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Reduced service on great northern services 23/10 due to driver shortages

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Impey0711

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Any idea what services they plan to cut the kx - Royston trains and stick additional stops on the Horsham -pbo runs ???
 
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MikeWM

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7 years into the franchise, and they still have driver shortages pretty much every Saturday.

(The only recent Saturday where they didn't seem to have a problem was a few weeks ago, when heavy rain was forecast the whole day. No doubt just a coincidence).

I started a thread on this in May 2016 (!) (here). Things don't appear to have improved much since.
 

Impey0711

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I've booked to go from st pancras to Peterborough aiming for the 09:46 just hoping it will be running an not hrly tommorow
 

Bishopstone

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All of the Brighton-Cambridge services are cancelled. They’ve had ‘Not Enough Staff’ for this service group ever since it was introduced, and it’s riddled with cancellations even during the week, albeit somewhat improved of late.

Just embarrassing at Haywards Heath now, listening to one ‘we’re sorry….’ announcement after another. A great way to deter the leisure and football traffic the railway desperately needs.
 

Ianno87

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7 years into the franchise, and they still have driver shortages pretty much every Saturday.

(The only recent Saturday where they didn't seem to have a problem was a few weeks ago, when heavy rain was forecast the whole day. No doubt just a coincidence).

I started a thread on this in May 2016 (!) (here). Things don't appear to have improved much since.

To be fair, I recall they'd got Saturdays pretty well back on track... then Covid hit.
 

bramling

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To be fair, I recall they'd got Saturdays pretty well back on track... then Covid hit.

Weekends have never really been as far as in track in the last decade or more, in my experience.

Only in the days of National Express WAGN was the service truly dependable. First seemed to continue this, but it does appear that issues were developing under the skin.

The current operation is rather fragile in a number of ways, driver coverage being one. The way the driver work has been divided into silos is another.

I’ve come to the conclusion there’s probably never going to be a dependable weekend service. I essentially ditched the service on weekends long ago. As far as I’m concerned it’s essentially a 5-day railway now. A few weeks ago it couldn’t even manage a one-way one-stop trip as part of a Saturday afternoon walk, that’s how useless it is.
 

JonathanH

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All of the Brighton-Cambridge services are cancelled.
While it can be a popular service, it is also a fairly reasonable one to sacrifice if there are staff shortages, given that there are still 3tph from Cambridge to London with it missing (indeed Greater Anglia as well) and Hitchin / Stevenage get the Peterborough service. Similarly, on the Brighton line, there are still other services.

It seems that GTR will put a Royston stop in the Kings Lynn sometimes to connect out of the Royston terminator.
 

bramling

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While it can be a popular service, it is also a fairly reasonable one to sacrifice if there are staff shortages, given that there are still 3tph from Cambridge to London with it missing (indeed Greater Anglia as well) and Hitchin / Stevenage get the Peterborough service. Similarly, on the Brighton line, there are still other services.

It seems that GTR will put a Royston stop in the Kings Lynn sometimes to connect out of the Royston terminator.

It isn’t really satisfactory, as it results in the intermediate stations losing half their service.

With Cambridge-Brighton being pretty unreliable most of the time, including during the week, one wonders if the time has come for Royston and Letchworth to be a permanent addition to the 1Txx services, as is already the case during peak times. I’ve always felt that non-stop to Cambridge is a bit too much of a good thing - one each calling at Letchworth or Royston should have happened years ago IMO.
 

MikeWM

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To be fair, I recall they'd got Saturdays pretty well back on track... then Covid hit.

I wasn't terribly impressed with them in February 2020 (as mentioned at the time here), but the issue at that point seemed to be widespread shortforms.

Though I can't really comment much on late 2018 or pretty much the whole of 2019 as I pretty much always went for GA trains at weekends for that period.
 

Peregrine 4903

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The reason why weekdays are better than Saturday's at the minute is because a base timetable has been introduced on weekdays designed to work around the shortage of train crew GTR have, as well as having reduced frequencies. On weekends, this hasn't been introduced and won't be introduced as its creates a too high workload for train planners, meaning that GTR are running more services on Saturday than any other day of the week, which is why they are suffering from crew shortages on Saturday.

I do agree though, the MML and Southern side all seem to be doing reliatively well at the minute, its the Great Northern side that are really struggling.

Although, I don't see how the withdrawal of the Cambridge - Brighton services really affects anything south of the river, unless your using Balcombe station. There are plenty of other services that are running to cover for it.
 

choochoochoo

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This is going to happen for years to come. And be even worse around xmas or the weekends that there is a depot night out organised.

And as said previously, the fact they've silo'd the work out so other depots can't cover the work adequately just makes things worse.

They'll have to stop blaming covid too, as almost all the measures introduced for social distancing have now been or imminently will be removed.
 

bramling

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This is going to happen for years to come. And be even worse around xmas or the weekends that there is a depot night out organised.

And as said previously, the fact they've silo'd the work out so other depots can't cover the work adequately just makes things worse.

They'll have to stop blaming covid too, as almost all the measures introduced for social distancing have now been or imminently will be removed.

Yes it will be a stretch to blame Covid when there’s so many services already missing from the timetable compared to December 2019.

All of the Baldocks in each peak, most of the fast Peterboroughs, and a massive number of Moorgates both peak and off peak. Plus stuff in the Cambridge area too.
 

Peregrine 4903

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Yes it will be a stretch to blame Covid when there’s so many services already missing from the timetable compared to December 2019.

All of the Baldocks in each peak, most of the fast Peterboroughs, and a massive number of Moorgates both peak and off peak. Plus stuff in the Cambridge area too.
What is intersting is why the problem is so much worse on the GN side, than it is on the Southern and MML side?
 

choochoochoo

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What is intersting is why the problem is so much worse on the GN side, than it is on the Southern and MML side?
did Southern open up 2 completely new depots without staffing them completely first ? Whilst also limiting what all their current drivers can drive in terms of routes/traction ?
 

Peregrine 4903

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did Southern open up 2 completely new depots without staffing them completely first ? Whilst also limiting what all their current drivers can drive in terms of routes/traction ?
Sorry, I don't really know much about crewing situations and train crew depots. Not my area of expertise. But thanks for saying what the issue is.

But still, MML Thameslink services seem to fair better than the Great Northern ones in terms of train crew.
 

choochoochoo

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Funny thing is, the GN side was much more reliable until they started running stuff through the core. Which also coincided with the depot changes.
 
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