There isn’t any such thing as a franchise and there hasn’t been for over 2 years. Do wish people would realise the world we are living in - nationalisation all but in name and at arms length.
They had a great performance today! (looking at trains through preston). It's so bad its laughable.
That is the part I really do not understand. These services are often marked as running 24 hours before then all cancelled/changed. I would expect a couple to change at most. From an outside perspective the problem seems to be solely caused by this frequent crew changeover and lack of route knowledge. Someone might have thought this saves money but it is completely obvious that it increases scheduling complexity exponentially and also increases risk all around. Once the crew scheduling starts going wrong it cannot be unpicked and causes zillions of knock on effects on multiple trains which is precisely what we see.
Again, that plain assumptions on one posters part and certainly doesn't affect the WCML services anything like North route services.
So what do staff do when they are available for work and all the trains are cancelled?
Go home, go shopping, watch TV. What else is there to do?
Is the availability of the 397s also a factor?
I have to say that I would find that pretty frustrating and depressing in itself. What a sad waste.
You get used to it as traincrew.
What about Dec 2019?
A large majority of the staff are currently working from home (not helped by a maintenance issue that caused the office building to be shut)
Do you mean for voluntary overtime etc? That’s probably their own business, and like the rest of us enjoying time with the family hopefully.
No I don't mean that I was thinking of the situation when 80% of the trains get cancelled but there must be quite a lot of staff who have little to do on their normal days work. That I find most sad, a terrible waste of resources and to the detriment of everybody.
If you mean that profit is across the whole of First Group, I honestly don’t think that’s a lot, and it really won’t go far to fixing the problems. I don’t just mean TPE, they have problems across GWR and the state of the bus industry right now is probably worse than the rail industry. What’s more frustrating about the profit if it is indeed across First Group, is that it’s made on the back of Government subsidy specifically directed at keeping both bus and rail afloat during COVID. That can’t be right.
Perhaps if their offices had been in Manchester Victoria in December 2019, they would have been a little closer to the human impacts on staff and passengers of abandoning practically the entire core transpennine timetable in favour of training up crews on the incremental (but doubtless more interesting in the Boardroom) Scotland service. That time was awful and frankly dangerous for passengers and station staff alike.
I think the finance team were most interested. It was over and above the ITT specification for the contract, meaning it must have been lucrative financially.
That was the fault of an MD who ploughed ahead at all costs and paid for it with his job.
Because it's not the same thing. Really wish you would understand that - just because one part of an owning group is making money, and through the sale something, does not mean it will then go to other areas of the business. And with National Rail Contracts that can't even happen anyway.
1) What unnecessary management layers? 2) Why would you want to get rid of a HQ where teams need to be in place to work with one another? 3) You do realise managers WFH pre-pandemic albeit not as much 4) Jobs advertised internally within TPE, as you know, are for Hybrid working. Network Rail managers I'm told need to be in the office 3 days a week and from what I've heard the new MD wants people back in too but there was some kind of issue at BWH which is why there's plenty of people working in Huddersfield currently.
Operational Performance; Customer Experience; Financial Performance; and Business Management
My understanding of this is that the space will be used by Network Rail to replace the demolished square one building outside Piccadilly
