Will they ever restore the Oxenholme - Windermere service ?

[rodent279]

Perhaps for extra entertainment the bus and trains could race between Oxenholme and Windermere? To make it even more fun you could call the bus a name, such as Bertie, and the train could be called something, maybe Thomas...?

Do you work for the DfT?..... :-)

[Mike Storey]

Mike

 

I am looking from the outside and know nothing about how a railway works from personal knowledge but have an understanding of how business works. To a certain extent railways are a national asset which should have its services preserved and kept running for the benefit of the public, despite the dramatic reduction of the network (even before Beeching) there are now more than ever people using the trains, secondly the cost of train travel is a total nightmare, some facing massive costs in travelling where as others are able to book giveaway fares (it recently cost me more for a cheap day return to London than a colleague who pre booked from Nottingham (half the price!!).

 

In short we have the highest number of passengers travelling coupled with the dearest fares, simply there is money in the system

 

Now the biggest drain on income I see is the amount of snouts in the trough hovering out cash from the system. Example 

 

One group owns the track (and I guess the buildings)

Another owns the rolling stock

A third runs the trains

 

Each of these businesses have their own companies making profits, putting it simply if one company owned the right to run the complete service, not only would the overheads reduce but things like new timetable, work on the infrastructure would be under the control of one company which would be better able to dovetail these areas together better.  In business why do investors like mergers, simple it reduces costs. In my opinion we have a system designed to fill the pockets of to many senior managers/directors/shareholders at the expense of the travelling public

 

Finally we need an agreement with the unions on staffing, what's the difference between a guard and a train manager ? a name !!!  Safety on the whole railway environment has improved so much over the past 100 years in train travel staffing needs to alter to take advantage of it fully. To be quite honest I would rather have an employee (what ever name they would like to be called) walking through the carriages than stuck in a guards compartment, especially in today's world.

 

Railways are a wonderful national asset, lets treat it that way and make the most of it. It seems to me we have too many anchors dragging the system to a halt

 

Interestingly, it was people from the outside, who knew nothing about railways, but thought they knew about other stuff, that designed the system we now have. 

[The Stationmaster]

Mike

 

I am looking from the outside and know nothing about how a railway works from personal knowledge but have an understanding of how business works. To a certain extent railways are a national asset which should have its services preserved and kept running for the benefit of the public, despite the dramatic reduction of the network (even before Beeching) there are now more than ever people using the trains, secondly the cost of train travel is a total nightmare, some facing massive costs in travelling where as others are able to book giveaway fares (it recently cost me more for a cheap day return to London than a colleague who pre booked from Nottingham (half the price!!).

 

In short we have the highest number of passengers travelling coupled with the dearest fares, simply there is money in the system

 

Now the biggest drain on income I see is the amount of snouts in the trough hovering out cash from the system. Example 

 

One group owns the track (and I guess the buildings)

Another owns the rolling stock

A third runs the trains

 

Each of these businesses have their own companies making profits, putting it simply if one company owned the right to run the complete service, not only would the overheads reduce but things like new timetable, work on the infrastructure would be under the control of one company which would be better able to dovetail these areas together better.  In business why do investors like mergers, simple it reduces costs. In my opinion we have a system designed to fill the pockets of to many senior managers/directors/shareholders at the expense of the travelling public

 

Finally we need an agreement with the unions on staffing, what's the difference between a guard and a train manager ? a name !!!  Safety on the whole railway environment has improved so much over the past 100 years in train travel staffing needs to alter to take advantage of it fully. To be quite honest I would rather have an employee (what ever name they would like to be called) walking through the carriages than stuck in a guards compartment, especially in today's world.

 

Railways are a wonderful national asset, lets treat it that way and make the most of it. It seems to me we have too many anchors dragging the system to a halt

 

So somebody else owns the rolling stock - and buying the new rolling stock which the state can't afford to buy (which is why BR went out and leased some stock) leads to the same old question about how the state spends its taxes - do you want more spent on the NHS or should it be spent on railway rolling stock, or schools, or defence, or benefits?   It has been repeatedly shown that the rolling stock companies are not ripping off the system and are making relatively modest profits on their investments.  How else for example would EWS have renewed the freight loco fleet if it had actually had to buy the Class 66s?

 

Similarly as far as freight is concerned the privatised operators have gained back traffic to rail because they have been prepared to accept a lower rate of return than The Treasury required BR to make - is that profiteering or were The Treasury profiteering by forcing BR to price out traffic which was more than covering its operating costs?

 

And back once again to timetable process.  Well I spent 5 years of my BR employment directly involved at managerial level in the train planning and timetable planning process and then a slightly longer period involved in it on the 'privatised railway' - during which time I was one of the adjudicators when it came down to any timetable conflict (the notes of our meetings are on public record as it happens.  To be honest in many respects the latter was easier because we were working within a clearly set out procedure with contracts to protect all parties.  The. critical point in both, and very much the critical point today and in affecting the May timetable, is no different from what it was in BR times - there are set timescales towards the construction and publication of the timetable and the various other work which goes into producing the total trainplan.  The discipline involved is little different although some timescales have been greatly improved (i.e. shortened) in respect of publication to the non-railway audience (something which was long overdue) and all that has changed is that organisational boundaries between the different stages of the process have moved.  But one thing which greatly irritates me about the process as it now stands is the way in which NR centralised timetable matters at a traditionally non-railway location and lost expertise and experience in the process and it has clearly not worked as recent events have starkly revealed.  That doesn't mean the process is wrong (and I don't think it is) but the management of a key part of it is definitely not as it should be and problems and major shortcomings have occurred as a result - but then of course for all sorts of reasons there were shortcomings which usually manifested themselves as late publication back in BR days.

 

I wonder just how many people are nowadays sent on the sort of regular train planning courses we on the Train Planning Training Group (I was a member of it for its final five years) used to run every year and even if such courses still exist?  Is there a training problem (which some have alleged to be the case within NR) or not?  Is there sufficient train planning managerial experience available, and so on?  In some respects the structure of the industry doesn't allow the sort of training by experience which was available within BR but equally the way NR is organised might mitigate against it as well within NR - back to NR rather than the process I think.

 

There have of course been agreements with unions regarding staffing going back over a century.  The difference currently is interference from DafT in respect of the management of what are strictly operational safety matters and differences between different employers within the industry.  Strangely the latter has delivered almost exactly what BR was looking for over - probably - getting on for the last 30 or so years of its existence.  The odd thing is that while many of us, even in senior management, within the industry were far from keen on the whole idea of privatisation (to put it mildly) it actually delivered some of the very things many in the industry had been looking for over many years

[The Stationmaster]

Interestingly, it was people from the outside, who knew nothing about railways, but thought they knew about other stuff, that designed the system we now have. 

 

Although somebody in BR wrote the Access Rules and defined and wrote the rules and procedures for various industry committees.  (And some of us within teh industry were involved in running table top exercises for those from outside the industry who were devising how the privatisation might be arranged.)

[rodent279]

"...….In some respects the structure of the industry doesn't allow the sort of training by experience which was available within BR...……."

 

I've wondered for a long time whether that would be a knock-on effect of the way the industry was privatised. BR I suspect would have found it in it's own interests to get people a broad range of experiences in various aspects of running the railway. Smaller, more focussed units are probably less able to provide that, and, maybe, less interested too, if the end result is staff leaving for another part of the industry, once they've been trained.

[locoholic]

So somebody else owns the rolling stock - and buying the new rolling stock which the state can't afford to buy (which is why BR went out and leased some stock) leads to the same old question about how the state spends its taxes - do you want more spent on the NHS or should it be spent on railway rolling stock, or schools, or defence, or benefits?   It has been repeatedly shown that the rolling stock companies are not ripping off the system and are making relatively modest profits on their investments.  How else for example would EWS have renewed the freight loco fleet if it had actually had to buy the Class 66s?

 

Similarly as far as freight is concerned the privatised operators have gained back traffic to rail because they have been prepared to accept a lower rate of return than The Treasury required BR to make - is that profiteering or were The Treasury profiteering by forcing BR to price out traffic which was more than covering its operating costs?

 

And back once again to timetable process.  Well I spent 5 years of my BR employment directly involved at managerial level in the train planning and timetable planning process and then a slightly longer period involved in it on the 'privatised railway' - during which time I was one of the adjudicators when it came down to any timetable conflict (the notes of our meetings are on public record as it happens.  To be honest in many respects the latter was easier because we were working within a clearly set out procedure with contracts to protect all parties.  The. critical point in both, and very much the critical point today and in affecting the May timetable, is no different from what it was in BR times - there are set timescales towards the construction and publication of the timetable and the various other work which goes into producing the total trainplan.  The discipline involved is little different although some timescales have been greatly improved (i.e. shortened) in respect of publication to the non-railway audience (something which was long overdue) and all that has changed is that organisational boundaries between the different stages of the process have moved.  But one thing which greatly irritates me about the process as it now stands is the way in which NR centralised timetable matters at a traditionally non-railway location and lost expertise and experience in the process and it has clearly not worked as recent events have starkly revealed.  That doesn't mean the process is wrong (and I don't think it is) but the management of a key part of it is definitely not as it should be and problems and major shortcomings have occurred as a result - but then of course for all sorts of reasons there were shortcomings which usually manifested themselves as late publication back in BR days.

 

I wonder just how many people are nowadays sent on the sort of regular train planning courses we on the Train Planning Training Group (I was a member of it for its final five years) used to run every year and even if such courses still exist?  Is there a training problem (which some have alleged to be the case within NR) or not?  Is there sufficient train planning managerial experience available, and so on?  In some respects the structure of the industry doesn't allow the sort of training by experience which was available within BR but equally the way NR is organised might mitigate against it as well within NR - back to NR rather than the process I think.

 

There have of course been agreements with unions regarding staffing going back over a century.  The difference currently is interference from DafT in respect of the management of what are strictly operational safety matters and differences between different employers within the industry.  Strangely the latter has delivered almost exactly what BR was looking for over - probably - getting on for the last 30 or so years of its existence.  The odd thing is that while many of us, even in senior management, within the industry were far from keen on the whole idea of privatisation (to put it mildly) it actually delivered some of the very things many in the industry had been looking for over many years

 

I'm sorry, but your first two paragraphs do not constitute a logical argument at all. The state could afford to buy new trains, since it can borrow at a lower rate of interest than a commercial company. It chooses not to because successive governments peddle the myth that the private sector, by simply being private, is inherently better at deciding things and doing things. Anyone who has an EE mobile phone, who parks in a Parking Eye car park, or who worked for Carillion, knows that is nonsense. Similarly, freight companies taking a lower return is a result of a political choice. Is doesn't demonstrate that the privatised railway is better. And as others have pointed out, if firms are taking a profit whilst doing the same job with the same resources that a state-run railway could obtain, that profit is being paid for by the income from tickets/freight and from government subsidy.

 

Ironically, whilst you defend a radical change in the ownership and financing of the railways, you argue that moving the timetabling function away to a "traditionally non-railway location" has wrecked the competence of NR. You can't have it both ways.

[Mike Storey]

Although somebody in BR wrote the Access Rules and defined and wrote the rules and procedures for various industry committees.  (And some of us within teh industry were involved in running table top exercises for those from outside the industry who were devising how the privatisation might be arranged.)

 

Sure, some of the rules, but not the system of franchising, FOCs, privatised infrastructure and rolling stock etc, that was imposed that needed those rules. My point was that one argument from someone who knows nothing about how railways are run, is against another group of people who knew nothing about how railways are run.

[Mike Storey]

I'm sorry, but your first two paragraphs do not constitute a logical argument at all. The state could afford to buy new trains, since it can borrow at a lower rate of interest than a commercial company. It chooses not to because successive governments peddle the myth that the private sector, by simply being private, is inherently better at deciding things and doing things. Anyone who has an EE mobile phone, who parks in a Parking Eye car park, or who worked for Carillion, knows that is nonsense. Similarly, freight companies taking a lower return is a result of a political choice. Is doesn't demonstrate that the privatised railway is better. And as others have pointed out, if firms are taking a profit whilst doing the same job with the same resources that a state-run railway could obtain, that profit is being paid for by the income from tickets/freight and from government subsidy.

 

Ironically, whilst you defend a radical change in the ownership and financing of the railways, you argue that moving the timetabling function away to a "traditionally non-railway location" has wrecked the competence of NR. You can't have it both ways.

 

Neither do you make a logical argument. You claim the "state" could "afford" to buy all these new trains. No it can't, as it proved in BR days, and it is primarily the contractual matrix between private operators and state controlled infrastructure, enforced by a Regulator, that obliges them to keep funding rail renewals and enhancements, albeit in a strategy that is now changing from year to year (back to Treasury control again).

 

The argument that the "state" should and could do all the rest on which the private sector has been fronting the capital up to now, has to be matched with the availability of funds. There ain't none.

[The Stationmaster]

I'm sorry, but your first two paragraphs do not constitute a logical argument at all. The state could afford to buy new trains, since it can borrow at a lower rate of interest than a commercial company. It chooses not to because successive governments peddle the myth that the private sector, by simply being private, is inherently better at deciding things and doing things. Anyone who has an EE mobile phone, who parks in a Parking Eye car park, or who worked for Carillion, knows that is nonsense. Similarly, freight companies taking a lower return is a result of a political choice. Is doesn't demonstrate that the privatised railway is better. And as others have pointed out, if firms are taking a profit whilst doing the same job with the same resources that a state-run railway could obtain, that profit is being paid for by the income from tickets/freight and from government subsidy.

 

Ironically, whilst you defend a radical change in the ownership and financing of the railways, you argue that moving the timetabling function away to a "traditionally non-railway location" has wrecked the competence of NR. You can't have it both ways.

 

So if it could afford to borrow why didn't it and why did a Labour Govt go out and obtain rolling stock via an outside financed route?  The indisputable logic is that Govt, however hard it tries (and it does) can't spend the money twice - if it goes on hospitals, even via the PFI route, it is still money which isn't available to buy railway rolling stock.

 

The second paragraph was no more that a statement of fact so I can't really see what is illogical about it.  BR was forced into pricing out some freight traffic in order to meet a Treasury imposition regarding the rate of return - that is a fact (which Govt did their nest to keep quiet, but it happened).  Following privatisation a number of such freight flows were regained to rail, that is also a fact.  You might find that illogical but it is exactly what happened.

 

Your final sentence again betrays your ignorance and failure to read various items in this thread, presumably because they don't suit what you want to say?  alas facts are facts, whatever you might think of them.

[caradoc]

From my experience with Network Rail I would agree absolutely that centralising Train Planning at Milton Keynes was a mistake, given that many staff would not want to transfer, in some cases hundreds of miles, away from their homes, and their experience and knowledge was therefore lost. NR was not alone in such decisions however; I recall the fanfare EWSR made when they opened their CSDC at Doncaster, it made the national news with much made of the number of jobs created; No mention however of the corresponding posts closed in the rest of the country as a result !

[The Stationmaster]

I've wondered for a long time whether that would be a knock-on effect of the way the industry was privatised. BR I suspect would have found it in it's own interests to get people a broad range of experiences in various aspects of running the railway. Smaller, more focussed units are probably less able to provide that, and, maybe, less interested too, if the end result is staff leaving for another part of the industry, once they've been trained.

I think it works in a slightly different way.  There is movement between companies and the private and public (i.e. NR) sectors in the railway industry but for many people it is more constrained than it was when it was all BR.  For a start you have to move between different sections of the pension fund although in many respects that is pretty straightforward.  More importantly for some if you go to a new employer you are a new entrant and you lose any length of service you have to count towards redundancy payments - an important thing for many in their 50s who the industry has been keen to get shot of.

 

In more senior jobs moving between companies etc seems to be fairly easy and there is head hunting but it's often some of the middle range skilled (in particular tasks) people who don't get the chance especially if it means moving home and going to an employer who doesn't offer travel facilities.  And don't dismiss the latter as 'a perk' because for many railway staff it was what helped give them employment mobility because it meant they could travel greater distances to new workplaces at a relatively lower cost than other commuters.  It also allowed organisation changes and relocation to be that much smoother because such travel was available.  For example the 1985 reorganisation which basically removed a managerial tier was easier to implement because of it - the Western moved staff from Paddington, Reading, Bristol and Cardiff to a new, and much slimmer, central organisation at Swindon so those who didn't want redundancy didn't have any particular worries about travel and travel costs.

 

On the other hand there does seem to have been a general uplift in salaries so loss of residential travel facilities doesn't matter to many coming into the industry as they simply commute by car (and in many cases probably never see a train).

[pete_mcfarlane]

So if it could afford to borrow why didn't it and why did a Labour Govt go out and obtain rolling stock via an outside financed route?  

I think they pioneered that approach back in the 1960s with the class 50s. 

[locoholic]

Neither do you make a logical argument. You claim the "state" could "afford" to buy all these new trains. No it can't, as it proved in BR days, and it is primarily the contractual matrix between private operators and state controlled infrastructure, enforced by a Regulator, that obliges them to keep funding rail renewals and enhancements, albeit in a strategy that is now changing from year to year (back to Treasury control again).

 

The argument that the "state" should and could do all the rest on which the private sector has been fronting the capital up to now, has to be matched with the availability of funds. There ain't none.

You don't seem to be able to distinguish between a government choosing not to fund something, and not being able to. I don't know how to put it in simpler terms, I'm afraid. You could ask yourself how the current government magically "found" the money that persuaded the DUP to vote their way in parliament, perhaps. Previous governments could have found the money in a similar way.

 

You seem to be under the impression that the train leasing companies have a stash of cash. They borrow, just like the government does.

[locoholic]

So if it could afford to borrow why didn't it and why did a Labour Govt go out and obtain rolling stock via an outside financed route?  The indisputable logic is that Govt, however hard it tries (and it does) can't spend the money twice - if it goes on hospitals, even via the PFI route, it is still money which isn't available to buy railway rolling stock.

 

The second paragraph was no more that a statement of fact so I can't really see what is illogical about it.  BR was forced into pricing out some freight traffic in order to meet a Treasury imposition regarding the rate of return - that is a fact (which Govt did their nest to keep quiet, but it happened).  Following privatisation a number of such freight flows were regained to rail, that is also a fact.  You might find that illogical but it is exactly what happened.

 

Your final sentence again betrays your ignorance and failure to read various items in this thread, presumably because they don't suit what you want to say?  alas facts are facts, whatever you might think of them.

Again, you don't seem to be able to distinguish between a government being unwilling and unable to fund something. Treasury rules are an artificial construct, designed to achieve a political end. You can type dozens of paragraphs, but if you can't understand something simple like that, I don't know why you bother.

[Mark Saunders]

Again, you don't seem to be able to distinguish between a government being unwilling and unable to fund something. Treasury rules are an artificial construct, designed to achieve a political end. You can type dozens of paragraphs, but if you can't understand something simple like that, I don't know why you bother.

To start to understand how government works a good beginning for this is to watch “Yes Minister” as there is a lot of information in it !

[ejstubbs]

one thing which greatly irritates me about the process as it now stands is the way in which NR centralised timetable matters at a traditionally non-railway location and lost expertise and experience in the process and it has clearly not worked as recent events have starkly revealed

 

Mike, can you give an idea of how much (or even whether) computer technology has been brought to bear in the field of timetabling?  I ask purely out of curiosity and interest, not seeking to undermine your point in any way.  Simply put: I don't know, and I'm intrigued about it!

 

My own experience of something similar - computer-based project planning tools - is that they are at best a useful way to record and organise task and resource information, but still not all that good at sorting out conflicts and dependencies.  (Though not quite as bad as the early days, when a favourite Friday afternoon amusement was to click "autoschedule" just to see exactly how far to the right MS Project would push your end date!  You could probably have run a fairly profitable sweepstake that way...quite possibly some project teams did just that, if their project was sufficiently boring/doomed/pointless.)

Edited June 20, 2018 by ejstubbs

[Mike Storey]

You don't seem to be able to distinguish between a government choosing not to fund something, and not being able to. I don't know how to put it in simpler terms, I'm afraid. You could ask yourself how the current government magically "found" the money that persuaded the DUP to vote their way in parliament, perhaps. Previous governments could have found the money in a similar way.

 

You seem to be under the impression that the train leasing companies have a stash of cash. They borrow, just like the government does.

 

Thanks for pointing out the lack of my abilities. Much obliged. DUP bungs are an aside (such relatively trivial, one-off amounts are irrelevant to this - we are talking billions of pounds extra every year for many years to come). If you believe borrowing limits do not have any practical impact on the welfare of the economy, and are just a political construct, that is your absolute right, and who am I to disabuse you?

 

There is an argument for a long term, state infrastructure development capital fund, but we already have that for the railways, but just for five years at a time. It would not apply to vehicles or other consumables.

 

I just look at 200 years of economic and social history, and reach a very different conclusion to you. So shoot me.

Edited June 20, 2018 by Mike Storey

[hayfield]

So somebody else owns the rolling stock - and buying the new rolling stock which the state can't afford to buy (which is why BR went out and leased some stock) leads to the same old question about how the state spends its taxes - do you want more spent on the NHS or should it be spent on railway rolling stock, or schools, or defence, or benefits?   It has been repeatedly shown that the rolling stock companies are not ripping off the system and are making relatively modest profits on their investments.  How else for example would EWS have renewed the freight loco fleet if it had actually had to buy the Class 66s?

 

Similarly as far as freight is concerned the privatised operators have gained back traffic to rail because they have been prepared to accept a lower rate of return than The Treasury required BR to make - is that profiteering or were The Treasury profiteering by forcing BR to price out traffic which was more than covering its operating costs?

 

And back once again to timetable process.  Well I spent 5 years of my BR employment directly involved at managerial level in the train planning and timetable planning process and then a slightly longer period involved in it on the 'privatised railway' - during which time I was one of the adjudicators when it came down to any timetable conflict (the notes of our meetings are on public record as it happens.  To be honest in many respects the latter was easier because we were working within a clearly set out procedure with contracts to protect all parties.  The. critical point in both, and very much the critical point today and in affecting the May timetable, is no different from what it was in BR times - there are set timescales towards the construction and publication of the timetable and the various other work which goes into producing the total trainplan.  The discipline involved is little different although some timescales have been greatly improved (i.e. shortened) in respect of publication to the non-railway audience (something which was long overdue) and all that has changed is that organisational boundaries between the different stages of the process have moved.  But one thing which greatly irritates me about the process as it now stands is the way in which NR centralised timetable matters at a traditionally non-railway location and lost expertise and experience in the process and it has clearly not worked as recent events have starkly revealed.  That doesn't mean the process is wrong (and I don't think it is) but the management of a key part of it is definitely not as it should be and problems and major shortcomings have occurred as a result - but then of course for all sorts of reasons there were shortcomings which usually manifested themselves as late publication back in BR days.

 

I wonder just how many people are nowadays sent on the sort of regular train planning courses we on the Train Planning Training Group (I was a member of it for its final five years) used to run every year and even if such courses still exist?  Is there a training problem (which some have alleged to be the case within NR) or not?  Is there sufficient train planning managerial experience available, and so on?  In some respects the structure of the industry doesn't allow the sort of training by experience which was available within BR but equally the way NR is organised might mitigate against it as well within NR - back to NR rather than the process I think.

 

There have of course been agreements with unions regarding staffing going back over a century.  The difference currently is interference from DafT in respect of the management of what are strictly operational safety matters and differences between different employers within the industry.  Strangely the latter has delivered almost exactly what BR was looking for over - probably - getting on for the last 30 or so years of its existence.  The odd thing is that while many of us, even in senior management, within the industry were far from keen on the whole idea of privatisation (to put it mildly) it actually delivered some of the very things many in the industry had been looking for over many years

 

 

Mike

 

Thanks for the detailed reply, but lets take the point about the stock, taking out a lease to buy stock is no different a way of financing than commercial companies leasing fleets of lorries/cars. I can totally understand the government not wanting to finance the rolling stock and believe commerce is in a better position to run the system than goverment

 

Now the train/stock owning companies, do they buy the stock outright or do they borrow to finance the acquisition ?

If its the latter, it will be far cheaper if the operators took out the leases from the lenders directly, rather than take out a sub lease from a company which has already financed the purchase then put on their own margin on to the sub-lease, thats the point I am badly making. Simply cut out the middle man and make it cheaper for the users

[Talltim]

And of course the operators also put their markup on the lease costs, so repayment of that loan actually goes through two middlemen

[jjb1970]

Mike, can you give an idea of how much (or even whether) computer technology has been brought to bear in the field of timetabling?  I ask purely out of curiosity and interest, not seeking to undermine your point in any way.  Simply put: I don't know, and I'm intrigued about it!

 

My own experience of something similar - computer-based project planning tools - is that they are at best a useful way to record and organise task and resource information, but still not all that good at sorting out conflicts and dependencies.  (Though not quite as bad as the early days, when a favourite Friday afternoon amusement was to click "autoschedule" just to see exactly how far to the right MS Project would push your end date!  You could probably have run a fairly profitable sweepstake that way...quite possibly some project teams did just that, if their project was sufficiently boring/doomed/pointless.)

 

I think it is true that a tool is just a tool, these project management tools are excellent and do make the administrative aspects of project management simpler (IMO) but they don't substitute professional knowledge. In project management they're not a substitute for human skills. I've seen project managers try and project manage via e-mail and use of project control function software and end up in an awful mess. There is a similar dynamic with operating procedures, I'm a big advocate of operating procedures (and rules) in safety critical processes, but they complement professional competence, they don't replace it. Unfortunately there is a school of thought that thinks blind adherence to a procedure is a substitute for competence.

[jjb1970]

In theory the government should be able to exercise their immense purchasing power to squeeze fantastic deals from their suppliers, and in combination with the low interest rates they can access then government spending should be very efficient. Unfortunately it seldom seems to work out like that. I think it's worth pointing out that Network Rail is a nationalised entity and they've managed to make electrification unaffordable.

[lmsforever]

Carlisle Dandy could be brought out of retirement might need a new horse and a bag of oats!

 

Marc

 

Only once the RSPCA have carried out an study and animal rights grup have been consulted!

[Fat Controller]

Mike, can you give an idea of how much (or even whether) computer technology has been brought to bear in the field of timetabling?  I ask purely out of curiosity and interest, not seeking to undermine your point in any way.  Simply put: I don't know, and I'm intrigued about it!

 

My own experience of something similar - computer-based project planning tools - is that they are at best a useful way to record and organise task and resource information, but still not all that good at sorting out conflicts and dependencies.  (Though not quite as bad as the early days, when a favourite Friday afternoon amusement was to click "autoschedule" just to see exactly how far to the right MS Project would push your end date!  You could probably have run a fairly profitable sweepstake that way...quite possibly some project teams did just that, if their project was sufficiently boring/doomed/pointless.)

We (Eurotunnel) certainly use computer programs to plan the timetable, as well as to diagram the stock and roster crews to it. The timetable is redone every day to take account of Short-Term and Very Short-Term modifications, and is loaded into the RTM (Rail Traffic Management) computers mid-afternoon of the previous day. It is distributed to the various interested parties via a Graphical User Interface; the version I print as a Crew Controller doesn't show planned possessions, but does show who should be doing what. When I work the night turn, I spend a while checking for 'schoolboy errors'; most usually crews that appear to have been teleported to the other side to start their shift.

[melmerby]

Mike

 

Now the train/stock owning companies, do they buy the stock outright or do they borrow to finance the acquisition ?

 

Banks/Investment companies are part of the consortiums that are Roscos, so they would be "investing" depositors money for a return. (& profit for themselves) i.e. Borrowing!

 

Keith

Edited June 20, 2018 by melmerby

[phil-b259]

Again, you don't seem to be able to distinguish between a government being unwilling and unable to fund something. Treasury rules are an artificial construct, designed to achieve a political end. You can type dozens of paragraphs, but if you can't understand something simple like that, I don't know why you bother.

Granted Treasuary rules are an artificial construct - but as we do not live in a socialist utopia those said constructs have significant effects on the money markets - and thus a government borrowing rates. If you have a look at the situation from a global perspective you will find that plenty of counties have suffered thanks to a perceived lack of financial discipline. During the 2008 Euro crisis it was the lack of confidence by the international banks in Spain and Ireland that caused big problems even though the actual true cause was the situation in Greece. Similarly with the likes of Argentina or Zimbabwe the actions of domestic politicans in trying to appeal to local pressures had major implications on the money markets.

 

In short 'Artifical constructs' cannot be dismissed in the way you seek to do - untill the entire developed world moves to a 'planned economy' situation.

 

Thus while it is perfectly reasonable to question where exactly the limits should be set, it is important to ensure that whatever is chosen does not 'spook' the money markets. We know from the 2008 Euro crisis that 'excessive' Government debit can be problematic and thus going for lease deals (whether directly or through 3rd parties is an important part of any Governments finincal toolkit.