New structure for British railways

[phil-b259]

13 minutes ago, 43110andyb said:

https://www.raildeliverygroup.com/rst.html All your questions about (current) Staff travel answered here.

 

Lots of stuff on there but all totally pointless unless you:-

 

(1) work for a Passenger Train operating company

 

Or

 

(2) were employed by British Rail before 1st January 1996

 

 

If you fall outside either of those categories you get sod all!

 

(Note the season ticket subsidy NR offer isn't rail specific - there is nothing to stop any employer be they a supermarket or a bank offering such a thing if they wanted to).

[Ron Ron Ron]

44 minutes ago, RJS1977 said:

And what happened last time the government bought rolling stock?

 

How far back are thinking about?

Do enlighten us?

 

.

[RJS1977]

I  was thinking of the Hitachi 80X series.....

[Ron Ron Ron]

2 hours ago, Grizz said:

Totally! 
 

‘The Crumbling Edge’......deliberately made to fail....how else could you run it into the ground to justify privatisation and the continuation of the road building 

 

If you're talking about the 1980's, into the 90's, then I think you'll find the reluctance to spend too much money on the railways was the fact that passenger numbers had been tumbling downwards on a consistent basis from around 1960**.

The railways were seen as a money pit. a sink hole that just swallowed money, whilst providing diminishing returns.

The public weren't particularly enamoured by the railways either; BR being the subject of much derision and even hate.

 

( ** Apart from the up-tick in the mid/late 80's when the "inter-city effect" reversed the trend for a few years.)

 

 

.

[Ron Ron Ron]

7 minutes ago, RJS1977 said:

I  was thinking of the Hitachi 80X series.....

 

The government haven't bought any of those trains and don't own any.

They haven't paid for them either.

 

 

p.s. They spent a small fortune on running the procurement process though.

.

Edited May 20, 2021 by Ron Ron Ron

[Michael Hodgson]

7 hours ago, The Border Reiver said:

Quote "All tickets will be sold by GBR in the future, ending the system where passengers must buy them from multiple companies online and in stations"

 

Will this mean the end of split ticketing web sites?

Trainline shares were down one third in value when I looked this morning.  I don't know whether they have any employee share bonus schemes, but it's bad news for their staff if they are losing their jobs and any existing bonus has gone down the pan - I've always been wary of share bonuses for that reason, although I have done quite well from such schemes with several firms I used to work for.

[corneliuslundie]

And what about private companies which provide such services where there are no railway staff (as we had until the pandemic in Newtown) - and tourist information office etc which sell rail tickets? If it means that for many people all tickets have to be bought on-line or from machines that will be a disincentive to use rail.

Jonathan

[Michael Hodgson]

11 hours ago, Supaned said:

I'm not necessarily happy with the concept of comparison with other sectors and labour markets - we've been down this road before with McNulty comparing train drivers to white van man. I think we can all see where this is heading....

I seem to recall the NUR objecting vociferously about train crews losing their jobs when the Minehead line closed.  Then they objected when the West Somerset wanted to reopen the line because their members had all got jobs as bus drivers.

[Michael Hodgson]

9 hours ago, Quarryscapes said:

" Great British Railways will introduce Rail Alphabet 2 across the rail network, replacing the many different fonts used on railway signage. Rail Alphabet 2 is used for the headings throughout this document."

Oh goody,  Jobs for signwriters!  Just think how much more collectable railwayana will be appearing on the market to join all the totems etc. 

[corneliuslundie]

Oh. soself- employed train drivers bringing their own trains?

J

[Michael Hodgson]

8 hours ago, woodenhead said:

all trains will have their existing logos replaced with the words British Railways, to save money 'Great' has been dropped.

 

 

Great will be retained sarcastically, the same way one uses the term Right Honourable Gentleman for a dishonourable politician who is no gentleman, and isn't right.

[Michael Hodgson]

9 hours ago, John M Upton said:

Currently TOC employees get free travel for themselves and family on their employer and any other franchise run by the same company.  Once we become one big happy family, will we get free travel network wide?

Of course you will keep the right to free travel on your franchise. 

Unfortunately there aren't going to be franchises any more.   Bad luck John!

[Ron Ron Ron]

It's almost inconceivable that any train operator, nationalised or otherwise, would actually "buy" large fleets of rolling stock these days.

The capital costs and effect on the company balance sheet, not to mention any Public Sector Borrowing metrics, would make it very unattractive.

 

Other European train operators like DB lease their new trains as well.

 

The banks and other lenders providing the finance for new trains are now spread far and wide.

For example the trains provided as part of the IEP (Class 8xx IET's) were paid for by a consortia made up of a number of international financial institutions, mainly Japanese.

Other train fleets have been financed by money from Europe, the Middle East and North America, usually funnelled through a "lead lender" closer to home.

 

Just look at the large fleet replacements that have taken place over the last 25 years and just imagine what the upfront cost would have been.

Apart from the large government subsidies, our railways have benefitted, if not survived on a huge amount of private capital over the last couple of decades.

 

Where would a government get such money?

From the very same, or similar lenders.

 

 

.

 

 

[BernardTPM]

4 hours ago, RJS1977 said:

That said, in the 46 years of BR's existence, we had 8 of the UK's nine worst peacetime rail disasters

'Peacetime' of course excludes Britain's worst ever rail crash, in terms of death, at Quintishill in 1915 which took 226 lives. That leaves a 'worst 9' as follows:

 

Harrow & Wealdstone (1952) 112

Lewisham (1957)                        90

Armagh (1889)                            80

Tay Bridge (1879)                       75

Shipton-on-Cherwell (1874)     34

Abergele (1868)                          33

Hither Green (1967)                  49

Bourne End (1945)                    45  (September, so after WW2)

Castlecary (1937)                       37

 

3 out of 9.

 

Edited because of my error over Armagh.

 

 

 

Edited May 20, 2021 by BernardTPM

[Gwiwer]

3 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

You didn’t have one of those sneaky “not via London termini” tickets, I hope, ‘cos if you did, her computer was right; change at Watford Junction.

Those "sneaky" tickets routed "Not London Terminals" are usually much cheaper than the equivalent "AP" (Any Permitted) route because you are effectively trading down.  To a slower and less direct service in most cases.  For Warrington to Croydon it's change at Milton Keynes and (currently, though hopefully Southern will re-extend the service eventually) also Clapham Junction.  In the work capacity I see a good many of those tickets.  Fewer currently than normal because a large number of them originated at Gatwick Airport for points across the network.  

 

One of the stated intentions of the new GBR is to make ticketing simpler but whether this includes aligning the fares across slower (but perfectly reasonable) routes for journeys such as this with the "AP" fare remains to be seen.  

 

As I read the document there is nothing to suggest staff will have travel facilities extended.  Those under safeguarded arrangements will retain that much.  Those non-safeguarded staff who have TOC-specific travel benefits would stay as they are once their TOC converts from ERMA to the new concession.  Those with Group-wide travel such as "Any First Group operator" might actually lose out though again this is neither stated nor certain.  It is possible their free travel will be restricted to their own business at some future time.  Privilege rate travel across all TOCs is another matter but if attempts were made to withdraw it GBR might find themselves under pressure from all sides of the industry.  For non-safeguarded staff it is a non-contractual benefit and can as such be withdrawn at any time.  It applies to TOCs but not to open-access operators; it is also available as a gesture of goodwill (the concept of one rail industry) on many heritage railways and overseas.  A tiny handful of staff are extremely knowledgeable about international travel and make good use of it; most probably never use it at all.  

[Nearholmer]

 

"'Peacetime' of course excludes Britain's worst ever rail crash,"

 

Also depends heavily upon the way "peacetime" is defined, since British forces were engaged in conflicts during many of the years on that list.

 

1952 - Korea, Kenya, and Malaya.

1879 - Afgahnistan

1874 - Gold Coast

1967 - Aden

1937 - Palestine

1988 - Northern Ireland

 

And, probably some of the other years too.

 

Anyway, not peaceful in those places.

 

 

Edited May 20, 2021 by Nearholmer

[RichardT]

3 hours ago, jools1959 said:

 

Why can’t they get people like Christian Walmar who are experts in the field?

I’ll take your word about this Christian Walmar fellow. Just don’t confuse him with Christian Wolmar, who isn’t an expert in any field, never mind railways.

 

RT

[billbedford]

36 minutes ago, BernardTPM said:

Selectively you could also exclude Armagh (80 in 1889) which is no longer in the UK,

 

Armagh is in Ulster, which is still in the UK, for now. 

[MrSimon]

A carnet of 10 or 12 would be more use as places in town are saying ‘2 or 3 days a week’ - at the moment you only start to save on tfl on the 6th day of a weekly ticket

[dave750t]

16 minutes ago, billbedford said:

 

Armagh is in Ulster, which is still in the UK, for now. 

Not all of Ulster is in the UK

[BernardTPM]

25 minutes ago, billbedford said:

Armagh is in Ulster, which is still in the UK, for now. 

Ooops, my apologies. While it wasn't ever British Railways, it was under State control later. List amended.

Edited May 20, 2021 by BernardTPM

[Classsix T]

2 hours ago, Michael Hodgson said:

 

Great will be retained sarcastically, the same way one uses the term Right Honourable Gentleman for a dishonourable politician who is no gentleman, and isn't right.

The latter part being "Rules of the House" more than anything else, no names for members. Like having a limousine take away the nation's poshest hat as some sort of indicative throwback of the division of Crown and State.

An utterly ridiculous pantomime in the 21st century frankly.

 

C6T. 

[TravisM]

35 minutes ago, RichardT said:

I’ll take your word about this Christian Walmar fellow. Just don’t confuse him with Christian Wolmar, who isn’t an expert in any field, never mind railways.

 

RT

Either one will do, got to be better than Pete Waterman 

[Classsix T]

16 minutes ago, dave750t said:

Not all of Ulster is in the UK

There's an...ahem, Alternative Ulster?

 

(sorry, but music fans of a certain age needed that.)

 

C6T. 

[TheSignalEngineer]

15 hours ago, ess1uk said:

Another re-org before the latest one has finished 

Nothing new, the London Midland Region had a reorganisations department at Euston House when I was a Staff Rep. I went through 4 in 5 years in the 1980s.