Delays on the Western

[TheSignalEngineer]

I did expect you would already have considered such matters Mike - but its worth stating such things for others with less insider knowledge

 

As regards your comment on the 'Digital Railway', I agree - and what with 'Uncle Rogers' recent comments about the gulf between what those in power think the 'digital railway' can deliver in the way of cost savings (easily 40%), and what those in the know say it can (at best 20%), its all a bit "emperors new clothes" syndrome

Save money, you must surely jest. By the time the powers that be have changed the requirements 15 times it will probably cost 40% more than present.

[D1059]

Whilst it is certainly interesting and informative to understand more about what went wrong, and the extent of the area affected, it still boils down to the fact that, with the B&H closed for major renewals, additional staff should have been available to 'gold plate' the one remaining route, especially on a Bank Holiday weekend. 

 

Aren't Bank Holiday weekends the normal time that NR cause maximum (scheduled) disruption on the grounds that fewer people are travelling ? Memories of gridlock in Reading over August Bank Holiday weekends in years past cos NR shut the station preventing anyone going to Reading Festival travelling by rail

[Mike Storey]

You can't fill vital posts LOM's MOM's etc.. with graduates and still expect them to be practically useful when the railway goes wrong

 

That sounds right, but isn't actually true. BR used to recruit at least around 60 graduate management trainees a year, into the operations specialism, 18 months intensive training including six months hands-on work, followed by practical and theoretical rules, regs and working manual examinations (which you had to re-sit every two years). I was one of them (but as a staff entrant). Almost all of us (that passed - there was usually a 25% attrition rate), were handed temporary or permanent first management (really, supervisory grade) Station Manager or Asst Station Manager posts, which included first line emergency response, for flagging, point winding, dealing with fatalities, derailments, collisions, operations supervisor on engineering works, shunting when no shunters available, etc etc, and indeed Temporary Block Working, which I first did on a planned basis at Sittingbourne. This was on top of all our commercial, internal control and personnel responsibilities. If you did not cope, you were told to feck off, or put into an office job. Even then, senior managers were questioning us on why we had not come up with cost saving plans, innovative changes and so on, in between doing all this, often working 13 days out of every 14. So you learned very quickly, and gained a lot of experience in a short time. Naturally, those who had been doing it for some years had a lot of advice and a lot of criticism. But I also remember showing several guards, whilst on placement at Chislehurst, how to re-set their brakes....

 

Railtrack practically stopped all that, which is the period when estate agents and insurance salespeople, were being recruited instead, both by RT and by the TOCs. NR has gradually resurrected it, with cross-fertilisation with some TOCs. I assume that continues, as it proved very successful initially.

 

BR however, were just as prone as RT and now NR, in cutting the number of people who could respond to such needs, through the multiple Area reorganisations. When I first started, I had direct control on-call (as an ASM on shifts) of just the Medway and the short Sheppey route. By the next re-org, when I was moved to Ramsgate, I had to respond to the whole of East Kent on-call, LCDR and SER routes. Once at Brighton, as SM (with no ASM support), I had much of East and West Coastway and up the BML to Wivelsfield, to cover. I see from comments on here, that NR is doing much the same again.

 

But what you are missing is that, in those days, we also had station supervisors, even Senior Railmen/women from all the larger stations, plus P/Way and S&T, all trained and qualified to assist in such matters. Nowadays, such folk (other than in the engineering depts.) cannot even step on the track, without escort, in most cases, and almost all of the ability to deal with such incidents are far more constrained. (I am aware there have been some attempts to improve upon that, but have seen little about it.) Perhaps the removal of that silo mentality is one major measure that could be taken?

 

As for the vulnerability of new signalling centres to catastrophic failure, the last SSI I was involved in had provision for local operation at TER cabins located at strategic locations. I remember reading somewhere on the GWML upgrade works, that despite commissioning of key stretches of new signalling, additional lineside works still remained to be done. Is this what is missing?

[Gary H]

Aren't Bank Holiday weekends the normal time that NR cause maximum (scheduled) disruption on the grounds that fewer people are travelling ? Memories of gridlock in Reading over August Bank Holiday weekends in years past cos NR shut the station preventing anyone going to Reading Festival travelling by rail

"A rock and a hard place" springs to mind.

Do you think that it would be more prudent to stop folk who pay thousands a year for season tickets to get to work on Monday morning or a bunch of p****d up rock fans getting to a gig on a BH weekend?

They have to do it sometime!

[Captain Kernow]

As regards your comment on the 'Digital Railway', I agree - and what with 'Uncle Rogers' recent comments about the gulf between what those in power think the 'digital railway' can deliver in the way of cost savings (easily 40%), and what those in the know say it can (at best 20%), its all a bit "emperors new clothes" syndrome

As far as I am concerned, the NR Imperium (and RT before them) was and still is full of that kind of stuff. 'You can't criticise the Digital Railway (or whatever else it happens to be), because that is thew New Black and it will save the whole of the railway industry from the horrors of it's nationalised past etc. etc.'

 

I knew that it was utter tosh back then, and it must surely remain the case today.

 

Just like the current fad of calling blockades 'TPODs' ('Temporary Period of Disruption'). The luvvies in NR these days don't like the 'finality' of the word 'blockade', so dress it up as something else.

 

Pathetic (that's a technical term).

[Captain Kernow]

That sounds right, but isn't actually true. BR used to recruit at least around 60 graduate management trainees a year, into the operations specialism, 18 months intensive training including six months hands-on work, followed by practical and theoretical rules, regs and working manual examinations (which you had to re-sit every two years). I was one of them (but as a staff entrant). Almost all of us (that passed - there was usually a 25% attrition rate), were handed temporary or permanent first management (really, supervisory grade) Station Manager or Asst Station Manager posts, which included first line emergency response, for flagging, point winding, dealing with fatalities, derailments, collisions, operations supervisor on engineering works, shunting when no shunters available, etc etc, and indeed Temporary Block Working,

When I started in 1981, Mike, we weren't really allowed to do anything 'hands on' until we were in our first jobs, which in my case was as a three-shirt 'Traffic Assistant' (aka Supervisor) at Taunton, responsible for running the station, emergency rostering of signalmen, drivers, secondmen and guards, supervision of the goods activities at East Yard and Taunton Cider and (latterly) responsible for the weekly signalbox and level crossing visits. It was a fantastic job, but the lack of hands-on BR experience during the training period meant that I learnt far, far more about practical railway work as a regular volunteer on the WSR, doing signalman, guard and shunters roles.

[Captain Kernow]

But what you are missing is that, in those days, we also had station supervisors, even Senior Railmen/women from all the larger stations, plus P/Way and S&T, all trained and qualified to assist in such matters. Nowadays, such folk (other than in the engineering depts.) cannot even step on the track, without escort, in most cases, and almost all of the ability to deal with such incidents are far more constrained. (I am aware there have been some attempts to improve upon that, but have seen little about it.) Perhaps the removal of that silo mentality is one major measure that could be taken?

 

During the RT years of the late 1990s and early 2000s, when I was the Area Production Manager for the SW, based at Exeter, I tried very hard on more than one occasion to get TOC staff at places like Totnes and Newton Abbot trained to manually operate power points, but each time I came up against the burgeoning 'competence assurance' industry, which has since become even more widespread with the 'tail wagging the dog' organisation that is Sentinel (I have my own personal and very frustrating reasons for having that view point).

 

So despite everyone in operations in both RT/NR and the TOC thinking it was a good idea, the 'Safety Management mafia' effectively found reasons whey it was 'all too difficult'.

[TheSignalEngineer]

That sounds right, but isn't actually true. BR used to recruit at least around 60 graduate management trainees a year, into the operations specialism,......................

 

Railtrack practically stopped all that, which is the period when estate agents and insurance salespeople, were being recruited instead, both by RT and by the TOCs. NR has gradually resurrected it, with cross-fertilisation with some TOCs. I assume that continues, as it proved very successful initially.

 

When we were being privatised the last Management Range Vacancy List we received (Grades MS2 to SO1?) had 42 jobs on it. 39 were accountants and lawyers, three were Operations or Engineering specialists.

 

 

But what you are missing is that, in those days, we also had station supervisors, even Senior Railmen/women from all the larger stations, plus P/Way and S&T, all trained and qualified to assist in such matters. Nowadays, such folk (other than in the engineering depts.) cannot even step on the track, without escort, in most cases, and almost all of the ability to deal with such incidents are far more constrained. (I am aware there have been some attempts to improve upon that, but have seen little about it.) Perhaps the removal of that silo mentality is one major measure that could be taken?

 

When i was responsible for recruitment and training in our group all of those on design training were sent out on-track with maintenance and installation teams for a period to learn what the outside world was about. Virtually every designer in the office had a second ticket, even if it was only a Mod 5 Assistant Tester. In 1990s terms, everyone down to the office Clerical staff were Personal Track Safety trained so they could be of more use chasing things up for the Project staff during commissioning works. All senior technical and engineering management staff were qualified as Person in Charge of Work (PICOW), some also as Engineering Supervisor or Person in Charge of Possession.

 

 

As for the vulnerability of new signalling centres to catastrophic failure, the last SSI I was involved in had provision for local operation at TER cabins located at strategic locations. I remember reading somewhere on the GWML upgrade works, that despite commissioning of key stretches of new signalling, additional lineside works still remained to be done. Is this what is missing?

Routing of Data Links and other transmission systems is a big problem. Ideally the two links should be in entirely separate routes through to the interlocking area. In relay interlockings I have come across cases where the two legs of the transmission are in the same cable along with the over-riding circuit which was used to put the controlled signals into the preferred routes working auto in case of remote control failure. super system when the locals decide they want a bit of cable to sell. 

 

I was involved in several SSI schemes in the early days and every one was baset by data link problems. The signal in each link has to be in sync within a certain margin. Propagation times vary due to the nature of the transmission system used and its length, so you could have a direct cable along the track from the Signalling Centre and one going half way round the country before getting back to the interlocking area on the ground. The further it went the less reliable it became. Then someone started using BT to provide the alternative route. You might get something that worked on day 1 but there was nothing to say they wouldn't change the routing to via Glasgow and Bristol and you were stuffed. this happened with repetitive Data Link failures in the North-East, in fact the Leeds Station area operated on one leg of the data link for several days in one case. The only way you can get close to being totally reliable and secure is to have two independent dark fibre links on your own infrastructure and under the control of your own staff. 

 

I may be a dinosaur but to me signalling via the cloud would be fraught with problems. Just think, I could try to get a web page up on my smart TV and end up setting a route at Swindon.

[Edwin_m]

If the problem was loss of power then wouldn't it have affected a remote relay interlocking just as much? 

[Mike Storey]

When I started in 1981, Mike, we weren't really allowed to do anything 'hands on' until we were in our first jobs, which in my case was as a three-shirt 'Traffic Assistant' (aka Supervisor) at Taunton, responsible for running the station, emergency rostering of signalmen, drivers, secondmen and guards, supervision of the goods activities at East Yard and Taunton Cider and (latterly) responsible for the weekly signalbox and level crossing visits. It was a fantastic job, but the lack of hands-on BR experience during the training period meant that I learnt far, far more about practical railway work as a regular volunteer on the WSR, doing signalman, guard and shunters roles.

 

That's only two years after me, but I was on the SR. Strange.

[TheSignalEngineer]

When I started in 1981, Mike, we weren't really allowed to do anything 'hands on' until we were in our first jobs, which in my case was as a three-shirt 'Traffic Assistant' (aka Supervisor) at Taunton, responsible for running the station, emergency rostering of signalmen, drivers, secondmen and guards, supervision of the goods activities at East Yard and Taunton Cider and (latterly) responsible for the weekly signalbox and level crossing visits. It was a fantastic job, but the lack of hands-on BR experience during the training period meant that I learnt far, far more about practical railway work as a regular volunteer on the WSR, doing signalman, guard and shunters roles.

From the practical point of view I had the advantage of doing the old S&T Engineering Student scheme as it was known in the 1960s. We spent five years attached to various offices and depots for periods up to six months. A lot of the time the jobs we were on were short-handed, so anyone who could use a shovel, run wiring, climb poles, etc were used in the same way as the junior staff. I ended up having installed mechanical and electrical signalling equipment, built a locking frame along with a Workshops apprentice, stripped down and rebuilt point machines and a key token instrument, planned possession work, designed a staff warning system for a tunnel, assisted testing and commissioning a major PSB, fault finding on train describers, could test and do fault finding on telephone systems and exchanges, do staff rostering, assisted with incident investigation ........

It was easy to hit the ground running when you were allocated to your first permanent post. That involved designing the trackside location works and fringe box alterations for an extension to a PSB. Shortly after taking up the job I got a promotion. I took a day off on the Friday after the interview. The boss phoned me at home and said congratulations, you've got the job. Are you free tomorrow night?  I asked why and he said --- has gone sick, can you lead the team doing track circuit changes at New Street and do the testing? Talk about being thrown in the deep end! 

[Oldddudders]

This is a sorry saga, and one that makes me truly grateful to be long gone. A few observations on trivia, not the main thrust. Apart from my couple of years flogging off BRIS, I had no real interface with Railtrack except as incompetent suppliers when I was involved in TOC retail matters.

 

Override was certainly built in to London Bridge in 1976, and I recall testing of the functions, to the extent that Charing Cross was briefly in automatic mode, which worked. Emergency panels were located at key interlockings, although not much invoked.

 

Dark fibre was the coming thing when we did LT&S Resignalling in the early 90s. And BRT in those days understood resilience. Their chief engineer had a recent background in Southern Region telecomms, so "got it". Even then he was struggling to make the case felt, I think, and was known to take his bat home in the face of senior resistance. Once Thales and Global Crossing got involved they might as well have been Radio Rentals for all they knew about railway comms.

 

Signal Engineer - I joined in 1966 aged 17 after A Levels, and entered the Railway Studentship, which was a shorter and less formal training that was otherwise comparable in design to your own. So several months were spent in full ticket office training and actually working shifts, followed by stints in Divisional Office, effectively covering vacancies so actually doing the job. There were occasional jollies and formal progress review interviews at very senior level - facing Stuart Ward, Southern Asst GM (Operations) as chair of a committee was not to be treated lightly, especially if his indigestion was playing up after lunch in the officers' mess! Incidentally, SO became SM in about 1981, with much grumbling as relativities were adjusted, and then EG in the Hay MSL era. I finally staggered into that Group in 1990, but my late first wife had arrived there at age 32, having started as a filing clerk at 18.

 

Mike Storey - you were about 5 years behind me in training, and I was surprised at the annual number of graduate recruits you quoted. In 1973 the total operations intake to Traffic Management Training was 30, of whom about 25% were ex-staff, like me. The Cook's Tour part of the scheme was balanced by practical matters as well, although I was able to skip some segments. After 5 years in Control, of which I spent 4 as an area controller, I knew a little bit!

 

The BR railway in many respects was the Big Four unified, more or less. Regions were omnipowerful, although Board HQ kept a watchful eye, and certainly provided a centre of excellence for engineering and operating functions. I think in 1966 there were roundly 250k staff, but that had halved by the onset of Privatisation. Already the cracks in incident recovery were showing. The vulnerability of the present railway in this thread shows that weakness to have grown exponentially.

[Southernman46]

That sounds right, but isn't actually true. BR used to recruit at least around 60 graduate management trainees a year, into the operations specialism, 18 months intensive training including six months hands-on work, followed by practical and theoretical rules, regs and working manual examinations (which you had to re-sit every two years). I was one of them (but as a staff entrant).

Hi Mike,

 

Yes, accepted - my comment was without the qualification that you have supplied - we ( you, me , Olddudders . Capt Kernow, and many others on here I have not mentioned) do all seem to be products of that mid 70's to early 80's era on BR (the SR especially - although I may be biased in that respect) when the recruitment & training programme was extremely good. NR have attempted to remedy the situation in recent times (St Simon is good evidence of that system - although application of the individual is still a huge factor - I have experienced some right losers come through the same Sultan scheme) - it's maybe easy to speak with hubris but to me it does all just seems to be too far gone now.

[Mike Storey]

Mike Storey - you were about 5 years behind me in training, and I was surprised at the annual number of graduate recruits you quoted. In 1973 the total operations intake to Traffic Management Training was 30, of whom about 25% were ex-staff, like me. The Cook's Tour part of the scheme was balanced by practical matters as well, although I was able to skip some segments. After 5 years in Control, of which I spent 4 as an area controller, I knew a little bit!

 

 

Definitely at that level in my year, the year before, and the year after, with whom we shared many weeks at Watford, especially in the pub down the lane. On reflection, I do think a small handful were personnel or commercial trainees, as I recall they broke off in the last six months, when the Ops training got pretty intensive. But I do gather this number started to drop later in the '80's. I was involved in the graduate recruitment campaign in 1989 (?), when it was proving increasingly difficult to recruit once more, as young people wanted to be something in oil (which garage?) or in making a lot of money, very quickly, with little effort, post '87. I think that was when they shifted up the starting rate to MS1, instead of the C02/Sup C basic we were on, and on the basis of that, I would guess RT took one look and wrote it off as an unnecessary expense.....Pity as I never made more money than as a Sup E at Ashford on 12 hrs on/off for nine months, until like you, I made EG.

[phil-b259]

Dark fibre was the coming thing when we did LT&S Resignalling in the early 90s. And BRT in those days understood resilience. Their chief engineer had a recent background in Southern Region telecomms, so "got it". Even then he was struggling to make the case felt, I think, and was known to take his bat home in the face of senior resistance. Once Thales and Global Crossing got involved they might as well have been Radio Rentals for all they knew about railway comms.

 

 

 

Thales's involvement with railways stuff has always been half hearted because they never wanted to be in the sector in the first place.

 

Global crossing is / was a division of cable & wireless whose main business was trying to compete with BT via the railway Telecoms Network, rather than any interest in railway telecoms as such.

 

TPWS (a current Thales product) was designed by a company called Rediffon - whose main business was simulators and defence equipment and it was these latter elements that Thales wanted when they took the company over. Similarly when British Rail Telecoms was privatised, it was bought by Racal who had sections of their business devoted to military kit and thus consequently were also bought up by Thales. Having bought up all these companies, Thales subsequently began disposal of its non military assets they had acquired as part of these acquisitions - and sold its railway Telecoms division to Network Rail.

 

Incidentally word on the grapevine is that the makers of the OD Radar dome (Honeywell - another military supply company) will not be making any more Radar units thus putting a big spanner in the works with future level crossing upgrades. Apparently this is because the OD Raydar is the same as that fitted to a certain type of fighter jet - and the relevant order is coming to a close, with Honeywell saying the railway simply cannot order enough to keep the production line open.

[TheSignalEngineer]

Incidentally word on the grapevine is that the makers of the OD Radar dome (Honeywell - another military supply company) will not be making any more Radar units thus putting a bi spanner in the works with future level crossing upgrades. Apparently this is because the OD Raydar is the same as that fitted to a certain type of fighter jet - and the relevant order is coming to a close, with Honeywell saying the railway simply cannot order enough to keep the production line open.

Similar development trail to that for Hot Box detector equipment. that was a spin-off from heat-seeking missile technology. Caused a lot of problems for me when a unit had failed and a card went back to the USA under warranty. It got stuck in transit on the way back because of the First Gulf War, impounded by US Customs as there was an embargo on exporting all such material at the time.

[D1059]

"A rock and a hard place" springs to mind.

Do you think that it would be more prudent to stop folk who pay thousands a year for season tickets to get to work on Monday morning or a bunch of p****d up rock fans getting to a gig on a BH weekend?

They have to do it sometime!

 

It wasn't the music fans I was worried about - it was those of us trying to get from A to B around and through Reading on roads that simply couldn't cope with the extra traffic forced onto them because rail was a no go area

 

Far from 'gold plating' a route (as the good Captain put it) on a Bank Holiday weekend, NR frequently make things as difficult as possible for casual travellers.

[The Stationmaster]

Interesting views and comments - oddly I too was Student Trainee in 1966 so OD and I must have been on the same induction course at Derby - where's the group photo gone?  When I went on the Traffic Management Training scheme in 1971 I think there were barely 40 of us in total of whom 3 of us were staff entrants - ah well, all water under long gone bridges and now back to this particular mess.

 

Originally when this area was remotely controlled from Reading and Swindon panels the local interlockings could go into through routes if there was an electronics failure in the remote control systems.  This changed a bit when reversible signalling came in as the system wouldn't go into through routes if any reversible moves were taking place or reversible routes had been called (previously a similar situation with loop routes set at Uffington also prevented through routes coming into operation).  But the infrastructure of available people was very different back then - at Regional level there were four of us as Regional Ops On Call Officer, all of us fully qualified in Rules & Regs (and On Call one week in 4 of course) plus a couple of more senior ops managers who were only contacted for real biggies.  But equally we would come out for other specialised tasks in the event of major things so although I was the Regional Freight Planning Officer I was also one of the two emergency passenger service planners who'd be called in to rewrite the next day's mainline services etc.  

 

Similarly for big signal failures - and they did sometimes happen - there were the Panel 'box supervisors and Relief Signalmen at Reading plus Relief Signalmen at Swindon and S&T Techs at both Reading and Didcot together with Area level staff plus the Regional team - again including On Call senior (and experienced) engineers.  Back then there would have been some very nasty questions asked if - in a failure of this magnitude - we hadn't got points clipped and scotched, at were, even by then rather remote spots railwaywise, and Temporary Block Working fully underway with trains on the move within about 90 minutes of the system going down (and much of that 90 minutes would have been people driving to the remote sites).

 

Incidentally picking up on Mike Storey's question I'm fairly sure there is no outstanding signalling work in the section whee the failure occurred - all of the new reversible direction signals are in commission (replacing older structures) and I noticed enroute to Trainwest a few weeks back that recovery of the old cable routes is well advanced.  The main work outstanding in the Swindon area is  (?was) the replacement of two Reading design gantry structures with structures with 25kv clearances and possibly some signal structure recoveries on the reversible section of signals that are already out of use.

[Southernman46]

Even "The Grove" got sold off which illustrated the new privatised railway's attitude to management training .......... shame because the Wadworth's 6X was rather good there ............

[The Stationmaster]

It wasn't the music fans I was worried about - it was those of us trying to get from A to B around and through Reading on roads that simply couldn't cope with the extra traffic forced onto them because rail was a no go area

 

Far from 'gold plating' a route (as the good Captain put it) on a Bank Holiday weekend, NR frequently make things as difficult as possible for casual travellers.

Going rather OT but as someone who used to regularly suffer from the road traffc impact of the movement of the pestival attendees coming and going by road the fact that a goodly chunk of the railway was closed couldn't really have made things much worse!  On the weekend of that event there were definitely times when you avoided various roads around Reading like the plague because you knew full well how jammed they could get, especially on 'going home days'.

[phil-b259]

Similarly for big signal failures - and they did sometimes happen - there were the Panel 'box supervisors and Relief Signalmen at Reading plus Relief Signalmen at Swindon and S&T Techs at both Reading and Didcot together with Area level staff plus the Regional team - again including On Call senior (and experienced) engineers.  Back then there would have been some very nasty questions asked if - in a failure of this magnitude - we hadn't got points clipped and scotched, at were, even by then rather remote spots railwaywise, and Temporary Block Working fully underway with trains on the move within about 90 minutes of the system going down (and much of that 90 minutes would have been people driving to the remote sites).

 

 

As an example of how the current railway likes to 'maximise staff utilisation' / control costs, outside M-F days I believe a S&T failure at Weymouth has to be attended by Exeter techs, Bournemouth has to be attended by Eastleigh while further east and Hastings has to be covered from either Ashford or Tonbridge. Locally to me there is no Brighton night turn at weekends - cover must come from Barnham or Three Bridges (assuming we haven't been stolen to cover p-way work).

[phil-b259]

Aren't Bank Holiday weekends the normal time that NR cause maximum (scheduled) disruption on the grounds that fewer people are travelling ? Memories of gridlock in Reading over August Bank Holiday weekends in years past cos NR shut the station preventing anyone going to Reading Festival travelling by rail

 

The statistics don't lie - the amount of people using the trains to get to the Reading festival are way smaller than the amount of commuters passing through the area on an ordinary working day.

 

Railway engineering work cannot be done my magic - nor is it feasible to do it all overnight, so something has to give, and bank holiday weekends represent the 'least worst option' As such the fact the B&H was closed is a red Herring - what is more reverent is the apparent ease with which a supposedly high tech new signalling system fell over - and couldn't be got to work correctly for several hours, combined with a general lack of staff / leadership at the higher levels to put in place TBW ASAP.

[PaulRhB]

As an example of how the current railway likes to 'maximise staff utilisation' / control costs, outside M-F days I believe a S&T failure at Weymouth has to be attended by Exeter techs, Bournemouth has to be attended by Eastleigh while further east and Hastings has to be covered from either Ashford or Tonbridge. Locally to me there is no Brighton night turn at weekends - cover must come from Barnham or Three Bridges (assuming we haven't been stolen to cover p-way work).

No Weymouth is covered by Salisbury at weekends , when they are tied up on a more important failure you might get cover from Eastleigh or in extreme cases the Western.

Salisbury S&T cover Honiton to Worting, Brockenhurst to Weymouth out of hours.

[phil-b259]

No Weymouth is covered by Salisbury at weekends , when they are tied up on a more important failure you might get cover from Eastleigh or in extreme cases the Western.

Salisbury S&T cover Honiton to Worting, Brockenhurst to Weymouth out of hours.

 

Ta, for the clarification

 

Thats a heck of a lot of railway to cover - a fault at Farnborugh while the team are down at Chard will generate a lot of delay minutes!

 

The topic did come up when when discussing the arrangements at Worgret with the Core Castle signalman on Friday -  he wasn't entirely sure who provided out of hours cover, but noted (and I readily concur) that cross covering teams do usually have difficulty with unusual bits of kit / access points / bespoke arrangements / etc and can  end up having to wait for the usual teams to book on to get the problem  sorted.

[PaulRhB]

Farnborough is beyond their normal patch there's a lot of cross cover with the MOM's too. When you're lucky someone else is near like when I attended a tree at Brockenhurst a couple of years ago and we had it cut up by the time the Bournemouth MOM fought through traffic, he'd been at Weymouth.

 

People want the railway to be cheap and 'efficient'