Whilst driving to Kentish Town last night, I noticed a queue of trains coming the other way between Farringdon and St. Pancras
; this is never a good thing!
Lo and behold, on the way back from Kentish Town, I got held outside of St. Pancras for quite a long time. Unrelated and interestingly, I was being held behind a Southern Trains 377 or 387, which I assume had come as ECS from the Hornsey depot via the Canal Tunnel and was possibly on the way to Selhurst depot. During station hours, it’s only ever our class 700s which travel through the Core (St. Pancras to London Bridge
), so this was a very unexpected sight.
Once I’d pulled into St. Pancras, the signaller contacted me to advise that there was a track circuit failure at Farringdon
. Track circuit detection is how the signalling system knows if there’s a train within a signalling section so a track circuit failure means that the signalling system is effectively not working. When this happens, the affected signal reverts to danger (red) and the signaller would usually have to give permission to pass each affected signal at danger, which is time consuming.
Throughout the Core, we have PoSAs (Proceed on Sight Authority) signals attached to each main aspect signal. When the signaller has confirmed that a train has the correct route set, a PoSA will flash to authorise a driver to proceed past this signal at caution, being prepared to stop short of any obstruction. This makes for slow progress, but not as slow as the signaller contacting every train driver individually!
By the time I got through Farringdon, I was 20 minutes late and wasn’t able to make that time up before Gillingham. As this was the last Thameslink service scheduled to run all the way through to Rainham for the day, it was decided not to terminate it at Gillingham so the driver who relieved me had to carry on to Rainham
.
#TrainTootRE: https://rear.train.cab/notes/ajwvuzcyiwl80008
Train Driver