Eurostar woes

[cynic]

The performance of the Eurostar trains over the last couple of days has been abysmal and I haven't been able to see any sensible explanation via the media. Have we anyone in the group who has any idea what is really wrong? Surely the trains should not come to a grinding halt when travelling through snow and there certainly will not be any snow once the train has travelled more than a few hundred yards into the tunnel. OK its possible that some snow might have entered the motor cooling air intakes but why is it having such a devastating effect this year only? The French overground Railways do not seem to have had any stoppages. Leaving stranded passengers stuck inside the tunnels was almost unforgivable - why didn't they tow the stranded trains out with a diesel powered loco?

[sm_jamieson]

As far as I understand, the french snow was very fine, and could not be "deflected" but got sucked into the electrics (air-cooling ??). It then all melted once the trains went into the warm tunnels, which caused problems with the electrics. The snow was finer than previous years - yes, the "wrong type of snow".

I am totally baffled why a) the people and b) the trains were left in there for hours. Why not just drive some coaches down the service tunnel (with some food etc.) and get people out ? They can at most be about 15 miles from one end or t'other. It must just be incompetence surely ?

Simon.

[Grimly Curmudgeon]

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember cynic saying something like:

Design stupidity - it's as if each generation of designers has to start with a blank sheet of mind and ignores all the painfully learned lessons of the past.

They did, but being Eurobollocks, they took their time to make up their minds what to do and couldn't be arsed telling anyone what was happening. Which gave me an idea - at the design stage it should have been possible to incorporate a normal train coupling so that an ordinary mainline diesel could pull the Eurocrap trains.

[Andrew Gabriel]

It really looks like gross incompetence and complete lack of planning for emergencies. I guess it's an organisation where no one is empowered to do anything locally in case they later get a bollocking. Things can, and do, go wrong. It's how you handle those failures that matters and that's been dire. Just said on the news that a driver was left crying in his cab, I guess because there was no contingency plan so he didn't know what to do, and/or he just got no useful guidance from his bosses.

BTW, my father made it through the tunnel on Friday in what was probably the last train to make it. It got delayed, and looking back, that was probably because they knew they had some problem.

[Tim W]

cynic wibbled on Monday 21 December 2009 20:19

Try uk.railway - it's been done to death there. Then they beat the corpse, shot the ghost and blew up the grave.

But the general summary is, so far:

Wrong type of snow.

Yes - just like BR. Light powdery snow getting in places it shouldn't in quantity, then melting in the tunnel (which is about 28C), then teh resultant water blew up the electrics or electronics.

[Steve Firth]

Wrong sort of snow.

[Andy Burns]

The Eurotunnel locos (which seem unaffected by snow) are capable of hauling Eurostar trains.

[Pete Verdon]

Sure they don't? The lower front of the engine looks like it opens up in two halves, presumably to expose a coupling.

Pete

[Jules]

Yes, that does seem to happen a lot, doesn't it? I don't think it's down to "not invented here" syndrome, either - but more a belief amongst designers that studying "old-fangled tech" couldn't possibly have anything useful to tech them when it comes to designing swanky new stuff...

I'm missing something on this snow thing - surely there are filters behind cooling vents / intakes, and someone forsaw the possibility of moisture (be it snow or anything else) build-up in there? Makes me wonder if there's a maintenance issue and whatever route moisture should have taken to not screw the electrics was blocked...

cheers

Jules

[John Rumm]

Last I heard on the news was the moisture caused the electronic protection system to shut the train down, rather than anything actually blowing up as such - some bit of software just thought it might!

[geoff]

In message , cynic writes

There have to be shunters around to pull the buggers out

and why they can't just use them to operate in the tunnels and then use the eurostar units to get carriages to and from the tunnel itself

A complete and utter balls up from start to finish

meanwhile, it looks like we will have an extra place at the xmas table and my b-i-l in Liege will be getting pissed as a fart "a seule (well ... avec ses amis)"

[js.b1]

Multiple diesel shunters were used to pull trains out. There are (hidden) couplings on both ends of the set.

The engineering problem is as much insufficient environmental testing at as early a stage as possible - probably lacking a facility large enough and thus using "Plan B" also known as "The Production System" for testing.

Existing snow shields performed fine for several years with larger particles of snow, but environmental conditions conspired to produce a particularly fine snow. Ingress of this fine snow accumulated and then melted on entering the tunnel which are at "peak summer" temperatures. The electronics shut the train down, probably the equivalent of a N-E fault with RCD protection :-)

The "redesign" appears to be regarding tighter clearances in snow shields, which suggests they have known about a problem - probably data-logging or maintenance.

The as-big problem is with management who either failed to develop sufficient contingency procedures or failed to enact them in a timely manner. The clock should start ticking after a train is stationary and after a certain period it is pulled out. Anything else is John Prescott shagging someone on a desk with the phone unplugged.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

The whole idea is fast travel between capitals. Having to change locos to go through the tunnel would take ages.

My niece and her family were visiting Disneyland over the weekend and are meant to be at my brother's in the North of Scotland by tomorrow.

[Usenet Nutter]

I'm just wondering why this is in UK.D-I-Y lol

[Nightjar]

sm_jamieson wrote: ...

They run on three different electrical systems as they travel between London and Paris. The reports I saw suggested it was the part of the electrics that deal with that conversion that had the problem.

The recovery plan is for any train that becomes stuck to be pushed or pulled out by the next one. However, that only works if there is just one train stuck.

Colin Bignell

[Clot]

"We're doomed, we're doomed, Captain Mainwaring!"

On Friday night, my younger son zipped over to Holyhead from Manchester to collect his girlfriend, popping into my MiL's in Conwy on the way to see us in Leics. arriving 3.00 a.m. having been stuck in a traffic problem on the M6 with his heater having packed up.

Without seeing him, I left in the morning to go to Llandudno to shop for Pater and drag the old blighter out to his pub for lunch so that he socialises.

Sunday night as I creep up the wooden hills at 1.00 a.m., son and his girlfriend are coming down the stairs with suitcases headed for Heathrow in the heaterless car, now safely esconced in a hotel in NY!

It's no wonder that there are Boondoggles in Copenhagen!

[Clot]

I might just be asking for advise on how to fix the cooling system on a 306 in a week's time! See lower on the thread. :)

[geoff]

In message , js.b1 writes

But, be it snow ingress or condensation, it's hardly rocket science

And because of a lack of competent engineering, my sister-in-law looks like she will be spending xmas with us, not with her husband

... luckily, she's a f'king good cook

[geoff]

In message , "Dave Plowman (News)" writes

No - having no service at all is worse than taking ages

[geoff]

In message , Usenet Nutter writes

Why not ?