Passengers travelling with @SouthernRailUK will have endured some delays on the #Seaford branch this morning, on top of some disruption last week. This comes a week after we completed resignalling on the line + people have rightly asked us why. 1/
@SouthernRailUK The issue this morning was down to a power surge last night with the external supply, which caused some of our train detection circuits to fail. These tell us where trains are and always fail to “red” as a fail safe. We worked round the problem but there were delays. 2/ 
@SouthernRailUK So why does a new system not work perfectly “out of the box? When a new system is installed with many thousands of components and miles of wiring, however much testing we do, there’s a chance something will let us down in the first few days. 3/
@SouthernRailUK Equally, each system will have its own quirks that only emerge when trains are running, power surges happen, lightning strikes… As our techs pick those up, they get ironed out and reliability climbs. Engineers call it the “bathtub curve”: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bathtub_c… 4/
@SouthernRailUK So, when we say a new system will be more reliable, we mean it and it will be, and it’s up to us to fix snags and make sure people are still able to get to work. Thank you to passengers for your patience + @SouthernRailUK for keeping you informed.
networkrailmediacentre.co.uk/news/passenger…
networkrailmediacentre.co.uk/news/passenger…
