WCML landslip Carstairs

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Cars have added advantage of being able to drive around landslips, timed to travel whenever you like.

 

 

[Legend]

Weather in West Central Scotland has been very wet , particularly between Christmas and New Year .  But this is West Central Scotland !  It is not unusual to have large amounts of rain. I can remember lots of periods of significant rainfall, yes as bad as this. Yet on Thursday we had flooding of the InverClyde lines at both Bishopton and Bogston , the Ayrline at Lochwinnoch  and the North Clyde Line at Bowling. In fact , if you looked up the Scotrail website there was significant disruption on 30 out of 36 lines . On top of this there's the WCML at Carstairs 

 

I cant help wondering if we are doing something differently than past maintenance and upkeep regimes , or perhaps not doing something at all , like cleaning cesses and removing autumn leaves .  The road system was also affected , one local road in Erskine was predictably flooded . Why?  Because the leaves which are not swept clogged the drains causing the flooding and the road to close . You could see it coming, but we do nothing about it.  Just wondering if the same is true of the railways . We already know that trees are not cut down close to railways like they were in the past , weeds seem to be allowed to grow without being dealt with . I think there are a lot of factors here . Too easy to hang it on the peg of excessive rainfall.

 

What with Strikes , bad weather , big signaling problem between Haymarket and Waverley on Wednesday , large parts of Scotrail have been no go zones . People are giving up on rail and either going back to car or using express bus services , and of course working from home if they can . Not a good trend for rail  or indeed the center of our cities , which must be suffering economically as people cant get to them. 

 

 

Edited January 3, 2023 by Legend

[CN6]

From the overhead picture Network Rail published, it looks like a culvert might be the problem. Can anyone confirm the location of the slip and is there a culvert involved.

[JDW]

7 hours ago, Legend said:

What with Strikes , bad weather , big signalling problem between Haymarket and Waverley on Wednesday , large parts of Scotrail have been no go zones . People are giving up on rail and either going back to car or using express bus services , and of course working from home if they can . Not a good trend for rail  or indeed the center of our cities , which must be suffering economically as people cant get to them. 

 

Picking up on the point, Scotland is a good example I think, since the express coach alternative is pretty good compared to elsewhere in the UK. The Citylink/megabus "Saltire Cross" network links all the major traffic objectives in a relatively easy to understand way with hourly services and easy connections using relatively modern coaches (yes, they'll never be as smooth or spacious as a train, but some of the newer ones, in particular the Plaxton double-deckers, are quite nice). Layer on top the expanding Ember, which has the cachet of using electric coaches on its routes between Dundee and Edinburgh/Glasgow, plus occasional Flixbus journeys too, as well as the (mainly Stagecoach-operated) long distance regional routes into places like Aberdeen and Edinburgh, and from the south-west into Glasgow, and it provides a credible (though maybe not equal) alternative to the train on a lot of major axes.

[Legend]

3 hours ago, JDW said:

 

Picking up on the point, Scotland is a good example I think, since the express coach alternative is pretty good compared to elsewhere in the UK. The Citylink/megabus "Saltire Cross" network links all the major traffic objectives in a relatively easy to understand way with hourly services and easy connections using relatively modern coaches (yes, they'll never be as smooth or spacious as a train, but some of the newer ones, in particular the Plaxton double-deckers, are quite nice). Layer on top the expanding Ember, which has the cachet of using electric coaches on its routes between Dundee and Edinburgh/Glasgow, plus occasional Flixbus journeys too, as well as the (mainly Stagecoach-operated) long distance regional routes into places like Aberdeen and Edinburgh, and from the south-west into Glasgow, and it provides a credible (though maybe not equal) alternative to the train on a lot of major axes.

And crucially at the moment more reliable 

[Mark Saunders]

1 minute ago, Legend said:

And crucially at the moment more reliable 

I could almost believe it’s 1955 again and a manufactured dispute!

 

 

[Northmoor]

12 minutes ago, Legend said:

And crucially at the moment more reliable 

In terms of the general political situation re: environmental politics, it is also worth remembering that a well-filled modern road coach is a very efficient vehicle.  If the passengers travelled by car they would need to be 4/5 per vehicle and every one doing 80-90mpg to match the coach.

[lmsforever]

Just watching the ten o'clock  news and interviews with RMT boss he clearly does not realise the bad future for his members people are starting to turn away for rail  ,I can see the airlines taking back more traffic for flights in the UK.  Talks must happen this week and both parties have to be willing to make easments so as work is resumed ,incidentally the current wages are very good and if they cannot live on them there is a problem in thier life. Sorry to be so blunt but something has to happen.

[Mark Saunders]

41 minutes ago, lmsforever said:

Just watching the ten o'clock  news and interviews with RMT boss he clearly does not realise the bad future for his members people are starting to turn away for rail  ,I can see the airlines taking back more traffic for flights in the UK.  Talks must happen this week and both parties have to be willing to make easments so as work is resumed ,incidentally the current wages are very good and if they cannot live on them there is a problem in thier life. Sorry to be so blunt but something has to happen.

Just look at recent history and how well a major tax cut went down along with the pound, followed by a policy reversal!

 

The night of the long knives …

[Mike_Walker]

My daily paper tells me this morning that ministers find Mick Wehlan of ASLEF "unpleasant and objectionable" and are happy for the strikes to continue until June if it destroys him and his union as the get paid well enough already.  What a sad state we've sunk to when personal differences are being used to destroy a vital national service.  The present "government" is not fit to govern a whelk stall let alone a country.  And of course, it's not just the railways that are being damaged but sectors like retail and hospitality putting tens of thousands more jobs at risk.

 

I despair! 

[jjb1970]

Never underestimate the importance of personal relationships. In politics, business and other fields of life personal relationships are crucial. Which means the ability to form working relationships is crucial at a certain level.

[Andymsa]

10 hours ago, lmsforever said:

Just watching the ten o'clock  news and interviews with RMT boss he clearly does not realise the bad future for his members people are starting to turn away for rail  ,I can see the airlines taking back more traffic for flights in the UK.  Talks must happen this week and both parties have to be willing to make easments so as work is resumed ,incidentally the current wages are very good and if they cannot live on them there is a problem in thier life. Sorry to be so blunt but something has to happen.

sorry but it’s not all about wages, one of the biggest issues is maintenance and reducing it. Just look what happened when privatised rail came into being, there were a number of major derailments because of lack of maintenance. As to the RMT boss he doesn’t call the shots he is the elected voice of the members and the members are the union which voted for the strike. To be frank the main stream media are not exactly unbiased in there reporting and particularly don’t like the RMT boss because for once the is a union leader who can run rings around the media.

[Dagworth]

12 minutes ago, Mike_Walker said:

My daily paper tells me this morning that ministers find Mick Wehlan of ASLEF "unpleasant and objectionable"

I find the ministers unpleasant and objectionable. 

[Pete the Elaner]

10 hours ago, lmsforever said:

Just watching the ten o'clock  news and interviews with RMT boss he clearly does not realise the bad future for his members people are starting to turn away for rail  ,I can see the airlines taking back more traffic for flights in the UK.  Talks must happen this week and both parties have to be willing to make easments so as work is resumed ,incidentally the current wages are very good and if they cannot live on them there is a problem in thier life. Sorry to be so blunt but something has to happen.

 

Sorry but you've been brainwashed by the media bleating on & on that it is all about wages. This is not true.

The unions claim it is all about safety. This is not entirely true either.

It is really about redundancies. As union leader, Mick Lynch fights for fair treatment of his members. Keeping their jobs is a rather important aspect of this.

 

The ToCs want to reduce the number of guards further & close many ticket offices.

It is very short-sighted because these pay for themselves. Ticket barriers need staff to supervise them, so without the staff the barriers will be open for fare jumpers. Without on train guards, who will inspect tickets? I regularly hear others comment that they had needlessly bought their ticket because nobody looked at it. I wonder how much revenue would be lost each day if guards did not check tickets. Judging from the amount of time it takes between me seeing them in the carriage & them actually getting to me, I imagine it is quite a lot.

 

 

[APOLLO]

Regarding flooding and the WCML.

 

A brook runs under the WCML near my house, twice with about 1/4 mile in between. Well over 20 years ago the lines and ballast were re-laid, and shortly after we had a very strong summer thunderstorm. The lower culvert blocked and several houses and streets nearby flooded. The flood actually built up to rail level and ran away southbound along and over the track. Subsequently it was discovered that an old car engine and several tons of new ballast had blocked the culvert. All was cleared and repaired and I am told Network Rail (or whoever it was back then) footed the domestic insurance bills.

 

The upper culvert was checked and cleaned out last year, I remember the orange brigade there. I have a walk past them now and again and always have a look to see if the brook is running OK.

 

Brit15

[phil-b259]

11 hours ago, lmsforever said:

incidentally the current wages are very good and if they cannot live on them there is a problem in their life.

 

I fear you are falling into the trap set by the Government / media who seemingly cannot bring themselves to strip out train drivers from the wages mix.

 

The RMT DO NOT represent the top earners (drivers) or the reams of management NR have stuffed themselves with (both of which are indeed paid well)

 

And while it is true some signallers (the ones at the busiest boxes) do relatively well in pay terms folk like front line maintainers - i.e. the ones who actually make sure trains don't crash due to broken rails, defective signalling cables etc fair less well.

 

Right at the bottom are people like station and train cleaners - many on 'zero hours'; contracts with no holiday or sick pay having seen their jobs 'outsourced by the likes of Avanti so as to improve shareholder dividends.

 

To turn around to such low paid people and claim its their fault they are struggling when they have been sold down the river for cooperate greed is quite frankly disgusting.

[Wheatley]

34 minutes ago, Mike_Walker said:

My daily paper tells me this morning that ministers find Mick Wehlan of ASLEF "unpleasant and objectionable" and are happy for the strikes to continue until June if it destroys him and his union as the get paid well enough already. 

 

They underestimate drivers and ASLEF then. Do they think drivers  are somehow going to revolt against the union if Mr W keeps them out until June ?  Unlike RMT members who are losing 4  days pay a month (assuming 2x 48 hr strikes a month) ASLEF are only striking for the odd day in between and losing a  couple of days  a month. They can keep that up indefinitely even with a rest day working ban on at the  same time. 

 

ASLEF are much better at this than the DfT and the TOCs. They've spent 25 years exploiting the hugely competitive internal labour market created by privatisation which only their members can fill and will carry on playing both sides off against the middle while ever that market exists. That's why they're on £40-50k a year, not because (as many seem to think) they're a bunch of Trotskyist oiks.   

  

1 minute ago, Pete the Elaner said:

The ToCs want to reduce the number of guards further & close many ticket offices.

It is very short-sighted because these pay for themselves. Ticket barriers need staff to supervise them, so without the staff the barriers will be open for fare jumpers. Without on train guards, who will inspect tickets? 

The  staff will still be there, but they won't be RMT members on current (considerably less than drivers') wages, they'll be zero hours minimum wage contractors. 

[Mike_Walker]

17 minutes ago, Pete the Elaner said:

 

Sorry but you've been brainwashed by the media bleating on & on that it is all about wages. This is not true.

The unions claim it is all about safety. This is not entirely true either.

It is really about redundancies. As union leader, Mick Lynch fights for fair treatment of his members. Keeping their jobs is a rather important aspect of this.

 

The ToCs want to reduce the number of guards further & close many ticket offices.

It is very short-sighted because these pay for themselves. Ticket barriers need staff to supervise them, so without the staff the barriers will be open for fare jumpers. Without on train guards, who will inspect tickets? I regularly hear others comment that they had needlessly bought their ticket because nobody looked at it. I wonder how much revenue would be lost each day if guards did not check tickets. Judging from the amount of time it takes between me seeing them in the carriage & them actually getting to me, I imagine it is quite a lot.

 

 

No, it's not the TOCs that want to close ticket offices, in most cases they oppose it.  It's the civil servants at the DfT (one in particular) who are pushing for it led by ministers who have no real understanding of the industry (if they do, Sir Humphrey has them moved on at the next reshuffle).  Likewise, the push towards extended DOO is supported by the TOCs but not as a means of getting rid of guards but to allow them to concentrate on the real issue of revenue collection.  As I've said before, it is extremely inefficient if a guard who is checking/selling tickets has to keep interrupting these duties to work the doors at each station particularly on busy suburban services.

 

Network Rail have made it quite clear, they do NOT propose any redundancies - in many areas, including key ones like signallers - they are actually struggling to fill posts so why would they want to make staff redundant?  The same applies to the TOCs.  Sadly, it is the unions who are misleading their members.

 

As for pay, whilst some grades are on fairly modest rates, we have many drivers and signallers who are on the upper levels of five-figure annual incomes and many are now into six-figures - that's right, £100,000 plus  I know because I have the contacts within the industry who tell me this - often 'cos they are the recipients.  Yes we have a cost of living crisis but if it's leaving those on that sort of incomes struggling then they need to reconsider their personal budgets.  How many of us on here are on those sort of incomes?

[Mike_Walker]

4 minutes ago, phil-b259 said:

 

Right at the bottom are people like station and train cleaners - many on 'zero hours'; contracts with no holiday or sick pay having seen their jobs 'outsourced by the likes of Avanti so as to improve shareholder dividends.

 

The old franchise system is no more.  All the TOCs now operate under management contracts where the DfT takes all the revenue and reimburses the TOCs for their operating costs with a fixed percentage premium on top as a "profit".  This is well below what any private business would expect to gain as a return on it's investment which is why the pool of companies willing to bid for such contracts, both here and overseas, is rapidly diminishing.  For example, Abellio (part of the Dutch railways) has recently sold off it's UK interests to its management citing the reason that there is no longer an opportunity in the UK to generate the profits which it used to subsidise its home business.  Speaks volumes for the sad state the industry has sunk into and not of its own making.

 

How many of those cleaners are actually members of the RMT or any other union?  Very few I would think which is the reason they are employed that way and their employers are not the TOCs but sub-contractors.

[CN6]

Come on guys, let’s get back to the issue of the thread. Where was the slip and how are the repairs going.

 

(To close the drift, it’s not all about the money!)

[Enterprisingwestern]

For Lynch read Scargill, and look how well off the coal mining industry is now.

 

Mike.

[The Stationmaster]

1 hour ago, Andymsa said:

sorry but it’s not all about wages, one of the biggest issues is maintenance and reducing it. Just look what happened when privatised rail came into being, there were a number of major derailments because of lack of maintenance. As to the RMT boss he doesn’t call the shots he is the elected voice of the members and the members are the union which voted for the strike. To be frank the main stream media are not exactly unbiased in there reporting and particularly don’t like the RMT boss because for once the is a union leader who can run rings around the media.

Lynch is not the 'RMT boss' but basically the public face of the union.  And he has to - under the union's constitution - do the same as many other TU General Secretary's - and work in accordance with decisions made by the National Executive.  The National Executive are the people who make the decisions (in the case of strike etc action in accordance with ballots of the membership); Lynch's job is to implement those decisions.  So these are the people you need to think about -

 

https://www.rmt.org.uk/about/rmt-structure/council-of-executives/current-members-of-rmts-council-of-executives/

 

There are some interesting 'histories' in there if you research them a bit further.  As for some other things posted on here we're back to some well worn tales which aren't new or much to do with privatisation.  Contractors being used to clean - is nothing new; BR were looking at using contract carriage cleaning firms back in the 1980s and to my certain knowledge were doing so by the early 1990s, if not sooner.  Some station cleaning firms/staff were contracted on a similar basis back then, and earlier in some places, as well.

 

Mike Walker has already spelt out part of the reasons for going DOO - don't forget that on BR we were going to it as fast as we can wherever the conditions could be met, even in the case of one branch line with slam door stock and no central locking.   We did it to improve reliability as much as to save cost because - as I mentioned previously - there had been ever increasing difficulty in recruiting Guards going back decades.  At one time a past colleague of mine actually made recruitment visits to one of Her Majesty's Prisons hopingto find recruits among those coming up for release (and he got a couple of good blokes from that source).  BTW on our branch when the train has a Conductor, which is basically only the first part of a weekday morning, all the Conductor does is issue tickets - he undertakes no operational tasks.

[phil-b259]

5 hours ago, Mike_Walker said:

 

 

Network Rail have made it quite clear, they do NOT propose any redundancies - in many areas, including key ones like signallers - they are actually struggling to fill posts so why would they want to make staff redundant?  The same applies to the TOCs.  Sadly, it is the unions who are misleading their members.

 

 

 

WRONG!

 

Firstly NR are on record as saying the only reason they are not proposing to sack anyone till 2025 is 3000+ people have asked for voluntary redundancy. If those 3000 change their mind then job losses will come along sooner so job losses are very much still an issue.

 

Secondly You also fail to understand that after a 3+ year recruitment freeze, the maintenance side of the organisation - by which I mean the very people who ensure rails don't brake, the signalling system is still safe, etc are already chronically short of staff!

 

(Note the reason why signallers can't cause train crashes is signalling system looked after BY THE MAINTENANCE FUNCTION)

 

Its all very well saying signalling staff aren't touched - but the last time I looked signallers work in signal boxes - they do not go round inspecting pointwork for rail defects, test cables for potentially catastrophic earth faults, etc.

 

NRs answer to this chronic staff shortage is to simply stop doing most preventative maintenance and smash the maintenance function to bits while sitting there just crossing their fingers that things fail 'right side' - but as any proper railway engineer will tell you this approach is guaranteed to lead to a Hatfield / Clapham / Potters Bar / etc style smash at some point.

 

The suits and politicians don't care about this of course - the executive / political merry go round moves at such a pace that it won't be their problem to face the music when people die...

 

But for true railwaymen playing Russian roulette with the public safety is not on. THAT is way most people within NR are going on strike!

Edited January 4, 2023 by phil-b259

[phil-b259]

3 hours ago, Mike_Walker said:

 

How many of those cleaners are actually members of the RMT or any other union?  Very few I would think which is the reason they are employed that way and their employers are not the TOCs but sub-contractors.

 

The RMT has actually made a big point of recruiting cleaners - because the cowboy outsourcing companies favoured by the rail industry like  Churchil, Mitie, ISS, etc etc frequently only offer 'zero hours' contracts on the minimum wage with no sick pay, no holiday entitlement, no pension provision etc.

 

https://www.rmt.org.uk/news/cleaners-strike-for-fair-pay-and-decent-conditions/

https://www.rmt.org.uk/news/merseyrail-cleaners-strike-and-protest-tomorrow-in-fight-for/

https://www.rmt.org.uk/news/cleaners-strike-for-fair-pay-and-decent-conditions/

https://www.rmt.org.uk/news/west-coast-train-cleaners-striking-again/

[SHMD]

I'm pretty sure I have located the breach!

 

 

Many things tie in...

The angle of the culvert, the fencing around the culvert, the bush, the OHLE Mast positions, the Signal, the AWS magnet, even the gate under the bush!

 

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Carstairs+Junction,+Lanark/@55.6544982,-3.6341962,516m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x4888096ddfae3319:0xc3aaf833ce228049!8m2!3d55.686899!4d-3.663482?hl=en

 

 

Speculation alert!

(I'm guessing the culvert flows from right to left because the field on the right looks to be at a slightly higher elevation to the field on the left.)

 

 

From the location, it looks like the "natural rain catchment area", (the field on the right), could not "drain" through the railway embankment into the culvert in the field left of the tracks.

Either due to a blocked/damaged culvert and/or too much rain at once.

The railway embankment makes a pretty good Dam here. If water is forced to accumulate on the Right of it, then once the water level "over flows" then Dam walls are known to fail

 

 

Kev.