Southeastern services were badly disrupted all day on Friday 12 February. This was eventually blamed on ice on the rails that the de-icing trains did not shift. However both passengers and the Met Office records suggest that any frost was local and short-lived, and different explanations were given during the day. It’s all a bit of a mystery.

Exhibit 1

The Met Office have around 150 weather stations across the UK that record weather observations hourly. Of the seven stations broadly covering the Southeastern area temperatures at Shoreham Airport, Manston Airport, Langdon (Dover) and Kenley (Surrey) never dropped below 1°C. The lowest temperature at Herstmonceux was -0.1°C, at Gravesend -0.5°C and

Charlwood (Gatwick) -1.2°C – but only Charlwood was below zero for more than an hour. It was not a cold night.

There is some evidence of a “double dip” though, with cold temperatures early in the night, then a warmer period, and then a cold period again. This is most evident at Charlwood, but shows in some other graphs too.

Exhibit 2

The BBC Southeast news bulletin at 2230 on Friday evening (available on iPlayer) reported that four specific lines had been affected by ice: Hastings to Tonbridge, Tonbridge to Redhill, Ashford to Maidstone East, and Haywards Heath to Lewes. We presume that they had been briefed by Network Rail. But if it were these four lines affected then why was there disruption on High Speed services – none of which use these lines? And why were the Ramsgate to London trains through Sevenoaks affected – which again do not use these lines?

Exhibit 3

As so often, Southeastern did not get their story straight. We have reports of the delays being blamed by Southeastern staff on over-running engineering work. Network Rail initially blamed the problems on not being able to run de-icing trains because of overnight engineering work. And that’s what the BBC initially reported.

Network Rail’s formal statement later in the day said

“While our de-icing train fleet ran overnight and our rail heaters were all on and working …”

We’re struck by the fact that the “all” only applies to the rail heaters – the statement would be technical correct if only some of the de-icing train fleet actually ran. Is this what someone is Network Rail is trying to avoid admitting?

Conclusion

Something here does not add up.

• The weather evidence and the BBC map of the lines affected roughly fit together; it was colder in East Sussex than elsewhere. If so, why the widespread disruption elsewhere?
• There’s a suggestion from our friends in other commuter groups, from talking to railway staff, that the de-icing trains run and the rail heaters are operated relatively early in the night. That would leave a period of vulnerability if the temperatures drop again before the normal trains start running regularly enough to keep the lines ice-free. There was indeed a double-dip during the night. Is this what happened?
• There was some engineering work going on. Did it mean that part of the de-icing fleet – perhaps in the west of our area – could not operate? (Remember that carefully drafted statement.)
• If the de-icing trains cannot do a decent job on most lines on a relevant mild February night what’s the point of them?
• Why were Javelin trains affected? They go nowhere near the areas that were cold.

Southeastern’s handling of the event

Southeastern will say that this is all Network Rail’s fault. It’s true that Network Rail have the prime responsibility for track maintenance (and they will have to pay compensation to Southeastern). However it’s Southeastern’s responsibility to communicate with its customers and to restore services to normal. There were some clear shortcomings:

• Southeastern failed to communicate with its customers in an accurate, timely and actionable way. Where station staff gave information, it was not consistent. At some stations, including Sevenoaks, platform staff seemed to go into hiding. On Twitter from 0700 to 0900 there were 2770 mentions of Southeastern but only 16 tweets from Southeastern itself. (It’s possible that the daytime Twitter team themselves could not get to work.) Overall we saw a pattern that is disappointingly still all too common when there is disruption.
• The service had not been restored to normal by the time of the evening rush hour. Southeastern admit that there were short formations and displaced train crews. Why did it take so long?
• Southeastern invited customers to apply for Delay-Repay. That’s no good for people who simply gave up. For such widespread disruption why don’t they just give season ticket holders an additional day, or a small discount on renewal?
• Southeastern told customers to file a formal complaint – although they’re not allowed to do it by email. It’s not clear what good yelling at a computer in an outsourced company in the Midlands will do, except perhaps generate a standard-form apology. We asked Southeastern to list 10 things that they’ve changed as a result of customer complaints; so far they have not even given us one.

We have received an email to stakeholders from Southeastern that does not really explain why a disruption of such magnitude occured. You can read it here.

We have written to Southeastern to ask why such a tiny touch of frost caused such a massive problem – and why it lasted all day. The MD of Network Rail South East also promised a further investigation; we hope that he will publish that shortly.

It’s important for us to learn from these incidents to identify issues on which we should press for change in Southeastern and Network Rail. Please tell us about your experiences – what happened, what you were told, what the result of your complaint was – so that we can continue the campaign.

Credits: Thanks to @marshlinktrains, @1066shrimprail and @trainwatch for their public detective work on this, and to all our members and supporters who contacted us yesterday.