GTR Timetable Change 2018

[jjb1970]

Call me suspicious if you like, but I note that he's due to face a commons committee shortly.

Maybe, just maybe, if he's no longer employed by Govia he could say rather more than if he was still, effectively, a government puppet?

Nice idea I suppose but in reality unlikely I think

 

Unfortunately that requires the committee to ask the right questions and to put partisan show boating to one side in order to get to the truth. Sometimes commons committees do that, other times it's just a pantomime as they either are incapable of recognising the killer questions or prefer to show boat one way or another. Unfortunately it's not just a Westminster characteristic.

[Purley Oaks]

 

 

I see that Horton's pay is just a whisker shy of half a million. Not a bad whack, eh?

 

 

I am not sure what the point of your comment is?

 

The point of my comment is entitlement for CEO jobs. Over-payment, certainly, but way back in 1995 the Chairman of M&S wrote a report for the government of the day about executive pay which basically said that everything was tickety-boo; move along, everyone, nothing to see here.

 

The point is that there is something to see here pay-wise. And when they are seen not to be doing a good job, why should their pay be anything so substantial?

[Fenman]

The point of my comment is entitlement for CEO jobs. Over-payment, certainly, but way back in 1995 the Chairman of M&S wrote a report for the government of the day about executive pay which basically said that everything was tickety-boo; move along, everyone, nothing to see here.

 

The point is that there is something to see here pay-wise. And when they are seen not to be doing a good job, why should their pay be anything so substantial?

I suppose you could lead by example. Tell us what your salary is and what you do, and we’ll see if we can find a few newspaper hacks to give us a running commentary on how everything is your fault, before we discuss among ourselves whether or not you’re over-paid?

 

The man fell on his sword, ffs. How many pints of blood do you want?

 

Paul

[Zomboid]

The point is that there is something to see here pay-wise. And when they are seen not to be doing a good job, why should their pay be anything so substantial?

He's done an excellent job. His role was to be the fall guy for the DfT if and when the implementation of the Thameslink project and their various other schemes on the TSGN area hit a major roadblock.

[Purley Oaks]

 ...he started in LUL (who sponsored him through an MBA), then TfL, on local government salaries (i.e. not big) for nearly 20 years, before entering the private world of TOCs at Go-Ahead 15 years ago, at South Central, then South Eastern and then GTR. He is acknowledged as a professionally highly respected, very experienced and knowledgeable, railwayman. I dealt with him briefly during the build up to the 2012 Olympics, and he had a very comprehensive understanding about what needed to be done, and it was done. In effect, he took over the running of four combined companies, 6,500 staff and around 270 million passenger journeys, with the associated costs management (although revenue was a DfT matter), the largest TOC in the UK.

 

Would it have run much better if someone who was prepared to be paid about the same as a politician, had been recruited? I don't see any of them falling on their swords.

 

 

I first met Charles Horton at an industry forum in 2014, he was fresh faced and full of enthusiasm, relishing the prospect of an integrated network serving 240 destinations I think it was. He majored on London Bridge and all that would bring when completed, I remember “a ticket hall the size of a football pitch...” was one of his quotes.

 

I saw him again in April, his demeanour was the total opposite, “a rabbit in the headlights” one of my colleagues commented and I’d have to say he looked twenty years older. As the DfT puppet, taking the rap for all that went wrong, largely as a result of decisions outwith his control, I’d have to say he’s earned his salary but if that’s what it does to you, I wouldn’t want it.

 

 

I suppose you could lead by example. Tell us what your salary is and what you do, and we’ll see if we can find a few newspaper hacks to give us a running commentary on how everything is your fault, before we discuss among ourselves whether or not you’re over-paid?

 

The man fell on his sword, ffs. How many pints of blood do you want?

 

Paul

 

 

He's done an excellent job. His role was to be the fall guy for the DfT if and when the implementation of the Thameslink project and their various other schemes on the TSGN area hit a major roadblock.

Points taken, Mike, Rangers, Paul & Zomboid.

 

So Horton is a good, experienced manager, either badly served by his managers, promoted above his level of competence, or used as a fall-guy for GTR shareholders &/or Grayling, or any of these in combination.

 

It will be interesting to see what, if any, his pay-off &/or pension will be.

 

On a personal level, Paul, my opinion is that everyone's tax returns should be available for all to see, transparency and all that, but I appreciate that I may be in a minority of one here(!)

 

Mal

[The Stationmaster]

He's done an excellent job. His role was to be the fall guy for the DfT if and when the implementation of the Thameslink project and their various other schemes on the TSGN area hit a major roadblock.

 

I think this is exactly the point and is the real answer to Mal's question (although the size of the salary is a rather different issue, like many other very senior management salaries in Britain today - so I will go no further in that direction).

 

Horton has had an extremely difficult job which would have been hard enough if he had not been at the beck and call of DafT as it involved managing what had been several separate franchises although not necessarily integrating all of them.  He was faced, as the man in the firing line, with dealing with. a major period of infrastructure work and change and a major industrial dispute which was largely not of his making but was dictated by DafT and where an individual within that organisation had thoroughly queered the pitch before any negotiations could even start.

 

There has undoubtedly been some mismanagement (more correctly non-management I would think) within GTR in respect of Driver numbers and training but I would not be in the least surprised if some of that again comes back to DaftT and their failure to acknowledge reality in respect of recruitment and the size of the training task and sufficiently release the purse strings to cover it.  Overall the change of service on GTR has been very badly handled but again in my view, and from what is in the public arena from various sources, GTR is hardly alone in bearing responsibility for that - NR has played a significant role in the circumstances that led to the mess and the mucky fingers of DafT can, again with documentary evidence, be found all over it.

 

Thus far Horton has been the sacrificial lamb but I sincerely hope that he will not be the only major resignation to come out of this and that the role of DafT, in particular, will be fully exposed with resignations following there (but I honestly doubt that happening)..

 

Strangely as the requests and shouts for passenger refunds grow DafT are keeping very quiet and of course GTR can say nothing as the 'franchise' agreement GTR have been working to explicitly ensured that all revenue went direct to DafT and not to GTR, thus any refunds would obviously have to come from DafT in the first place.

[Fat Controller]

Shades of Admiral Byng, I fear.

[jjb1970]

If people are expected to act as chaff decoys and body armour for DafT and take the public opprobrium and asinine media commentary that goes with a job like that then they deserve a good level of remuneration I think.

[Purley Oaks]

 post deleted

Edited June 16, 2018 by Purley Oaks

[Mike Storey]

I think this is exactly the point and is the real answer to Mal's question (although the size of the salary is a rather different issue, like many other very senior management salaries in Britain today - so I will go no further in that direction).

 

Horton has had an extremely difficult job which would have been hard enough if he had not been at the beck and call of DafT as it involved managing what had been several separate franchises although not necessarily integrating all of them.  He was faced, as the man in the firing line, with dealing with. a major period of infrastructure work and change and a major industrial dispute which was largely not of his making but was dictated by DafT and where an individual within that organisation had thoroughly queered the pitch before any negotiations could even start.

 

There has undoubtedly been some mismanagement (more correctly non-management I would think) within GTR in respect of Driver numbers and training but I would not be in the least surprised if some of that again comes back to DaftT and their failure to acknowledge reality in respect of recruitment and the size of the training task and sufficiently release the purse strings to cover it.  Overall the change of service on GTR has been very badly handled but again in my view, and from what is in the public arena from various sources, GTR is hardly alone in bearing responsibility for that - NR has played a significant role in the circumstances that led to the mess and the mucky fingers of DafT can, again with documentary evidence, be found all over it.

 

Thus far Horton has been the sacrificial lamb but I sincerely hope that he will not be the only major resignation to come out of this and that the role of DafT, in particular, will be fully exposed with resignations following there (but I honestly doubt that happening)..

 

Strangely as the requests and shouts for passenger refunds grow DafT are keeping very quiet and of course GTR can say nothing as the 'franchise' agreement GTR have been working to explicitly ensured that all revenue went direct to DafT and not to GTR, thus any refunds would obviously have to come from DafT in the first place.

 

Entirely. There is an obvious contrast between one CEO resigning over the calamity for which he accepted some major responsibility, and another who has been awarded a Queen's Birthday honour, and who has not (publicly) accepted a major responsibility, against which the papers have not made as much of a contrast that I would have expected. (To be fair, I think Mark Carne has achieved some highly creditable things in NR, post the Coucher regime, and to a great extent, his Honour was reasonably deserved - not a popular view, I understand. )

 

I would, however, be very interested as to how a certain Mr Wilkinson might be rewarded or penalised.

[Covkid]

Entirely. There is an obvious contrast between one CEO resigning over the calamity for which he accepted some major responsibility, and another who has been awarded a Queen's Birthday honour, and who has not (publicly) accepted a major responsibility, against which the papers have not made as much of a contrast that I would have expected. (To be fair, I think Mark Carne has achieved some highly creditable things in NR, post the Coucher regime, and to a great extent, his Honour was reasonably deserved - not a popular view, I understand. )

 

I would, however, be very interested as to how a certain Mr Wilkinson might be rewarded or penalised.

 

 

Agree with much of that Mike, but Carne was the head of Network Rail, and they messed up badly over many issues.  After the GWR electrification shambles - in fact every non Scottish electrication project has been late, there are allegations of unused GWR electrication kit being sold as scrap.

 

The real villain of the peace is Wilkinson and I personally think Horton is taking the hit for him, so nothing is actually changing in the DfT. 

[31A]

Agree with much of that Mike, but Carne was the head of Network Rail, and they messed up badly over many issues.  After the GWR electrification shambles - in fact every non Scottish electrication project has been late, there are allegations of unused GWR electrication kit being sold as scrap.

 

The real villain of the peace is Wilkinson and I personally think Horton is taking the hit for him, so nothing is actually changing in the DfT. 

 

 

Scottish as well in fact - the Edinburgh-Glasgow electrification also over ran, quite apart from the Class 385 windscreen issue - although I agree, other schemes in Scotland seem to have been managed more efficiently.

[Mike Storey]

Agree with much of that Mike, but Carne was the head of Network Rail, and they messed up badly over many issues.  After the GWR electrification shambles - in fact every non Scottish electrication project has been late, there are allegations of unused GWR electrication kit being sold as scrap.

 

The real villain of the peace is Wilkinson and I personally think Horton is taking the hit for him, so nothing is actually changing in the DfT. 

 

Completely accept that, but there is far, far more to running NR than a few electrification projects - they are the ones that make the headlines I totally agree. Carne had to undo an awful lot of the extraordinary centralisation that Coucher created (some of it was justified at the time perhaps, but the rest was just control freakery), and he also had to take serious action on the unacceptable number of possession overruns, not just at Christmas and Easter, as well as continuing safety, contractual and funding issues, not least the sudden transfer of corporate NR into an entity under Treasury borrowing rules once more - that will have fundamentally changed so many planning assumptions, for good or ill, and will have taken up a huge amount of his attention. So whilst also de-risking possessions, and returning power to front line managers and route directors, an unfortunate side effect has been further delays in renewals, which are only now turning around (as far as I can make out from ORR performance statements). The electrification juggernaut seemed to have a momentum all of its own, and just like the proverbial oil tanker, would take many miles to turn back on course. His previous Major Projects Director left for more money at Rolls-Royce, right in the middle of the problems, which cannot have helped. But it seems NR will not get the chance for corporate re-learning to have built up sufficient experience and knowledge again to become much better at doing it.

[The Stationmaster]

Agree with much of that Mike, but Carne was the head of Network Rail, and they messed up badly over many issues.  After the GWR electrification shambles - in fact every non Scottish electrication project has been late, there are allegations of unused GWR electrication kit being sold as scrap.

 

The real villain of the peace is Wilkinson and I personally think Horton is taking the hit for him, so nothing is actually changing in the DfT. 

 

The sale of 'GWR unused electrification equipment'  is a fact.  NR put out for tender the disposal as scrap of 1,000 tonnes of structural steel led in store at Wroughton Airfield for the GWML electrification project; presumably it was intended for use on the two sections through to Bristol TM which have been 'deferred' nothwithstanding quite a lot of the associated works having been completed.

 

PS And in the meantime there is dotted about those sections which have been electrified a noticeable quantity of unused material - principally foundation pile tubes - which gives the impression of it being left on site to rot.

Edited June 17, 2018 by The Stationmaster

[jjb1970]

Mark Carne will leave a mixed legacy, it's a little sad that he may be remembered more for the debacle that became their electrification projects rather than for all the good work he did. The electrification mess is a major failure which will have serious consequences for British railways for a long time to come, Carne as head honcho is ultimately responsible for what happens on his watch but at the same time he inherited those projects and the original planning, design and costing was signed off before he took the helm. Therefore, while he has to take some of the blame (and certainly for not getting things under control) the really critical failings were the result of failings before he joined the company. Overall, I think he has probably done as well as anybody would have taking over the helm at the time he did.

[The Great Bear]

So, reports today say GTR have two weeks to sort things out or lose their franchise, well, contract. To me it rather misses the point based on this thread as to where much of the blame lies, but having a private sector scapegoat suits the politicians, DafT and, ironically, I guess the unions.

 

Given the issue primarily as I understand it (correct me if wrong) is route and traction knowledge for the expanded routes and Class 700s things have got to get better, haven't they? Time rather "nationalisation" would seem to be the thing to fix that...but again it would suit the politicians if their action now magically fixed things!

[roundhouse]

It's all too late for me now as I finished work on Friday although have three days left on my season ticket so will be making use of that to travel round London then just the occasional use of trains. Any future work will be by car or by foot

[stewartingram]

So in two weeks it goes to Govt. control, whatever that means. Presumably they can't get a shipload of ready trained drivers, so things stay exactlty the same (or maybe get worse if they stop training more drivers?). What happens to their blame culture idea then?

 

Please don't tell me Beardy will jump in with an offer to magic it right!

 

Stewart

[Coryton]

So in two weeks it goes to Govt. control, whatever that means. Presumably they can't get a shipload of ready trained drivers, so things stay exactlty the same (or maybe get worse if they stop training more drivers?). What happens to their blame culture idea then?

 

 

It's possible that the threat won't be carried through....

[uax6]

One hopes that we'll go back to the old t/table until December when there should be enough drivers.....

 

The service this week on the fen line has been the worst I've known....

 

Andy G

[BR(S)]

There won't be a return to the old timetable as this would involve not just GTR but LNER, EMT and freight trains also having to revert. 

 

I can confirm that things are currently on course for a new timetable to begin on July 15th.  This will have a significantly reduced number of trains compared to the proposed May 2018 timetable, something like 290 have been removed. 

 

What it should give is a level of predictability that has not been seen since May 20th, as driver diagrams to run it are based on available drivers for each route, with zero reliance on overtime; diagrams will now match the new timetable, rather than drivers having to get to trains that don't exist on other trains that don't exist, but not knowing this until they try!

 

People will be understandably cautious regarding this new timetable, but things should start to get better from July 15th, compared to the last six weeks.  And with a rest day agreement in place, there will be lots of spare drivers available.  We can hope at least! 

 

Training has now restarted and this will help the timetable to develop as the months pass.

Edited July 1, 2018 by BR(S)

[The Great Bear]

One hopes that we'll go back to the old t/table until December when there should be enough drivers.....

 

The service this week on the fen line has been the worst I've known....

 

Andy G

 

Is that possible, even? For instance on my line (East Grinstead) before the peak hour only London Bridge service was class 377s, now they are 700s. Where have the spare 377s released by that gone? (It doesn't seem some of the Victoria services have been strengthened to 12 coaches with these spares so I guess they have gone elsewhere?)

[The Great Bear]

There won't be a return to the old timetable as this would involve not just GTR but LNER, EMT and freight trains also having to revert. 

 

I can confirm that things are currently on course for a new timetable to begin on July 15th.  This will have a significantly reduced number of trains compared to the proposed May 2018 timetable, something like 290 have been removed. 

 

What it should give is a level of predictability that has not been seen since May 20th, as driver diagrams to run it are based on available drivers for each route, with zero reliance on overtime; diagrams will now match the new timetable, rather than drivers having to get to trains that don't exist on other trains that don't exist, but not knowing this until they try!

 

People will be understandably cautious regarding this new timetable, but things should start to get better from July 15th, compared to the last six weeks.  And with a rest day agreement in place, there will be lots of spare drivers available.  We can hope at least! 

 

Training has now restarted and this will help the timetable to develop as the months pass.

 

Thank you, hopefully this works!

 

So it looks to the public like a politician's threat has got a response and makes Grayling look good, when clearly this has been planned for a while!

[ColinK]

So, reports today say GTR have two weeks to sort things out or lose their franchise, well, contract. To me it rather misses the point based on this thread as to where much of the blame lies, but having a private sector scapegoat suits the politicians, DafT and, ironically, I guess the unions.

 

Given the issue primarily as I understand it (correct me if wrong) is route and traction knowledge for the expanded routes and Class 700s things have got to get better, haven't they? Time rather "nationalisation" would seem to be the thing to fix that...but again it would suit the politicians if their action now magically fixed things!

I think one reason why the threat of losing the franchise is being made is because Northern acted relativly quickly and introduced temporary timetables/bus replacements to free up resources so the drivers could be route trained. Despite the voiciferous complaints over the Windermere Line (yet not the Morecambe line which also is mainly buses) it is fair to say the temporary arrangements are a big improvement on the shambles before - at least we now have a service which, while not perfect, is actually useable.

 

There is also the question, do GTR actually want to have the franchise taken off them?

[cromptonnut]

Is that possible, even? For instance on my line (East Grinstead) before the peak hour only London Bridge service was class 377s, now they are 700s. Where have the spare 377s released by that gone? (It doesn't seem some of the Victoria services have been strengthened to 12 coaches with these spares so I guess they have gone elsewhere?)

 

As the East Grinstead services have now gone over to 700's (like the Horshams) on their new routes, you won't be getting 377's back as they won't be cleared to run through to wherever, so swapping them back will mean they can't go through to Bedford, Peterborough and Cambridge.  That's partly due to the auto control bit through the core, and running services from places to, say, Blackfriars then running from Blackfriars to "up north" as separate 700's services rather defeats the idea of the new timetable bringing through services under Railplan 20/20.

 

The bottom line is that the GTR franchise is far too big and complex, and you're mixing too many short commuter services and long distance services together with the complexity of straight through cross-London tube style frequency services.

 

I'd personally love to know the statistics of how many people travel from Brighton to, say, Cambridge on a daily basis as a regular commute.  I haven't seen much advantage in the new services at all really.