Supaned

On 28/12/2019 at 16:20, Covkid said:

 

Traincrew are actually in three places Mike.

 

Enjoying their rest days and annual leave

At work working trains

At work training or instructing

 

Some parts of the media are trying to portray the traincrew in a bad light by refusing to help their employers out by giving up their valuable time. Now perhaps some unfortunate people have T&Cs which dictate that they have to work their days off but traincrew don't.  Therefore it is entirely up to the crew whether they want to sacrifice personal and family time to try and correct the mismanagement of the franchises by the TOC owners and more importantly the DfT.

 

When at work the crew are either working to a roster, or released from a roster to instruct or train. To put this simply Depot X might have three links of 24 drivers, totally 72 drivers as the complement. Let's just say there are

three vacancies

two long term sick

two drivers off trains on chain of care

one driver on incompatible medication

four drivers released for instructing and assessments

 

That means that you only have 60 instead of 72 to run your service with - without selecting your drivers to release for traction training.  Release four - one for each instructor and you are down to 56 drivers available, and don't forget that each link of drivers only has so much crossover in terms of route and traction, so you cannot always use a Link C driver to cover a Link A vacancy.

 

This has been life on a daily basis for many years, partly brought into focus by the fact that train drivers are now well paid and most do not need to work any overtime and rest days, and those that do see 40% taken by HM revenue in tax.

  

 

 

And it is a very similar situation with a TOC that I am very familiar with.

On paper there are 150 drivers available across 4 links. Each link has certain route or traction requirements , meaning that in Link 1 only 60 drivers on paper can cover every job.

At present the depot has 13 vacancies , meaning that even before sickness , leave , chain of care , training etc, that many lines of work have to be covered - this in turn automatically eats up any spare capacity built into the headcount .

There are presently 7 trainee drivers in progress , however these will not be fully quaified to work on their own much before the middle of 2020 due to the route learning and traction training they have to undertake once passed out. Likewise, if a driver transfers from another TOC , their training period is longer and it is often several months before they are fully trained to do the work in their respective link , so even employing 15 qualified drivers does not fix the problem overnight.

Another issue which most TOCs are facing is that there is currently a group of drivers of a certain age who were all trained at the same time under BR, who are now nearing retirement age and in many cases are electing to leave the industry earlier than age 65 which previously was the norm.  There seems to be no rolling plan in place to continually replace these crew as they retire , and as alluded to elsewhere in this thread , as cost cutting and headcounts are now key it seems , there is no appetite for carrying any sort of surplus of men.

Furthermore , as seems to be common across the industry , diagrams have been tightened up to extract the maximum percieved efficiency out of the workforce , with little margin for late running etc which then merely exports delays around the network as a result, Also , the TOC in question has a maximum agreed working day length of 10 hours , and many of the new diagrams are close to that time limit , which combined with the lack of spare cover means that drivers are working far longer hours per week than any average link calculation , bearing in mind that spare turns are 8h45 in length , and regardless of 4 or 5 day week shift pattern , so tired crews are electing to not work any rest days or overtime simply to try to recharge the batteries - it's a viscious circle in that there's a shortage of crews , but the crews they do have are being worked harder and longer and something has to give.

I also suspect that as the fines for cancelling a train for a lack of driver are far less than the cost of employing a driver , the TOCs really don't worry too much about it - perhaps something that could be looked at by the powers that be to make such a thing less attractive to do?

Obviously the festive period will have a greater proportion of staff not wanting to work overtime to be able to spend time with families etc , it seems this festive period has served to show up just how few staff there actually are running the trains and how much the industry does rely on goodwill and overtime - and one final thought on the matter of goodwill , only a few weeks ago West Midlands were more than happy to throw the guard grade away on the altar of DOO , so perhaps is it any wonder that those same staff are far less inclined to work overtime as a result?

Maly Zlata?

I've been watching JRJ for some time now , I agree the presenting sometimes is a bit lacking but I watch it primarily for the subject matter - it gave me a few ideas before I visited Japan , and now, having been , I do have a greater interest in the railways there . 

Working in the rail industry , I do find the reports on how they do that side of things to be particularly interesting.

I see it as a decent bit of entertainment , there aren't many other TV programs dedicated to railways that are like it.

5 hours ago, dmustu said:

Yes, they has 747 to 751. Pretty sure they has 746 as well, but I think that one went as soon as the first voyagers were introduced. In the final 12 months of the Cheltenham - Swindon's, they had 747, 749 and 751 to run the service. Despite only having only 3 sets, the odd one made it down to Reading on occasion!

 

The odd one still went through to Portsmouth, I can remember one turning up vice Voyager one afternoon,

On 14/10/2019 at 17:59, w124bob said:

 There was also around this time a 90 hauled Pretenderlino working, mid afternoon from New st to Picc. The return working contiued to Derby with a 57, rumour was a couple of senior Virgin staff arranged this as the departure off New st was around 17.30(FO?). I don't know the full 158 working diagrammes but there may have been a pair leased to Virgin around 2000ish. Virgin XC  also used a mk2 set with 57 power for awhile on a midday New st Picc service and return.

Bob,

The class 90 and DVT set was a hire-in to cover for a 221 that hit a car on a crossing near York and was out of traffic for a long period awaiting repair,

The diagram was ECS from Crewe CS to New St, then Manchester and back , round the houses ECS via Aston , Manchester and back , round the houses ECS via Aston , Manchester and back then ECS to Crewe CS.

There was a single occasion where the set was used on a Newcastle turn with a 57/3 as Derby men had also learnt them , this job came back to New St then went ECS to Crewe CS with the 57 light back to New St.

Occasionally a 57 got turned out if  there was an issue with the 90 or DVT , the regular DVT had a poor set of batteries and used to de-configure the TDM quite frequently.

As far as 158s go, I thought Virgin had 158747-158751? They started on the Edinburgh- Liverpool/Manchester-Birmingham-Portsmouth circuit as stated , but later on ended up on the Swindons.

On 04/08/2019 at 11:23, Fat Controller said:

; very reliable and fast, but the brakes were somewhat lacking; it had to be pulled out of hedgerows on several occasions. Mind you, this was the era when modern trucks were starting to have air-brakes, and had notices on the rear saying 'Danger; Air Brakes', as they stopped so quickly in comparison to cable and rod brakes.

Slightly OT , but similar notices are on the rear of some Hindustan Ambassadors in India - presumably the originals had poor brakes, now they must have ABS or servos and similar , as they claim "Power Brake - Keep Distance"

I'm visiting the family this week (who live in Grand Madieu). We visited the Gond Pontouvre retail park (mainly because there's a very good beer warehouse there). Infer scrap merchants are still taking in locomotives from SNCF, there were 2 rows awaiting disposal , mainly Y type shunters although there were some BB63500s and 2 BB67400s.

On 26/07/2019 at 20:12, Trog said:

A modern transponder as used by Pendolinos etc. note how fragile and cheap looking it is compared to the BR equivalent. Not much chance of that still working after you have run a couple of JCBs over it.

Err. That's a TASS Balise (and yes , that it what it is called) , which has stored data used to determine the Tilt Authority and Speed Supervision (TASS) for Classes 221 and 390 to use tilt operation

I don't think XC necessarily want rid of the Leicester/Notts stoppers , more a case of local authorities wishlisting train services along with certain TOCs fishing for work. The stopping services concerned both form longer distance trains as part or their diagrams , the Notts stoppers forming a Cardiff upon turnround at Notts and the Leicester terminator forming a Stansted at New Street,

There could be a case for re-connecting the New St - Leicester stopper to the Leicester - Lincoln , which could certainly be achieved without any investment in infrastructure, but going back to the days of Central Trains is not necessarily a good thing , in their latter days the service was farcical with late running , and indeed since the timetable change I'd suggest LNW/WMT concentrate on running and staffing their current published timetable before taking on any more work.

Haven't they since built a housing estate on the site of Nuneaton shed , making a dive under the WCML even more difficult?

It has to be asked though , is there really that great a demand for through travel from Coventry to Leicester and points beyond? If there was genuine statistical evidence in terms of ticket sales (I wouldn't count a passenger survey as that isn't necessarily a true reflection of journey intent) then fair enough but I'd be very surprised if this was the case. Certainly when I pass through Nuneaton I can't say as there are many dozens of people connecting between the Coventry and Leicester trains with any regularity.

I really can't see how they can achieve the manoeuvre they want without a reversal or a horrendously expensive and intrusive flyover , and again , I'd make the point , for what actual benefit.

so how common were EM1s at Ashton Moss? 

On a related matter , it has been interesting on my travels watching the various methods of work used for attaching locos to trains.

For example , in at least Germany and the Czech Republic , diesel locos are shut down , and electrics drop the pantograph prior to the shunter going in between, The shunter gives the driver his ID tag , and the driver gives him the loco key, thus providing a measure of safety , and they are only returned when the task is completed.

In the US, many freight railroads use the "3 step" process, where the loco brake is destroyed, reverser key removed and generator field CB tripped , so that again the loco cannot be moved whilst staff are between vehicles. For passenger trains , because the ETH connections have to in effect be connected by a fitter "carman" , they use a blue flag or light to provide extra warning that staff are working on or around vehicles (same as a NOT TO BE MOVED board in the UK).

I've also seen some hair raising things , although learning about the Berne square makes them perhaps less so , that said, I remember watching some hump shunting in Austria where the shunter has to place hemschuh (effectively a metal scotch that fits over the railhead and slides along it) in front of moving vehicles in order to manually retard them, the only wagons that were treated differently were tankers where the shunter rode on the platform at one end applying the handbrake as necessary.

Also announced at the Springfield show from Atlas :

ACF 5250 4 bay Centerflow covered hoppers

89' Multi Max Autorack cars - these are the newest version which can be adjusted internally for either 2 or 3 levels.

Thanks for all that info gents

Having just started to work on the Cardiff route , the pic of the Brickyard sidings is particularly interesting as we have to shunt to there regularly, Does anyone have any more pics of the yard in it's former use or further details of the trains that used it?

Was it only ever worked by an 08 , or did main line locos get in there too?

Whilst it is just paint and good commercial sense for the owners of the locos , I find it ironic given the fuss over 50007 and green paint.

Kato have just announced Viewliner 2 Baggage cars (pretty much an essential for present Amtrak operations) :

https://www.katousa.com/N/Amfleet/index.html

https://www.katousa.com/N/Amfleet/156-0955.jpg

I bought a copy of said poster from the DB Museum in Nurnberg last time I visited. Admittedly a few years ago , but they certainly were selling them.

You did well to get in - normally all I've seen is what is visible from the line as the train passes by.

Back in BKK next month so hoping for some more GEK action :-)

There is a chord from the Eastern line that heads towards Bang Sue , normally freight only , but a set of points would soon solve that. If you take an Eastern Line train out of Bangkok, the triangle is just before Phayathai - what looks like double track is actually two single lines with the line towards Bang Sue being on the left as you head into Phayathai.

I presume SRT will have to do something to maintain access to Makkasan works as well.

Funnily enough I had been looking at that Tmf 2/2 wondering about chassis....

And in an equally coincidental turn of events , a Kato GE 4/4ii is on it's way in the post.....

I do like the modular idea too.

I fully expect this to be an order for Siemens Chargers and matching stock , as is being delivered to US states such as Illinois.

I told you so....

Well done.

Will that be in it's CNJ guise or the more usual? Have to say I like the CNJ look.

Just catching up with this after some time away.

Turning this on it's head , how many drivers having read ALL of their applicable notices actually slow down for a TSR or ESR where there are no boards provided whatsoever (ie the restriction has either not been imposed or if any repairs have been done , no SPATE boards are provided)? I suspect in reality very few.

My take on this is that every TSR or ESR these days should have at least one warning magnet (2 if an ESR) , a warning board , a commencement board and a termination board. Whilst one of these items could well be missing (ie fallen over) , the likelihood of the full set of boards and magnets being missing is, I would hope, very small , likewise if a speed restriction is newly imposed, trains should be stopped and cautioned until such time as all the warning boards etc are in place. Whether the boards and magnets are correctly laid out is a matter for another debate , but either way , the driver should, upon encountering the warning equipment for the restriction , take some appropriate action and timings etc be damned, as soon as a restriction is imposed then any delay penalty should the driver reduce speed well before the actual restriction will be on the infrastructure owner and not the TOC.

I believe the method of working for the Lickey involves setting up a multi-party call on the GSM-R radio. There are off indicators at Bromsgrove for the driver of the loco on the rear as well.

It's unlikely that a train being banked would be stopped halfway up the bank barring a signal failure - the whole point of the exercise is to get the train up the hill - if there isn't a clear run to begin with I can't see the train being signalled out.