Cathedrals Express to Cardiff 1/03/18. New date: 14/06/18

That snow doesn't really look particularly deep to me.

 

Well we dont have any at the moment but services are being pulled!

 

Heaven help us if we get a winter of the duration of 62/3 the whole lot will be shut down for three months

 

It was 6 inches deep in central Tonbridge, but nearer a foot deep at Hildenborough for the outward trip.
Nothing London side of Petts Wood, so it was very localised.

Cheers, Neil

 

Snow ? What snow ? <BJ>

 

Superb pics of steam and snow!

 

The alternative being to run the train, but leave passengers behind because their connecting services are not running,..and if the weather happens.. passengers stranded in the snow needing emergency services to rescue them.
Meanwhile someone loses money to failing to turn up or the operator having to dole out refunds, not to mention waste food, and people who need paying...

It’s only a train ride, everyone likes taking the morale high ground on safety, why not take it on this one.

Cancelling now everyone knows where they stand before money gets wasted and lives risked.

 

That may be so but the extreme knee jerk over weather which may or may not happen has left big parts of the UK with little or no services running. There is no need to curtail the network like this at this stage when nothing has even started to happen!

 

The operators are obligated to carry out a risk assessment. You may not agree with or like their conclusions but the due process has to be implemented. Only time will tell whether it was over cautious and whos mystic meg was best.

 

I wonder how the railways cope with the prospect of snow in Norway and Sweden. We've got a couple of Scandinavian members, haven't we?

 

I did see something in the news today about Greater Anglia cutting back services...you would have thought that would free up more paths for Ollie to get back to London! I hope that Saturday's tour/positioning move to the K&WVR doesn't get canned as well.

In fairness though we must remember the Cath Ex to Stratford in December that only got from Slough to Reading before being forced to turn back, on a day when the snow warnings turned out to be accurate.

 

A convenient excuse to dump a steam train from the national network I think.

 

Have you travelled on a third world rail system? I have and whilst things here are far from perfect at times, they’re nowhere near as bad as some of the places I’ve been.

 

Quite correct but don't worry we're getting there.

 

A risk assessment! The convenient words to hide behind when positive thinking and the old 'can do' approach would get things done. I expect all the schools will be closed too just in case. What we have is a weather pattern that used to occur quite frequently in winter without anyone noticing. Thankfully it's now not so frequent or we would be in trouble.

London used to be regularly blanketed with thick fog in November and December, a thick fog caused by high pollution so you couldn't see more than about 10 yards, the infamous peasouper. My father was a bus driver and did they stop running, no they did their risk assessment and issued conductors with flares so they could walk in front and guide the way in the worst areas. I don't recall it but there was a whole week of it in December 1952 when the capital never saw daylight, my dad paid for our bathroom to be refurbished from the overtime he earned that week.

 

What is actually unsafe about a bit of snow?

 

My old man was a driver at Stratford. In the 60s when I was a wee nipper, I can remember the GPO telegrams boy struggling up to our place in the god awful Essex snows on a BSA bantam to deliver a telegram (we had no telephone) from the depot superintendent to inform my dad that he would be required that night to run snow trains, trains that ran all night, up and down, to keep the lines open and functional. He would trudge to the local station through the snow on foot, where he would use the station masters phone to book on. Sometimes, because there were unscheduled snow trains running around, getting the signalman to stop one for him so he could hitch a ride on the warm footplate or cab to his starting point.

He also tell me tales of being the fireman on the first train up the line to Ipswich after the '53 floods, with an emergency engineers consist to examine the line and repair what they could, often crawling over washed out lines.

Mind you those were the days when you could get a train on Christmas Day.

 

Risk assessment is not a new concept, it just been more formalised.
Sadly we are not as prepared as our forebears. Cost have been trimmed and contingencies reduced. The consequence is out of course weather, when it happens, has a greater impact.