Southeastern services plus Victoria and Waterloo stations affected by freak lightning strike in Wandsworth

9:09am Friday 20th April 2012 in Traffic & Travel By Mark Chandler

Lightning strike leaves train passengers stranded Lightning strike leaves train passengers stranded

THOUSANDS of travellers were left stranded on trains and station platforms yesterday evening after a lightning strike damaged signalling equipment.

Network Rail said the lightning hit a power substation in south Wandsworth at around 5.30pm which triggered a power surge disrupting signalling for Victoria and Waterloo stations.

Victoria station suffered the worst disruption with the Southeastern side closed down and no trains running via Herne Hill.

Disgruntled commuters were forced to take buses and taxis to complete their journeys.

A spokesman for Network Rail said traction problems were not fixed until around 10pm, with engineers working through the night to get services up and running again this morning.

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Comments(9)

bothered44 says...
9:28am Fri 20 Apr 12

3 hours & 3 buses to get home last night from Victoria...

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nigel1 says...
10:02am Fri 20 Apr 12

Stuck on the track in packed train for two hours just outside Vauxhall when power blew. No air con or lights - extremely stuffy/warm. Some passengers were contemplating walking out the back of the train and along the tracks. Not pleasant.

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Empirecook says...
10:57am Fri 20 Apr 12

Anyone else notice the failure here?

For lightining to strike, it strikes the highest thing. (which is why tall buildings usually have a means of earthing). So the only way this would happen is if the sub-station was to be in the middle of nowhere...which for wandsworth, is hard to believe.

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HughJarrs says...
11:09am Fri 20 Apr 12

"freak lightning strike in Wandsworth" - shocking excuse in a current climate.

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bnorther says...
11:31am Fri 20 Apr 12

Empirecook wrote:
Anyone else notice the failure here?

For lightining to strike, it strikes the highest thing. (which is why tall buildings usually have a means of earthing). So the only way this would happen is if the sub-station was to be in the middle of nowhere...which for wandsworth, is hard to believe.
That's simply is not true. Lighting will follow the course of least resistance to earth (note: electrical earth is not the same as ground level, its a ref of near zero voltage, with a near infinite sink, at least in theory) for cloud/earth lightning.

This often is a tall building, as the often is a copper "rod" which will be earthed.

But, its relatively common for lightning to strike the ground, even where there are trees and poles close by.

A big electricity sub station will be full of nice easy routes to earth, so will be more likely to be struck than much of the surrounding area. Unfortunately the surge caused will have tripped many surge protectors within it and blown many fuses, and possibly destroyed lots of equipment as well. Even a non direct hit can cause serious damage. I was in charge of an IT dept a while back. A strike hit a tree about 500m away, and despite of some very expensive protection of the computer room, there were many electrical items that were fried.

Have a look at this site:

http://stormhighway.
com/lightning_always
_strikes_tallest_obj
ect_myth.shtml

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jaded1 says...
5:57pm Fri 20 Apr 12

More chance of getting struck by lightening.

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IMakeSense says...
6:47pm Fri 20 Apr 12

I would have thought that rail commuters would be used to lightning strikes by now, what with the unions and all. Notice I wrote lightning, not lightening.

Just you wait 'til London Bridge is closed. That will be fun, won't it?

Oh, how glad I am that I don't commute. Been there, done it, got the T-shirt.

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dave76 says...
2:02pm Sat 21 Apr 12

I bet they would like to be able to blame Bob Crow for this one!

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mumcabs says...
3:58pm Sat 21 Apr 12

Was obviously the wrong sort of lightning !!

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