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Northern rail could be nationalised


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Apologies for the O/T...

 

 

Right. I had to get up in the morning at ten o'clock at night, half an hour before I went to bed, eat a lump of cold poison, work twenty-nine hours a day down mill, and pay mill owner for permission to come to work,

Edited by newbryford
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On 19/10/2019 at 09:28, Covkid said:

 

This will continue to happen until the DfT face up to Sunday working with all the TOCs.  Putting it simply Sunday is regarded as just another day in the retail world and I am told that some shops are busier on that day than some other days.   DfT need to drag itself into the 21st Century and arrange staffing accordingly - ie have enough staff to work each of the seven days  rather than expect Sundays to be overtime / extra pay.   

 

Two points, Northern is made up of The former Arriva Trains Northern (east of Pennines) and First North Western as when the Northern franchise was created both sides had different conditions of service. ATN had restructured and Sunday was part of the working week and FNW retained theirs with Sunday outside!

 

When franchises change and or combined TUPE applies and Conditions of Service are retained by the staff hence different ones at Northern!

 

Mark Saunders 

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18 hours ago, Covkid said:

 

Don't know how many drivers are still on annualised hours. Takes me back to an EWS presentation in Scarborough where it was it explained to us all how annualised hours was going to be the tool to help EWS grow it's business. After I had picked myself up off the floor ....................... 

I don't know what other depots were like but our Link 1 contained the senior drivers with steam, AC traction, passenger ratings and hefty route knowledge. Link 2 was also predominantly "fast" having some mail work and AC traction as well as good route knowledge. Link 3 was East / diesels and Link 4 was the local link which signed basic traction and local routes only. 

 

So for the benefit of those who don't know, the annualised house contract proscribed that each driver would have a contract (then) of 1686 hours to burn for the year. Each driver was in their link with a certain amount of working turns, rest days and some training days, but also a proportion of contract turns (C/Ts). The driver might start off on line 1 working 4 turns totally 31 hours, then a weekend off, then five C/Ts.  The concept was that the drivers with the highest hours used would stay at home on their C/Ts, whilst drivers with more hours to burn would be given C/Ts - the longest possible. Using this utopic plan each driver would "descend" on their hours used glideslope until at the end of February each driver would complete their contract hours.

 

Looking back at our driver on line 2 then, had his burned hours been high, he would stay at home for the week and not use any of the 1686 hours in his account. Compared to other colleagues his "glideslope" would recover during his week of unused C/Ts. A brilliant idea but totally impractical for EWS who intended to be a growing company, simply because EWS threw away the possibility for crews to earn overtime without impediment.

 

The new system resulted in link 4 drivers staying at home on their C/Ts because their route knowledge rarely gave them the scope to work - most of the work being specialist stuff for links 1 and 2. Conversely link1 and 2 bust their hours by October or November, and here was the really clever bit.  Once drivers had completed their contract hours they could do one of two things ;

 

Put their boots away until next February and have winter in Benidorm

Carry on working and receiving a pot of money at the end of their contract the following February which effectively paid them double time.

 

In my view it was a financial disaster which did very little to resolve the company's main area of concern.  The EWS motto at the time was "double in five and triple in ten", but capping drivers hours didn't make sense.       

Having been involved in the management of annualised hours for traincrew (until I managed to get shot of it almost as fast as it had been dumped onto me) I simply do not like the system.  It tends to be unwieldy and requires a really. clever IT program if it is to be managed properly - and by properly I mean a sensible and equitable deal for both traincrew and management.

 

The big problem with it is that it can be difficult to accurately forecast how to spread the hours when it comes to work outside the normal diagrams and at diagram changes - and that's before you look at special traffic work and Bank holiday alterations to train services.   And that means it is difficult for many operators in the UK situation where we tend not to have a standard timetable running throughout the tinetable year - very different from the way timetables are arranged in mainland Europe.

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4 hours ago, newbryford said:

Apologies for the O/T...

 

 

Right. I had to get up in the morning at ten o'clock at night, half an hour before I went to bed, eat a lump of cold poison, work twenty-nine hours a day down mill, and pay mill owner for permission to come to work,

 

Luxury!

 

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On 22/10/2019 at 10:39, The Stationmaster said:

Having been involved in the management of annualised hours for traincrew (until I managed to get shot of it almost as fast as it had been dumped onto me) I simply do not like the system.  It tends to be unwieldy and requires a really. clever IT program if it is to be managed properly - and by properly I mean a sensible and equitable deal for both traincrew and management.

 

The big problem with it is that it can be difficult to accurately forecast how to spread the hours when it comes to work outside the normal diagrams and at diagram changes - and that's before you look at special traffic work and Bank holiday alterations to train services.   And that means it is difficult for many operators in the UK situation where we tend not to have a standard timetable running throughout the tinetable year - very different from the way timetables are arranged in mainland Europe.

 

In my experience Mike it was simply Orwellian and unworkable, assuming the EWS model is industry standard.

 

As I said, the concept is that the driver with the highest contract hours left to use gets the longest job. The driver with the highest contract hours already used, stays at home unused.  That is all well and good if every driver at the depot signed all routes and tractions. They didn't.  Link 4 in this case only signed local routes and basic traction so was never going to get a job.  The guy with the most hours used still needed to work because the rosters still had vacant jobs anyway - which only links 1 and 2 signed  !!!

 

Quite how the Company Council convinced Ed Burkhardt and Co that it was a good idea never ceases to amaze me.

 

 

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16 hours ago, Covkid said:

 

In my experience Mike it was simply Orwellian and unworkable, assuming the EWS model is industry standard.

 

As I said, the concept is that the driver with the highest contract hours left to use gets the longest job. The driver with the highest contract hours already used, stays at home unused.  That is all well and good if every driver at the depot signed all routes and tractions. They didn't.  Link 4 in this case only signed local routes and basic traction so was never going to get a job.  The guy with the most hours used still needed to work because the rosters still had vacant jobs anyway - which only links 1 and 2 signed  !!!

 

Quite how the Company Council convinced Ed Burkhardt and Co that it was a good idea never ceases to amaze me.

 

 

As far as I know (and I am a bit out of date on the software involved in this sort of thing) there is no industry standard.  The big idea back in teh late 1990s was to g buy sofware used b y teh aurlines for rostering and recording hours worked etc but having looked at most of the systems/software available in the whole of Western Europe I found no probalem at all in rapidly concluding that even if it actually did what it was supposed to do (which in itself was very unusual) it was totally useless for dealing with traincrew.  Somebody suggested looking at the system used by BA but because it quickly emerged it was already at the root of some of their aircrew management problems it was a dead duck without going much further and one simple question with an equally simple answer absolutely convinced me the system was appalling - I believe they still use it, and it is just as bad.

 

My next door neighbour is a program designer (and innovator) and we were talking about rostering systems  a f couple of weeks back and he reckons they are one of the most difficult things around to properly computerise because of the way some quite/very large relational databases have to work with each other.

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On 18/10/2019 at 19:24, newbryford said:

 

Pretty sure that 150150 and 150128 are still sans branding - 3 and 2 months on respectively.

 

I realise that it's "only" a few stickers, but is it an indication that Arriva knew what was coming back then?

 

I think these might be units which have only had a partial refurb, so have been left unbranded. Other units continue to be delivered with the full livery, including the first 323:

 

48947210182_a8f5ebbf79_z.jpg

Northern 323234 by Mike McNiven, on Flickr

 

 

Edited by Christopher125
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  • 2 weeks later...

I made a trip out from Flixton to Lancaster and back yesterday, didn't see one Pacer at all and that included time sat at Oxford Rd waiting for services.

 

Preston was full of new units as well.

 

Not sure of the ride quality of the 195, whilst not uncomfortable on vertical bounces it seemed to be hunting and I was having difficulty using my laptop mouse to work.

 

Plenty of 319s and 323s at work on various Liverpool services as well.

 

It seems that Northern are getting on with their fleet replacement and refurbishing.

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  • 2 months later...
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Nao are already getting their teeth into Network Rail. I think this may end in tears.. Northern can't be blamed. But, like Scotrail they have taken the blame to allow the Civil Service an opportumity to totally break the system.

Late and Never Early couldn't organize a p++s up in a brewery. Hope they are keeping stock maintained properly. But they don't seem to get any communications out of Network Rail anyway....

 

With all the stock shuffles complete only places to point fingers at for delays etc..network rail and...the unions..who complain about fare risers but keep quiet about the cost of paying some of their members.

Baz

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2 minutes ago, Barry O said:

With all the stock shuffles complete only places to point fingers at for delays etc..network rail and...the unions..who complain about fare risers but keep quiet about the cost of paying some of their members.

Baz

 

But the stock shuffles aren't complete, a long way to go yet given the amount of stock that had to get waivers to keep running this year.

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1 hour ago, mdvle said:

 

But the stock shuffles aren't complete, a long way to go yet given the amount of stock that had to get waivers to keep running this year.

The major changes are well in hand..a lot of problems can be seen to being close to being cleared..but why does it take network rail 5 years to build a platform in leeds, 3 years to build a platform in Horden and 2 years to build a platform at Stevenage? Because no one can kick them into doing things in a more economic and timely way. Picking on the franchises is far easier than admitting that, as a Goverment the bit you run is dreadful...or rather the bit the Civil service "run" is carp because you haven't got a clue how to do it

Baz

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1 hour ago, DavidB-AU said:

Ministers set to renationalise failed Northern rail franchise

 

https://www.ft.com/content/da64e424-4117-11ea-a047-eae9bd51ceba

Conveniently when most of the driver training has been done so things will naturally improve regardless of who is operating the franchise.

 

Its almost as if they planned it isnt it!

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Let’s face it, it’s not Being renationalised. It’s always been a public service run to a government specification.

 

the current private operator, Arriva, will be replaced by a different private operator, OLR. OLR is a consortium of global consultancy firms including Arup, EY and SNC-Lavalin.

 

of note to left wingers Interested in post-Carillion matters is EY are one of the big 4!

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10 hours ago, Barry O said:

The major changes are well in hand..a lot of problems can be seen to being close to being cleared..but why does it take network rail 5 years to build a platform in leeds, 3 years to build a platform in Horden and 2 years to build a platform at Stevenage? Because no one can kick them into doing things in a more economic and timely way. Picking on the franchises is far easier than admitting that, as a Goverment the bit you run is dreadful...or rather the bit the Civil service "run" is carp because you haven't got a clue how to do it

Baz

The work at Stevenage is slightly more than just building a platform 

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9 hours ago, royaloak said:

Conveniently when most of the driver training has been done so things will naturally improve regardless of who is operating the franchise.

 

Its almost as if they planned it isnt it!

 

That's rather cynical - wouldn't surprise me though.

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7 minutes ago, ess1uk said:

The work at Stevenage is slightly more than just building a platform 

I know but I watched 2 "blocklayers" take 30 minutes to lay 3 blocks. Then one went off as he had strained his hand...they had to make new cement as the first lot had gone off... on their mobiles (not acceptable on any construction site) most of the time and no supervision. 

 

Absolutely carp site management. .God only knows how the track bashing was going.

 

Too slow, no site discipline and the H&S checker was wandering around all over the place but never watching. 

Baz

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19 minutes ago, Reorte said:

 

That's rather cynical - wouldn't surprise me though.

Yes

But so true... between DaFT and the unions they all think it will be "better" when they run the railways

...with a huge dollip of taxpayers money..or reduced maintenance...

 

Remember why we denationalised the railways???

Baz

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