From the District Council

Train users have a chance to quiz railway executives about services between London and the St Albans District.

Representatives of Govia, which operates the Thameslink line, are to attend a public meeting later this month.

They will be joined by colleagues from Network Rail which owns the track and other infrastructure.

Members of two rail user groups will also be in attendance to give their views on behalf of travellers. These are the Association of Public Transport Users and the Train Suffererjettes.

A wheelchair user who regularly uses the route will be present to talk about his experiences.

The meeting has been arranged by the Planning, Resources and Housing Scrutiny Committee of St Albans City and District Council. It will be held in the Council chamber at the Civic Centre, St Peter’s Street, on Thursday 2 February from 7pm.

Anyone who wants to raise an issue can do so by emailing  scrutiny@stalbans.gov.uk by Monday 30 January.

Their questions will be put to the executives by Councillors.  If requested, their names and addresses will be kept confidential.

County Councillor Sandy Walkington was delighted to join the brilliantly named ‘Sufferjettes’ in their protest this morning at St Albans City Station.  Many of those protesting are female commuters making the particular point that train delays and cancellations play expensive havoc with childcare arrangements. They just want the service they are paying for.

Sandy helped lead the chant which received thumbs-up from the hurrying commuters going past:

‘What do we want?  Trains on time!

‘When do we want it?  Now!’

Sandy said: “I was on the Environment and Transport Panel at County Hall which grilled Thameslink senior executives last week.  It goes without saying that the service needs to be run as advertised.  But problems are likely to continue in the near term due to driver shortages, track closures at London Bridge and teething problems with the new Class 700 trains.  None of these is the fault of the poor long suffering passengers and they should be properly compensated, not just Delay Repay but a proper and substantial fare cut until the advertised service can be delivered.”

Dear stakeholder,

I would like to offer my wholehearted apologies for the severe disruption on Thameslink services this week.  I appreciate that this has been immensely frustrating to our customers on the back of the extended disruption last week after a power surge damaged signalling systems in the Luton area.

This week there have been further major incidents affecting Thameslink services. On Wednesday evening following a fatality near Elstree and Borehamwood, with services held for around 80 minutes while emergency services attended, and subsequent services delayed or cancelled.

Yesterday evening one of our trains came to a stand near Kentish Town at 1842.  Our provisional findings are that there was a loss of overhead electric power which caused a ‘tripping’ in of the circuit breakers in the train involved.  With the train unable to receive power, a rescue train was sent from Cricklewood.  However, when that train was attached the same problem affected the rescue train.  Our priority was the comfort and safety of our passengers, so the trains were decoupled in order for passengers from the original train to be evacuated on to the rescue train.  This took place at around 90 minutes after the original incident began. After that, the stalled train was cleared once engineering assistance arrived. Continue reading →