So, this morning, SouthWest Trains had a train derail at London Waterloo station due to it crashing into a stationary goods / works train.

Unsurprisingly this is causing somewhat major mayhem for everyone trying to get to or from work in London today; so I'm going to ask a couple of very pertinent questions:

1. Could this have been avoided?
   
   
2. Was this inevitable, with the current engineering works?

Firstly, a little bit of background. Waterloo station is the busiest train station in London, with something like 99m people using it every year. However, the station is running vastly over-capacity, as are a lot of the trains that run to and from it. Therefore Network Rail decided to embark on a £800 million project to extend the length of some platforms at Waterloo to allow longer trains to use the station. They're also, *finally*, getting round to re-introducing the ex-Eurostar platforms, which have laid unused for over 10 years now.

This upgrade work has meant major disruption to the station while it takes place. There are currently 10* platforms out of 19 which are out of use due to the upgrade, and only limited access is available to the "new" ex-Eurostar platforms, meaning a hell of a lot of people are trying to use under half the already-well-over-capacity available space at Waterloo. SouthWest Trains have subsequently cancelled, retimed, altered and generally buggered about with trains and the rest of the network in order to try to make some of the station work during this upgrade.

The problems though, are that they're trying to run trains into and out of the rest of the station. This is clearly a big issue as there's only a limited number of tracks in and out of the station (5 each way), and not all those lines are connected to each platform, meaning a train which is going into (say) platform 12, can only use 1 or 2 of the incoming lines.

This issue gets exacerbated by the fact that the signalling and points control systems at Waterloo have been built / altered / mucked up / enhanced / re-wired and bodged so much, and were built for a 19 platform station, meaning they now have to do a lot more bodging / altering / re-wiring as part of the upgrade work. Unfortunately of course, this bodging / re-wiring inevitably means that from time to time the engineers break part of the system that's still meant to be "live", thus causing yet-more delays to passengers.

What seems to have happened today is that there was some form of points failure, which judging by the pictures that have been released, caused a departing passenger train to drive into the side of a handily placed "barrier" train made up of ballast waggons. That "barrier" train was placed there over a week ago to help separate the "live" part of the station and associated track from the bit that's currently being renewed. The fact that the waggons had been there for a week isn't the issue; the issue is how and why a points failure (for failure please read "was probably caused by bodging the wiring to keep the "live" stuff working") was even able to alter a set of points which should have been suitably clipped or locked so as to prevent the chance of a passenger train driving into the side of the barrier train.

That incident has, of course, caused yet more disruption, as another 3 platforms are now out of use; taking the totals to 13 closed out of 19, with only limited use on the other 4. SouthWest Trains are subsequently advising people to not travel to Waterloo or London in general, if they can avoid it. Not for the rest of today, and not for tomorrow either!

Which of course we all can, 'cause we only commute into London each day for "shits and giggles", as someone posted on Twitter earlier.

So... to answer my first two questions...

1. Could this have been avoided?
   
   Yes. But there's no easy solution or alternative. What they *could* have done is bite the bullet and shut the entire station for a month. Probably less actually. That would have given them the ability to rip out all the old infrastructure and lay the new platforms / tracks without the worry of keeping anything working. They could have then re-signalled the entire system in an organised, bodge-free manner. To achieve this closure, they could terminate all trains at Clapham Junction or Vauxhall and put on a bus shuttle to / from Waterloo & Victoria (remember that Vauxhall, Waterloo & Victoria also have tube connections). Of course this would affect the traffic in the area, but it probably wouldn't make too much difference in the grand scheme of things.
   
   
2. Was this inevitable, with the current engineering works?
   
   Pretty much, yes. Trying to do so much, and such complicated work without a total shutdown of the station is simply asking for trouble.

 

Now we can add a third question; on which pretty much every SouthWest Trains customer is currently asking:

1. Why the hell am I still paying for a full weekly / monthly / yearly season ticket when you can't offer me a full service for a month?
   
   The answer to this one is a little more complex, and I guess in reality it's to do with working out who'd be eligible for any discounts. But as a measure of good will to all men, women and ewoks, maybe SouthWest Trains should have said "If you're affected, you can have a 50% discount. If your local station / service is closed, you can have a month for free".
   
   Not that they will of course!

 

* They announced they were going to close 9 platforms, but it seems someone couldn't count and so 10 got closed, not 9!