Great Anglia rail passengers’ ordeal after power cable breaks (From Echo)

those elastic bands get brittle in the cold weather and will snap if wound up too tight....

What country was this in , somewhere in izzbekystan i guess, such things would never happen just 15mins outside the city of london would it , when we have the best engineers to work on our infastructure of transport or was it more than their jobs worth to deal promptly

it is ridiculous this should happen with the amount of engineering works that take place on that line.

As for the lack of information that is disgraceful

It's not starting very well for GA, is it?

Sorry to hear about the passengers' experience.

You have to feel sorry for GA; years of cutting costs and not investing by National Express and GA cop the rap for it. They only have 18 months and it will take at least that to stablise the sinking ship.

National Express should never be allowed to run a railway again.

Dont ask any of them passengers to go to war, things happen get a grip

save southend wrote:
What country was this in , somewhere in izzbekystan i guess, such things would never happen just 15mins outside the city of london would it , when we have the best engineers to work on our infastructure of transport or was it more than their jobs worth to deal promptly

Your sarcasm could be considered a little innappropriate here. I guess you imagine you would have jumped on top of the train, grabbed the two halves of the 25kv cateniary , pushed them together and, using the resulting arc, welded them back together. Repaired the broken insulators etc. on the pantographs atop of the train with some duct tape, shoved the cables back into the damaged clamps and sent them on their way!

However, back in the real world, how about the normal service we get from non-industrial services, you know like the office workers that use our fine railways. In their world, the standard is "Please allow up to 28 days for this to happen." I spent all my working life in electrical supply and, it may surprise you to learn, effecting a line repair takes a little more than writing a letter to it. Don't make yourself look a fool by knocking something you have not the slightest understanding of, or I may be tempted to call you a Tory!

you tell him poster you tell him, I bet he can't put a plug on

Seems the line could be awarded that famed title once held by the LTS. "THE MISERY LINE". Should make a great impression on those from outside the UK as they travel to Stratford and The Olympics, if it continues to regularly malfunction.

Can I ask if anyone tried this offer of 25% off a ticket on their site? I got a email with the pin number but trying to book the ticket I want there is nowhere as I can see to input this pin code! Anyone else tried with this offer and can help me? or is this offer just one big lying con?

“Thankfully, it was warm because there were so many people on the train, but it was pitch black as there were no lights and some people were very anxious.”

Either it was warm, or it was sub-zero on the train? It can't be both.

As for announcements being made, power is needed to do this, so was the driver expected to have a battery back-up, or perhaps a megaphone?

When passengers get held-up in their cars home from the station, WHO do they moan at then?

An absolute disgrace of a story, so far from the truth...... The idiot of a 'journalist' put an appeal out via the Echo's website appealing for witness/victims and their comments. The comments received were all positive, praising the driver and other staff...... And then she prints a story like this! Total opposite and total rubbish.

Yes, the train needs power to communicate to the passengers! The trains power was lost. The driver did his best to walk through a packed train to try to tell passengers the situation, while also trying to single handlely deal with a real emergency situation. If there was no word from the driver as this story suggests then how did this woman from Hockley know to tell relatives to meet them at Romford or Shenfield?

Surely you should get all the facts before running a story, don't forget these people have livelihoods/careers too.

Shame on you Echo Newspapers, shame on you Gina Marden.

Despite the comments above, the service provided by GA is still not satisfactory, they promised many changes especially regarding communication with staff given Blackberries, etc the above incident is not an isolated one, there have been umpteen problems since they took over, why is it that there are continual overhead cable/signalling problems, there are so many that surely they should have a well rehearsed plan for when things go wrong but it never happens, staff appear clueless and commuters get frustrated, don't forget to travel on this line is very expensive..commuters expect a good service but rarely receive it. The fact that it the main line serving the Olympic station of Stratford is indeed rather worrying as is their short franchise which means they are very unlikely to spend any significant amount of money on improvements.

andy:) wrote:
Despite the comments above, the service provided by GA is still not satisfactory, they promised many changes especially regarding communication with staff given Blackberries, etc the above incident is not an isolated one, there have been umpteen problems since they took over, why is it that there are continual overhead cable/signalling problems, there are so many that surely they should have a well rehearsed plan for when things go wrong but it never happens, staff appear clueless and commuters get frustrated, don't forget to travel on this line is very expensive..commuters expect a good service but rarely receive it. The fact that it the main line serving the Olympic station of Stratford is indeed rather worrying as is their short franchise which means they are very unlikely to spend any significant amount of money on improvements.

The signals, cables etc are owned and maintained by Network Rail NOT Greater Anglia!

Do you blame your car manufacturer/dealer/
mechanic when something happens on the roads??

wannabe_mayor wrote:

andy:) wrote:
Despite the comments above, the service provided by GA is still not satisfactory, they promised many changes especially regarding communication with staff given Blackberries, etc the above incident is not an isolated one, there have been umpteen problems since they took over, why is it that there are continual overhead cable/signalling problems, there are so many that surely they should have a well rehearsed plan for when things go wrong but it never happens, staff appear clueless and commuters get frustrated, don't forget to travel on this line is very expensive..commuters expect a good service but rarely receive it. The fact that it the main line serving the Olympic station of Stratford is indeed rather worrying as is their short franchise which means they are very unlikely to spend any significant amount of money on improvements.

The signals, cables etc are owned and maintained by Network Rail NOT Greater Anglia!

Do you blame your car manufacturer/dealer/

mechanic when something happens on the roads??

No quite the same, as car manufacturers dont pay to use the roads, whereas TOC's pay Network Rail for a service and if its not good they should give them a roasting, demand compensation, etc

A better analogy would be..you buy a car and a third party product say tyres or distributer fails you'd still blame the car manufacturer even they they didnt 'make' the part in question.

andy:) wrote:
Despite the comments above, the service provided by GA is still not satisfactory, they promised many changes especially regarding communication with staff given Blackberries, etc the above incident is not an isolated one, there have been umpteen problems since they took over, why is it that there are continual overhead cable/signalling problems, there are so many that surely they should have a well rehearsed plan for when things go wrong but it never happens, staff appear clueless and commuters get frustrated, don't forget to travel on this line is very expensive..commuters expect a good service but rarely receive it. The fact that it the main line serving the Olympic station of Stratford is indeed rather worrying as is their short franchise which means they are very unlikely to spend any significant amount of money on improvements.

See? When it was nationalised it was better and safer. Routine safety repairs were never shoved on the back burner and, believe it or not, travel was actually cheaper. Big bucks for some, misery for most. Bet they manage to put the ticket offices in the Indian sub-continent and you will need to dial a prefix of 0871 to ask for the train times from a nearly English-speaking ticket clerk. However did people believe that de-nationalising the railways, or any other once nationalised industry would work? Locally,the councils proved the Tories can't manage their way out of a paper bag-They just have to hand it over to their friends the contractors. Why would National concerns be any better? Just because a fat cat tells you it's so doesn't actually make it so!

andy:) wrote:

wannabe_mayor wrote:

andy:) wrote:
Despite the comments above, the service provided by GA is still not satisfactory, they promised many changes especially regarding communication with staff given Blackberries, etc the above incident is not an isolated one, there have been umpteen problems since they took over, why is it that there are continual overhead cable/signalling problems, there are so many that surely they should have a well rehearsed plan for when things go wrong but it never happens, staff appear clueless and commuters get frustrated, don't forget to travel on this line is very expensive..commuters expect a good service but rarely receive it. The fact that it the main line serving the Olympic station of Stratford is indeed rather worrying as is their short franchise which means they are very unlikely to spend any significant amount of money on improvements.

The signals, cables etc are owned and maintained by Network Rail NOT Greater Anglia!

Do you blame your car manufacturer/dealer/


mechanic when something happens on the roads??

No quite the same, as car manufacturers dont pay to use the roads, whereas TOC's pay Network Rail for a service and if its not good they should give them a roasting, demand compensation, etc

A better analogy would be..you buy a car and a third party product say tyres or distributer fails you'd still blame the car manufacturer even they they didnt 'make' the part in question.

but the driver does!! Road tax, tolls etc etc