Power outage at BBC Wales

I think a lot of London was without power because the National Grid had shut off the 400kV overhead lines because they were at risk of crunching into the pylons and each other. At about 7am ish these supplies were gradually restored, but it was then down to the local electricity boards (SEB, Seeboard, LEB), who looked after 132kV down to 415/240 to get their sub stations up and running. London's LEB had 99% underground distribution so probably didn't suffer too much, if any damage. My local board SEB had suffered extensive damage, and it was days before some punters had their power restored. Yorks Electricity were drafted in to help out, and were made incredibly welcome by us normally reserved southerners. Free accommodation, food and drink in pubs and farm houses for starters

If the incoming feed from Manchester was via LO SWC it would seem a good bet for how they patched around TC, either directly or via Brum? Manchester would go through there anyway?

Yes Manchester circuits to London would have passed through Pebble Mill.
It's whether or not extra bits were required in the vision signal to allow it to keep the transmitter network up.
I don't think there was anything other than SiS back then, maybe ITS on lines 19/20?
In later years there were more added.

There was ITS, and also various ident data on 21? It was there in the 70s, the ident data would vanish during opts (soft and hard opts)

Presumably Pebble Mill could generate those idents if they were designated as a back up for London?

I'm pretty sure it wasn't coming from Belfast. Annoyingly, I was in a rush that morning, and only turned on the TV moments before leaving the house. Didn't have time to set the video (as I recall, we had no blank tapes left either).

It was fairly unusual for the BBC to put out a plain blue background on such captions. That was more of an ITV thing.

It's a long time ago, but my hazy memory has a recollection of the early morning BBC Two caption being accompanied by current Ceefax IV music (that's why I don't believe it was coming from Belfast; I don't believe I checked the VBI at the time though). And the text generator was more akin to what we would've seen in the 70s and early 80s (Anchor possibly). They may have been limited to very basic kit. And if that caption was generated in Belfast, I would've recognised their usual character generators.

I was in such a hurry and can't remember if I checked if Ceefax was operational.

And really pushing it with my memory, but I'm almost certain the BBC Two apology caption referred to the power issues and wasn't just a generic apology.

Any idea what clip that was Steve? I'd be interested to see the caption - and whether or not my memory of the BBC Two equivalent that morning might be close to reality.

I've only ever seen a couple of clips of BBC One that morning - and the blue caption wasn't featured.

Well, this is a different Steve, but I vividly remember seeing this clip on the internet about fifteen years ago, it was Donald Heighway at BBC South West. It began with Donald saying "well, I expect you're wondering what's been happening", seemingly this was at 6.57, and then he suggested they were hoping to go over to London for Breakfast Time but "it depends on whether they can get the volts back". And then after doing the regional news he said, "yes, indeed, we can go over to London for a news (sic)", which is presumably when Nicholas Witchell's Broom Cupboard Breakfast Time began. Haven't seen it for ages.

As far as I know, the Broom Cupboard manned things until about 8.15 at which point Breakfast Time began from Pres B at TVC. I've seen quite a lot of this and interestingly there are a few other reports and interviews and they actually have a couple of studio guests about subjects unrelated to the storm, heaven knows how they got there. Of course there's TVam from the same morning on YouTube which is pretty much all storm apart from five minutes when Fred Trueman pops up to talk about cricket.

Thanks Steve. I do recollect someone talking about that BBC SW clip some years ago - but I've not seen it.

I'm sure things got pretty crazy in NC1 and NC2 that morning. As far as I'm aware, back in those days, only the duty announcer was present in Pres when the channels came on air each morning. NC1 would've been more fully staffed later in the morning. But staffing arrangements on this particular date were probably a little different, needless to say.

BBC Two had no early morning OU programmes that day. 'Pages from Ceefax' was the first offering from 9am, followed by 'Daytime on Two', which probably would've been self-op by the duty announcer (in normal circumstances). It'd be interesting to know what happened on BBC Two that morning. We seem to know a lot more about BBC One that day.

Well, now, blue was the IBA's corporate colour from the early 70s until their demise in 1991. The legendry (in here that is) strike captions etc were IBA generated.
Of course there were 'blue' ITV companies, Southern, HTV, Granada, ATV, Border, Tyne Tees, arguably Thames and Ulster, actually, I think you're right after all!

Yes, it would be interesting to know whether BBC 2 was running. It's occurred to me that if CP was running on a genny that morning, they wouldn't have wasted power on transmitting a caption to an audience that were busy sweeping up their rooftiles from the pavement!
So that could explain its absence from CP

It was my understanding (from what I remember from when I had a tour round) that CP didn't have a generator, they relied on two diverse feeds from the grid