Back to the bad old days’: swingeing rail cuts set alarm bells ringing

Watershed said:

what's the point in having separate XC and LNER depots in Newcastle or Edinburgh, or TPE and Avanti depots in Glasgow.

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BR maintained separate depots in local areas in many cases though, usually due to different traction types.

In the case you cite, you've got LNER with Hitachi stock, which from what others have posted was procured with Maintenance and Support to be covered by Hitachi. Similar on Avanti where the Pendolinos are maintained by Alstom. It's unlikely Hitachi or Alstom would take on maintenance of Siemens stock for example. So they only practical way for eliminating depots would be to change the rolling stock procurement so that once a fleet is decided any others operating in that area would have to come from the same provider.

Wolfie said:

You sir l have zero sympathy with. The archetypical right wing Tory bigot shut your mouth and tug your forelock to your employers type. How dare those pesky teachers want to protect themselves, their pupils, and their health. I support them. I despise the current Government.

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I sit as a school governor and got to see close at hand what the unions were demanding and I can assure you it had precious little to do with protecting the pupils or the staff. They were obstructive over the use of remote learning options, in some cases didn't want teachers taking remote lessons. Limited marking and feedback was given for those pupils who did complete online work. Minimal contact - even by phone - was maintained with pupils and parents. They wanted schools closed without the backing or direction of either Public Health England or the local Director of Public Health.

Sorry - some of the teaching unions have behaved appallingly during the Covid pandemic and I'm not prepared to defend such behaviour.

Fortunately many teachers don't agree with the political outlook of their unions and largely ignore what the unions are demanding. They only remain members of unions like the NEU for the legal protection it affords, which sadly they do need. There is a market for a new, sensible, pragmatic union in the Education sector, because their current ones are not fit for purpose.

squizzler said:

massive public strike would probably bring down the government at this stage.

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not in the rail industry it wouldn’t. Most people simply wouldn’t care. If anything it would strengthen government’s hand. Remember what happened in 1982.

irish_rail said:

Thats exactly what I said. Obviously every driver isn't going to sign every route at Manchester for example, but no reason why an Avanti driver can't also sign 802s and the route to York, plus maybe 195s and the road to Liverpool etc etc.

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It’s not what you said, nor what you are saying now. There is good reason why Manchester Avanti drivers shouldnt sign 802s and the route to York - it would cost a fortune to gain and maintain all that route competence, for relatively little use.

There is good reason why, say, TPE Glasgow drivers and Avanti Glasgow drivers should sign each others’ traction; their route cards are near identical, and there would be rostering efficiency in having the two combined.

A0wen said:

You're mistaken. With a modal share of ~15% and many former commuters now able to work from home, I think a national rail strike would go largely un-noticed by the vast majority of the population. Certainly not enough to make a material difference to the government's standing. The only thing a strike like that would achieve is worsen the fiscal position of the railway network.

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I certainly do think now may well be the least worst time to have a few necessary "fights", e.g. regarding final salary pensions for new entrants (hardly any business offers these) and other modernisations, plus DOO strikes if they're going for any.

I am utterly opposed to striking about the pay, terms, conditions and practices for future staff not yet employed by the company. Their role should be legally limited to direct impacts on existing staff who are members. Companies must be free to plan their future employment strategy without this sort of intervention. So let them strike, and don't negotiate at all. They will give up eventually when they lose too much money - see dockers, miners...


@Bald Rick said:

There is good reason why, say, TPE Glasgow drivers and Avanti Glasgow drivers should sign each others’ traction; their route cards are near identical, and there would be rostering efficiency in having the two combined.

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You could answer that within the franchise structure simply by negotiating moving the TPE Scottish services plus the 397s and crews to Avanti. They are a better fit there anyway; the North West stuff was never a good fit for TPE and was just put there because there was potential to eke out a bit more from the Class 185 fleet. And that would add the flexibility for Avanti to mix the stock up a bit e.g. use a Pendolino for particularly busy Manchester-Scotland services or a 397 for particularly quiet WCML ones.

squizzler said:

I would suggest their hand is stronger than people admit - a massive public strike would probably bring down the government at this stage.

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I think you could be very wrong there! Every government in trouble wants an enemy to fight (see all the wars starting by failing dictators etc).
In olden times a Tory government would be worried by the commuters in the Tory shires - but they have proved they can work from home and can almost certainly last out the unions. And so Boris might be more than happy to get his right wing back on side with some union bashing.
The people who have to commute are going to be lower paid types who will be susceptible to "train drivers huge wages!!", and public sector workers who have suffered badly whilst the rail workers haven't been in the public sector and might well have a wry smile about the unions getting their nationalisation wish and then not liking the inevitable consequences.
The rail union leaders and members need to consider the history of the miners strike - a politicised leadership walking their members into a battlefield chosen and prepared by the government. That press release is exactly what they mustn't do - look political and belligerent when some change is inevitable.

Meerkat said:

I think you could be very wrong there! Every government in trouble wants an enemy to fight (see all the wars starting by failing dictators etc).
In olden times a Tory government would be worried by the commuters in the Tory shires - but they have proved they can work from home and can almost certainly last out the unions. And so Boris might be more than happy to get his right wing back on side with some union bashing.
The people who have to commute are going to be lower paid types who will be susceptible to "train drivers huge wages!!", and public sector workers who have suffered badly whilst the rail workers haven't been in the public sector and might well have a wry smile about the unions getting their nationalisation wish and then not liking the inevitable consequences.
The rail union leaders and members need to consider the history of the miners strike - a politicised leadership walking their members into a battlefield chosen and prepared by the government. That press release is exactly what they mustn't do - look political and belligerent when some change is inevitable.

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A very reasonable and measured post.

Wether or not anyone would support a strike , I personally wouldn't advocate for one. However , comparing it to the miners is not comparable. Coal was already a dying industry , that we need to move away from. The railway is seen as something we need to move towards.

baz962 said:

Wether or not anyone would support a strike , I personally wouldn't advocate for one. However , comparing it to the miners is not comparable. Coal was already a dying industry , that we need to move away from. The railway is seen as something we need to move towards.

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One could argue that the roles of booking office staff and suburban guard definitely are in the same space as the role of coal miner in the 1980s. The railway as a whole indeed definitely not.

Bletchleyite said:

You could answer that within the franchise structure simply by negotiating moving the TPE Scottish services plus the 397s and crews to Avanti. They are a better fit there anyway; the North West stuff was never a good fit for TPE and was just put there because there was potential to eke out a bit more from the Class 185 fleet. And that would add the flexibility for Avanti to mix the stock up a bit e.g. use a Pendolino for particularly busy Manchester-Scotland services or a 397 for particularly quiet WCML ones.

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the forumsofteare showed you quoting @A0wen rather than me, but yes, I agree with your analysis.

Bletchleyite said:

One could argue that the roles of booking office staff and suburban guard definitely are in the same space as the role of coal miner in the 1980s. The railway as a whole indeed definitely not.

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Possibly. Although the queue for the ticket office at Bedford one recent day ( within the last week , but struggling to remember the actual day ) was nearly out of the doors.

Bald Rick said:

the forumsofteare showed you quoting @A0wen rather than me, but yes, I agree with your analysis.

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Thanks, somehow went a bit wrong there, I have corrected the quote.

Watershed said:

Yes, essentially a return to the regions-based setup. But even a return to the OfQ setup would deliver efficiencies; what's the point in having separate XC and LNER depots in Newcastle or Edinburgh, or TPE and Avanti depots in Glasgow.

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That's one the areas that does my head in. Newcastle is my perennial example of this actually! Just taking drivers you have driver depots for Northern, TPE, LNER and XC.

TPE drivers sign Edinburgh to Leeds, all LNER drivers sign Newcastle - London with a link that signs Newcastle to Edinburgh, XC drivers sign Derby to Edinburgh (via Leeds and Doncaster). Northern of course also signs parts of these routes as well (Morpeth to Darlington primarily). So you have four sets of TOCs with drivers who all sign parts or indeed sometimes basically identical parts of the ECML from Leeds/Doncaster to Edinburgh.

Yet because they cannot share resources they all have to make their own arrangements and depot establishments so that's extra costs right there from having to employ more drivers, to having more HR, etc etc. Plus if there's disruption they cannot cross cover so even if TPE have a driver sat around without a train because their train is stuck somewhere south of York and LNER have a unit in Newcastle but no driver because their driver is also stuck down south then nobody goes anywhere because the TPE driver cannot drive the LNER unit (which is of course even more farcical here because the units would be almost identical, I imagine the conversion course from an 802 to 800/801 is very very short).

It's this sort of maddening inefficiency that's baked into the system at the moment that you'd hope GBR would be tackling because there must be some fairly easy wins to be had at driver depots like Newcastle. Merging the four depots and then redrawing the link structure seems like it would be an absolute nailed on easy win for improving productivity, efficiency, value for money, reliability, etc. It might even make the job slightly more appealing as you could have much more progression. Join up as a trainee pootling around the North East but eventually you could end up driving trains all the way to Inverness! Whereas right now you want to do that you have to leave Northern and join LNER. Which means Northern gets to spend all the money training the driver but LNER will eventually be the one to benefit when they jump ship for a different challenge.

You could probably even reduce the overall headcount (through natural wastage and a temporary recruitment freeze) and still have a more flexible and useful depot establishment! Same issues of course exist on the guard side of the equation at Newcastle.

Crackers that anyone thought that this was ever going to be a sensible way to run a railway.

A0wen said:

It's unlikely Hitachi or Alstom would take on maintenance of Siemens stock for example.

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I must have imagined TPE’s CAF stock being maintained at Longsight by Alstom.

ainsworth74 said:

That's one the areas that does my head in. Newcastle is my perennial example of this actually! Just taking drivers you have driver depots for Northern, TPE, LNER and XC.

TPE drivers sign Edinburgh to Leeds, all LNER drivers sign Newcastle - London with a link that signs Newcastle to Edinburgh, XC drivers sign Derby to Edinburgh (via Leeds and Doncaster). Northern of course also signs parts of these routes as well (Morpeth to Darlington primarily). So you have four sets of TOCs with drivers who all sign parts or indeed sometimes basically identical parts of the ECML from Leeds/Doncaster to Edinburgh.

Yet because they cannot share resources they all have to make their own arrangements and depot establishments so that's extra costs right there from having to employ more drivers, to having more HR, etc etc. Plus if there's disruption they cannot cross cover so even if TPE have a driver sat around without a train because their train is stuck somewhere south of York and LNER have a unit in Newcastle but no driver because their driver is also stuck down south then nobody goes anywhere because the TPE driver cannot drive the LNER unit (which is of course even more farcical here because the units would be almost identical, I imagine the conversion course from an 802 to 800/801 is very very short).

It's this sort of maddening inefficiency that's baked into the system at the moment that you'd hope GBR would be tackling because there must be some fairly easy wins to be had at driver depots like Newcastle. Merging the four depots and then redrawing the link structure seems like it would be an absolute nailed on easy win for improving productivity, efficiency, value for money, reliability, etc. It might even make the job slightly more appealing as you could have much more progression. Join up as a trainee pootling around the North East but eventually you could end up driving trains all the way to Inverness! Whereas right now you want to do that you have to leave Northern and join LNER. Which means Northern gets to spend all the money training the driver but LNER will eventually be the one to benefit when they jump ship for a different challenge.

You could probably even reduce the overall headcount (through natural wastage and a temporary recruitment freeze) and still have a more flexible and useful depot establishment! Same issues of course exist on the guard side of the equation at Newcastle.

Crackers that anyone thought that this was ever going to be a sensible way to run a railway.

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I agree - and without getting into too much of an argument about driver wages, it's a clear waste of staff who are on a reasonable salary - if you can only drive XC then your day is limited to either one return trip to Derby (around six hours) or two (around twelve hours) - but if you could do other jobs too then you could do a Newcastle - Derby - Newcastle and also a Newcastle - Carlisle - Newcastle too (around six hours for the Derby trip and around three hours for a Carlisle trip - which may be just right in terms of a ten hour working day - I'm sure someone will be along to correct me on the diagram durations etc, but you get the point that I am making - more flexibility would allow staff to be better utilised over a working day

Time and time again we've seen the "Provincial" TOC stretched because staff have been poached by the "Intercity" TOC (which requires lower subsidy and can afford higher wages), creating a transfer market where people only seem to move "up" but not back down again (and the "Provincial" TOCs have to increase their salaries to compete with the better remunerated "InterCity" ones)

But I don't know how much of this is:

1. The fault of privatisation
2. Unions wanting a better deal for their members, ensuring that staff require to maintain various competencies for route/traction knowledge, which makes it harder to allocate staff willy-nilly (sensible precautions re safety, sure, and I appreciate that modern stock is a lot more specialist and require more training on each traction type than BR days)
3. The natural consequences of a busier network with significantly more trains (i.e. there were so many staff and so many services that it was more natural that they'd be specialists on certain routes/ traction

Obviously privatisation will get the blame for most things on this Forum, but there are clearly examples within one TOC (and within one TOC depot) where staff didn't have the kind of "all round" knowledge that might have been commonplace in the 1980s (when there were fewer diagrams/ fewer staff/ fewer differences between the different types of stock)

I've mentioned before just how inefficient some staffing can be - there are a number of staff duties of awkward length or that involve the staff "sitting on the cushions" for long times/distances - e.g. the need for XC to run one daily service from Aberdeen to England takes around twelve hours and must be both an awkward length of round trip from Edinburgh to Aberdeen and back whilst also requiring a lot of the Craigentinny staff to be trained on it to ensure reliability - whereas if ScotRail operated that stretch of the journey they could interwork it with other Edinburgh - Aberdeen duties - I think I saw before that the GNER/ LNER (etc) diagrams for Inverness saw staff work an Edinburgh - Aberdeen service then sit on the ScotRail "cushions" to get to Inverness where overnight accommodation was provided so that the staff would then work the southbound Chieftan from Inverness to Edinburgh the following morning? Seem a lot of complication when you have ScotRail staff who could work the Inverness section and not need a room for the night on company expenses. Correct me if I'm wrong, of course, but that's how I was told it was operated.

Good Morning all

If it's all about saving money whilst still running the railway in an effiicent manner, surely it should be a case of looking at the top of the food chain to see whom is earning the most for doing very little, as i'd dare say that there maybe people whom work within the railway industry who do very little or nothing at all and get paid very large amounts of money for doing so for sitting in an office...

There's certainly arguments in favour of training staff to cross cover other TOCs work but then the issue becomes at what point does the training and competence management cost more than the benefit you end up getting from it?

Bletchleyite said:

May I ask, if you're so anti-rail (this is aimed at everyone who seems to be on here) why do you gain anything from being on a railway forum?

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Oh, come on! That's such a feeble response. This is a forum, a meeting point where people can exchange information, ideas and opinions. It's quite possible to be interested in railways and also to appreciate the huge benefits cars bring. How on earth could any government continue to subsidise railways if they were deprived of the enormous revenue streams provided by excise duty on fuel, 12% levy on car insurance, VAT on fuel, cars, spare parts, servicing and MOTs, income tax and NI contributions from people whose work is absolutely dependent on the car industry, such as civil servants at DVLA, traffic wardens, people manufacturing traffic cameras, petrol station staff, plus all those who work directly in the car industry?

OverSpeed said:

If it's all about saving money whilst still running the railway in an effiicent manner, surely it should be a case of looking at the top of the food chain to see whom is earning the most for doing very little, as i'd dare say that there maybe people whom work within the railway industry who do very little or nothing at all and get paid very large amounts of money for doing so for sitting in an office...

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There seems to be a layer of management who just exist to be reported to by their underlings and then pass those reports to their manager. It does seem more than a bit bloated.

PupCuff said:

There's certainly arguments in favour of training staff to cross cover other TOCs work but then the issue becomes at what point does the training and competence management cost more than the benefit you end up getting from it?

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The whole idea is good in theory but terrible because GBR is seemingly going to be functionally identical to the TOCs at that level. The various TOC-like entities will manage their own affairs on behalf of GBR. If GBR was going to be anything like BR and run the whole show in house then perhaps it would be practical and possible to combine depot knowledge and management but its not.

OverSpeed said:

Good Morning all

If it's all about saving money whilst still running the railway in an effiicent manner, surely it should be a case of looking at the top of the food chain to see whom is earning the most for doing very little, as i'd dare say that there maybe people whom work within the railway industry who do very little or nothing at all and get paid very large amounts of money for doing so for sitting in an office...

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In most organisations there are so few of these that it makes little to no difference to the books whilst removing an often very experienced and capable member of staff and whose advice really matters when it's needed.

PupCuff said:

There's certainly arguments in favour of training staff to cross cover other TOCs work but then the issue becomes at what point does the training and competence management cost more than the benefit you end up getting from it?

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Exactly. A Driver Manager can only really care for a team of people, and even if you merge several TOC's worth of drivers, you still need a pro rata number of managers to keep their teams competent.

OverSpeed said:

Good Morning all

If it's all about saving money whilst still running the railway in an effiicent manner, surely it should be a case of looking at the top of the food chain to see whom is earning the most for doing very little, as i'd dare say that there maybe people whom work within the railway industry who do very little or nothing at all and get paid very large amounts of money for doing so for sitting in an office...

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Whilst there will be some “Director of Paperclips” type roles that can easily go, what you describe can also be applied to those guards who sit in the back cab (their office) all day doing very little.

Railwaysceptic said:

Oh, come on! That's such a feeble response. This is a forum, a meeting point where people can exchange information, ideas and opinions. It's quite possible to be interested in railways and also to appreciate the huge benefits cars bring. How on earth could any government continue to subsidise railways if they were deprived of the enormous revenue streams provided by excise duty on fuel, 12% levy on car insurance, VAT on fuel, cars, spare parts, servicing and MOTs, income tax and NI contributions from people whose work is absolutely dependent on the car industry, such as civil servants at DVLA, traffic wardens, people manufacturing traffic cameras, petrol station staff, plus all those who work directly in the car industry?

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It is certainly valid to say "we should remove all rail subsidy". However, some on here seem to be saying that without considering the huge impact that would have on the rail network. The way it is being put is "I'm all right, Jack". "Implement Serpell and I'll stick with my car".

This isn't about closing the Conwy Valley, the Far North or the Cornish branches, things which I am about 50-50 on and could swing in favour of if only UK bus operation had any kind of quality basis whatsoever, and if the buses were effectively permanent RRBs incorporated into the rail timetable and fares systems, plus quality coach style seating, carriage of two bicycles and good luggage provision. I have said many times before that much more benefit would be gained for the same money by implementing a high quality, well-connected extended Snowdon Sherpa bus network (with Bangor station as the main connecting point with rail, and quality interchange facilities at Betws and Llanberis) and turning the Conwy Valley into a surfaced cycle path, than keeping it open. But this is about much, much bigger cuts. If zero subsidy is a requirement, for example, the Northern franchise and Transport for Wales would be closed in their entirety.

Cars will not go away, and nor should they, but it is utterly ludicrous to suggest that they could viably replace the amount of the network that a zero-subsidy situation would create. What would our cities look like? Even the USA has subsidised urban commuter rail.

The role of cars is journeys where people have to carry lots of stuff, and where public transport can't viably provide for the journey e.g. because it is a journey of low demand, plus where they are needed for reasons of accessibility.

Wolfie said:

. I despise the current Government.

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You and the rest of the rationale thinking British public.

ainsworth74 said:

That's one the areas that does my head in. Newcastle is my perennial example of this actually! Just taking drivers you have driver depots for Northern, TPE, LNER and XC.

TPE drivers sign Edinburgh to Leeds, all LNER drivers sign Newcastle - London with a link that signs Newcastle to Edinburgh, XC drivers sign Derby to Edinburgh (via Leeds and Doncaster). Northern of course also signs parts of these routes as well (Morpeth to Darlington primarily). So you have four sets of TOCs with drivers who all sign parts or indeed sometimes basically identical parts of the ECML from Leeds/Doncaster to Edinburgh.

Yet because they cannot share resources they all have to make their own arrangements and depot establishments so that's extra costs right there from having to employ more drivers, to having more HR, etc etc. Plus if there's disruption they cannot cross cover so even if TPE have a driver sat around without a train because their train is stuck somewhere south of York and LNER have a unit in Newcastle but no driver because their driver is also stuck down south then nobody goes anywhere because the TPE driver cannot drive the LNER unit (which is of course even more farcical here because the units would be almost identical, I imagine the conversion course from an 802 to 800/801 is very very short).

It's this sort of maddening inefficiency that's baked into the system at the moment that you'd hope GBR would be tackling because there must be some fairly easy wins to be had at driver depots like Newcastle. Merging the four depots and then redrawing the link structure seems like it would be an absolute nailed on easy win for improving productivity, efficiency, value for money, reliability, etc. It might even make the job slightly more appealing as you could have much more progression. Join up as a trainee pootling around the North East but eventually you could end up driving trains all the way to Inverness! Whereas right now you want to do that you have to leave Northern and join LNER. Which means Northern gets to spend all the money training the driver but LNER will eventually be the one to benefit when they jump ship for a different challenge.

You could probably even reduce the overall headcount (through natural wastage and a temporary recruitment freeze) and still have a more flexible and useful depot establishment! Same issues of course exist on the guard side of the equation at Newcastle.

Crackers that anyone thought that this was ever going to be a sensible way to run a railway.

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Same on GWR area with Plymouth and Bristol XC depots could be comfortably absorbed by GWR.

Bletchleyite said:

It is certainly valid to say "we should remove all rail subsidy". However, some on here seem to be saying that without considering the huge impact that would have on the rail network. The way it is being put is "I'm all right, Jack". "Implement Serpell and I'll stick with my car".

This isn't about closing the Conwy Valley, the Far North or the Cornish branches, things which I am about 50-50 on and could swing in favour of if only UK bus operation had any kind of quality basis whatsoever, and if the buses were effectively permanent RRBs incorporated into the rail timetable and fares systems, plus quality coach style seating, carriage of two bicycles and good luggage provision. I have said many times before that much more benefit would be gained for the same money by implementing a high quality, well-connected extended Snowdon Sherpa bus network (with Bangor station as the main connecting point with rail, and quality interchange facilities at Betws and Llanberis) and turning the Conwy Valley into a surfaced cycle path, than keeping it open. But this is about much, much bigger cuts. If zero subsidy is a requirement, for example, the Northern franchise and Transport for Wales would be closed in their entirety.

Cars will not go away, and nor should they, but it is utterly ludicrous to suggest that they could viably replace the amount of the network that a zero-subsidy situation would create. What would our cities look like? Even the USA has subsidised urban commuter rail.

The role of cars is journeys where people have to carry lots of stuff, and where public transport can't viably provide for the journey e.g. because it is a journey of low demand, plus where they are needed for reasons of accessibility.

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You were very quick off the mark! I've deleted my post because others had already made similar points.

I haven't noticed anyone suggesting that cars should replace railways. The frequent suggestion is that buses might be more economical.

Railwaysceptic said:

You were very quick off the mark! I've deleted my post because others had already made similar points.

I haven't noticed anyone suggesting that cars should replace railways. The frequent suggestion is that buses might be more economical.

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If you consider how awful public transport is in large towns and cities where it's almost all by bus (e.g. Bristol, MK)** then it soon becomes apparent that the Serpell option of removing all subsidy and so closing networks like Manchester's suburban DMU services*, Merseyrail, Leeds suburbans etc is an utter non-starter.

If you consider England (because while Network Rail does do infrastructure in Wales and Scotland, fiddling there would be politically impossible), there isn't a lot of significance you could viably close entirely without hitting that problem. There's a dedicated "what would you close" thread, and that's actually gone off at a tangent and become similar to this one, because there is really not very much you sensibly could. The obvious low-impact cost savings are booking offices and DOO, plus some frequency reductions.

I think @A0wen is suggesting the (electric) car is the way forward, by the way.

* "Spend capex to save opex" has to be the mantra there, i.e. Metrolink as much of it as possible.
** Edinburgh is your counterexample that always did OK with almost all public transport being bus, but it's very unusual in UK terms by its very high population density and comparatively anti-car attitude.

Bald Rick said:

There is good reason why, say, TPE Glasgow drivers and Avanti Glasgow drivers should sign each others’ traction; their route cards are near identical, and there would be rostering efficiency in having the two combined.

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I'd agree there are good reasons, but ... (and there's usually a but)

Are they currently on different pay, terms and conditions?

And, if so, wouldn't harmonising conditions (which will only go one way) make a significant hole in any savings?

Bletchleyite said:

One could argue that the roles of booking office staff and suburban guard definitely are in the same space as the role of coal miner in the 1980s. The railway as a whole indeed definitely not.

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Out of honest curiosity this one, because I always read the redundancy of certain guards, and let me say first that I do believe that some job descriptions should definitely be updated, but how do DOO operation manages things like disabled assistance at unstaffed stations? Would maintain staff at stations at all times not cost more than guards on trains?

tbtc said:

I agree - and without getting into too much of an argument about driver wages, it's a clear waste of staff who are on a reasonable salary - if you can only drive XC then your day is limited to either one return trip to Derby (around six hours) or two (around twelve hours) - but if you could do other jobs too then you could do a Newcastle - Derby - Newcastle and also a Newcastle - Carlisle - Newcastle too (around six hours for the Derby trip and around three hours for a Carlisle trip - which may be just right in terms of a ten hour working day - I'm sure someone will be along to correct me on the diagram durations etc, but you get the point that I am making - more flexibility would allow staff to be better utilised over a working day

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That's a very poor example, as a Newcastle driver doing a Derby trip would take more than 6 hours due to the need to take a break. Your proposal would also blow the fatigue index right out of the water.

ainsworth74 said:

Yet because they cannot share resources they all have to make their own arrangements and depot establishments so that's extra costs right there from having to employ more drivers, to having more HR, etc etc. Plus if there's disruption they cannot cross cover so even if TPE have a driver sat around without a train because their train is stuck somewhere south of York and LNER have a unit in Newcastle but no driver because their driver is also stuck down south then nobody goes anywhere because the TPE driver cannot drive the LNER unit (which is of course even more farcical here because the units would be almost identical, I imagine the conversion course from an 802 to 800/801 is very very short).

It's this sort of maddening inefficiency that's baked into the system at the moment that you'd hope GBR would be tackling because there must be some fairly easy wins to be had at driver depots like Newcastle. Merging the four depots and then redrawing the link structure seems like it would be an absolute nailed on easy win for improving productivity, efficiency, value for money, reliability, etc. It might even make the job slightly more appealing as you could have much more progression. Join up as a trainee pootling around the North East but eventually you could end up driving trains all the way to Inverness! Whereas right now you want to do that you have to leave Northern and join LNER. Which means Northern gets to spend all the money training the driver but LNER will eventually be the one to benefit when they jump ship for a different challenge.

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I think you're overstating the benefits.

All of the TOCs you list have a certain amount of work to cover which will require a certain number of drivers. Amalgamating the operators will not alter this number. Also, you mention the cost of supporting this number of drivers. Again, there are only small savings to be made in this area, none of which will be specific to that location. These drivers still need managing (the ratio of drivers to managers will mean almost no alteration to the total number required), accommodating (which includes mess facilities for visiting drivers taking their breaks) and equipping (which is proportional to the number of drivers employed). About the only saving that you might be able to expect might be in a small reduction in the number of daily spares required. There may also be some savings to be had through amalgamation with reducing higher management, HR and Control, but again that's not going to represent a very big reduction in head count.

I'm sure that this point has already been raised, but amalgamating depots would not necessarily result in efficiency savings. Enlarging a depot's route and traction cards only serves to increase the number of route refresh days required to ensure competency is maintained. Larger depots with more extensive route cards require more route refresh days than smaller depots with smaller route cards. The same applies to traction knowledge. While there is a degree of duplication in routes it cannot be assumed that every driver will get across every route within the roster cycle.

magicmcone said:

Out of honest curiosity this one, because I always read the redundancy of certain guards, and let me say first that I do believe that some job descriptions should definitely be updated, but how do DOO operation manages things like disabled assistance at unstaffed stations? Would maintain staff at stations at all times not cost more than guards on trains?

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That is why level boarding is such a good thing - almost all requirements for assistance at minor stations are in fact requirements for ramp provision.

With DOO at unstaffed stations on existing lines you have to prebook assistance and it shows up in a van. However, that wouldn't be acceptable going forward, so it would be a choice between having one member of station staff for the full period of service, not going DOO or going for a hybrid, e.g. DOO-with-OBS* on trains stopping at such stations. Such a member of staff could be multi-skilled - customer service, gateline and assistance. If needing to do assistance the gateline could be left open. With OBS there are also other possible concepts, such as a "passenger steward" who would be assistance trained but also check and if necessary sell tickets and potentially even catering.

* OBS aren't necessarily paid a lot less, indeed I think Southern OBS are paid more than the guards were, and they're on all trains, not just 12-cars. But with no requirement for much safety training nor route knowledge there is still saving there.

I know it's almost as much a raw nerve as DOO, but we probably do have to talk about the possibility of driver assist to reduce the necessity of repeated and lengthy route training.

Even if it was just balises that bring up the relevant portion of the sectional appendix as a "moving map indicator" or using balise datagrams to give advance warning of speed restrictions etc.

HSTEd said:

I know it's almost as much a raw nerve as DOO, but we probably do have to talk about the possibility of driver assist to reduce the necessity of repeated and lengthy route training.

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DB has operated for years using the Buchfahrplan and later elektronische Buchfahrplan to substitute for detailed route learning. I have not heard of any crashes that resulted from that being the case. So yes, absolutely.