Driving trains in the BR sectorisation period

[rob D2]

Hi,

just wondering how this worked ?

say, for instance, you are a driver at a depot with infrastructure locos , visiting RES and intercity locos - did you drive them all or were you only driving specific groups ? I guess up to 1994 everyone was employed by BR.

 

after 94 and into privatisation , were drivers employed by, say , intercity or RES directly and of course the shadow freight companies ? Was there any cross driving between the parts ?

[phil-b259]

1 hour ago, rob D2 said:

Hi,

just wondering how this worked ?

say, for instance, you are a driver at a depot with infrastructure locos , visiting RES and intercity locos - did you drive them all or were you only driving specific groups ? I guess up to 1994 everyone was employed by BR.

 

after 94 and into privatisation , were drivers employed by, say , intercity or RES directly and of course the shadow freight companies ? Was there any cross driving between the parts ?

 

Depends what you mean by driving them... Shuffling them about the yard is one thing, taking them out on the mainline to undertake revenue earning duties is another.

 

The first thing to remember is that following sectorisation (1992) there was no such thing as a generalised 'Engineers depot' - All assets (including depots) used for engineering work were divided up and became the responsibility of either NSE, Regional Railways, InterCity, Parcels or trainload freight. This follows on from the abolition of BR regions in 1992 and the allocation of every single bit of track to one of the aforementioned business sectors for maintenance purposes.

 

Thus if an InterCity loco (even one only used for InterCity engineering work) needed attention at a trainload freight depot, the InterCity would be billed by Trainload Freight for the work. If a InterCity loco failed and one was hired from the parcels sector then it would be done as a hire of another sectors assets - much as happens today in the post privatisation world. If NSE required extra locos for a big relaying job and hired them in from Trainload freight then Trainload freight would be billed accordingly...

 

Obviously given that all sectors were part of the entity called British Rail, things were perhaps not quite as perfectly set up as today (no involvement from the legal trade for starters when it came to drawing up agreements or settling inter-sector disputes) - but the same general principles as exist today apply.

 

As for drivers, by 1992 I believe that things had been reorganised such that even drivers were notionally allocated to different business sectors - and as with locos, the drivers wages for that turn would have to be paid by the hiring sector if they got pinched for work outside their 'owning' sector.

 

Between 1990 and 1992 things were in a sate of flux as the reorganisation took effect gradually and before 1990 the sectors had far less powerful - mainly being marketing strategies and operational matters still dominated by the attitudes of the regional structures.

Edited April 30, 2020 by phil-b259

[rob D2]

So , another question, if say intercity was responsible for the GWML infrastructure and a freight train travelled over it , would they have to pay IC ? I presume this was before rail track arrived.

[phil-b259]

11 hours ago, rob D2 said:

So , another question, if say intercity was responsible for the GWML infrastructure and a freight train travelled over it , would they have to pay IC ? I presume this was before rail track arrived.

 

Yes thats the gist of it - although back in BR days you would typically have the fast / main lines on the ECML / WCML / GWML maintained by InterCity and the slow / Relief lines maintained by NSE / Regional Railways / Trainload Freight (depending on the location). Thus on the GWML inwards of Reading money would flow both ways between InterCity and the NSE sectors as each made regular use of the others assets.

 

Consequently  the whole Railtrack / Network Rail setup was not as radical as some would have you believe - and if Privatisation hadn't happened then I have no doubt much of what people criticise today would still have gone on - just within the umbrella of BR

 

Not sure who was responsible for junctions - but that may have been a 50:50 split money wise although obviously one sector would have to take the lead.

 

One side effect of this was the removal of many 'emergency crossovers' or little used sidings as no sector was willing to take on the liability for maintaining them. One of the good things that came out of privatisation was it has been deliberately made hard for Railtrack / NR to do the same as arbitrarily ripping out track had the potential to ruin the earning potential of the newly private Freight companies. Not a problem with BR and HM Treasury looking to keep cutting the block grant, but definitely an issue with a private company needing to return profits to its shareholders....

[SM42]

Sectorisation was, I was told by the PWME,  one of the reasons behind the closure of Stourbridge - Walsall line.

 

Regional Rail would use it ( to serve Merry Hill shopping centre mainly)  if Railfreight paid for maintenance and vice versa. Neither wanted the bill so it was shut.

 

Perhaps if Railtrack had come along sooner it may still be open.

 

Andy

[russ p]

Drivers were only really sectorised by being based at a depot which was sponsored by a specific sector but that was as far as is went.

I was at thornaby which the sponsoring sector was railfreight metals but we had booked work for this sector (our main work) but we had a lot of work from all of the train load sectors together with RfD, freightliner and regional railways.  If you were travelling back from somewhere passenger and rang control you could also be given work for intercity or RES if you signed the route and traction this was a good way of making overtime and mileage 

[jim.snowdon]

22 hours ago, phil-b259 said:

 

Yes thats the gist of it - although back in BR days you would typically have the fast / main lines on the ECML / WCML / GWML maintained by InterCity and the slow / Relief lines maintained by NSE / Regional Railways / Trainload Freight (depending on the location). Thus on the GWML inwards of Reading money would flow both ways between InterCity and the NSE sectors as each made regular use of the others assets.

 

Consequently  the whole Railtrack / Network Rail setup was not as radical as some would have you believe - and if Privatisation hadn't happened then I have no doubt much of what people criticise today would still have gone on - just within the umbrella of BR

 

Not sure who was responsible for junctions - but that may have been a 50:50 split money wise although obviously one sector would have to take the lead.

 

One side effect of this was the removal of many 'emergency crossovers' or little used sidings as no sector was willing to take on the liability for maintaining them. One of the good things that came out of privatisation was it has been deliberately made hard for Railtrack / NR to do the same as arbitrarily ripping out track had the potential to ruin the earning potential of the newly private Freight companies. Not a problem with BR and HM Treasury looking to keep cutting the block grant, but definitely an issue with a private company needing to return profits to its shareholders....

Now, it seems to be the resignalling projects that are intent on pulling out the 'emergency crossovers' that are more useful now for engineering works than emergencies, 

 

Jim

[phil-b259]

20 hours ago, russ p said:

Drivers were only really sectorised by being based at a depot which was sponsored by a specific sector but that was as far as is went.

I was at thornaby which the sponsoring sector was railfreight metals but we had booked work for this sector (our main work) but we had a lot of work from all of the train load sectors together with RfD, freightliner and regional railways.  If you were travelling back from somewhere passenger and rang control you could also be given work for intercity or RES if you signed the route and traction this was a good way of making overtime and mileage 

 

Although it wouldn't have affected you as such, presumably behind the scenes InterCity would financially compensate Trainload Metals for using your services in such cases.

[rob D2]

20 hours ago, russ p said:

Drivers were only really sectorised by being based at a depot which was sponsored by a specific sector but that was as far as is went.

I was at thornaby which the sponsoring sector was railfreight metals but we had booked work for this sector (our main work) but we had a lot of work from all of the train load sectors together with RfD, freightliner and regional railways.  If you were travelling back from somewhere passenger and rang control you could also be given work for intercity or RES if you signed the route and traction this was a good way of making overtime and mileage 

Thanks for that , very interesting . And I guess there was a lot of cross use of assets in the more remote ends of the country such, as I’ve seen photos, RES 47s doing the Plymouth to Penzance fuel tanks ? 

[phil-b259]

18 minutes ago, jim.snowdon said:

Now, it seems to be the resignalling projects that are intent on pulling out the 'emergency crossovers' that are more useful now for engineering works than emergencies, 

 

Jim

 

Not so!

 

Resignalling schemes near me (Arun Valley and Coastway East) have actually not only left previous crossovers in place at the likes of Billingshurst and Bexhill, they have upgraded them and installed wrong road starting signals to oblivate shunting!

 

These days both NR and the TOCs have come to appreciate their usefulness in enabling services to turn in the event of engineering work or incidents as it minimises the use of Rail replacement buses - something that is even more important now that the DfT are demanding all such buses to be compliant with accessibility requirements (hint, disabled friendly coaches are few and far between...)

 

With the Edenbridge and Dormans landslips because the crossovers used were stand alone ground frames NR had to provide extra staff to enable them to be used to turn services back - something that would have been removed if the current practice of providing full signalling had been followed

[russ p]

58 minutes ago, phil-b259 said:

 

Although it wouldn't have affected you as such, presumably behind the scenes InterCity would financially compensate Trainload Metals for using your services in such cases.

 

To be honest Phil,  I'm not sure that a lot of transactions were actually billed to the relevant sectors 

If there was a unit at Darlington that needed to go Middlesbrough,  well there always was one if I was on Doncaster freightliner and my mate was on at Darlington!  That gave me two hours overtime band two mileage and DOO . It was never queried by anyone 

[caradoc]

2 hours ago, jim.snowdon said:

Now, it seems to be the resignalling projects that are intent on pulling out the 'emergency crossovers' that are more useful now for engineering works than emergencies, 

 

Jim

 

To second what phil-b259 says, not so ! When the Cathcart SB area was recontrolled to the West of Scotland Signalling Centre, additional signalling for wrong direction working was installed on the Neilston line, and crossovers previously worked from Ground Frames were upgraded to the Signaller's control, along with the appropriate new main aspect signals for turnback moves, at Muirend and Pollokshields East for example.

 

[Mark Saunders]

Sectorisation at Thornaby saw the small passenger link disbanded, the ten senior men given redundancy and likewise the ten junior men of who most went to Darlington. At Darlington the Eastgate cement and engineering work went to Thornaby leaving it as Regional Railways Depot.

 

Newcastle was split Intercity and Regional.

 

Cambois and South Dock Trainload Coal.

 

not sure who sponsored Tyne Yard.

 

York was split Regional and RES with Regional having a booked Engineers job from York to Tyne but it did not last more than two years.

 

For Maintenance Heaton became Regional with Intercity work under contract, and likewise RES but Using their own 08’s and in the end York Drivers with shunt work tagged on the back of diagrams.

 

Cambois became the Maintenance Depot for Coal being in effect a sub shed of Toton.

 

weekend work enginineers 37 were based and maintained at Heaton.

[phil-b259]

2 hours ago, russ p said:

 

To be honest Phil,  I'm not sure that a lot of transactions were actually billed to the relevant sectors 

If there was a unit at Darlington that needed to go Middlesbrough,  well there always was one if I was on Doncaster freightliner and my mate was on at Darlington!  That gave me two hours overtime band two mileage and DOO . It was never queried by anyone 

 

That may well be true - everything being under the BR umbrella would give more scope for recipricol 'favours' rather than moving money about or the odd turning a blind eye.

 

Nevertheless the principle was no different to the current privatised system even if it may not have felt like it on the front line.

[russ p]

12 minutes ago, phil-b259 said:

 

That may well be true - everything being under the BR umbrella would give more scope for recipricol 'favours' rather than moving money about or the odd turning a blind eye.

 

Nevertheless the principle was no different to the current privatised system even if it may not have felt like it on the front line.

 

The principal may have been the same but the way it was executed was COMPLETELY different,  you still had regional controls and when the job went to c£ap thier main focus was to get things running properly again and a lot of people really did go the extra mile.

Today where what would often  be a trivial incident back then becomes a major farce and wearing any kind of railway uniform becomes an embarrassment as even if you offer your services they are most often refused because there is no contracts between companies 

[phil-b259]

19 minutes ago, russ p said:

 

The principal may have been the same but the way it was executed was COMPLETELY different,  you still had regional controls and when the job went to c£ap thier main focus was to get things running properly again and a lot of people really did go the extra mile.

Today where what would often  be a trivial incident back then becomes a major farce and wearing any kind of railway uniform becomes an embarrassment as even if you offer your services they are most often refused because there is no contracts between companies 

 

Erm... you still have regional controls and by no means all of them are useless when dealing with incidents these days.

 

That said the extra barriers introduced as a result of franchises being under the control of separate commercial entities plus freight being dealt with on an entirely different basis by yet more stand alone commercial companies does make things harder when it comes to co-ordinating the response to certain incidents compared to BR days - as does the lack of experienced controllers (others have noted how following the move of the Wessex control from Waterloo to Basingstoke, many experienced staff left rather than relocate for example).

 

Its not the fault of Control that there is a lack of contracts between the different players - its the result of Lawyers and accountants demanding everything be written down and allocated a price.

 

Railway workers today must operate within the structure others (principally non railway people in the DfT or private corporations / companies see fit. That they may not be optimal for railway purposes doesn't mater to such persons - its all about money, contracts and liabilities....

 

Ultimately, as you say its all about implementation of the process rather than the principle, although had Sectiorisation continued then I have little doubt that separation of assets, including drivers, would have continued to be developed.

Edited May 2, 2020 by phil-b259

[russ p]

The regional controls are network rail and in lot of cases don't impress and train crew aren't allowed to talk to them directly .

It seems to be the TOC controller who shouts the loudest gets his result 

[Foden]

If I may creep in with a sub question (apologies Rob, no hijack intended), would it be a case that a Regional or Freight service that would normally use slow lines stay on the slow lines even during quiet periods where a path is available on the main line? Because a deviation onto another business sector's line would incur additional costs?

 

And equally, if for example an Intercity train had to use the slow lines, lets say funded by Regional Railways, would the Intercity train then fall down the priority order when it came to pathing? It would seem harsh for an RR service to incur delay over its own infrastructure due to an Intercity foreigner. Would signallers have clear instruction when this scenario were to present itself?

[The Stationmaster]

On 30/04/2020 at 23:56, rob D2 said:

So , another question, if say intercity was responsible for the GWML infrastructure and a freight train travelled over it , would they have to pay IC ? I presume this was before rail track arrived.

Not exactly.  After full sectorisation in 1992 we sorted out who carried the cost of what at a joint meeting between all the sectors, who owned which routes had already been settled before that.   Thus what we did was to take each section of route and consider everything on it from a usage viewpoint and whether or not we as a sector needed to use it.  

 

So to take an unexpected example at Shrewsbury the route owner was the Provincial but they obviously had infrastructure there which they didn't need for their core business so the cost of it was transferred to another business sector.  In the case of Abbey Foregate Curve (from Abbey Foregate Jcn to English Bridge Jcn the only booked service using it was an occasional oil train so Provincial proposed to transfer the cost to the Freight Sector but I rejected it because the occasional oil train could run round in Shrewsbury station and I wasn't going to take on 4 point ends and about 12 track chains just for an occasional train.  That left the sole, occasional, user as Inter City who used the curve for occasionally turning engines working steam specials so the cost went to them.

 

That identification of user apart there was at that time no arrangement for off charging everyday track costs between sectors - it only applied to identified lines and sidings sub-allocated to a sector and to any renewal costs of those identified lines, connections and sidings

 

At privatisation in 1994 the vast majority of infrastructure went to Railtrack (as they then were) although some odds & ends of sidings etc went to privatised operators.  Railtrack simply charged (and NR now charge) each operator an Access Charge for using their network which should take into account any facilities particularly needed for their traffic.

 

As far as resources are concerned the situation was probably a bit different but I doubt in some respects money actually changed hands prior to [privatisation.  But in other cases money did change hands as will become apparentbelo.   in 1992 what wasn't already sectorised (mainly the civil engineer's fleet plus some S&T and maybe oddments in HQ M&EE hands) was sectorised while other stuff - mainly InterCity and Provincial went from what was mainly Regional control (often with sector influence) to pure sector control.  Freight resources were already fully sectorised - right down to sub-sector level.  What then followed from 1992 to 1994 was basically a situation of 'bought in' services, which in some cases included traincrew where depots had bot previously been sectorised, but was mainly managerial and various HQ work.  For example in my second year budget in TLF I got shot of £1 million's worth of 'bought in' services while adding to my own planning staff in order to bring work in house - inevitably at lower cost even if it was the same people doing the same work.   As far as movement respources such as locos were concerned people would usually 'lend' some time in a diagram on an 'old mates' basis - I don't think anybody was charging until we were privatised.

 

On the Western between 1989 and 1992 we had gone quite a long way towards sectorising traincrewwork and depots (and links within depots where the depot wasn't sectorised) so 1992 was a very easy transition for us in traincrew terms and all the associated work let alone making far less work in terms of 'buying in'.  for example on my patch on the former WR part of it I had 100% internalised train crew diagramming whereas on the former SR part traincrew diagramming was bought in from NSE (until I ended that a year later as part of my big savings).  Thus if a depot in one sector was doing booked traincrew work for another sector then there would be a charge for the 'bought in' service.  If it was happening on an ad hoc basis then it was probably by old mates agreement until it got sufficient to be noticed in which case a charge would be raised.  From privatisation it was, or should have been, 100% charged for every hour or however rates were set (I charged a basic fee of a 9 hour day for a Driver and then a separate charge, at a higher rate per hour, for every hour above  that, going up to an absolute maximum of 12 hours in exceptional circumstances but normally limited to 10 hours maximum.  I charged out locos by the working day, plus fuel but with no mileage charge, but as someone on here knows it worked out cheaper for somebody looking for very long term higher (a year or more) to make me an offer to buy the loco.

 

So there you are - taht is how it was d for somebody working right at the heart of it all right through from the late 1980s, when started working hard to effectively sectorise traincrew depots, and on into the provatised era.

[The Stationmaster]

1 hour ago, Foden said:

If I may creep in with a sub question (apologies Rob, no hijack intended), would it be a case that a Regional or Freight service that would normally use slow lines stay on the slow lines even during quiet periods where a path is available on the main line? Because a deviation onto another business sector's line would incur additional costs?

 

And equally, if for example an Intercity train had to use the slow lines, lets say funded by Regional Railways, would the Intercity train then fall down the priority order when it came to pathing? It would seem harsh for an RR service to incur delay over its own infrastructure due to an Intercity foreigner. Would signallers have clear instruction when this scenario were to present itself?

Irrelevant really except where there were totally separate goods lines owned by the Freight Sector.  In most cases, and certainly on the routes we planned and timed trains over on the former WR and SR there was very little in the way of separate parallel lines which 'belonged' to us.  So our trains were pathed over whatever line was available provided there was room there for a valid path.  The only thing was that on routes owned by passenger sectors we weren't allowed on the timetable graph until they'd put their trains.  Sometimes there could be a bit of mutual flexing of times but we had no choice but to run on their railway.  It was also to our advantage to have timing in house because then we knew exactly what was going on and weren't in a situation where we were delivered somebody else's decision.

 

That in fact was one of the big benefits of privatisation because from then on freights and their paths were generally protected by written contracts although flexing no doubt still takes place - but now it has to be done officially if there's no way round a problem.

[rob D2]

Thanks for the replies thus...very interesting.

 

So let’s say the 1035 beddidlyboing to Paignton is an intercity service , but ( as I see written some times ) it’s “ booked “ a RES 47, when is that sorted out ? Before the timetables or set up, or closer to the service running ?

[The Stationmaster]

12 minutes ago, rob D2 said:

Thanks for the replies thus...very interesting.

 

So let’s say the 1035 beddidlyboing to Paignton is an intercity service , but ( as I see written some times ) it’s “ booked “ a RES 47, when is that sorted out ? Before the timetables or set up, or closer to the service running ?

When the loco diagramming is beimng done and by a bit of chat between the respective diagrammers - part of the overall timetable c development process if its' planned working. 

[phil-b259]

2 hours ago, russ p said:

The regional controls are network rail and in lot of cases don't impress and train crew aren't allowed to talk to them directly .

It seems to be the TOC controller who shouts the loudest gets his result 

 

This is a direct result of everything needing to be accounted for by the bean counters / legal teams - which in turn is because they are all separate entities and not subdivisions of a parent organisation.

 

As you and the Stationmaster have said, under BR the 'can you do us a favour' mentality was tolerated without it causing too many issues (unless it became regular enough to start impacting the sectors cost base). Unfortunately that sort of thinking is anathema to anyone involved in contract law or administering of contract payments. To them ALL work MUST be captured and appropriate payments made - requests to do anything outside the contracted arrangements usually requiring a considerable amount of cash and written guarantees as to what will be done....

 

Thus drivers and controllers agreeing things on a personal basis might well be good for operational reasons - but if it results in a financial loss then the paper pushers will want to know why they did not get the opportunity to approve the arrangements, so they ban the use of such unofficial arrangements!

 

It affects infrastructure staff too - These days if there is the need for a train to drop off / pick up incident response staff, it has to be approved by the TOC high ups (not just control) - on the basis that doing so will cause a delay and mean the TOC may be required to doll out compensation to passengers for the late running. Similarly some TOCs are more than happy to keep running with delays rather than cancel services to facilitate engineers access due to the financial implications.

 

This is also why it may well seem as 'the TOC who shouts loudest' gets to call the shots - if you are a finance guy counting the pennies then you generally listen more to your most profitable clients as not doing so can have significant impact on the fiances.

 

As with many things in the UK these days, the railway has fallen victim to City / HM Treasury 'experts' who Know the Price Of Everything, but the Value Of Nothing to coin an old saying. Employees (and indeed users) may suffer, but ultimately as long as the monetary figures are right then who cares about such old fashioned niceties....

 

 

[russ p]

A great example of where the railway snatched defeat from the jaws of victory occurred just over two years ago when we had late season heavy snow 

On the Anglia region there were six class 37s fitted with miniature ploughs and were capable of being driven by DRS drivers and a good number of GA drivers.  This would have seemed ideal for having overnight snow patrols and keeping the railway open 

But no decisions were taken to suspend all services on the night before the expected blizzard and not run any trains for days.

In the end the rural Norfolk branches had to be reopened using the BR independent ploughs. 

There was a lot of bad publicity after this but I would not expect the modern railway to act any differently in the future 

[rob D2]

I get the impression Russs, that you don’t like the privatised railway!