Oh Shucks...Now who is going to ring the bearded man?

[Metroland]

Network Rail has serious concerns that it will fail to meet the deadline to finish work on the West Coast Main Line by December, the BBC has learned.

The rail infrastructure company has rejected the idea of putting completion of £750m of work back to May 2009.

Instead, it is asking train companies for extra track closures on top of those planned for holiday periods.

It comes as the rail regulator is set to fine Network Rail for late work at Rugby, Liverpool Street and Glasgow.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7267658.stm

 

[Dennis]

Sir Richard and his Stagecoach friends are obviously only in the rail business to make money, but strangely, I almost feel sorry for the man.

DfT take away his XC franchise and won't let him lengthen the trains he has got left to play with. NR won't let his trains run as fast as he was promised they would be able to and his customers are regularly bailed onto buses.

What a way to run a railway.

 

[Metroland]

Over 3 days in spring in 1892, 4,200 engineers ripped up 177 miles of broad gauge track on the Great Western Railway and replaced it with standard gauge. And with the wonders of modern technology NR/RT are still going to overrun modernising 600 miles of route over the last 3,500 days, by another 100 days. Over the next 4000 days, Spain will be building 5,000 miles of 220mph high speed line.

 

[me123]

But back in 1892, stupid health and safety rules didn't exist, a high minimum wage didn't exist, more people wanted to work on the railways for easy money... Nowadays it's too crazy out there to allow that to happen.

I hope they get it done on time, but the track closures seem to affect Glasgow Central a lot this weather. A lot of airline commpeition comes from Glasgow-London route, and passenger numbers reflect this. I can only hope this doesn't return passengers to the polluting planes; to be honest, I can't blame them if they choose that option.

 

[Metroland]

Well yep it is too crazy. The government won't allow Branson to add 1 extra coach when it's all done, or build a new high speed line.

I seem to recall the Great Eastern railway built complete steam locomotives in 36 hours from scratch, as did the LNWR at Crewe. These days coaches sit in sidings when passengers stand, and it takes years to introduce and build new trains designed on computers.

The railway network added 5,000 miles of track in the ten years in the mid 1800s. built mostly by hand. You used to get tied railway houses in those days, even 20 years ago one railway worker could buy that same property on one mediocre wage. Now two Oxford graduates struggle on two wages for exactly the same bricks and mortar, often marketed as 'period'.

Perhaps comparisons with the past are not totally valid, but it does illustrate how the system has been tied in knots.

 

[Nym]

You would have thought that compueters speed up the design, which in some ways they do, lower tolerances and less mistakes are made. The computers don't slow things down, it's the accountants the slow things up.

If the accountants kept their mouts SHUT! and the DaFT let pepole run whatever length trains they wanted then it would be working a lot better than it is now. Leave railway engineering to the ENGINEERS! They could have all this work done in half the time if they hired more pepole. Top gear proved this by doing a 1 week refurfacing project in 24 hours! The same applies to railways, throw a lot of staff and money at it and it will get done a lot faster!

I've compliled a short list of things that wrecked these railways:

NATIONALISATION!
Health and Safty at Work etc. Act. 1998
Trade Unionism
RE-PRIVATISATION!
Labor costs.
Living costs.
Stupid Franchises! If you wanna run a route, you bid for that route, not a load of routes joined together
If the DaFT want to hold the strings, then have companies bid for individual paths with a lot of conditions attached to it! Such as, You MUST use a train that complies with this timetable... etc...
Stock Control Orders: If TPE wasn't controled centraly they'd have gotten 125mph stock (possibly even with tilt, we might have seen 1/3 2/3 doored super vomiters!)
Leasing (Somtimes is good)

If you want a system that works, let pepole do this wacko things, bit like Branson's origional ECML express bid, or better yet, Properly re-privetise the whole damn lot! And work on subsidies if the're needed...

 

[djw1981]

H&S is not as restrictive as the managers who try to interpret it, and the consultants who have selective interpretation. Thus myths get perpetuated - so much so that the HSE is taking out adverts saying that they have not banned use of ladders, just recommended that people do not work by leaning out from the side when an alternative is more suitable.

Personally I think most of the problem is the dfT control. Privatisation worked better at first under the less prescriptive (and less premium rich) franchises where we saw innovation and radical ideas.

The Top Gear issue was a bit put on - there as work done before ad after, and the road failed to meet the Highways standard for grip and drainage, which might be considered important by some.

The issue again is not accountants, but the managers who put try to reduce the scoping costs so a project will gain approval, then reveal the real costs slowly and thus we have an 'overspend'. Look at the differences between the ORR and the NR figures for expected costs in CP4.

 

[Metroland]

For those that have not worked for the railway (and other companies for that matter), the disciplinary system is usually regressive and not applied even handily. What this creates is a fear and work to rule culture, where people OVER apply the rules and regulations. This is one of the reasons you still have a strong union movement as workers seek to protect their backs.

Managements role is to motivate and support it’s workforce in getting the job done effectively and safely. Not to enact punitive and in some cases over-zealous applications of the rules against the workforce or the company, or over compartmentalise the operations of the organisation.

Mistakes do happen, and will always happen. However, all too often the policies do not help the workforce to learn rather entrench them further and create resentment. Sometimes simplification of rules is necessary rather than over application of regulations or technology for the sake of it.

All too often we see more rules, more management, and less actual thinking/doing going on where it needs to be. This all costs a great deal of money, and achieves actually very little. The result is the whole railway coming to a stand over something that is minor and probably not even a safety risk. Remember the speed restrictions after Hatfield?

Now some of this is simply down to the sorts of people that are employed in middle management, and not just the railway. Some of this is from outside forces. Indeed risk aversion in (the now litigious) British Society is now endemic, especially as we see all too often there is a concretive effort to seek to blame someone rather than learn the overall processes and create a more efficient, yet safer organisation.