GTR Timetable Change 2018

[cromptonnut]

A way off 60 yet . Just got so fed up that it's better to pack commuting in now rather than end up with a heart attack before 60.

There has been no Thameslink for about two hours this evening. They have been diverting Southern services to call at Redhill. Its getting worse by the day.

I just have to stick it out for a few more weeks

 

It's not much fun the other side of the window either, although that's probably little consolation.

[roundhouse]

It's not much fun the other side of the window either, although that's probably little consolation.

I wouldnt want to be on the platform or your side of the window as it cant be much job satisfaction at the moment.

 

Imagine what it must be like for anyone in GTR Control or NR signalling at the moment. I wouldnt be surprised to see some of those leave adding to the problems. Only those at the top will cream off all of this.

[jjb1970]

I'm no expert and am merely an interested observer, but I always thought that the original Office of Rail Regulator was an important component of the privatised railway and that as originally intended the system was intended to give franchisees substantial freedom to innovate and manage their own activities. When the ORR was abolished it opened the gates to a steady transfer of power to DafT and ever increasing political meddling. I think Tom Winsor took his position as an independent regulator too literally and actually believed that he was meant to be an independent regulator which wasn't what his political masters wanted.

 

The problem now is that DafT and the government are accustomed to running the show and they will be loathe to surrender that power. To me it seems DafT and ministers are not competent to fulfil the role they've taken upon themselves but I suspect they would dispute that and I suspect they genuinely see themselves as a bulwark holding back the tide of evil corporate greed and saving the day. We have ended up with a passenger railway which is effectively nationalised in all but name but by being able to point fingers at TOCs DafT and their political masters have been very adept at evading responsibility for their meddling. And formal recognition of that reality is unlikely to improve things despite what some politicians and media pundits might claim as if the lunatics are already running the asylum then I don't see how bringing service delivery in house will change anything substantive. A BR Mk.2 could have a lot of merit but that is not what we would get, and a BR Mk.2 would then still be subject to treasury spending restrictions. Whether the railway is private or state owned isn't really the problem, it is getting a system which shuts out meddling politicians and civil servants. The ORR seemed to be able to do that hence why the position was scrapped.

 

However, these are just musings of an observer so whether or not they hold water who knows.

[Mike Storey]

A way off 60 yet . Just got so fed up that it's better to pack commuting in now rather than end up with a heart attack before 60.

There has been no Thameslink for about two hours this evening. They have been diverting Southern services to call at Redhill. Its getting worse by the day.

I just have to stick it out for a few more weeks

 

Beer (or wine in my case) becomes a much greater feature in life in retirement, after decades of having to remain relatively sober, for on call duties. Just beware!

[Mike Storey]

The Scottish Parliament, Edinburgh Trams.....................

 

I accept what you say, the Olympics were a triumph . However there are more than a few project that are just out of control , and we are just as susceptible north of the Border too

 

The Scottish Parliament is out of control???!! Perhaps I have misunderstood. 

[Coryton]

There's often a lot of discretion shown in such circumstances so long as cost is minimal, such as a later train service, but when it comes to taxis late at night I think it comes down to cold hard facts. If they've got a fully valid ticket and the delay isn't their fault, no problem otherwise they've made their own choice. Some would say that's heartless but tough decisions have to be made.

 

I believe that it is has now been formalised that you don't lose the right to take a later train on an advance ticket if an earlier train is late even if you have split tickets. Maybe it's different if you need a taxi but I don't see why it should be.

 

Split ticketing is often presented as people trying to take advantage of a loophole in the system to save money, but often it is just a way of getting round the manifest unfairness of the current system in the way peak and off-peak tickets are handled (as has been acknowledged in the current ticketing review).

 

To take a slightly extreme example, if I wish to travel to Nottingham from my local station in Cardiff on one ticket and just the few minutes of the connecting journey into Cardiff is before half past 9, I have to pay for a full fare ticket all the way because of those few minutes.

 

So the only sensible choice is to buy two tickets. If on the way back the train is delayed and I miss the last train home, have I really done something so underhand that I should be refused a taxi home? So yes I would say it's heartless and I fail to see why this is a tough decision that has to be made. Why I should have paid so much over the odds to keep what would otherwise have been my right?

 

By split ticketing I've already paid more than an off-peak ticket, despite the fact that for the local part of the journey there is no difference in price no matter when you travel.

 

Or what if I held a season ticket for the local journey? Should I pay twice for part of the journey in order to keep my rights?

 

I should perhaps add that the few times I have been put on a taxi, I don't think anyone has actually asked to look at a ticket, mind.

[Coryton]

I thought one of the cardinal principles of bus deregulation was that companies were not permitted to deliberately use profitable services to subsidise the unprofitable ones, to the detriment of the rural bus services.

 

 

It's hard to see why they would want to anyway.

 

But unlike the railways, they can take all the money from profitable services without any of it going as a 'premium' to fund the rest.

[Mike Storey]

I'm no expert and am merely an interested observer, but I always thought that the original Office of Rail Regulator was an important component of the privatised railway and that as originally intended the system was intended to give franchisees substantial freedom to innovate and manage their own activities. When the ORR was abolished it opened the gates to a steady transfer of power to DafT and ever increasing political meddling. I think Tom Winsor took his position as an independent regulator too literally and actually believed that he was meant to be an independent regulator which wasn't what his political masters wanted.

 

The problem now is that DafT and the government are accustomed to running the show and they will be loathe to surrender that power. To me it seems DafT and ministers are not competent to fulfil the role they've taken upon themselves but I suspect they would dispute that and I suspect they genuinely see themselves as a bulwark holding back the tide of evil corporate greed and saving the day. We have ended up with a passenger railway which is effectively nationalised in all but name but by being able to point fingers at TOCs DafT and their political masters have been very adept at evading responsibility for their meddling. And formal recognition of that reality is unlikely to improve things despite what some politicians and media pundits might claim as if the lunatics are already running the asylum then I don't see how bringing service delivery in house will change anything substantive. A BR Mk.2 could have a lot of merit but that is not what we would get, and a BR Mk.2 would then still be subject to treasury spending restrictions. Whether the railway is private or state owned isn't really the problem, it is getting a system which shuts out meddling politicians and civil servants. The ORR seemed to be able to do that hence why the position was scrapped.

 

However, these are just musings of an observer so whether or not they hold water who knows.

 

A little misunderstanding here, I think. The ORR has not been abolished - it is alive and well, well, sort of. It is the post of His Excellency The Rail Regulator (aka Tom Winsor) which has been eradicated. That abolition coincided with the realisation that Mr Major had given the Regulator the power to determine what money "must" be spent on the railway (levelled down to a state of efficiency that apparently he alone could determine) regardless of whatever HMG had in its piggy bank, into a state where the Treasury, oops, sorry, DafT could say what funding was available, and that the ORR's job was to determine the most efficient way to spend it. It also became rather less relevant because an entirely commercial entity was no longer managing the infrastructure, when RT passed on (RIP) and NR arose, phoenix-like in the ashes of His Excellency Iain Coucher, Laird of somewhere very big and expensive in Scotland and Master of Quad Bikes, and of not actually being an employee until he was caught out at the end.

 

Ironically, capital spending on the network actually increased once Mr Winsor had been dismissed, simply because demand had increased exponentially, and the combination of Franchise agreements now based on growth, rather than decline or stable demand as had been the basis of the original non-InterCity franchises, and the deplorable state the network was discovered to be in after, not just Railtrack's interesting approach to maintenance and renewal, but also an admission that BR had been so squeezed in its final years, that the backlog of renewals and enhanced maintenance to cope with the increasing demands was vital to avoid more Ladbrooke Goves, Hatfields and the like, let alone a Clapham from BR days.

 

Nonetheless, Our Right Honourable Friend, Grayling, having run out of stiffs that could help him out tamely, has now commissioned none other than the ORR's Rottweiler, Prof Stephen Glaister, to carry out yet another investigation into Why Things Went Wrong. Professor Glaister is not looking for promotion and already has a CBE, and an enormous history in rail involvement. Unless he is particularly needy for a Knighthood, (he is in his seventies), I would very much hope he will actually point fingers. It might be Grayling's Mueller moment...... I am only a little bit worried that he might conclude that TfL would have done it so much better, given his history in the embryo of that organisation. Fact is, TfL did everything much better, whilst they had a bottomless pit (and, to be fair, some very talented individuals), but the money has gone as have many of the talented individuals, mostly to NR.

 

Nonetheless, I believe the most idiotic abolition was that of the Office of Passenger Rail Franchising (OPRAF) who were full of people that had some idea of what their remit was, and were far less influenced by the govt of the day. I well remember going to their lovely, but somewhat cramped, offices, just around the back of Horseguards Parade, to be told to f-off and get on with it, and let them sort out the detail. OPRAF kept that distance between civil service Sir Humphreys and the real railway which is so necessary to get anything done properly, even if they were often derided as the problem and not the solution. Having lost that, unaccountable careerists like Mr Wilkinson (whose history of consultancy was exactly the same) were always going to dominate.

[Legend]

The Scottish Parliament is out of control???!! Perhaps I have misunderstood. 

Well that’s debatable. But the cost of building. It certainly was

[cromptonnut]

I wouldnt want to be on the platform or your side of the window as it cant be much job satisfaction at the moment.

 

Imagine what it must be like for anyone in GTR Control or NR signalling at the moment. I wouldnt be surprised to see some of those leave adding to the problems. Only those at the top will cream off all of this.

 

Unfortunately when we are the 'public face' we get all the grief - people rarely think that we don't decide what trains run and what ones don't, which ones skip stops, and don't have on board staff in the right place at the right time to take their train forward.  A lot of people also don't realise that we suffer just as much - or at least those of us who use the train to get to work do, I can't any longer as the one train I used to get on the one shift that did work, going in I now have only one option that gives me 7 minutes before I start otherwise if I miss the connection I'll be late, and the train I used to get home now goes 4 minutes before I officially finish leaving me a 50 minute wait for my connection - and for the latest shift, that is the last train to connect with my last train to home and if I miss that connection I have no other choice but about £60 in a taxi which really does not appeal.  It's just less stress to drive even with overnight motorway works disrupting my journey in at least one place every day somewhere.

 

Unfortunately we've been hit quite hard in this area because the Horsham trains that were the mainstay of our London Bridge services have gone over to Thameslink to go through the core, and those are the ones suffering the most for various reasons that can be found all over the news and don't need repeating here, although none of them involving Poundland cooking chocolate.  Also we've lost the direct Tonbridge and Reigate to London services which have caused big gaps in the timetable and a lot of passenger misery.  Changing at East Croydon, whilst a solution, is never a pleasant experience whatever the time of day.

[Mike Storey]

I wouldnt want to be on the platform or your side of the window as it cant be much job satisfaction at the moment.

 

Imagine what it must be like for anyone in GTR Control or NR signalling at the moment. I wouldnt be surprised to see some of those leave adding to the problems. Only those at the top will cream off all of this.

 

I do not doubt the pain of customers, or those at the front line, or in operations delivering the front line - been there, done that, and at some just as excruciating periods (although everyone insists BR never got it wrong like this....oh yes they bl88ding well did. There just wasn't the 24/7 news media or social media to make it headline news). But to assume those at the top will not be suffering, let alone "creaming it" is imaginary at best. Reputations (and therefore income) will be lost. Resignations will follow - one director in GTR has already pulled up stumps earlier than he could have done. The mandarins in Great Minster House are circling the wagons, but there will be casualties. Just not the ones we hope. But the shareholders of the constituent companies of GTR will not be creaming it - that much is already evident. They may well express their anger in other ways.

 

It is of note that First Group have just sacked their longstanding CEO, because the shareholders were not happy with financial results over the past few years. They have nothing to do whatsoever with the GTR or Northern, or Network Rail problems. Don't imagine directors of these companies don't have to live on the edge almost all the time. And compared to other industries, given comparative legal, safety, staff numbers, commercial, environmental, societal and performance responsibilities, they are relatively underpaid (not that we would recognise that), and could earn more in banking, insurance, software houses, utilities (where several rail peeps have gone) and so on. Bashing bosses and politicians/civil servants is great fun, but not necessarily accurate. Newspapers and politicians want blood, so long as it isn't their own.

 

The difference I discovered between being a coal-face member of staff through to junior manager, compared to going into middle and then senior manager/director roles, is that you give up the right to leave the job when you clocked off. Whilst all those 9-5 (or 6-2 or 2-10) people are trying to get to work and then trying to get home, in many cases the senior managers, and many more junior ones, as well as some staff, will still be the same ones from the early morning through to late in the evening, until the crisis is over. And then many of them will still be on the phone and/or the computer when at home and sometimes right through the night trying to sort out the next day, and then back into work early the next morning, ad nauseum until things settled down. Some of us on here have done that, many many times. Being told we are parasites that live off the backs of the working classes, does not do it for me. It certainly isn't for the grand lifestyle, if you work for the railways or the civil service. Why effing bother?

 

Well, we bothered, because we felt we were making a difference. hopefully for the better - job satisfaction you might call it - but in which other industry do you have to keep taking the BS from so many sections of society who feel they know much better than you do, as well as expecting you to ensure their lifestyle is sustained at your cost? Not many outside the NHS, I would suggest. So, take a few mouthfuls on the platform or the customer service points, or in the carriages, or through the cab window, or on the phone or web, but go home when your shift is up and forget all about it, because some poor b'stard supervisor/manager/director will be paid slightly more than you (probably less than you think) to do the worrying and the planning and the parrying of the press and the mandarins and the politicians, and then get it in the neck from you as well, for the hours after you go and the hours before you come back.

 

I don't excuse incompetence, and there has clearly been some over this, and incompetence or dereliction should not be tolerated, at any level. But to make out that this is some kind of class war where the "bosses" are just sitting back, counting their money, leaving the lackeys to take the stick - please, let's grow up?

[The Stationmaster]

(snipped)

Nonetheless, I believe the most idiotic abolition was that of the Office of Passenger Rail Franchising (OPRAF) who were full of people that had some idea of what their remit was, and were far less influenced by the govt of the day. I well remember going to their lovely, but somewhat cramped, offices, just around the back of Horseguards Parade, to be told to f-off and get on with it, and let them sort out the detail. OPRAF kept that distance between civil service Sir Humphreys and the real railway which is so necessary to get anything done properly, even if they were often derided as the problem and not the solution. Having lost that, unaccountable careerists like Mr Wilkinson (whose history of consultancy was exactly the same) were always going to dominate.

 

I agree absolutely.  The abolition of OPRAF was a disaster of major proportions for the railway but it was alas its steadfast independence and the lust of DafT that led to its end.  Like so many things I think it boiled down to a particular Civil Servant, or coterie of them, having the ear of a Mioster who 'wanted to be seen to have done something during his period in office' and of course getting franchising under direct Govt control fitted the mantra of that particular day.

[chrisf]

I sampled the scene of the crime yesterday afternoon.  The 12 car 16.32 Bedford to East Grinstead departed punctually, lost five minutes to Luton and after calling only at Luton Airport Parkway and St Albans was 25 minutes late into St Pancras.  It apppears that we had been following a defective train and on the up fast too.  At St Pancras the screens made for depressing reading, with most northbound trains shown as around half an hour late.  As we passed Cricklewood at around 17.30 I noted 10 Class 700 sets on the depot, which strikes me as being rather a lot for the height of the peak.

 

Chris

[John M Upton]

I gather this morning was a disaster as the fast lines were blocked between Gatwick and Earlswood due to a very broken down piece of On Track Plant.

[roundhouse]

Our 17.21 from LBG has dissappeared off the departure boards this week and the next one is often cancelled or late. So now we tend to catch the Caterham / Tattenham Corner service and change at East Croydon or if no train shown take a bus home but that does add substantial time..

 

I gather that the broken down engineers train leaked our substantially enough for the environment agency to be called out but haven’t seen where my other half read that yet.

 

We are travelling to Bognor on Saturday but not relying on Thameslink so an even earlier start using GWR as far as Gatwick.However it takes a lot longer since our direct trains were discontinued last year. We may end up driving as have to be in Bognor by 09.15 but that then means no beer.

[The Lurker]

 

I gather that the broken down engineers train leaked our substantially enough for the environment agency to be called out but haven’t seen where my other half read that yet.

 

 

Gwiwer has also reported that (in ERs).

[caradoc]

Calling the environment authority (in Scotland, where I worked, this is SEPA, the Scottish Environment Protection Agency) is a mandatory duty of Network Rail Control once the specified threshold for the quantity spilled (which varies depending on the substance) has been reached. If no-one could state the quantity spilled we always let them know anyway, given that there are substantial financial penalties for failing to report pollution incidents, and I always found SEPA most helpful. The most common event was leakage of hydraulic fluid from tampers, but fuel spillage from trains after striking objects also happened. It should be noted that regardless of where the spillage came from, or how it occurred, if on Network Rail land it is Network Rail's duty to report and deal with it.

[The Stationmaster]

Calling the environment authority (in Scotland, where I worked, this is SEPA, the Scottish Environment Protection Agency) is a mandatory duty of Network Rail Control once the specified threshold for the quantity spilled (which varies depending on the substance) has been reached. If no-one could state the quantity spilled we always let them know anyway, given that there are substantial financial penalties for failing to report pollution incidents, and I always found SEPA most helpful. The most common event was leakage of hydraulic fluid from tampers, but fuel spillage from trains after striking objects also happened. It should be noted that regardless of where the spillage came from, or how it occurred, if on Network Rail land it is Network Rail's duty to report and deal with it.

 

I wonder what they'd make of a little incident we had back in the '70s?  We had to knock a leaking 45ton tank car out of the (Fawley -) Tivvy (Tiverton Jcn) tanks one afternoon because someone had noticed liquid dripping from it.  the Fire Brigade duly attended to deal with the leaking liquid - which turned out to be petrol - and they collected several buckets full of the stuff before the leak stopped of its own accord.  The FB were then faced with getting rid of several gallons of petrol so adopted the simple expedient of digging a hole and burying it;  they then departed the scene.  

[RANGERS]

I sampled the scene of the crime yesterday afternoon.  The 12 car 16.32 Bedford to East Grinstead departed punctually, lost five minutes to Luton and after calling only at Luton Airport Parkway and St Albans was 25 minutes late into St Pancras.  It apppears that we had been following a defective train and on the up fast too.  At St Pancras the screens made for depressing reading, with most northbound trains shown as around half an hour late.  As we passed Cricklewood at around 17.30 I noted 10 Class 700 sets on the depot, which strikes me as being rather a lot for the height of the peak.

 

Chris

The issues on Wednesday afternoon were down to a failed freight train on the down slow at Leagrave which diverted everything on to the down fast, the crossovers causing congestion for Southbound traffic also. Most EMT traffic into LStP was around 30-40 mins down, delaying the subsequent Northbound services but some were worse than others. Swift turnaround certainly helped and despite a 17.40 arrival, the 17.50 out left only a few minutes late whereas the following one was much later.

 

Those units have sat at a Cricklewood all week, presumably surplus since the timetable was pruned.

[justin1985]

An interesting quote from section 1.5

 

 

Maybe others can explain differently, but to me those 2 "wins" in the franchise bid are contradictory - getting better service quality usually means higher expenses, which would seem to go against having the lowest cost.

 

I also find this in 1.10 a bit disturbing

 

Gatwick Express services are performing the worst, with the number of trains arriving within five minutes of the schedule being as much as 10% lower than other routes at certain points. Gatwick Express is the smallest part of the franchise, with 46,000 or 4% of services. Govia Thameslink told us that when there are service problems, other, longer distance and less frequent trains are sometimes given priority over Gatwick Express trains, under an established industry process agreed by Network Rail with other operators, since passengers can use other trains to reach Gatwick Airport.

 

While technically true, how many passengers are a) aware of the alternates to Gatwick and b) how practical when dragging luggage is it to then try and use a commuter train and c) can they still meet the time constraints given planes don't wait.  If I was Gatwick Airport this would infuriate me as the whole point of Gatwick Express is to get travelers to the airport, and if Gatwick Express is going to be the first service "thrown under the bus" then it isn't a service my customers could rely on.

 

Surely this is a quirk of that particular statistic. GatEx is one of the shortest of the Southern Routes, but one that exclusively uses the busiest section of track. The potential for delays of around 5 minutes is high, but the potential to make any of that time back up is very low (compared to a longer distance service). 

 

My experience travelling between Victoria and East Croydon for many years now is that GatEx is usually the LEAST likely to be cancelled. Many a time at East Croydon several Southern trains in a row have been cancelled, and the platforms overcrowded to the point of being dangerous, but the GatEx trundles through unhurriedly, with its 12 passengers spread out between the 8 carriages. Its VERY rare that anyone shows the aptitude to get them to make an extra stop.

 

 

 

While technically true, how many passengers are a) aware of the alternates to Gatwick and b) how practical when dragging luggage is it to then try and use a commuter train and c) can they still meet the time constraints given planes don't wait.  If I was Gatwick Airport this would infuriate me as the whole point of Gatwick Express is to get travelers to the airport, and if Gatwick Express is going to be the first service "thrown under the bus" then it isn't a service my customers could rely on.

 

This is a huge part of the problem - the fact that the Gatwick passengers DO know about the alternatives, and routinely choose them in preference to GatEx, which I've hardly ever seen more than half full. Especially at the shoulders of the peaks it is absolutely normal for East Croydon commuters to struggle to get onto a Victoria bound Southern train because of the volume of suitcases piled in the vestibules or spread out across the seats.

 

A very large proportion of Gatwick's passengers are either South Londoners, who are likely to want to change at East Croydon or especially Clapham Junction, or are "citybreak" tourists from mainland Europe, many of whom are quite savvy enough to know they can save a good few pounds for a journey time of only 4 minutes longer.

 

(when I travel to another city that has a choice of "express" or "metro" airport trains, like Vienna, of course I take the S-Bahn in preference to the CityAirportTrain, not least because I can make S-Bahn connections that will take me closer to my hotel, rather than the faff of having to change at Wien Mitte. I'm sure many tourists coming into Gatwick think the same way)

 

I'd love to see the official passenger loading figures for GatEx broken out, but it really is seriously rare to see them more than a fraction full, or perhaps one or two carriages which were near the escalators full. It is an absolutely criminal waste of resources and route paths. At the very least the price differential should be removed to encourage more of the actual Victoria-Gatwick passengers to use them, and ideally at least one stop should be added at Clapham to make it more useful to more passengers, and again ease the load.

 

I'm sure the GatEx is only retained in its current form as political sop to Gatwick, especially given the runway decision - if Heathrow can have an (equally pointless) "Express" train, then Gatwick would be exceptionally upset to lose theirs! But both those services were designed for a different era, when long haul passengers were a bigger proportion of (lower total) airport traffic, when a greater proportion of tourists stayed at hotels in Zone 1 (many now priced out into hotels in Zones 2 or 3, or using AirBnB etc) and indeed when, before the internet, tourists were less well informed, and therefore more credulous!

 

Justin

[Nimbus]

Some level-headed assessments of the fundamentals here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/video_and_audio/headlines/44401751/train-torture-what-s-gone-wrong-with-your-rail-journey

They'll probably form part of a broadcast news item in due course.

 

The Nim.

[The Stationmaster]

Some level-headed assessments of the fundamentals here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/video_and_audio/headlines/44401751/train-torture-what-s-gone-wrong-with-your-rail-journey

They'll probably form part of a broadcast news item in due course.

 

The Nim.

 

The London Reconnections bloke seems to have as much idea of the reality of the railway world as the one on that site who keeps posting nonsense about. Crossrail and 'its wonderful trains'.   I worked for almost 6 years with the 'system of complexity' he talks about and the fact is that it was complex - it was series of straightforward contractual relationships with laid down timescales and guidelines and provided the work was carried out by a sufficient number of trained and competent people in accordance with the timescales there was no problem at all in working within it.  In fact I wouldn't even go so far to say that there was 'no problem in making it work' because that it implies you had to make it work - and you didn't.

 

In fact apart from contractual relationships it was really not much different from the system used by BR where on every stretch of railway somebody was 'the keeper of the graph'.  All that happened in 1994 was that 'the keeper' moved to a different organisation instead of a dfferent part of the same organisation.  The big difference back then was the total lack of outside micro-management from the amateurs in DafT and that is where much of this has gone wrong apart from NR failing to meet their part of the timescales and the franchise getting things wrong on Driver numbers and training although that in turn was exacerbated by NR's lack of timeliness and DafT fiddling. 

 

Back in the early part of this century I did a job risk assessing the timetable and its preparation process in Australia and I had to present the first part of my conclusions and recommendations to the Chief Executive.  I duly began my explanation and presentation but being a plain speaking Aussie, and a good railwayman, he had only listened a short while before asking me outright to say what the biggest problem was in getting the timetable produced and then working reliably.  I replied with a single word - 'You'.  (he was indeed well in the red sector in the risk analysis).  And the reasons were simple - he kept on amending commercial requirements long after the TT specification was settled which meant late alterations and fiddled running times to create what he wanted.  Result was downstream work delayed and rushed and trains unable to keep time due to fiddled timings - notice any sort of similarities in that story compared with the GTR one?  

 

I wonder what would be in the red area of the risk (and results) in an analysis of the May 2018 TT changes if I were to go back on this one and start from January 2017 when the spec would be going together for sunbmission to NR in April?   I somehow doubt it would have little to do with the alleged (usually by amateurs without knowledge of what is really involved) 'complexity of the process' and an awful lot to do with people fiddling with specs and the process and the resultant (and other) failures to complete process by due dates.  I wonder if the inquiry into all those which actually address events and process in that way or will it be a whitewash job to protect DafT and its Minister?

[roundhouse]

Services through Redhill this evening. It's for this reason that we don't stay out in London after work much

[rodent279]

I suppose it's the same in many other industries. It's easy to think those at the helm don't care-chances are they do, but their hands are tied.

Edited June 12, 2018 by rodent279

[Jonboy]

Will park this here and add no comment https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-44415339