Avanti London to Glasgow record attempt postponed because of faulty signals

Avanti West Coast has postponed its London Euston to Glasgow record attempt, that was scheduled for next Wednesday, claiming that signalling issues would make the attempt difficult.

According to the internal memo: “Together with Network Rail we’ve made the difficult decision to postpone our planned record tun attempt on Wednesday 7 May, due to ongoing signalling issues near Camden. Succeeding in setting a new record comes down to a matter of seconds, so we’re working hard with signalling specialists to find a fix. We want to give it our best attempt and we will be working with colleagues across the industry to find a new date to take on the challenge later this year. While scheduled passenger journeys are largely unaffected, the work would have slowed us down getting out of London. We are sorry about this disappointing news, and we know many people have worked hard to make it happen. But that will not go to waste, as we are already looking at new dates to complete the run, and will let you know when a new date is set soon.”

Engineers have contacted me to say that there have been a number of instances of signals reverting to red, causing approaching trains to pass them at danger, and that there is a lot of '“head scratching” to try and determine the cause of the fault. As a result the signals are working in 'restricted aspect’ mode, meaning that trains approach them at reduced speed.

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