The Wrong Type of Seawater

Voyager at Dawlish

Virgin Trains are very proud of their new Voyagers. Their website goes into great detail about how wonderful they are. Other people are less impressed, complaining about cramped interiors, lack of luggage space, and the fact that these four or five coach trains have replaced older seven coach trains, and can't cope with the crowds.

Now a new problem has occurred; it appears that they don't like seawater. I haven't yet read the full story of yesterday's Dawlish sea wall fiasco, but it seems that between five and seven of these shiny new trains failed on the same five mile stretch of track that runs along the sea wall.

Hugh Dady takes up the story on the SWRG mailing list

The evening high tide has now passed and with the wind now moderated, trains again running normally again with the exception of Virgin who are running an HST only service i.e. very little.

Will try and post todays happenings tomorrow - they have been long and complex but for those still dying to know, Voyager 220024 forming 1S69 sat in Dawlish station for some time today before setting off at around 1130 only to collapse between there and the Rockstone bridge. Thunderbird 47756 had already been scrambled but its progress (as it had to run wrong line from Teignmouth) was hampered by a down 221 which itself was in trouble on the sea wall. After running round at the Warren 47756 arrived to attach to 220024 around 1220 but it took just over an hour to complete this operation. All sorts of problems and crew clearly unfamiliar with carrying out the procedure in anger. Further delays caused by the inability to build sufficient air pressure to release brakes so the cavalcade did not set sail until 1325 some two and a half hours after first reaching Dawlish. Arrival at Exeter was at 1340 where the train was terminated with the 47 removing the errant 220 to Riverside Yard almost immediately for decoupling.

A full account of a pretty unhappy Princess will be posted tomorrow - I am still trying to work out what was what as things went from bad to worse through much of the day. Amey staff on site have confirmed that there have been no problems with the signalling or infrastructure during what was a fairly mild easterly weather pattern. No other reported problems from other trains so sadly it was just the Voyager fleet that brought the service to a standstill through much of the day. Wessex indicators at Dawlish are still displaying a note at 2200 this evening saying that the service remains disrupted as a result of "several Virgin Cross Country train failures between Exeter and Newton Abbot today".

H.D.