Snow1964
Established Member
I was thinking of worst case scenario, hopefully lot shorter than that.Twenty drivers a month (well four weeks) seems like agony. That's 77 fortnights (769 / 10 rounded up) or 154 weeks (77 x 2), that's almost three years (nearly 156 weeks).
However as there is effectively 75 trains (30 are half sets), the maths doesn't look good there either. Roughly speaking SWR operates 125 hours of 168 hour week (negligible overnight services). Allowing for holidays etc, 4 drivers doing 30-35 hours covers 125 hours. Actually wouldn't diagram all 75, probably nearer 67 in service.
67 trains x 4 drivers = 268 drivers needed, so suggests will be 2.7 drivers on each train if need to train up 769 drivers. I wonder if it 769 drivers across all SWR (and have used wrong figure) whereas would be about half that for just suburban drivers.