ECML franchise fails .... again....

[great central]

 

What amuses me, why does the public not get it. The DfT makes ALL the decisions, the private partners bid on what the DfT demands. About time the system is changed and new franchise system places well away from the DfT! 

 

That's the whole point, keeps the 'government' and it's departments looking good because they can hide behind the companies and, of course, the comapnies aren't allowed to say anything which would upset that balance.

[Mark Saunders]

That's the whole point, keeps the 'government' and it's departments looking good because they can hide behind the companies and, of course, the comapnies aren't allowed to say anything which would upset that balance.

The whole franchise system was set up to fail if the franchise failed, the rolling stock was returned to the leasing company and set for the staff and trains ready for the next one to try there hand at it!

 

Mark Saunders

[chriswright03]

Perhaps if Stagecoach cut their losses and concentrate on buses again they may stop the cut to the quick budgets that are in force today in the bus world. 

 

I still have contacts working locally for them and to say that money is tight would be a lot of an understatement.  I believe Mr Souter sold some of his overseas interests to pay for the ECML saga.  At that time we could see it would leave little to pay for the upkeep of our fleet let alone the countless other depots in the Country.  We were not wrong.

[great central]

Perhaps if Stagecoach cut their losses and concentrate on buses again they may stop the cut to the quick budgets that are in force today in the bus world.

 

I still have contacts working locally for them and to say that money is tight would be a lot of an understatement. I believe Mr Souter sold some of his overseas interests to pay for the ECML saga. At that time we could see it would leave little to pay for the upkeep of our fleet let alone the countless other depots in the Country. We were not wrong.

Not unique to the bus business

[RANGERS]

Perhaps if Stagecoach cut their losses and concentrate on buses again they may stop the cut to the quick budgets that are in force today in the bus world. 

 

I still have contacts working locally for them and to say that money is tight would be a lot of an understatement.  I believe Mr Souter sold some of his overseas interests to pay for the ECML saga.  At that time we could see it would leave little to pay for the upkeep of our fleet let alone the countless other depots in the Country.  We were not wrong.

 

Thats far from a Stagecoach issue I'm afraid, thats a symptom of the pressures the transport industry in general is under and can be traced back to the decline in public transport funding by local government. As subsidies are reduced, services are cut, revenues decline and economies of scale are lost as the fixed overhead costs are borne by the remainder.

 

The difficulty in running a viable service in Lincs are nothing new, they go back decades and are part of the reason why there are so few railways there, the cost per passenger mile of providing a service patronised by so few people is so much greater than in an urban area. Bear in mind that costs have to be managed in line with revenue and I'm afraid rural Lincs (even urban Lincs!) is hard going for any operator, even more so since the virtual elimination of any service support. Lincs Road Car was the most impoverished of all the National Bus subsidiaries, so much so that it was reliant on vehicle hand me downs in the last few years of NBC ownership on account of being unable to afford to maintain its own fleet. Such was the level of neglect it had suffered. It was deemed more cost effective to bring in redundant but serviceable vehicles from other subsidiaries than it was to rectify the defects in the incumbent fleet. It was ultimately among the last of the major operational units to be sold basically because nobody wanted it, at least not at the figure the Government was asking (based on the asset value), and serious consideration was given to closures even more extensive than those which it ultimately suffered. The only way it was going anywhere was as part of a package with a more profitable part of the group, East Yorkshire was the first suitor but Yorkshire Traction was the eventual pairing.

 

The years which followed saw even more of the make do and mend approach but was much more measured and allowed services to be maintained. Only under Stagecoach ownership has the average fleet age reduced. The depot closures under Stagecoach ownership were inevitable I'm afraid, for all the reasons noted above, and the situation would have been little different under Yorkshire Traction Group ownership.

 

Of all the major transport groups, Stagecoach are the known to be the biggest investors in their bus division, they have a consistent fleet replacement programme and can boast the lowest overall fleet age profile of the "big five" (Stagecoach, Go-Ahead, Arriva, First and National Express).

[chriswright03]

Oh I am well aware that some of the other companies leave a lot to be desired.  Having taken over Lincs Roadcar however many years ago it was they are still running some of their buses albeit the Volvos that were new in 2003.  I actually preferred driving them to the newer stuff that the Company had shares in!

 

Not wanting to divert this away from the original thread I shall just say this.  Grimsby is a depot that has no competition at all yet the fleet/depot  and it's maintenance were in dire need of money being spent and they should have had enough profit to do so.  I accept that being part of the East Midlands region we were part of an are that was not that profitable at some depots.  We had an excellent MD at the time and whilst she was always open and approachable it was very evident that when the train set was bought things got worse.

[Mike Storey]

 

I copy what I said in the other ECML/VTEC topic.

 

The whole problem with the franchise system is that the winners are those who have promised the most and are therefore the most likely to fail. It seems the more successful you are the less likely you are to retain a franchise and with the East Coast this latest move is the second to hand back the keys due to not making the money they expected, the third failure was not of the franchise as such but that the owners went bust due to their failings in other parts of their company. 

 

The nationalised East Coast Railway made profits but those in charge wanted it to be run by the private sector who thought they could do better and have been proved that they can't. I am not in favour of nationalising the railways as the main problems seem to come from DaFT but I do think the franchising system needs a massive overhaul. Time and again franchises that are well run and successful are given to another organisation who then make a mess of things.

 

A lot less interference from DaFT would also help with success being rewarded with extensions rather than having the system where most of the payments for a franchise are in the last three years with a get out clause just before those payments kick in.

 

Sorry if this is too political but railways have become a political football. Privatised by one party with the other screaming about how it should be run but then doing nothing while in power. Then the ones who privatised it all say the system is wrong but again avoid doing anything once back in power. Meanwhile the TOCs try to run to the rules which much of the time do not make sense.

 

 

Perhaps you are forgetting that, by far the greatest problem that the "screamers" inherited was not the TOCs, but the complete clusterf**k that was Railtrack, the last-minute afterthought of the Major regime, to stop Labour keeping the infrastructure in state hands. Are you saying the Red corner did nothing at all about them?????

 

I agree the railways have been a political football - ever since the 1844 Act. If you think that incompetence, mis-direction and machiavelliness at the DfT, or the DforT, or the Ministry, or the Board of Trade before all of them, is a "new" thing, you need to read up quite a lot more. Especially at how they were treated vis-a-vis the landed gentry by the Victorians, then post WW1, during the Great Recession, and even WW2, and then it just gets even worse from then. All that has really changed is that the railways have become even more dependent on state capital funding, because they have become far more popular, something even this lot accept. Whether the other lot will follow through with creeping nationalisation, or not, the best we can hope for is that they adopt the National Infrastructure Bank (as proposed by Lord Adonis) which may somewhat even out the feast and famine that the new Treasury control will cause.

 

To my tiny and befuddled mind, TOCs are the least of the railways' problems, just the current fall guys, now that bashing ROSCOs has gone out of fashion.

[Titan]

OK - and Hitachi is assembling trains in the UK. Neither Hitachi nor Bombardier are British companies though.

 

How about design? Are the Derby-built trains also designed in the UK? Or is the UK work just "build-to-print"? To me that does make a difference. There's a difference between "Train makers to the world" and "Proudly built in the UK to a foreign design for a foreign company".

 

If a German was to buy my  3 bedroom semi, change the name rent it out does it suddenly become a German house? Of course not, it is still as British as the day it was built. Similarly the company in Derby, which 100% designed, built etc etc,  is still as British as the day it was formed, irrespective of owner or name, just as my house with a foreign owner would still be a British house.

 

I sometimes wonder if the people who complain we never make anything anymore deliberately take this stance to support their views, so as to ignore/belittle all the stuff we do in fact design and make in Britain...

[Coryton]

If a German was to buy my  3 bedroom semi, change the name rent it out does it suddenly become a German house? Of course not, it is still as British as the day it was built. Similarly the company in Derby, which 100% designed, built etc etc,  is still as British as the day it was formed, irrespective of owner or name, just as my house with a foreign owner would still be a British house.

 

I sometimes wonder if the people who complain we never make anything anymore deliberately take this stance to support their views, so as to ignore/belittle all the stuff we do in fact design and make in Britain...

 

I'm not sure how far you can push that analogy. A company isn't a house and a company with a foreign owner is controlled from outside the UK. OK your German home owner might modify the house but that's nothing compared to what the owner of a company can do (including moving everything lock, stock and barrel to another country).

 

Anyway I think the design bit is important.

 

If Bombardier trains built in the UK are designed here then I would feel differently, especially if those designs were also exported. Generally in the UK it seems to be the other way round (Hitachi, Siemens etc.) and I wasn't aware that Bombardier was an exception. Perhaps we do still have a "train makers to the world" company, albeit foreign owned.

 

For the record, I work in a company which does all its design and manufacture in the UK and exports round the world (and beyond). We even sell things to China. 

[Ron Ron Ron]

From what I understand, a fair proportion of the content (components, mechanicals, fittings etc,) of trains built in the Derby works, comes from other Bombardier plants in Europe, as well as from 3rd party suppliers across Europe and even from China.

[Bon Accord]

From what I understand, a fair proportion of the content (components, mechanicals, fittings etc,) of trains built in the Derby works, comes from other Bombardier plants in Europe, as well as from 3rd party suppliers across Europe and even from China.

 

That being the case, wouldn't it be more accurate to say they were merely assembled here than built here?

[Ken.W]

So if a TOC is resopnsible for infrastructure as well as trains, do I take it that the signallers will be employed by them too? How exactly is this going to lead to impartial train regulating , given that in some places it's as good as favoured to the incumbent TOC anyway?

The train regulating's hardly impartial anyway

(and it's certainly not the 'incumbent TOC' that's favoured)

[Coryton]

That being the case, wouldn't it be more accurate to say they were merely assembled here than built here?

 

I imagine you could say the same of any train built in Europe (but probably not Japan and the US) - with the suppliers including UK (or at least UK-based) companies.

 

I think there's no clear cut line between manufacture and assembly (a satellite "manufacturer" may not make anything out of raw materials, contracting out all the fabrication of parts and supply of sub-systems and "just" putting everything together).

 

However you can see two ends of a spectrum for a train "manufactured" in the UK. One extreme is that the train is designed and the body shells fabricated overseas, with the parts shipped to the UK to be assembled into a train along with components from 3rd parties (some UK, many not). The other extreme is that a UK (based) company designs the train and makes the body shells in their factory from raw materials.

 

I think (going back to the "train makers to the world" theme) that to me the design (i.e. the intellectual input) is the important thing.

 

I think of Bachmann models as being British in the sense that although the CAD work and manufacture is done in China, and Bachmann is a foreign company, the decisions on what to make and the R&D are done in the UK.

[DY444]

From what I understand, a fair proportion of the content (components, mechanicals, fittings etc,) of trains built in the Derby works, comes from other Bombardier plants in Europe, as well as from 3rd party suppliers across Europe and even from China.

 

Yes but the trains are designed in Derby and the body shells are built there.  By contrast Hitachi designs in Japan and imports all of its body shells.

Edited December 3, 2017 by DY444

[enginelane]

Yes but the trains are designed in Derby and the body shells are built there.  By contrast Hitachi designs in Japan and imports all of its body shells.

It’s the issue of contunity that is also important. Thrall built a factory in York, wagons built and then shut down. What future for Newton Ayckiffe once all shells fitted out?

[jjb1970]

Similarly the company in Derby, which 100% designed, built etc etc,

 

 

What is the basis of the claim that Derby 100% designs and builds?

[jjb1970]

Yes but the trains are designed in Derby and the body shells are built there. By contrast Hitachi designs in Japan and imports all of its body shells.

From a technical perspective it is better to design and manufacture the high value technically complex bit like the traction package, control systems etc. The body shell is probably one of the less demanding bits to manufacture.

[Ron Ron Ron]

Agreed. The body shell is just that, an empty shell.

Most of the value comes from what's attached to ...and what goes inside.

Hundreds, if not thousands of components, sub assemblies and interior fitments.

[lmsforever]

Will the ECML ever be a success it seems be a poisoned chalice for anyone who takes it on ,is the decline in passengers due to  the towns it goes through not being as large as ones on the WCML .York and Newcastle being the largest whereas on the WCML there are many vibrant towns so is this why passenger numbers are down and on the west coast they are up  so will it ever change for the better.Does anyone know what things were like in BR days did the receipts cover costs or was there a profit ,and I seem to remember that the service levels were nothing like todays,

[Zomboid]

Depends what you consider a success to be. It is apparently profitable for the operators, just not as profitable as Stagecoach promised the DfT it would be.

 

Though I seem to recall at the time of award this was the predicted outcome, because of a break point in the contract and the premium profile. Though maybe I'm thinking of something else.

[lmsforever]

Must be very difficult to forecast growth how do they do it ?

[Coryton]

Must be very difficult to forecast growth how do they do it ?

 

Some might say this is a slight flaw in the franchise system.

[enginelane]

Agreed. The body shell is just that, an empty shell.

Most of the value comes from what's attached to ...and what goes inside.

Hundreds, if not thousands of components, sub assemblies and interior fitments.

If that is the case why the additional expense of transport across at least 2 oceans and then road transport?

[Mark Saunders]

Some might say this is a slight flaw in the franchise system.

Possibly the growth potential was realised in 1991 with the electrification and there was less to achieve in the private/franchise period!

[jjb1970]

If that is the case why the additional expense of transport across at least 2 oceans and then road transport?

 

The simple answer would be to reduce cost, shipping is cheap, I'm guessing most would be surprised at just how cheap it is to ship goods around the world (by sea at any rate).