Major changes to Network Rail proposed

[phil-b259]

Keep your ears open on Tuesday for the changes

http://www.itv.com/news/2016-12-03/network-rail-to-be-stripped-of-monopoly-over-britains-railway-tracks/

One things certain though, the Unions won't be happy. As for us staff - well it all depends on the proposals because although the Railtrack experience as a whole wasn't good, some IMCs were considerably better than others in relation to how they treated their staff / organised themselves.

On a separate note the Unions are consulting on a new 4 year pay deal due to be concluded this year. While a good headline figure has been tabled it does come with numerous strings attached which fundamentally change the way we work (by cutting back on numbers) to save money - not all of which are safe, practical or actually going to be effective. I foresee further Union action taking place to the detriment of passengers.

Now what was it someone said on another thread about not kicking a hornets nest......

Edited December 3, 2016 by phil-b259

[beast66606]

Be interesting to see how the FOCs fit into the equation.

[phil-b259]

Be interesting to see how the FOCs fit into the equation.

Freight doesn't vote in general elections!

[ess1uk]

Here we go again.

Just in the middle of a reorganisation at the moment

[caradoc]

Just what the rail industry needs, more reorganisation. I dream of a time when politicians say to the rail industry, get on with running a safe, reliable and efficient railway system, instead of constantly interfering. Every single reorganisation I endured in nearly 38 years on the railway (and I endured far too many) resulted in uncertainty, inefficiency, expense, unforseen problems, plus experienced staff leaving the industry and demoralisation of those who had to stay. The relentless pressure (from Government) to reduce costs, and the adverse impact this was having on staff morale and health, was one of the reasons I decided to retire from Network Rail earlier this year.

 

I do wonder quite how this proposal is going to work in real life, given that Train Operators do not have the knowledge or experience of maintaining the infrastructure; It will also be interesting on the many routes where there are multiple operators. I can only hope that whatever happens, all staff remaining in the rail industry are treated fairly and correctly. Good luck !

[jjb1970]

I think the railway needs stability and to concentrate on making the existing framework work well. Governments and some large corporations have a history of lurching from initive to initiative with the result that none of them are allowed time to work. I tend to think that the problems faced by NR are more related to their program management than to a structural problem. That said, I think chickens may be coming home to roost as they've burned through an awful lot of goodwill and political capital in recent years.

[Bruce Depot]

So glad I got out ten years ago, what a mess.

[The Stationmaster]

Just what the rail industry needs, more reorganisation. I dream of a time when politicians say to the rail industry, get on with running a safe, reliable and efficient railway system, instead of constantly interfering. Every single reorganisation I endured in nearly 38 years on the railway (and I endured far too many) resulted in uncertainty, inefficiency, expense, unforseen problems, plus experienced staff leaving the industry and demoralisation of those who had to stay. The relentless pressure (from Government) to reduce costs, and the adverse impact this was having on staff morale and health, was one of the reasons I decided to retire from Network Rail earlier this year.

 

I do wonder quite how this proposal is going to work in real life, given that Train Operators do not have the knowledge or experience of maintaining the infrastructure; It will also be interesting on the many routes where there are multiple operators. I can only hope that whatever happens, all staff remaining in the rail industry are treated fairly and correctly. Good luck !

 

Spot on - most operating companies haven't got a clue about infrastructure apart from saying everything should be put right yesterday.  How do you put things right; you have possessions; what happens if you have possessions?: you potentially/actually cancel trains - oh dear, didn't think of that did we.

 

NR suffers from a number of problems, one of them in my view (albeit from Railtrack days) was a lack of understanding that train operators were its customers and that trains are run for passengers and freight customers.  By simply allowing in, say, one operator on a part of a route in some sort of 'alliance' what about the other NR customers.  To me this all sounds like a shambles in the making that will take us back to the bad aspects, and worse, of sectorisation.

 

Overall NR has done rather well in getting a lot of the network back to where it ought to be in maintenance terms but my backside often tells me that on the Western they are a long way behind WR standards of track maintenance even if they have done a lot of good on earthworks.  They have had mixed success on big projects - some such as the emergency works at Dawlish and dover have gone well while others such as the operational impact of London Bridge and GWML electrification seem to have been atrociously mismanaged.  Putting in someone from a train operating company won't put those sort of things right nor will it necessarily help resolve spending priorities.  

 

Some parts of NR need a good kick up the tail lamp but other problems in fact need resources - such as trained and experienced people - rather than bureaucracy and the involvement of even more amateurs at the top end.  So possibly Mr Grayling has asked some of the right questions - unfortunately his (less than experienced I suggest) advisors seem to be coming up with the wrong answer.

Edited December 3, 2016 by The Stationmaster

[Dunsignalling]

However some TOCs might publicly welcome this, they will soon feel the heat of having to carry the can for anything that goes wrong themselves rather than throwing the blame at NR.

 

Cynical, Moi?

 

John

[Rivercider]

I'll bet the 'legal beagles' will be rubbing their hands, plenty more agreements to be drawn up, and a lot more backside covering to be done.

 

Like others have said I was also glad to be paid to get out (of the industry) 10 years ago, after dodging a number of bullets (re-organisations), which came with increasing frequency,

 

cheers

Edited December 3, 2016 by Rivercider

[phil-b259]

Its also worth noting that the much trumpeted "South West Alliance" between NR & SWT was dissolved a few years early by mutual consent (i.e. even SWT found it wasn't worth the hassle) - though at least the NR staff have kept their free travel they got as part of the deal for the alliance to be formed in the first place. A colleague of mine who used to work at Wimbledon has however said that even with the lack of free travel, working directly for NR is miles better than the alliance as basically you had to get the go ahead from SWT before you could even think of going to touch the infrastructure - even for routine maintenance activities.

 

Then there is the situation in Scotland. The recent action plan contained lots of infrastructure work that some opined was more stuff that NR should have done anyway. Could it be that the "Alliance" has in fact been frustrating the efforts of local NR departments who actually have been wanting to get the work done for ages but were overulled? If so then it doesn't bode well for further TOC / NR integration as hinted at by the Minister.

Edited December 3, 2016 by phil-b259

[russ p]

Having seen haw some TOCs operate and there insistence on changing everything that has gone before on the railway we will end up with signals in silly colours where red no longer means stop as beardy thinks it's negative for his business!

On a serious point though this is the last thing the railway needs, interesting to see how this fits in with the ROC concept and ERTMS. Personally I'm not a fan of either but I don't want to see a TOC controlled railway either

[PenrithBeacon]

... this is the last thing the railway needs ...

Sorry, but I disagree. I think that this is something that should have happened a long time ago. There are too many fingers in the pie and all wanting to make a profit. It's time some of the digits were extracted.

[Wheatley]

ess1uk, on 03 Dec 2016 - 10:04, said:ess1uk, on 03 Dec 2016 - 10:04, said:

_{Here we go again.}

Just in the middle of a reorganisation at the moment

 

_{I was going to say "have they finished the last one yet ? Ye gods.}

 

_{Short franchises specced and funded by the DfT, without a civil engineer between them,  trying to do long term investment. What could possibly go wrong ?}

 

 

PenrithBeacon, on 03 Dec 2016 - 12:39, said:

Sorry, but I disagree. I think that this is something that should have happened a long time ago. There are too many fingers in the pie and all wanting to make a profit. It's time some of the digits were extracted.

But this is opening up the pie to even more fingers, some of whom won't see why they need to wash their hands first. Cluster***k is the word that springs to mind. Unless you trust the DfT to do it properly - I suppose there's a first time for everything.

 

 

Edited December 3, 2016 by Wheatley

[Grovenor]

Sorry, but I disagree. I think that this is something that should have happened a long time ago. There are too many fingers in the pie and all wanting to make a profit. It's time some of the digits were extracted.

Where is there any suggestion that the number of fingers is to be reduced?

Regards

[BoD]

Don't want to get too political but the minister involved seems to think that it 'should' improve services and hopes it 'might' reduce fares.

Sounds like it has been really well thought through.

['CHARD]

Don't want to get too political but the minister involved seems to think that it 'should' improve services and hopes it 'might' reduce fares.

Sounds like it has been really well thought through.

 

I completely agree.  

 

This has profound and utter disaster written all over it.

 

Haven't had chance to read it through in detail yet, but my hopes are not high.

[Davey]

John Major is to blame for this mess! If he had to privatise the railways - he shouldn't - the sensible thing to have done, would have been to split the network into region as per the British Rail model and let the various regions have control over the infrastructure. It's about time the needs of passengers took priority over the foreign companies and shareholders, who are the only winners in the sorry mess that is Britain's railways.

[newbryford]

Does this mean that the TOC's will need their own IM/test trains, so I'll have more liveries to reproduce apart from yellow?

 

 

Cheers,

Mick

[Nearholmer]

Well......... there was a hugely serious flaw in the model of privatisation that was applied to the railways in this country: it put far to much power/influence in the hands of a body (Railtrack, which then became NR) that is too remote from the fare-paying customers to be properly accountable, and far too monolithic to be useful.

 

If any change resolves that problem, it might help; if it doesn't, it almost certainly won't.

 

But, even if it does help, it might not help enough, because another huge flaw in the industry is short-termism, driven by the franchising arrangements, even after the tinkering that was supposed to resolve it.

 

Anything that passes accountability for infrastructure to TOCs, though, will require a gigantic change in their competence-base and outlook, as others have said above. Running a vertically integrated railway is a whole lot more challenging than running a TOC as they exist now, not that that is exactly simple.

 

A question: to what degree might Brexit open-up models that haven't been available recently?

 

Kevin

[Dunsignalling]

_{I was going to say "have they finished the last one yet ? Ye gods.}

 

_{Short franchises specced and funded by the DfT, without a civil engineer between them,  trying to do long term investment. What could possibly go wrong ?}

 

 

But this is opening up the pie to even more fingers, some of whom won't see why they need to wash their hands first. Cluster***k is the word that springs to mind. Unless you trust the DfT to do it properly - I suppose there's a first time for everything.

 

 

Reorganisations are never finished - that would be fatal because then it would become apparent that none of them do anything better than what went before, just differently. 

 

In the meantime, the movers and shakers pushing the changes have achieved some good career progression and the consultants brought in to ensure it didn't blow up in their faces have done very nicely thank you.

 

Oh, and loads of cash that could have been spent on making the infrastructure more resilient have been diverted into not really doing anything meaningful.

 

John

[4630]

Be interesting to see how the FOCs fit into the equation.

And the open access operators too. Be interesting to see how it would work on the East Coast mainline with the resident TOC and two open access operators.

[w124bob]

Don't forget there is one big TOC, XC Trains with no geographical base to call it's own. I wonder how this reform will pan out for XC, personally I can seee it being slit up.

[The Stationmaster]

Sorry, but I disagree. I think that this is something that should have happened a long time ago. There are too many fingers in the pie and all wanting to make a profit. It's time some of the digits were extracted.

 

I'm a bit confused - you say there are too many fingers in the pie now but you seem to be supporting an idea/proposal which is going to put even more fingers in the pie - and some downright ignorant fingers at that.  For example quite who would you put in an 'alliance' for the WCML apart from the infrastructure owner? - Virgin (gawd help us if that bunch got control of so much as a single point end), or London Midland, or Northern or even DBC - looks like me for a recipe for a total mess and more talking shops and jobs for the legal trade than we have ever come across.

 

Simple answer - give NR the tools to do the job.  Another simple answer (which is where a lot of the 'added cost' actually lies) is a proper review of the compensation arrangements.  If a possession overruns (and that won't change unless extra resources are put in etc) creating an 'alliance' won;t make any difference at all on a multi-operator network.

[caradoc]

Some excellent points being made here.

 

The original Daily Telegraph article, from which the ITV report comes, is available to read on the BBC News Headlines page today. It contains references to travellers facing a 'crescendo' of Network Rail maintenance work this Christmas, then a bit further on quotes Mr Grayling as saying 'too many people and organisations are involved in getting things done - so nothing happens'. Excuse me, but those two statements are surely utterly contradictory ? 

 

At present Network Rail is responsible for maintaining the rail network, to a common standard, with all the advantages that economies of scale bring. Imagine if maintenance was instead split between, say, 25 passenger operators (TOCs), plus the freight operators (for TOCs will not want to maintain freight-only lines, yards and sidings), each of which would have to set up their own maintenance organisations, encompassing all the various disciplines - Signalling, Telecoms, Permanent Way, Structures, Electrification, Plant, etc, as applicable. How can this possibly be more efficient, and lead to lower fares as is promised (unless maybe S&T staff are going to do train maintenance in their spare time, or train depot staff go out to fix the OLE when it comes down - neither of which happened even when the entire railway was under one management in BR days) ?

 

On a practical level, how would such a system work ? Take for example, the WCML between Carstairs and Glasgow Central. The following operators use this route:

 

Scotrail (operate the most trains north of Lanark Junction)

Virgin WC (operate the fastest trains and the most trains south of Carstairs)

Virgin EC (operate one train a day each way)

Cross-Country (operate the longest-distance trains)

Caledonian Sleepers (operate the longest-formation and most complicated passenger trains)

Trans-Pennine Express

 

DB Schenker

Freightliner

Direct Rail Services

Colas Rail

GB Railfreight

 

So who would maintain this railway; Logically perhaps Virgin, in which case who would maintain the diverging routes over which they operate very few or no trains, for example the Lanark branch or Hamilton Circle ? If Scotrail maintained the branches, how would it work at junctions such as Motherwell; Maybe separate maintenance teams for 'Virgin' points (ie on the Up and Down main lines only) and 'Scotrail' points (all others) ? Or there could be a split en route somewhere, say Carstairs, which would then require separate maintenance teams north and south of this location.  Some TOCs might end up having very little, or even no, infrastructure maintenance responsibility, whereas others would have a heavy workload - How would this be fair ? And wherever a passenger TOC was responsible for maintenance, how would the interests of freight operators, and indeed 'lesser' passenger operators, be safeguarded ?

 

No matter how this proposal is implemented (if it even is), I cannot see how it can be possibly more efficient and cheaper than the present system, despite the issues with Network Rail mentioned above. And as for the statement that it might lead to lower fares, this is simply political hot air and has no connection with the real world whatsoever.