Great British Railways

[RichardT]

13 hours ago, Mike Storey said:

(bar a certain Eco Warrior, Mr Packham, flying around in jets to get to his latest book launch).

What was that you were saying about keeping the thread on-topic and avoiding rants?

 

Please leave the Daily Mail culture war cr*p at the door.

 

Richard T

[Oldddudders]

12 hours ago, Mike Storey said:

Just thought I would post the results of the extensive consultation that GBR has conducted

 

My history teacher, Miss Macaulay, once summed up one of my A Level essays as "A good deal of waffle", and this may qualify for the same brickbat. Given the perpetual dynamic of politics - with Government policy changing, not always as a result of a change of Government, either - every long-term plan of this sort will, during its currency, suffer from expediency and signs-of-the-times, often short-term, thinking. Secretaries-of State come and go, and it is not regarded as a prestige post, sadly, more a poison chalice. Having worked at one time for the Director, Financial Planning, BRB, I have some idea how this can compromise things. Nevertheless, setting basic goals from a present-day viewpoint seems an imperative at this stage.

 

Heeding environmental aspects is an obvious starting block, and as noted is particularly complex right now with Society 'greening' at unprecedented pace. Then there is the Social Railway (was it the 1968 Transport Act that first defined this?) which is always likely to be a drain on finances, of course, although as enthusiasts we delight in every new station or re-opening, many will struggle ever to make a positive contribution. Knocking out the competitive elements, that 30 years ago were said to be in the customers' interests, I would offer as a Good Thing. De-mystifying the fare structure would be popular. 

 

Post-Covid effects and high inflation are going to make assessment of necessary service levels a tricky exercise. The trains I regularly catch - Eurostar, GWR, XC - always seem healthily full, the last-named often excessively so. The industry evidently offers a lot that people want. Let's hope the waffle turns into something more tangible, that can turn the present mess into a cohesive strategy.  

[Not Jeremy]

Well Ian, I think that was a concise, relevant and perceptive deal of waffle.

 

I will join with you in hoping for a better and more forward looking future on the tracks.

 

Back in the day you often got on empty trains, compartment to self and girlfriend all the way to Weymouth from Bath many years ago,  these days the blessed thing is full of people!

 

Not that I'd want a compartment to myself, if you see what I mean...

 

Think I'll go now!

[Mike Storey]

5 hours ago, RichardT said:

What was that you were saying about keeping the thread on-topic and avoiding rants?

 

Please leave the Daily Mail culture war cr*p at the door.

 

Richard T

 

It was a direct reference to discussions being had, about the shameful way Mr Packham has been wasting time and money, on the HS2 thread, which you have either missed or not remembered. Its relevance to GBR is whether any honest evaluation of railway re-openings or enhancements will arise from that quarter.

 

As for the Daily Mail, I despise it as much as Mr Packham, and they both hate HS2.

 

[KingEdwardII]

5 hours ago, Not Jeremy said:

Not that I'd want a compartment to myself

You'd be blessed lucky to get any kind of compartment any longer - them's not the kind of trains that run any longer - all open plan, like so many offices have become.

 

Yours, Mike.

[hmrspaul]

2 hours ago, KingEdwardII said:

You'd be blessed lucky to get any kind of compartment any longer - them's not the kind of trains that run any longer - all open plan, like so many offices have become.

 

Yours, Mike.

I have no understanding how you youngsters manage. Weekend on the nest with the lady and then stretching out on an overnight train to where one was living in compartment all to ones self. Wonderful! Yes, a shared compartment was preferable, but life sucks.

 

But the nicest train I ever travelled in was in Italy where the whole of the cushions in the compartment pulled out to make an enormous bed. Just 2nd class with a lot of strangers, and couldn't understand a word, but unforgettable. Now why didn't they catch on as a standard? Didn't seem an expensive arrangement for the rail company to provide 😀

 

Paul

 

[Mike Storey]

Just pinching an article from phil-b259 (hope that's ok?) which was posted on the Northern Powerhouse thread, and is a summary of articles that appeared in Modern Railways in July 2021, by Roger Ford. I know it is a little old, but still worth reading. Scroll to Page 2 for the "Williams-Shapps Plan" :

 

https://ezezine.com/ezine/pdf/759-2021.06.17.03.03.archive.pdf

 

To find out more, you have to subscribe to the mag!

 

Edited July 26, 2022 by Mike Storey
Got the issue date wrong - many thanks MDVLE!

[John M Upton]

Wow, that is an utter omnishambles looking for somewhere to happen...

[phil-b259]

On 27/07/2022 at 13:59, John M Upton said:

Wow, that is an utter omnishambles looking for somewhere to happen...

 

Did you seriously expect anything less?

[John M Upton]

To be honest, err no...

[Wheatley]

‘meaningful numbers of people in middle and senior management roles with substantial experience outside Network Rail, including in some cases from outside the rail and transport industry altogether; and more people with retail and customer relationship experience’.

 

Dear God no, at least not without some sort of balancing common sense faction. I can think of at least one station which has a very expensive easy access area (Harrington Hump) on the platform for wheelchairs because some ex-Supermarket wonk in charge of accessibility simply went down a list of station stepping distances and ticked off the worst ones until he ran out of budget. How the wheelchair user then gets over the steps-only footbridge which is the only  exit from that platform is still yet to be explained. 

 

Let them run marketing campaigns, retailing, brand identities, PR, all the sort of stuff which railways have tended to be a bit crap at, but don't let them anywhere near operations. 

[hmrspaul]

7 hours ago, Wheatley said:

‘meaningful numbers of people in middle and senior management roles with substantial experience outside Network Rail, including in some cases from outside the rail and transport industry altogether; and more people with retail and customer relationship experience’.

 

Dear God no, at least not without some sort of balancing common sense faction. I can think of at least one station which has a very expensive easy access area (Harrington Hump) on the platform for wheelchairs because some ex-Supermarket wonk in charge of accessibility simply went down a list of station stepping distances and ticked off the worst ones until he ran out of budget. How the wheelchair user then gets over the steps-only footbridge which is the only  exit from that platform is still yet to be explained. 

 

Let them run marketing campaigns, retailing, brand identities, PR, all the sort of stuff which railways have tended to be a bit crap at, but don't let them anywhere near operations. 

 

What goes around comes around.

My Dad's final job in the late 60s and early 70s in BRB HQ Marylebone was selling the movement of oil on rail. He had trained and worked on the station organisation side of railways originally and in the 60s on modernising freight movement.  He disliked his direct boss was a "carpet salesman" and he claimed there were only two of them in BRB HQ able to "translate" information coming from the operational people on why something had gone wrong with whatever train was in trouble. 

 

Paul

Edited July 29, 2022 by hmrspaul

[Mike Storey]

On the aspect of using non-railway people in middle to senior management roles - this is nothing new at all (as hmrs Paul has described), and was an occasional attempt inside BR to re-vamp various activities. A very few worked, but most did not.

 

Railtrack and the TOCs attempted the same, post privatisation, but after just a few years, almost all TOC MD's were ex-BR. Network Rail tried something similar, but even they had to admit to huge difficulties when it came to understanding what was really going on, and how to deal with it - again, almost all senior management posts, outside Finance, PR and HR, (including mine) were ultimately held by long-serving railwaymen either originally from BR, or from one of the internal management training schemes that had gradually, and reluctantly, sprung back into life. Only Strategic Planning seemed to be a reserved occupation for non-railway peeps. That worked out well......

 

I guess the re-invention of the wheel is based on the fanciful idea that such people, devoid of the railway culture, can come up with whizzo ideas about efficiencies and marketing. In reality, the railway family come up with those ideas anyway, which are often pinched and presented as something "new" (cf Shapps passim), and are then tasked with making them actually work.

 

It is to be hoped that GBR will provide a better connection between wheel and rail. Just sayin'.

 

 

 

[BernardTPM]

I'm sure if they got people with no medical experience doing operations in hospitals we could solve the waiting list problem very quickly - no-one would want one!

Edited September 28, 2022 by BernardTPM

[DavidLong]

I wouldn't normally offer a link to an article in the general press about the current state of the railway but Gwyn Topham has been doing the job at the Graun for a few years now  and generally gives a decent summary.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/sep/28/great-british-railways-is-dead-rail-industry-at-lowest-ebb-since-the-days-of-railtrack

Summary "we are in a hole and are still digging"!

It does, of course, feature a couple of quotes from the 'world's greatest transport correspondent™'

 

David

[Mike Storey]

1 hour ago, DavidLong said:

I wouldn't normally offer a link to an article in the general press about the current state of the railway but Gwyn Topham has been doing the job at the Graun for a few years now  and generally gives a decent summary.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/sep/28/great-british-railways-is-dead-rail-industry-at-lowest-ebb-since-the-days-of-railtrack

Summary "we are in a hole and are still digging"!

It does, of course, feature a couple of quotes from the 'world's greatest transport correspondent™'

 

David

 

I agree - this is a good article, the contents of which have been ignored by other media who prefer only to concentrate on the industrial relations aspects.

 

His conclusion, that if GBR is not sanctified in this parliament leaves the door open to Labour's nationalisation plans, is not perhaps accurate. It does not matter whether GBR exists or not - this will not affect the re-nationalisation of TOCs when each comes to the end of their contracts. 

[Nearholmer]

This is an important phrase from within it:

 

Few in the industry argued with the conclusions.

 

The S-W Plan is actually pretty sound (I found that really hard to type, given the S part, but credit where credit is due), and it merits being followed through, with progressive nationalisation of the TOCs at a subsequent stage if that is the political flavour at the time.

 

It would be far worse to have endless limbo-land stuff while the current government tries to come up with an ideologically-driven “better idea” by the inevitable process of ringing some bolt-eyed mates in a free market think tank.

[Mike Storey]

1 hour ago, Nearholmer said:

This is an important phrase from within it:

 

Few in the industry argued with the conclusions.

 

The S-W Plan is actually pretty sound (I found that really hard to type, given the S part, but credit where credit is due), and it merits being followed through, with progressive nationalisation of the TOCs at a subsequent stage if that is the political flavour at the time.

 

It would be far worse to have endless limbo-land stuff while the current government tries to come up with an ideologically-driven “better idea” by the inevitable process of ringing some bolt-eyed mates in a free market think tank.

 

"Pretty sound" in that it had very little to say about how it would all be done, just what the end results should look like, kind of, to a degree that would brook little argument because it was so vague. 

 

How Shapps was allowed to attach his moniker to Williams we can leave to historians, but the intent was presumably to give it some prospect of surviving contact with the enemy (the Treasury). It does not appear to have done so.

 

That leaves us, as the article suggests, in limbo yet again.

 

[John M Upton]

Reports this morning that the whole Great British Railways plan is about to be binned!

[lmsforever]

Hooray  someone is seeing sense promoted by a career politician  who had no interest in the future of an important sector of the UK,s transport.Lets hope that the future plans are of good ideas that continue the expansion of freight and passenger trains also please keep us from Labour,s nationalisation plans complete with trade unions running things.

[Wheatley]

Be careful what you wish for. The libertarian approach to this would be to take all the controls and Public Sevice Obligation limitations off, sell it off to the highest bidder and let the market decide whether we need railways or not  

[Dagworth]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-63313823

[melmerby]

7 minutes ago, Dagworth said:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-63313823

Not surprised, the way the rumour mill has been going.

[Michael Hodgson]

Only just spotted this.  So they're going to pass new laws about e-scooters instead. 

Probably about time they did that, but it seems unlikely to be seen in the North of England as "levelling up" or improving their transport infrastructure.  Sorry we can't afford new trains across the pennines but at least you can go to Hull on your escooter on the M62 - that'll be fun in the snow!