First Group wins the West Coast.

[royaloak]

12 hours ago, 298 said:

There is an excellent write up on another forum as to why new trains are sat idle whilst there's a driver shortage. Basically the drivers conversion course takes 7 days, and they are only allowed to work 12 out of 14 which would include rest days anyway. So courses are getting cancelled to solve the short term need to avoid trains being cancelled, but that obviously doesn't solve the long term fix. 

 

Now you could cite "poor management" as an excuse but if I were to work overtime on a Sunday 12hr Nightshift before a bank holiday or a Wednesday day for 12 hours I get paid the same. So I'd respectfully acknowledge that anyone on better terms wouldn't really want to give up their terms and conditions to have to put up with more generalised terms in order to get the job done, because I wouldn't.

Then there are the drivers who do not work overtime full stop, we had that issue with the IET training because it was expected that drivers would work Monday to Friday when doing the training but some drivers insisted on sticking to their rostered days (as is their right) so how do you do the training when one driver is RD Monday, another is RD Tuesday and another is RD Thursday, the other 3 were happy to move their RD to Saturday.

 

Edit-

Not aimed at you 298 but at Apollo who seems to have all the answers, if only he was in charge of a TOC it would be sweetness and light for everyone who worked for him, apparently!

Edited December 8, 2019 by royaloak
fat fingers, small keys.

[newbryford]

Railways - particularly passenger operating companies - are a 7 day operation.

Admittedly service levels on the heavy commuter routes are understandably lower at weekends, but general ridership is on the increase at the weekend. I can see that simply by observing passing trains from my back door. (No I don't count the passengers...…..)

My own local line that re-opened to passengers in 1994  has gone from no Sunday service, to 2-hourly and now hourly or better as it matches the weekday times. And the weekday service has seen improvements in service frequency over the same period - including trains earlier and later than the original timetable.

It is operated by Northern and remarkably, seems to suffer little when other services in the region are cut back on a Sunday. (Possibly because there is no other parallel public transport - or what little there is, is a bus service that gives up at 5pm on Sundays)

 

Overtime in industry - particularly manufacturing - was used to fill gaps when increased production was required for short periods, but surely that doesn't apply to passenger railways?

There will always be a demand for travel - whatever day of the week - and it is on the increase.

 

Yes - more staff will be needed to cover the extra days without overtime, but then maybe the guaranteed working of Sunday services, may improve the public perception and then even more people use trains at weekends.

So extra cost of staff is covered by extra revenue - or is that too simple?

 

 

 

 

 

[caradoc]

Sunday working on the railway is a long-standing issue and, as royaloak has shown, not an easy or cheap one to resolve !

 

When I started work on BR in 1978, at a relatively lowly grade. at the wage rates then a Sunday (ie overtime) shift was a valuable enhancement to take-home pay, so not easily or willingly given up; Many are the tales of rail workers who came home in the middle of two weeks Annual Leave to work their rostered Sunday !

 

Later on, in Glasgow Control, at one time Sundays were not rostered but were allocated on an equalisation basis, ie over the course of the year shared out as fairly as possible. So no-one knew if they were working the Sunday until the roster was posted (on what was known as the Wailing Wall) on Thursday morning ! Again, Sunday shifts were jealously guarded and the roster was intensely scrutinised, and individuals kept detailed records, to make sure they did not miss out.

 

Later on again a more logical and fair system was adopted, with Sundays being rostered, however they were, and still are, overtime shifts. You were expected to work your rostered Sundays, or assist with arranging cover if you wanted the day off. As far as I was concerned, it was my choice to take a job involving Sunday work, and the accompanying benefits, so felt duty bound to work Sundays unless absolutely impossible (at the end of my career I was rostered to work, effectively, 3 Sundays out of every 5, either finishing night shift, on day shift, or starting night shift, all 12-hour turns).

 

It would seem logical to simply make Sunday part of the working week, however I do not see it ever happening because

Management would require far more staff to cover the work, (increasing costs), and Staff would lose money unless basic rates of pay were increased to compensate for the loss of Sunday overtime (also increasing costs). I do recall, in BR days, many occasions when trains were cancelled due to Traincrew shortage, however Sundays were normally the exception ! None of which absolves Northern, and other TOCs, from their duty to employ sufficient staff to cover all their diagrams, with an allowance for foreseeable eventualities. Hopefully once training for new stock is completed things will settle down. We will see....

 

 

[APOLLO]

Your not wrong Royal Oak, I fully agree with you. It will cost to get this mess sorted, but passengers will benefit if the trains run, albeit at a bit of extra cost.

 

On "The Gas" all our Sunday working, rostered or not was double time - mostly emergency and planned renewal works that had to be done on a Sunday. Saturday & other overtime was paid time and a half, no shift work back in my day. We were well paid but we worked hard and actually served our customers (or is that a no no these days - seems to be - everywhere). We had very few if any serious gripes with higher management and certainly there was very little industrial action over the years (and NONE from staff). Safety was NEVER compromised at any time. Even for many years after we were privatised in 1986 by Maggie - we still had an engineer at our helm, Sir Dennis Rooke - a top guy with gas in his veins.

 

I'll say it again, Northern management (and above way up to the PM) is sh*te - absolute sh*te. They should have prepared a long time ago staffing levels for these new trains and their required training, not rocket science it's called forward planning. The Railways need a Railway man at the top, not a bean counter.

 

Too late now - we all are in a mess & no easy way out now. 

 

Look at this for an excuse on the Northern rail disruption site, yes I can accept bustitution for engineering works

 

https://www.northernrailway.co.uk/news/travel-alerts/2386-timetables-change-sunday-dec8

 

Each week, we are having to adjust our Sunday timetable and as a result, our on-board crew rosters, on a small number of routes in the north west. There are several factors impacting on our ability to run these services, including engineering work and being able to match employees’ availability within their working agreements

 

Brit15

 

 

 

 

Edited December 8, 2019 by APOLLO
typo

[woodenhead]

The Avanti website is down - unexpected header in the tab area 

[woodenhead]

It's clearly being worked on - now the page is a dirty big shopping basket image and a couple of links in the top left to register/my account.

 

 

You'd think this would have gone live at midnight or in the middle of the night when the trains weren't actually running, not in the middle of the morning of launch day.

 

Virgin aren't going away either it would seem

 

[woodenhead]

The Avanti register page is not yet pretty either

 

 

If you're not ready to accept custom don't put your page live  - this looks amateur - and this is from someone who has been known to do the same thing on intranet sites and regretted it.

 

Edit: I looked below the shopping list - all kinds of links, where is your style, where are your images - oh dear.

 

South West Trains header back now on tab top, it looks like someone is copy pasting in pages from their other site and editing on the fly.

Edited December 8, 2019 by woodenhead

[newbryford]

5 minutes ago, woodenhead said:

The Avanti register page is not yet pretty either

 

 

If you're not ready to accept custom don't put your page live  - this looks amateur - and this is from someone who has been known to do the same thing on intranet sites and regretted it.

 

Edit: I looked below the shopping list - all kinds of links, where is your style, where are your images - oh dear.

 

South West Trains header back now on tab top, it looks like someone is copy pasting in pages from their other site and editing on the fly.

 

Maybe the web staff are not used to working Sundays....?

 

[woodenhead]

I wonder if it is also own clothes day on the trains so that they match with the state of the website.

[The Stationmaster]

1 hour ago, caradoc said:

Sunday working on the railway is a long-standing issue and, as royaloak has shown, not an easy or cheap one to resolve !

 

When I started work on BR in 1978, at a relatively lowly grade. at the wage rates then a Sunday (ie overtime) shift was a valuable enhancement to take-home pay, so not easily or willingly given up; Many are the tales of rail workers who came home in the middle of two weeks Annual Leave to work their rostered Sunday !

 

Later on, in Glasgow Control, at one time Sundays were not rostered but were allocated on an equalisation basis, ie over the course of the year shared out as fairly as possible. So no-one knew if they were working the Sunday until the roster was posted (on what was known as the Wailing Wall) on Thursday morning ! Again, Sunday shifts were jealously guarded and the roster was intensely scrutinised, and individuals kept detailed records, to make sure they did not miss out.

 

Later on again a more logical and fair system was adopted, with Sundays being rostered, however they were, and still are, overtime shifts. You were expected to work your rostered Sundays, or assist with arranging cover if you wanted the day off. As far as I was concerned, it was my choice to take a job involving Sunday work, and the accompanying benefits, so felt duty bound to work Sundays unless absolutely impossible (at the end of my career I was rostered to work, effectively, 3 Sundays out of every 5, either finishing night shift, on day shift, or starting night shift, all 12-hour turns).

 

It would seem logical to simply make Sunday part of the working week, however I do not see it ever happening because

Management would require far more staff to cover the work, (increasing costs), and Staff would lose money unless basic rates of pay were increased to compensate for the loss of Sunday overtime (also increasing costs). I do recall, in BR days, many occasions when trains were cancelled due to Traincrew shortage, however Sundays were normally the exception ! None of which absolves Northern, and other TOCs, from their duty to employ sufficient staff to cover all their diagrams, with an allowance for foreseeable eventualities. Hopefully once training for new stock is completed things will settle down. We will see....

 

 

Very much agree with that as it matches my experience - Sundays were never part of the Guaranteed Week but they were rostered - i.e. if you weren't prepared to work your rostered Sunday you had to apply to give it up or find somebody to work it for you but they were of course paid at enhanced rate.  What seems to have happened is that in many of the post-privatisation 'deals' - for Drivers in particular - Sunday has been taken out of the rostered week and made voluntary.  This was a very clever move on the part of staff reps and the union, ASLE&F, because as part of the revised conditions pay rates generally went up considerably to make up for them being a fixed salary and a natural consequence was that the need to 'grab' a Sunday became less pressing.    Hence covering Sundays on some TOCs (not including Northern by the way) become much more difficult while the 'clever' managers who'd got such deals in - usually accompanied by big reductions in spares - went on to bigger things because those without railway experience thought such folk were remarkably clever people (they weren't but the trail of Sunday train cancellations came much later of course).  Some operators I understand stuck with rostered Sundays (I think at an enhanced rate in one case) but in any case they were extra hours which meant extra payment.

 

And Sundays were worth a lot of money - I ceased to be paid for Sundays when i was promoted in early 1974.  I still had to work them but year-on-year my annual earnings had dropped by £1,500 because a Sunday had been worth almost half a week's pay - 14 hours pay for 8 hours worked which was quite a chunk against a basic 38 hour week and of course 12 hours worked on a Sunday was worth 21 hours pay for me.

 

So that is one trail of change.  The other - which is particularly hitting Northern at present - is rather different.  Firstly they ended up with a franchise which was being 'mucked about' by DafT almost up to the day it was let meaning an almost instant need for lots of additional training added to which more recently new trains have come along which have also meant lots of training.  (Much the same has happened on GWR with IET introduction but I think they might have managed it a bit better although trains have still run with only 5 cars in public use because of staff shortages.)  Simple maths really - traincrew can't be learning new trains while driving the existing ones.   And it's pointless and extremely expensive to recruit extra traincrew, who would need months of training from scratch, simply to cover what is, in many respects, a short term shortage - especially when your budget is tied by the terms of the franchise.  Put in a bigger bid to cope - somehow - with the training cost and you won't win the franchise.  Think in terms of good old BR and put in a budget which allows extra staff resources to cover traincrew training on new traction and the money will be knocked off somewhere else because the overall size of the financial cake will be no different.   We used to cover training out of our 'spares' complement and that was part of our depot establishment on a common, agreed, formula (diagram days divided by a set number). 

 

Another change is Hidden 18 - item No.18 in the Hidden Report into the Clapham collision.  That limits the number of days of consecutive duty which can be worked by safety critical personnel - such as Drivers and Signalmen (among many others) and that makes it more difficult to cover unrostered Sunday turns - i.e. turns which are not in the base roster.  All you need then is a few awkward engineering jobs involving, say. diversions which create a need for additional turns or Conductor Drivers because of lack of route knowledge and you are (if you'll excuse the technical term) well and truly shafted before you even start.

 

However I've got well used over the years to the fact that anybody and everybody knows far more about how to run the railway 'properly' than those of us who were trained, and paid, to do it.

[royaloak]

I was going to give another detailed reply but then I saw this dig in the middle-

 

 

2 hours ago, APOLLO said:

We were well paid but we worked hard and actually served our customers (or is that a no no these days - seems to be - everywhere).

So cant be bothered, ButI will mention that we dont get time and a half for Saturdays (its flat rate working 3 out of 4) or double time for Sundays (time and a quarter 2 out of 4 rostered but optional) either!

[royaloak]

26 minutes ago, The Stationmaster said:

However I've got well used over the years to the fact that anybody and everybody knows far more about how to run the railway 'properly' than those of us who were trained, and paid, to do it.

An excellent and well detailed reply as always Mike, but sadly most of it will be ignored by most as it doesnt comply with what they think happens. summed up beautifully by this bit ^^

 

Still its better than another forum I used to frequent where posters genuinely believed staff should be forced to work Sundays, and yes the word forced was used quite often, they didnt seem to understand the phrases Terms and Conditions, Contracts or Voluntary.

 

Edit-

Shouldnt we be getting back to the superbly slick roll out of Avanti on the WCML instead of infecting another thread with gripes about rail staff not working Sundays when they dont have to and who is at fault for that fact!

Edited December 8, 2019 by royaloak

[newbryford]

13 minutes ago, royaloak said:

 

 

Edit-

Shouldnt we be getting back to the superbly slick roll out of Avanti on the WCML ……..

 

 

VIP launch train tomorrow in full new livery 

 

https://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/train/S03423/2019-12-09/detailed

 

 

Reported to be 390156

[Paul80]

In a situation like this, what happens to Virgins rolling stock, do the have to pass it on to the new company or do the new company have to find enough stock to run the service from day one, if they don't pass them on what happens to Virgins stock, is there a big trainset sale going on. 

 

Just wondering what happens in a setuation when they have a franchise change? 

[newbryford]

1 hour ago, The Stationmaster said:

Very much agree with that as it matches my experience - Sundays were never part of the Guaranteed Week but they were rostered - i.e. if you weren't prepared to work your rostered Sunday you had to apply to give it up or find somebody to work it for you but they were of course paid at enhanced rate.  What seems to have happened is that in many of the post-privatisation 'deals' - for Drivers in particular - Sunday has been taken out of the rostered week and made voluntary.  This was a very clever move on the part of staff reps and the union, ASLE&F, because as part of the revised conditions pay rates generally went up considerably to make up for them being a fixed salary and a natural consequence was that the need to 'grab' a Sunday became less pressing.    Hence covering Sundays on some TOCs (not including Northern by the way) become much more difficult while the 'clever' managers who'd got such deals in - usually accompanied by big reductions in spares - went on to bigger things because those without railway experience thought such folk were remarkably clever people (they weren't but the trail of Sunday train cancellations came much later of course).  

 

Mike (apologies for the part quote) - a most informative reply, but it looks like there was a distinct lack of forethought by the mangers at the time of that deal. Not so clever after all.

 

[woodenhead]

1 hour ago, Paul80 said:

In a situation like this, what happens to Virgins rolling stock, do the have to pass it on to the new company or do the new company have to find enough stock to run the service from day one, if they don't pass them on what happens to Virgins stock, is there a big trainset sale going on. 

 

Just wondering what happens in a setuation when they have a franchise change? 

The new franchise holder negotiates with the rolling stock companies to have suitable stock - Virgin didn't own the trains a ROSCO did.

 

In this case it's the same trains today as yesterday with some new trains ordered at the time the contract was signed to be delivered a some point in the future enabling First to meet it's obligations on the new contract.

[woodenhead]

They've sensibly given up the web page release at the moment, not sure I'd want an Android or Apple app yet.

[mdvle]

5 hours ago, newbryford said:

Yes - more staff will be needed to cover the extra days without overtime, but then maybe the guaranteed working of Sunday services, may improve the public perception and then even more people use trains at weekends.

So extra cost of staff is covered by extra revenue - or is that too simple?

 

That might work for a TOC that makes a profit - that is they pay a premium to the DfT - but Northern isn't such a TOC.  Northern requires money from DfT to operate because Northern doesn't make a profit.

 

Thus given (in general terms) every train Northern runs loses money the extra cost of staff wouldn't be covered by extra revenue.

 

1 hour ago, newbryford said:

Mike (apologies for the part quote) - a most informative reply, but it looks like there was a distinct lack of forethought by the mangers at the time of that deal. Not so clever after all.

 

Maybe not for the railways, but it was almost certainly the correct/clever thing for the managers of the time.  They will have gotten their yearly bonus for a job well done, and either a promotion or a better job elsewhere, because far too much of business these days is based on quarterly results with no regard for future consequences.

[woodenhead]

The website is a little more alive now, still a lot of broken links and simple acts like adding a return don't work as smoothly as they should - apparently on a weekend journey I can get an upgrade - they don't spell out what the £25 upgrade means - I would presume First Class but they are not marketing it very well.  Also not sure if you can alter your reservation seats - not actually got that far on the ordering to find out.

 

One nice touch - you can select to try and get a seat near a toilet.

 

Early days I guess but the Virgin site was good.

 

Looking out of the Advance fares - weekdays in January look quite expensive but I can see that in Feb a Saturday Advance fare to London from Manchester (and a similar return) can be had for £25 per journey - I need to look out for these for Ally Pally in March.

 

Nice prices for Model Rail Scotland - I can do TPE from Manchester (will that still be a 350) or Pendo from WBQ for a similar price.

Edited December 8, 2019 by woodenhead

[woodenhead]

New website will not be letting passengers re-select their seats as it did with Virgin - confirmed by Avanti

https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/teething-problems-take-shine-new-17383992

 

All the new trains will be supplied by Hitachi - the electrics will plough the London-Birmingham and London-Liverpool lines, the bi-modes will go on North Wales service as expected.

https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/what-manchester-piccadilly-london-euston-17374771

[4630]

1 hour ago, woodenhead said:

 

 

Nice prices for Model Rail Scotland - I can do TPE from Manchester (will that still be a 350) or Pendo from WBQ for a similar price.

 

If you go by TPE to Model Rail Scotland, by then all the TPE class 350s will have gone.   Should be a class 397, or Nova 2 in TPE Speak, but the occasional class 185 substitute can’t be ruled out. 

Edited December 8, 2019 by 4630

[MrSimon]

No seat selector? That’s me not using Avanti then. I mean they can’t get a website to work so it’s probably asking too much anyway, but if every ticket bought is going to be window/pillar shoulder-crush roulette I’ll drive.

[big jim]

11 minutes ago, MrSimon said:

No seat selector? 

via Imgflip Meme Generator

[royaloak]

4 hours ago, Paul80 said:

In a situation like this, what happens to Virgins rolling stock, do the have to pass it on to the new company or do the new company have to find enough stock to run the service from day one, if they don't pass them on what happens to Virgins stock, is there a big trainset sale going on. 

 

Just wondering what happens in a setuation when they have a franchise change? 

It isnt Virgins rolling stock and never has been (despite Virgins adverts saying they were investing millions on new trains, the truth is they spent naff all), it is owned by a leasing company and Virgin Trains merely rented it, the new franchisee simply takes over the lease.

 

Just one of the many lies the franchise spouted to show the general public how generous they were being with other peoples money.

Edited December 8, 2019 by royaloak

[royaloak]

4 hours ago, newbryford said:

 

Mike (apologies for the part quote) - a most informative reply, but it looks like there was a distinct lack of forethought by the mangers at the time of that deal. Not so clever after all.

 

Sundays were NEVER part of the working week on BR, come privatisation the TOCs could have negotiated it inside but most of them didnt want to because of the costs involved, Stagecoach did on SWT meaning Sundays were inside the working week and paid at flat rate just like the other 6 days of the week.

Edited December 8, 2019 by royaloak