Donny. New GBR Freight Hub?

[Mallard60022]

Donny came 2nd in the bids for the GBR HQ.

I read that the Local Politicians are in talks with GBR about the above possibility and viability.

Phil 

[The Stationmaster]

I remember when Trainload Freight moved their HQ to Doncaster.  They immedatey hit a major problem because they found that many existing train planning staff had no intention whatsoever of moving there - whatever they were offered as inducements.  So they had no choice but to try to recruit locally or draft in folk with no previous train planning experience.

 

Several of the staff in my previous organisation - Swindon - were without jobs or waiting to take redundancy and they were asked if they would go to Doncaster to train the new staff and help get the new organisation up & running.  They duly agreed once the pay package had been accepted by EWS - full day & night expenses (= about £35 per day in 1994) plus double their salary for the whole period they spent at Doncaster training and mentoring.  Mr Burkhardt's hands and feet were duly bitten off and three or four of them went to Connie on those terms for around 6 months or  longer (I know one of them was there for almost a year).

 

So some simple messages about Doncaster based on past railway organisational change experience and the views of those who have worked there

1. Nobody wants to go there unless it's within easy travelling distance of where they live,

(with the existing NR HQ at Milton Keynes anyybody transferring to Doncaster would probab)y have to move)

2. Those who did go there from elsewhere didn't much like the place as a town in which to work,

3. It is impossible to locally recruit people with the necessary experience for some important railway HQ tasks because those sort of skills had gone from the place several decades previously,

 

Of all the places which over the years have had railway HQ buildings of any sort I'd have ot be very blunt and say that Doncaster is the last one which i would choose as the location fora nationa HQ with its only likely benefit being that ii is probably cheaper than the far more obvious, and better, alternatives of Birmingham, Crewe, or York.

[Ian Smeeton]

A late friend of mine who worked as a store manager for C & A was 'promoted' to run the Doncaster store.

 

Moving up from London, he popped i  to a local Estate Agent, and gave an indication of his budget.

 

When he named a figure, the Estate agent asked 'North or South Side?'

 

Unsure what was meant, my mate asked the Estate Agent to clarify.

 

'Well for that budget you can have  half a street, North or South side, or,  both sides East or West end'

 

Regards

 

Ian

[Rivercider]

When EWS set up at Doncaster it was not only train planning staff who were reluctant to move. All office based TOPS work was centralised there (excluding TOPS direct inputs carried out by groundstaff), traincrew rostering was also later centralised there. As a TOPS clerk I declined the kind offer to move to Yorkshire, as did many of my colleagues at Westbury. Seven years later, now working as a traincrew roster clerk in Bristol I again declined the chance to move north, and along with all my remaining roster colleagues in Bristol took redundancy,

 

cheers

Edited April 23, 2023 by Rivercider
Additional info

[BR traction instructor]

The same reluctance to relocate has recurred many times within the railway and over many years, as successive new managers have tried to combine offices etc to reduce costs but without really considering the needs of the staff. The double whammy for those that did relocate to Doncaster for EWS at the CSDC in the late 1990s was that the demands of the American shareholders for higher dividends then led to a large amount of those same experienced staff being paid off to reduce the wage bill. The dire working environment of large numbers of inexperienced staff attempting to run a set up requiring exactly the experienced staff that had just departed, then helped many of the remaining experienced staff to head for the door...commercial suicide.

 

BeRTIe

Edited April 22, 2023 by BR traction instructor

[black and decker boy]

I guess it depends on what they mean by a GBR Freight Hub.

 

from all accounts, the GBR HQ in Derby isn’t as big and grand as it sounds as functional offices remain devolved to the regions.

 

in Doncaster you do have the DB hub and a large GBRF office so there are freight operations staff in the town these days. 

[Enterprisingwestern]

10 hours ago, Rivercider said:

When EWS set up at Doncaster it was not only train planning staff who were reluctant to move. All office based TOPS work was centralised there (excluding TOPS direct inputs carried out by groundstaff), traincrew rostering was also later centralised there. As a TOPS clerk I declined the kind offer to move to Yorkshire, as did many of my colleagues at Westbury. Seven years later, now working as a traincrew roster clerk in Bristol I again declined the chance to move north, and along with all my remaining roster colleagues in Bristol took redundancy,

 

cheers

 

Congratulations on widening the North South divide.

 

Mike.

[ess1uk]

They have just spent lots of money at Peterborough so I don’t see them moving out of there

[Rivercider]

33 minutes ago, Enterprisingwestern said:

 

Congratulations on widening the North South divide.

 

Mike.

It was no North South divide for me, rather that  I was not prepared to move house to keep my railway career going.

Over the years I commuted from my home in Weston to work. My first couple of job moves were for promotion/progression, but from about 1988 onwards each job move was to dodge a bullet (office move or closure).

Over the 30 year career I worked at Bristol, Swindon, Bristol (post withdrawn), Westbury, Bristol (office closed), Westbury (office closed), Bristol, Newport (job relocated), Bristol (job relocated back). Finally traincrew rosters moved from Bristol to Doncaster in 2007, so I took the money.

 

I think I am right in that there were Mainline Freight staff who moved house from Nottingham to Doncaster for EWS, only to be relocated back out of Doncaster within a few years ,

 

cheers 

Edited April 23, 2023 by Rivercider
Additional info

[Mallard60022]

34 minutes ago, ess1uk said:

They have just spent lots of money at Peterborough so I don’t see them moving out of there

Do you mean GBRF? If so this is not GBRF the Company BUT the new Government idea for GBR, the overall controller for Rail that has gone to Derby but is considering the Freight idea to be centered elsewhere.

I know nothing other that Donny Council mentioning talks.

My only experience of Donny as a working Freight service HUB is that  it already has a large Container and Engineering facility and the Woks still has a large capability for actual Engineering of Stock work.

What I don't know is what all the Government Great British Railways thing is all about. IF I were to comment it would be deleted as it would most certainly contain blatant Political stuff.

If anyone can direct me to what Westmonster has planned (really?) for, I'd be forever ungrateful, but enlightened (as a 'new' Northerner).

Phil

Edited April 23, 2023 by Mallard60022

[ess1uk]

3 minutes ago, Mallard60022 said:

Do you mean GBRF? If so this is not GBRF the Company BUT the new Government idea for GBR, the overall controller for Rail that has gone to Derby but is considering the Freight idea to be centered elsewhere.

I know nothing other that Donny Council mentioning talks.

Phil

So presumably doing what a team in MK does already?

[Mallard60022]

4 minutes ago, ess1uk said:

So presumably doing what a team in MK does already?

NO idea matey?

Phil

[Mallard60022]

27 minutes ago, Rivercider said:

It was no North South divide for me, rather that  I was not prepared to move house to keep my railway career going.

Over the years I commuted from my home in Weston to work. My first couple of job moves were for promotion/progression, but from about 1988 onwards each job move was to dodge a bullet (office move or closure).

Over the 30 year career I worked at Bristol, Swindon, Bristol (post withdrawn), Westbury, Bristol (office closed), Westbury (office closed), Bristol, Newport (job relocated), Bristol (job relocated back). Finally traincrew rosters moved from Bristol to Doncaster in 2007, so I took the money.

 

I think I am right in that there were Mainline Freight staff who moved house from Nottingham to Doncaster for EWS, only to be relocated back out of Doncaster within a few years ,

 

cheers 

He was making a joke about the side of the Roads thing...I hope?

Phi

[The Stationmaster]

1 hour ago, Rivercider said:

It was no North South divide for me, rather that  I was not prepared to move house to keep my railway career going.

Over the years I commuted from my home in Weston to work. My first couple of job moves were for promotion/progression, but from about 1988 onwards each job move was to dodge a bullet (office move or closure).

Over the 30 year career I worked at Bristol, Swindon, Bristol (post withdrawn), Westbury, Bristol (office closed), Westbury (office closed), Bristol, Newport (job relocated), Bristol (job relocated back). Finally traincrew rosters moved from Bristol to Doncaster in 2007, so I took the money.

 

I think I am right in that there were Mainline Freight staff who moved house from Nottingham to Doncaster for EWS, only to be relocated back out of Doncaster within a few years ,

 

cheers 

Moving about was of course the experience of many of us in the industry - either because we had no choice but to go elsewh here on redundancy, or reorganisations moved our job to somewhere else, or we moved for promotion.  In many cases the moves were travellan ble (if that is a word and although the day was longer die to travelling we didn't have to move home.  

 

And with occasional exceptions - such as the WR two tier HQ being established in Swindon - organisations were moved to or created at places where the necessary work experience already existed.   But at least in Swindon's case for many of the people involved it was relatively easy to access by travel without having to move home.   Numbers were reduced anyway so some redundancy was inevitable but I knew of only a few people who opted for redundancy instead of having a job in Swindon although I knew one who left after we'd moved there because she didn't like the town for lunchtime shopping!

 

But Doncaster was one of those oddball decisions where almost none of the existing HQ level staff, except those based in York (and to a lesser extent those living on the 'right' side of London) could easily travel to get there).  But a lot of the York based staff preferred to take redundancy rather than work in Doncaster.  Milton Keynes was I expect in a vaguely similar mould but at least easy to travel from London and Birmingham and not impossible from Crewe - but not an easy journey. 

 

Incidentally re-organisation was inevitable fact of life on BR for two reasons.  The first of these was constant Treasury pressure to reduce costs.  But even more important was the way in which the railway changed over the years and various tasks either ceased to exist or the process changed and fewer people were needed or the number of people based at one place could cover the work previously covered by people based at c several dfferent places.  When we moved to Swibf don in 1985 there was tyoing pool - aneit using word processors.  But many of us also had, or had access to word processors so we could revise a documant as easily as a ci opy typist could.  For example at first all our Signal Box Special Instructions were - as in the past - typed up in the typing pool but with a couple the clerk preparing and revising them could do so for himself on the same data store.  Multiply that by a number of tasks and the typing pool went.  Exactly the same applied with notices and other things - so staff numbers shrank and jobs were amalgamated or eliminated because they were no longer needed. 

[Wheatley]

6 hours ago, The Stationmaster said:

 !But Doncaster was one of those oddball decisions where almost none of the existing HQ level staff, except those based in York (and to a lesser extent those living on the 'right' side of London) could easily travel to get there).  But a lot of the York based staff preferred to take redundancy rather than work in Doncaster. 

On paper York and Doncaster are similar - ex railway towns with good transport links (Donny undeniably having the egde on that one) cheaper housing than the south, empty office space and a rubbish football team. But York has two overwhelming advantages when it comes to wanting to work there - 

 

1 - It's prettier than Donny

 

2 - it's not full of people from Donny. 

[Mallard60022]

2 hours ago, Wheatley said:

On paper York and Doncaster are similar - ex railway towns with good transport links (Donny undeniably having the egde on that one) cheaper housing than the south, empty office space and a rubbish football team. But York has two overwhelming advantages when it comes to wanting to work there - 

 

1 - It's prettier than Donny

 

2 - it's not full of people from Donny. 

Sadly that's mainly true. However my son lives in Kirk Sandall, so I hope you will excuse some that are actually intelligent and hard working and appreciate the lost heritage of the now City.

Phil

[JeffP]

Housing in and around York is about 50% dearer than in or around Doncaster.

You want cheap housing? Move 23 miles east to Scunthorpe where a new build 3 bed detached with garage still comes in at under £200k, and an older semi detached without garage at £120k or less.

 

Donny's not so bad.

Learn the lingo, tha'll be reet.

"Azigeniter?" Has he given it to her?

"Aztha gorratenner?" Do you have ten pounds you could lend me?

"Astle clowtthi if thidunt geower".

If you don't stop what you are doing I shall have to administer corporal punishment.

 

And many others.😁

Edited April 24, 2023 by JeffP