Mike_Walker

I always think the same when I see the similar one at Didcot but then I always like to have my feet firmly on terra-firmer...

Now all that's needed is some trains!

The diplomatic corps loss is the hobby's gain!

The quality of management is important, not just in general terms but specifically at individual levels. Much of the current issues at Avanti stem from the attitudes of a former MD who was particularly unpleasant towards his employees who have reacted in an understandable way. Elsewhere, we have the opposite, people like Mark Hopwood at GWR or the late Adrian Shooter when at Chiltern who inspire their teams and will get them to go the extra mile to get the job done. Since Adrian left Chiltern morale has hit the floor exemplified by the Turbo which ran around for several days with its branding skilfully amended to read: "Chiltern Railways sadly a part of Arriva, a DB company." Mark Hopwood once said to me: "Treat your staff as you would expect to be treated. If you treat them like s**t don't be surprised if they treat you with contempt and become bolshee." It's not confined to the railways. We had a supermarket here which got a new manager who was a right bar-steward to his staff and not much better towards his customers. The staff morale collapsed and the customers suffered as a result. After he departed it took ages for things to recover by which time the company had overlooked its lease was expiring and a rival moved in and, in effect, chucked them out!

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.

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?

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!

I have to agree with all that Mike says. Roughly one third of the passenger trains on the national network are currently DOO as is the entire London Underground with no discernible difference in safety compared to trains with guards still operating the doors. Many drivers actually prefer DOO as they feel it speeds up the operation particularly on busy services where the guard might have to fight his way through to the door controls. I accept there can be a role for a guard/conductor/train manager, call them what you will, on some services. As Mike says, here in the Thames Valley we have branches which are equipped for DOO but the conductor still operates the doors in addition to checking/selling tickets. This causes delays and reduces the number of tickets that can be checked or sold per trip thereby impacting on revenue. It is local agreements that require the conductor to operate the doors but it does mean that if a conductor is unavailable the train can run in full DOO mode - but in the case of the Marlow branch only as far as Bourne End as the last 2 3/4 miles aren't DOO approved! There is also a case for them on long distance trains. In the Marlow Railway Society we have a retired GWR HSS train manager who has been chronicling his memoirs in our club magazine and it is an eye-opener as to what such staff members have to deal with on a daily basis. But again, do they really need to be in charge of opening and closing the doors at every stop? Sadly, I think there is more than a whiff of the 1980s about this. The RMT seems to have aspirations to do what the NUM tried and failed to do; bring down a Tory government. It didn't work then and it almost certainly won't now but the result could be the same for the industry. People are already voting with their feet. Just before Christmas, three GWR drivers, two from Exeter and one from Plymouth, were contributing to another well-known forum. It seems that on the Thursday before Christmas, thanks to the overtime ban, there was only one train from Paddington to the West of England from late afternoon until close of play and that was only a 5-car unit. The trio were gleefully predicting chaos as Paddington would be bursting at the seams as usual at this time of year and this train would, as a result, resemble something from Indian Railways. But in the event they couldn’t understand why Paddington was almost deserted and the train, having carried a few standees as far as Reading, had seats available for the rest of its journey which as it happens was truncated at Plymouth due to no onward crew being available, stranding anyone who wished to continue into Cornwall. Where was everyone? Well, to me the answer is obvious: they were in their cars or on National Express/Megabus coaches on the M4/M5 or A303/A30. Having had their plans so thoroughly disrupted will they be rushing back to the railways in future? One of those GWR drivers then had the brass neck to complain about how difficult it was for his son to get home from Brighton for the festivities! Oh, deep joy! Regrettably I can't see an early resolution to either the railway dispute or the others ongoing or likely to happen as we seem to have a government that is totally incapable of understanding what "negotiation" means or is prepared to allow the managements of those industries/services to deal with the issues. I say that as a life-long Tory supporter who will never, ever vote for them again. On the subject of DOO, a good friend of mine who was, at the time, a senior driver on the Long Island RR, was visiting at the time the Turbos and DOO was being introduced on the Chiltern lines. Reggie got chatting to a driver and was very interested in the concept of DOO - the LIRR at that time would typically have two or three crewmen on the train in addition to the driver. "What" he asked "would you do if someone started shooting back there?" (The LIRR had recently had such an incident). The Chiltern driver looked at him thoughtfully and replied: "I stay in hear mate and that door remains locked!"

Nice idea Mike, but is there enough room?

That was, of course, the proposal when there was talk of closing Marylebone in the early '80s. Since then the service levels on the Chiltern main line (that via High Wycombe) have exploded beyond recognition and I doubt if Paddington could actually accommodate all of those plus, as you say, there are the issues at Old Oak Common. Under the present plans there will be additional Elizabeth Line turnback sidings provided at OOC on the trackbed of the now closed GW "New Line". EL services which today terminate at Paddington LL will continue to OOC. In addition, Chiltern have proposed a two platform terminal station opposite North Acton LU station which would be connected to the main OOC station by a Travolator or similar - they acknowledge that future access to the GWML at OOC will not be possible. This station would not be able to handle all the CML services but the plan is that it would be used for local services from as far out as High Wycombe or possibly Aylesbury via Princes Risborough. Whether this plan ever comes to fruition remains to be seen.

And in the case of GWR's "Pullman" services it still is prepared and cooked on board from freshly sourced local ingredients. Served with Silver Service too - the last surviving example on a "normal" service in this country although they are under pressure from the DfT to abandon it as a cost cutting move despite it being profitable.

That's Metro-North who switch between systems at line speed in the Pelham area on the Grand Central to New Haven line.

Very true. A lot of passengers will let a LU train pass at stations between Amersham and Harrow-on-the-Hill in favour of the next Chiltern service just as they ignore Crossrail trains for GW ones on the GWML.

Apart from any suggestion of laying more 3rd rail on the national network causes a fit of the vapours among the elf-n-safety brigade. Yes, we know there's umpteen miles of it on the Southern and LU/LO but they won't be told...!

Class 68s do sound superb - hearing one accelerate away from High Wycombe is always a treat. Probably why those in the flats at MYB are complaining too! 😀

Sadly, I'm reliably told that electrification of the lines out of Marylebone is likely to be a non-starter due to the constraints caused by the clearances in the tunnels. You can't go down and you can't go up and then there's the bridge over the WCML between the tunnels which is already of the "hump back" variety having been raised when the WCML was wired.

Many moons ago a chap bought the old station building at Little Kimble which had been converted into a house; at that time there was only a minimal DMU service on the line mostly confined to the peak hours. Not long after he'd moved in his slumbers were shattered one night by a heavy train passing through and returning a few hours later, still pre-dawn. Come morning he was on the "dog" to BR to enquire what the hell was going on. After a thoughtful pause, the reply came back: "Oh, that's the new rubbish train." "What rubbish train?" "It's running from Northolt up to the old clay pits at Calvert" "You mean it's going to be a regular thing?" "Well, the initial contract is for 20 years and it might be running twice a day." Needless to say, the house was on the market once more very soon after! More recently, when residents started to move into the expensive new flats built on the site of the old Marylebone DMU depot (on the up side approaching the station) they soon complained about the noise from the trains and threatened legal action to shut the station down! Didn't wash with dear old Adrian Shooter who simply pointed out to them that the station opened in 1898 and if they hadn't looked out of the window and spotted the trains passing when making their purchases that was their problem. Today they appear to be at it again, this time complaining about the pollution caused and they seem to have Citizen Kahn on their side - never one to pass up a cause that can get him in front of the cameras.

Oh yes, I'd forgotten about them. There are two on the bi-directional Up Oxford for movements in the down direction approaching Kennington Junction. OD2331 shows G or YY and OD2337 G, Y or YY depending on the aspects shown by OD2343 and then OD2347, 2349 or 2351. However, I've never come across them on a single line.

That signal is a repeater or distant in old money and displays only yellow or green, the solid white triangle indicates this. It cannot display a red aspect.

Best wishes to all on RMweb. Mike

That's what I'm planning to do with my upcoming micro-layout based on Helland. There will be thick stands of trees at both ends to hide the disappearance through the backscene.

Most probably yes but not until I actually get started!

Which is precisely what I'm working on inspired by this classic Peter Gray image... 😀 In it's infancy at the moment. Once Xmas is out of the way I'll order up things I need and get building.

The main issue as I understand it was that the original cooler groups were of inadequate capacity which was exasperated by a build up of sludge. It was cured by fitting an alternative design but they always sailed close to the wind in hot weather and close attention was paid to regular flushing of the system to prevent recurrence. Early on the was also a spate of turbocharger failures caused by poor quality control during manufacture. Some casting cores were offset leading to thinning of the walls which resulted in failures. This might be the "breaking manifolds" referred to.

The first phase opening in 2024 will be Oxford to Milton Keynes, not Bedford. Options for Bletchley to Bedford are still being considered.