ECML Disruption - Saturday 27th December

[Crossover]

It's called 'The Papers' - check the BBC's First Editions.

Yes, OK, that's pretty bad! To sum up "OMG! FLAGS!"

 

[Dave1987]

If ever there was a reason for never reading the Daily Mail again its tomorrows headline.

 

[Crossover]

To preserve the stupidity for evermore...

Now let me go and cleanse my tablet.....

 

[matacaster]

That would be Robin Gisby, Managing Director of Network Operations (ie he runs the day-to-day railway), and as far as I can see is a seriously good guy.
He was the one who sorted out the shambles at Rugby in 2007/8.
He is being replaced in the new year by Phil Hufton, currently COO of London Underground.
http://www.networkrailmediacentre.c...anaging-director-network-operations-215c.aspx

I believe this guy was involved with the Railtrack 'Leeds First' project. I suggest you Google that project before deciding whether he was good or not. If my memory is correct (I admit I may be wrong as its a long time ago in which case I apologise in advance) I seem to remember seeing him being interviewed on Calendar or Look North at the time and him saying that it was on schedule when even just passing through the station it was obvious the situation was hopelessly behind. There were no trains for weeks through Leeds and it was a long, long time before everything was completed. The infrastructure designers (not sure of correct term) even managed to put a large set of signals in the wrong place too meaning that the intended approach / depart speed had to be reduced.

 

[DelayRepay]

Yes, OK, that's pretty bad! To sum up "OMG! FLAGS!"

Oh dear...perhaps they should employ Paul McKenna as a consultant next time??

 

[amcluesent]

I'm reading that incorrect equipment had been ordered for the work, and the hastily requested replacement was also unsuitable. 16 hours passed before useable kit was at the works site.

Someone must be feeling a bit of a silly-billy !

 

[infobleep]

I'm reading that incorrect equipment had been ordered for the work, and the hastily requested replacement was also unsuitable. 16 hours passed before useable kit was at the works site.

Someone must be feeling a bit of a silly-billy !

That's what I heard on LBC last night. Not sure what that has to do with a failed bit of equipment. Perhaps it's in addition.

 

[LAX54]

£25 / week plus the cost of their phone line rental seems very little in return for giving up the freedom to do what they choose in their personal time

I work in IT, and provide on-call support. For this, we are paid:
* £25 per weeknight
* £40 per weekend night (if before and/or after midnight is at the weekend, so includes Fri, Sat and Sun nights)
* £40 per weekend day
* £80 per bank hol night (if before and/or after midnight is on a BH).
* £80 per BH day

This comes to £300 for a week without Bank Hols, and £610 for a week where Christmas Day falls on a Thursday.

I have compared the rates with other IT jobs, and ours are not over-generous; so if the railway industry expects people to be very restricted in what they do outside of working hours for £25 per week, then that is very harsh.
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I didn't travel yesterday, and the one person I know who did said it wasn't that bad - in fact they called their mother that evening because they'd seen it on the news and wanted yo reassure her they hadn't been caught up in horrendous crowds/etc.

However the thing about disruption at this time is that it's likely to affect quite a lot of people who only make a handful of journeys a year by rail, and in their experience a high proportion of railway journeys will involve delays/standing/etc. Many of these same passengers are making journeys they could make by other means such as air, and will do next time.

Is there anything to be said for TOCs limiting reservations to something like 60% of expected capacity the day after engineering works - then if there's a delay they can say "passengers with reservations only" and only have a manageable number of passengers.

Looking at EC's twitter feed on Friday night, one thing they should've done when announcing that an emergency timetable would be published was to give an ETA - at least that way people would know what to expect, rather than shouting about lack of further news within an hour.

Think it is what 21C101 was saying that Rail Staff should get, £25 ! I hope he was joking of course no one would 'give up' Christmas for that amount!......£610 however different story maybe, but I cannot see the TOC's/FOC's/NR paying out that just in case somone is needed, even then some would say no thankyou I suspect.
I go along with 'reservations only' at Chrsitmas and Easter, imagine trying to get a flight at those times of year by just turning up on the off chnace ?
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Ah yes, taken from another predictably outraged Daily Mail rant which tried to suggest that trains were being "led" by men with flags because of a signal failure. It was actually planned Single Line Working (as already discussed at length), but why let the facts get in the way?!

Lets hope that the Network Rail media team rspond to the article and put people straight ! BUT would the DM publish it ?

 

[Bald Rick]

I don't know how many people had their journey affected on Saturday - I guess somewhere around 50,000.

But if Chief Executives were sacked every time there was an overrun that affected 50,000 people somewhere on the network, there would be a new one every week.

 

[amcluesent]

Not sure what that has to do with a failed bit of equipment.

IMHO 'failed' was a bit of PR spin to cover blushes that they'd booked the wrong gear

 

[infobleep]

I don't know how many people had their journey affected on Saturday - I guess somewhere around 50,000.

But if Chief Executives were sacked every time there was an overrun that affected 50,000 people somewhere on the network, there would be a new one every week.

And they would keep getting paid off, if it's anything like football managers!
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IMHO 'failed' was a bit of PR spin to cover blushes that they'd booked the wrong gear

Is that really is true then they deserve some of the criticism they get.

For something as big as this you need to put out roughly what happened or you'll end up with people saying there's be a cover up.

Saying that the Daily Mail will be spouting some rubbish of course and hopefully there has been some failed equipment too.

 

[NSEFAN]

IMHO 'failed' was a bit of PR spin to cover blushes that they'd booked the wrong gear

Were you on site at the time? From what I've read on WNXX, the delay stemmed from work on a neutral section. There was some initial discussion about problems with a crane on site, but this wasn't the cause of the delay, it seems.

 

[Andyh82]

It looks like there were still loads of delays last night, with the last few trains from Edinburgh all being delayed near Finsbury Park and arriving into Kings Cross 100 mins late. According to reports, these passengers then had to join hour long queues for taxis as they'd missed the underground by that time.

 

[Red Dragon]

IMHO 'failed' was a bit of PR spin to cover blushes that they'd booked the wrong gear

I think you could have a good point, Good Point.

Having been responsible in the past for slide in bridges and rail infrastructure projects, whilst working for a contractor, the planning required for a campaign in a possession/blockade such as this is enormous but, as things stand, is solely the Contractor's responsibility.

In my experience it might be better for Network Rail to procure their projects "in partnership" with their selected contractor, as the oil industry has done for many years, thereby pooling experience, knowledge and expertise to jointly achieve the objectives of completion within the time and budget constraints, on technically and logistically difficult projects.

This would require a big step change in the approach by NR, and a culture change within the NR organisation.

The inevitable multi million £ fines levied because of the late completion, will demonstrate to Joe Public that the Guilty have been hunted but, as ever, it will be the innocent who are punished.
Which coffers will the fines be taken from?

As things stand, using the current procurement methods, everyone looses, the PAX, NR, and the Contractor.

Time to change ?

 

[ainsworth74]

Where can I read the report into this incident and its conclusions as to why delays were incurred? I only ask as people are talking about the need to sack members of Network Rail staff and I'd have thought that could only really be discussed once there was a detailed understanding of what went wrong? Or is that not required?

 

[Red Dragon]

Where can I read the report into this incident and its conclusions as to why delays were incurred? I only ask as people are talking about the need to sack members of Network Rail staff and I'd have thought that could only really be discussed once there was a detailed understanding of what went wrong? Or is that not required?

I would think the initial meetings are already taking place, but it's all conjecture at the moment regarding the cause(s).

It will be interesting to get the facts.

I wonder if we will ! ? !

 

[GodAtum]

i dont understand how people can survive standing from London to Edinburgh. There must of been cases of people fainting?

 

[amcluesent]

Being reported Robin Gisby can wave goodbye to his £371,000 'golden goodbye' as MD of Network Operations after the omnishambles

 

[Red Dragon]

i dont understand how people can survive standing from London to Edinburgh. There must of been cases of people fainting?

Glad to see you decided to remove death from the post !

 

[amcluesent]

Where are you picking that up Good Point ?

Torygraph

 

[Tav77]

I go along with 'reservations only' at Chrsitmas and Easter, imagine trying to get a flight at those times of year by just turning up on the off chnace ?

The question would be when do you start/finish Christmas and Easter Reservations only.

A few years ago, my wife and I were due to travel from London to Scotland for Christmas to join her family and our flight (23rd December - 4pm) was cancelled due to fog.

I found that there was a 6pm train from Euston to Glasgow and bought all provisions expecting to be sat in a vestibule for 6 hours. Imagine our (pleasant) surprise when the service was half empty and even better as it was a Sunday we could take up the weekend 1st offer which became the busiest part of the train.

In essence, I am trying to say that 1) People have the knowledge that they may have to stand for 6 hours, and if they are desperate to get to the destination they will do it. and 2) Train companies aren't going to turn away monies (in our case £198 + £40 upgrade) when trains are not even full up.

 

[Hadders]

Furthermore, how would you make GN trains reservation only?

 

[jon0844]

i dont understand how people can survive standing from London to Edinburgh. There must of been cases of people fainting?

Chances are they sat down in the aisles, the vestibules, or even swapped seats with passengers that gave them up for a short time.

Maybe some had no option, but I am sure it wasn't as bad as some made out.

 

[Howardh]

Chances are they sat down in the aisles, the vestibules, or even swapped seats with passengers that gave them up for a short time.

Maybe some had no option, but I am sure it wasn't as bad as some made out.

I am sure it was as bad as was made out! Dunno how you can say that when you weren't on that train?

 

[455driver]

From what I can see online, the organisation of yesterday was a complete shambles. Aside from the issues of communication on Boxing Day and the severe queues outside Finsbury Park station, it seems Great Northern did little to help the situation. I don’t know if they were physically unable to do much as a result of the engineering works, staffing problems, train issues etc, but from Realtime Trains, it appears they just cancelled most of their trains. Even the services to/from Moorgate were mostly cancelled, and very few services ran between Finsbury Park and Peterborough. What’s even more strange is that it appears there was little attempt to allow services to run at the opposite end of the route- looking at the Cambridge and Peterborough ends, most services were cancelled and there were large gaps between services that did run. I know capacity would have been an issue, but could they not at least have run an hourly stopper to Cambridge and an hourly stopper to Peterborough? Was there a major issue that prevented them from running anything?

As far as a contingency plan goes, I think for the future, they should use one of two options for departures:

Option 1

East Coast
• Hourly service from Finsbury Park to Edinburgh calling at York, Darlington, Newcastle, Berwick and Edinburgh
• Hourly service from Finsbury to Edinburgh calling at Peterborough, Doncaster, York, Darlington, Durham, Newcastle, Alnmouth and Edinburgh.
• Hourly service from Peterborough to Leeds calling at Grantham, Newark, Retford, Doncaster, Wakefield and Leeds

Have passengers who are intending on travelling to York and beyond queuing up at Moorgate (with one queue for the main destinations served by the fast train and another for the smaller stations served by the stopper) and then travelling into Finsbury Park on a frequent six car 313. Local passengers would also be able to be accommodated on this and would be in a separate queuing. Staff would allow passengers to board the services that would be timed to connect with the East Coast trains. Passengers can reach Moorgate from Kings Cross via the Circle, Metropolitan or Hammersmith and City lines.

Have passengers who are travelling to Stevenage, Peterborough Grantham, Newark, Retford, Doncaster, Wakefield and Leeds queuing up at Finsbury Park. Great Northern can then run an hourly service to Peterborough calling at Stevenage with a 12 car Class 365, connecting into the hourly service to Leeds. Passengers can reach Finsbury Park from Kings Cross by using the Victoria or Piccadilly Lines.

Local passengers would have a separate queue and would be directed onto the following services:

Great Northern
• Hourly fast to Peterborough as above (if there’s any space left after EC passengers)
• Two trains per hour to Peterborough (as timetabled usually)
• Two slow trains per hour to Cambridge (as timetabled usually)
• Six trains per hour (formed of 6 car 313’s) between Moorgate and Finsbury Park, with services continuing to Welwyn Garden City or to Hertford North as required.

Option 2

• Replace the East Coast services above with 12 Car Class 365’s running non-stop to Peterborough, where the East Coast trains will start from (the Finsbury Park to Peterborough service would be timed to connect into the Edinburgh services.
• Extend the Leeds service to start from Stevenage, allowing one of the three Class 365’s to terminate there (although it could continue to Peterborough if passenger numbers required.
• Other Great Northern services and queuing arrangements would be the same as Option 1.

A Hybrid option might have worked well yesterday: Option 1 at 11:00 when the crowds were busy as it would have enabled passengers to be taken out of London quickly and would have prevented the build-up of passengers due to trains being stuck outside Finsbury Park due to taking a long time to unload and shunt. Option 2 from about 1 or 2 in the afternoon when passenger numbers would have probably died down slightly.

Arrivals
Passengers could be directed onto a Moorgate service to Highbury and Islington to catch a Victoria Line train. If Highbury and Islington was to get too busy, passengers could be told to stay on to Moorgate and catch a Circle Line train to Kings Cross, or could be directed to the tube at Finsbury Park.
Coaches could also be put on standby to help displace the crowds if necessary.

I know some of this would have really been possible yesterday due to the short notice, but the queuing methods would have helped and I’m sure there were 365’s available given that Great Northern had cancelled all of their London to Cambridge Expresses.

Would this contingency plan work in the future?

Excellent idea!
Now can you show me the train crew rosters (taking into account the start/finish times, home locations, route knowledge and legally required PNBs for the train crews please!
You have got about 5 hours (actually lets be very generous and make it 6 hours) to sort out all the traincrews rosters, get them agreed and printed, sort out the train plan (so you dont end up with an electric train ending up working a service which ends up off the juice) bearing in mind the numbers of each train you have available and and maintenance or mileage restrictions!

 

[amcluesent]

I am sure it was as bad as was made out!

+1 I recall a nightmare journey standing on much delayed (person under) PBO-EDB train on Xmas Eve a few years back. I enquired from the ticket collector about delay-repay compensation and he went off on a berserker!

 

[455driver]

The bus drivers were ready and available - but nobody called for them.

Really?
Where were they then?
I used to be a bus driver and I was either at work or at home (and free to do what I want), never was I 'on call' in the sense the fuhrer is wanting to implement!


B1B-
£25 a week to be on call <sniggers>, you can foxtrot oscar mate!
I am just glad you are not my Manager!

Oh if I am 'on call' is that over and above my base roster?
Because if it is and I am called in then you can cover one of my other shifts to get me back down to my agreed weekly hours (if the 'on call' day is after my rostered hours then I will be having one of those days off 'just in case'), or are you saying it is (effectively) compulsory overtime and we are expected to be available at the drop of a hat!
I am all for being flexible but my time is my time, and that isnt going to change for a poxy extra £25 a week!

 

[cf111]

Where can I read the report into this incident and its conclusions as to why delays were incurred? I only ask as people are talking about the need to sack members of Network Rail staff and I'd have thought that could only really be discussed once there was a detailed understanding of what went wrong? Or is that not required?

Please don't get the in the way of the baying mob, it won't be long before someone (anyone) from Network Rail is marched out in front of a camera to deliver a grovelling apology before some pitchforks and lit torches.

 

[455driver]

Currently discussing what happened and what should change on LBC.

One caller, Chris, an engineering contractor, who works on rail infrastructure projects, is saying Network Rail are just putting sticky plasters over sticky plasters, given the age of our railways and people should have a better service than this.

Nicolas Soams said earlier on LBC that some senior managers in Network Rail should be sacked. As a politician he would say that of course.

Maybe our lovely Government ought to give NR enough money to sort the network out then, instead of cutting their budget year after year in the name of 'efficiencies'!
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The head of Network Rail is retiring early next year with a golden goodbye according to LBC. I'm sure many journalists will be outraged on behalf of their readers/listeners and/or viewers.

Which was made public about 6 months ago, but lets all make it sound like he is jumping because of the Christmas eff up! :roll:
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Being reported Robin Gisby can wave goodbye to his £371,000 'golden goodbye' as MD of Network Operations after the omnishambles

Why?
Was this failure down to NR then?
What about the Contractors and whoever was responsible for the planning and implementation of of the schedule for the renewals?

 

[jon0844]

Sure all costs will be passed on to the contractor that messed up (if this is what happened)?