This is why a comprehensive investigation is needed to ensure the details are known and all lessons learned or, unfortunately, re-learned.
The trains were built to a environmental tolerance spec, and shutting down when that spec is exceeded seems like a reasonable thing to do. Having an expert test that all the safety systems are still working properly after they've been exposed to conditions they weren't designed for also seems prudent.
Do you think people should pay higher ticket prices / more tax to fund trains that can tolerate a wider range of input frequencies, given how rarely these sorts of events happen?
Yes, they were built to a spec. According to the official technical report[1] these trains DID NOT experience anything outside that spec. The shut down was not supposed to occur. The trains are simply defective and both manufacturer and operator testing failed to reveal these defects. There is no other reasonable conclusion. Defective, inadequately tested trains.
> Having an expert test that all the safety systems are still working properly after they've been exposed to conditions they weren't designed for also seems prudent.
This bit of guesswork is also contradicted in the official report as the manufacturer has committed to providing a system update to permit operation to resume WITHOUT any of your supposed 'prudence.' Resuming operation on power recovery without intervention by technicians is the specified, expected behavior. This is a separate defect that also survived whatever obviously inadequate testing regime was supposedly in effect.
> Do you think people should pay higher ticket prices / more tax to fund trains that can tolerate a wider range of input frequencies, given how rarely these sorts of events happen?
Since the official conclusion and subsequent response by the manufacturer both show the trains were specified to tolerate these conditions the extraordinary costs you imagine are a fiction; the cost has already been paid. No higher ticket prices required. And since these conditions were specified we also know they were indeed anticipated despite their infrequency.
Both the manufacturer and the operator failed here. They got caught with their pants down. You may not like hearing that for whatever reason but that's the bottom line and inventing excuses won't change it.
Similarly, the grid's license gives them a ±1% variation around 50Hz (so ±0.5Hz from https://www.nationalgrideso.com/balancing-services/frequency...).
So we have a power anomaly where the frequency moved >0.125Hz/s and dropped well below the 49.5Hz license threshold. I don't know what the procurement spec was, but I'd be very surprised if this event was "in-spec" for the trains, so in the absence if this it's probably reasonable to say that GP is incorrect.
Transformers get quite unhappily melty if you drop the frequency too much, so if your cooling system isn't designed to cope with this, it's probably better to shut down than have an exciting fire.
* Wider tolerance means heavier electrical and cooling systems, increasing both capital outlay and operating cost for both track wear and maintenance.
* The trains procured were essentially "off the shelf" from Siemens and would have been designed and manufactured for other operators before the DfT put the tender together. A wider operating tolerance would have therefore either ruled out the Siemens trains, or at least significantly upped the cost as they would have had to redesign them.
An annual season ticket from St Albans to London is about £3,600. How much more should that passenger (as well as the taxpayer) be paying so that they can travel on trains that work when this type of event happens? How often does this type of event happen?
> This is utterly inexcusable for a train given the amount of disruption caused by multiple lines being clogged by failed trains in multiple places.
People being stuck on trains for a few hours is pretty far down the severity list of "things that could go wrong" when the power goes out. That said, what I do think the outcome will be here is they'll figure out if/how the driver can self-reset this type of issue rather than requiring a fitter to travel out.