Caledonian Sleeper: How should it be run and what changes would you like to see?

[Bletchleyite]

Surely, the focus of the revenue model, is to sell all the seats and beds? Not rack prices up "as much as you dare".

The focus of the revenue model is to make as much money as possible (or rather lose as little as possible). This can mean it's better to sell one bed at £300 than two at £100.

 

[Wynd]

The focus of the revenue model is to make as much money as possible (or rather lose as little as possible). This can mean it's better to sell one bed at £300 than two at £100.

How well has that been working out?

Railways work best when they transport large volumes of people or cargo.

 

[Peter Sarf]

Surely, the focus of the revenue model, is to sell all the seats and beds? Not rack prices up "as much as you dare".

It seems to already run fairly full. Merging with Scotrail makes for economies and better support. I think making the service more reliable could justify higher prices. Why should it be subsidised if the prices could be raised without losing passengers ?.

The days of it being a cheap service are long gone and that is an irreversible change brought on by the acquisition of posh(er) stock.

 

[JamieL]

If we got aside from the devolved politics and the problems of the current franchisee wouldnt it actually in terms of both cost saving and service integration make much more sense for it to become part of the West Coast operation in the future rather than Scotrail trying to service the sleepers major hub (London) 400 miles away from its current bases. Even LNER a Dft owned company would seem to make more sense than Scotrail.

The devolved politics are critical here - if brought back under ScotRail control, it would provide a rail service link to London under the control of the Scottish Government. I think the Avanti extension illuminates why Westminster (Government and DfT) can't be relied upon to sustain a good service on the WCML and therefore the CS provides an essential backup. Indeed, I have just booked myself on the CS for w/c 24 Oct 22 as Avanti are unable or unwilling to finalise their timetable for that week. In this strategic sense, the cost of providing the CS is irrelevant really.

For those complaining about CS ticket costs, an en suite Club cabin was only £155 - cheaper than an anytime First ticket!

 

[Bald Rick]

If we got aside from the devolved politics and the problems of the current franchisee wouldnt it actually in terms of both cost saving and service integration make much more sense for it to become part of the West Coast operation in the future rather than Scotrail trying to service the sleepers major hub (London) 400 miles away from its current bases. Even LNER a Dft owned company would seem to make more sense than Scotrail.

It certainly made sense to run as part of West Coast when they used the same traction. Less so now. Having GBRf drivers is quite efficient.

 

[The Planner]

Does the railway exist for passengers, or does it exist for engineers?

Passengers and freight.

But without the engineers, the railway doesn’t exist.

By all means restrict the time available for the engineers, but don’t complain when the wires come down at Prestonpans, for example.

Either that or we just take more disruptive blocks meaning buses and more money in the compensation merry go round coming out from NR.

 

[paul1609]

The devolved politics are critical here - if brought back under ScotRail control, it would provide a rail service link to London under the control of the Scottish Government. I think the Avanti extension illuminates why Westminster (Government and DfT) can't be relied upon to sustain a good service on the WCML and therefore the CS provides an essential backup. Indeed, I have just booked myself on the CS for w/c 24 Oct 22 as Avanti are unable or unwilling to finalise their timetable for that week. In this strategic sense, the cost of providing the CS is irrelevant really.

For those complaining about CS ticket costs, an en suite Club cabin was only £155 - cheaper than an anytime First ticket!

CS doesnt actually provide an essential back up to London (99% of its customers) thats provided by the East Coast and LNER. CS provides a once a day option from a limited number of station.
Even taking an extreme example like the lunchtime train from Fort William changing at Queen St and Edinburgh gets you in to Kings Cross 6 mins later than Euston via the WCML. For people like me going out on HS1 thats actually a better option.

It certainly made sense to run as part of West Coast when they used the same traction. Less so now. Having GBRf drivers is quite efficient.

Id suggest that if Scotrail are going to continue to sub out the whole operation to GBRF (which I agree is likely) theres no efficiency savings at all. In fact Scotrail will now have to bear the losses previously underwritten by Serco.

 

[JamieL]

CS doesnt actually provide an essential back up to London (99% of its customers) thats provided by the East Coast and LNER. CS provides a once a day option from a limited number of station.

LNER is as prone to the politics of London as anywhere else, which is why a Scottish run backup is required. CS has fairly comprehensive coverage given the pickup/drop off locations extending all the way north.

 

[ajrm]

LNER is as prone to the politics of London as anywhere else, which is why a Scottish run backup is required. CS has fairly comprehensive coverage given the pickup/drop off locations extending all the way north.

Yes quite. 40 pickup points on the sleeper network by my reckoning is hardly a 'limited number'!

Why sleeper services and not earlier/later day trains that take less time (which would also benefit passengers through the rest of the day)?

It's 7 hours from Aberdeen to London by day train on current timings, so for a 9am arrival you'd be looking at a departure from Aberdeen at 0200. (And the boxes between Aberdeen and Dundee are shut overnight so it's a non-starter.)

 

[Bletchleyite]

I think the "day trains" argument is more valid for the Lowlanders, particularly post HS2.

 

[paul1609]

I think the "day trains" argument is more valid for the Lowlanders, particularly post HS2.

I think it will really actually depend on the service alterations following HS2 rather than the reduced journey time. If for instance there will now be a departure from Glasgow to London at 7pm that will have a major impact. If however its still the same last train getting to Euston 40 mins earlier less so. Problem is Id suggest whether there is sufficient demand north of Preston to support the extra services given that thec cities are 400 miles apart. From my Easyjet experiences Id suggest that evening flights south from Glasgow to all the London airports have pretty weak demand.

 

[zwk500]

I think it will really actually depend on the service alterations following HS2 rather than the reduced journey time. If for instance there will now be a departure from Glasgow to London at 7pm that will have a major impact. If however its still the same last train getting to Euston 40 mins earlier less so. Problem is Id suggest whether there is sufficient demand north of Preston to support the extra services given that thec cities are 400 miles apart. From my Easyjet experiences Id suggest that evening flights south from Glasgow to all the London airports have pretty weak demand.

Late evening trains will probably not be as attractive but I'd suggest having early morning trains would be much more popular. Post HS2 Glasgow is 3h40, Edinburgh 3h48 so for a 09:20 arrival you're looking at 05:40 departures. A call at Crewe would be around 08:20, if you wanted to give a greater chance of filling the train.

It's 7 hours from Aberdeen to London by day train on current timings, so for a 9am arrival you'd be looking at a departure from Aberdeen at 0200. (And the boxes between Aberdeen and Dundee are shut overnight so it's a non-starter.)

Hence the 'that take less time' comment, but yes I agree that the idea of a 0230/0300 from Aberdeen is a non-starter, even without the boxes issue (which will be solved but not for a very long time yet).

 

[Peter Sarf]

If this has been answered please direct me to the post...

What will happen to the rolling stock? I presume the carriages will stay, but will the 66s/73s/92s stay if ScotRail intend to bring it in-house?

The coaching stock only works with 73/9s and 92s and they are hired in from GBRF so Scotrail (if taking over) would very likely stick with that.

CS doesnt actually provide an essential back up to London (99% of its customers) thats provided by the East Coast and LNER. CS provides a once a day option from a limited number of station.
Even taking an extreme example like the lunchtime train from Fort William changing at Queen St and Edinburgh gets you in to Kings Cross 6 mins later than Euston via the WCML. For people like me going out on HS1 thats actually a better option.


Id suggest that if Scotrail are going to continue to sub out the whole operation to GBRF (which I agree is likely) theres no efficiency savings at all. In fact Scotrail will now have to bear the losses previously underwritten by Serco.

GBRF drive the trains essentially. It is all the back office stuff that Scotrail could take over. Organising help during disruption (which can be lacking), customer services (off train) and running the business.

 

[Davester50]

Late evening trains will probably not be as attractive but I'd suggest having early morning trains would be much more popular. Post HS2 Glasgow is 3h40, Edinburgh 3h48 so for a 09:20 arrival you're looking at 05:40 departures. A call at Crewe would be around 08:20, if you wanted to give a greater chance of filling the train.

Hence the 'that take less time' comment, but yes I agree that the idea of a 0230/0300 from Aberdeen is a non-starter, even without the boxes issue (which will be solved but not for a very long time yet).

Again, this is better in the speculation thread, but perhaps there would be two highlanders, and better still an East/West split when HS2 arrives.
And some of the signal boxes do appear open all night. I've seen Carnoustie open early in the morning when out for a stagger home in the middle of the night.

 

[paul1609]

The coaching stock only works with 73/9s and 92s and they are hired in from GBRF so Scotrail (if taking over) would very likely stick with that.

GBRF drive the trains essentially. It is all the back office stuff that Scotrail could take over. Organising help during disruption (which can be lacking), customer services (off train) and running the business.

Thats fine but Scotrail dont have any customer prescence at what is by far Caledonian Sleepers most important station, London Euston. In my experience (WHL and lowlander) by far the majority of the traffic originates in London and the South east or is internation tourism based there. They are not going to offer an improved customer experience from a call centre in Edinburgh or Fort William.

 

[Davester50]

They are not going to offer an improved customer experience from a call centre in Edinburgh or Fort William.

But it's call centre is already in Inverness.

I imagine where CS overheads can be reduced by merging with ScotRail is in carrying less redundancy, as resources can be shared.
Not at the front of the train, as SR won't have the pulling ability, but back office and maybe a few less guards roles.

 

[SeanG]

It seems to me that the berths often sell out and the seats often do not. Could one option therefore be to reduce the price of the seats and increase the price of the berths?
I would love it to be a cheap service but unfortunately those days are over and given the subsidy that is given to it I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't cut, if it weren't for the politics involved.

 

[Peter Sarf]

It seems to me that the berths often sell out and the seats often do not. Could one option therefore be to reduce the price of the seats and increase the price of the berths?
I would love it to be a cheap service but unfortunately those days are over and given the subsidy that is given to it I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't cut, if it weren't for the politics involved.

Yes filling the seats would make sense. And if berths are fully booked most of the time it makes sense to raise the price of berths. TBH I guess the pricing of berths vs demand seems to happen already. Just need to keep the service top notch to justify the higher prices and that seems to be one failing so far.

 

[RT4038]

How well has that been working out?

Railways work best when they transport large volumes of people or cargo.

They work best when the revenues from transporting people or cargo (of whatever volume) exceed the costs of providing such transport. Anything else is a constant argument [in this country at least], as shown in the pages of this forum and others.

 

[Tetchytyke]

Scotrail dont have any customer prescence at what is by far Caledonian Sleepers most important station, London Euston

CS has always used Virgin/Avanti facilities at Euston without it having any impact on their services, and I'm not sure where a call centre is based has any relevance either- for a long time, Virgin Trains' call centre was in Dundee.

The coaching stock only works with 73/9s and 92s and they are hired in from GBRF so Scotrail (if taking over) would very likely stick with that.

I would expect so too. When it was Scotrail before, the trains were hauled by EWS; one of the 90s was in Barbie, but it was still EWS.

I imagine where CS overheads can be reduced by merging with ScotRail is in carrying less redundancy, as resources can be shared.

Absolutely. The savings are in the management team and back-office functions, which are duplicated at present.

I never understood why the Scottish Executive carved CS out from the rest of Scotrail in the first place.

 

[JonathanH]

Yes filling the seats would make sense.

Is that filling the seats to the extent that they are booked up two weeks in advance, a month perhaps? Or setting the price at a level that they will sell out some nights, but there are usually some for last minute travellers?

I am minded to recall one night I caught the Aberdeen sleeper and overheard a conversation about someone booking that night because their flight had been cancelled at short notice. Should the price be set so there is no room for people in that situation.

Of course, there are some nights when there would be spare seats even if they were free. The prevailing £75 seems about right.

 

[zwk500]

Absolutely. The savings are in the management team and back-office functions, which are duplicated at present.

How much savings are actually available though? CS's accounts for year ending March 2021 (available here, page 33 is the tasty one) show that total Staff costs were £9.6m, of which £294,000 was directors pay (which can, presumably, be largely discounted).

What of the remaining £9.3m?
The guards will presumably be retained in full, anybody know what the number is?
Scotrail's back office teams will likely not have slack in their workflow to take on the full CS workload without at least some additional staff coming in. Say 50% of the backroom staff stay on.

You're looking at 66-75% of staff being kept on, presumably with the same terms, so a saving of what, £2.5m ish?
The Scotrail franchise payments to CS to keep running the service were £48m. A total profit of £10m was reported, so an effective subsidy of £38m was paid to keep CS running last year. The potential savings are between 10 and 25% of the losses.

 

[Tetchytyke]

You're looking at 66-75% of staff being kept on, presumably with the same terms, so a saving of what, £2.5m ish?

I'll trust your research as I don't know any more, although management and directors are not the same thing. But there are also savings to be had through merging non-staff expenses: running one website and booking system instead of two, for example.

And a saving of £4M-£5M per year certainly isn't to be sniffed at.

 

[StephenHunter]

I would assume the split between London and Scotland is close to 50:50 after all most passengers are travelling across the border most nights. Now I assume there are more interesting things (problems etc) going on North of the border. That is because it is a more complex operation in Scotland than on the WCML. I also think the Scottish will want to "own" CS more than England (choice there would be Avanti). Not merging CS with another TOC/Franchise/OLR achieves nothing. So who would you merge CS with ?.

Avanti, personally. Or whoever replaces them. Call it Avanti Notte?

 

[D6130]

Again, this is better in the speculation thread, but perhaps there would be two highlanders, and better still an East/West split when HS2 arrives.
And some of the signal boxes do appear open all night. I've seen Carnoustie open early in the morning when out for a stagger home in the middle of the night.

Carnoustie has to be open 24/7 as it's the fringe box for Dundee panel and controls at least one manual level crossing.

 

[JamesT]

I never understood why the Scottish Executive carved CS out from the rest of Scotrail in the first place.

From https://www.transport.gov.scot/medi...cted-version-for-publication-31-july-2014.pdf

The Ministerial decision to create a separate Caledonian Sleeper Franchise was taken
in order to obtain more focused management of the Sleeper operation to develop a transformed product
offering that will secure its future as a sustainable business.

Presumably they felt that Scotrail management wouldn't be able to deliver the major changes they wanted to CS along with handling all the rest of the Scotrail franchise.

 

[MacCookie]

I never understood why the Scottish Executive carved CS out from the rest of Scotrail in the first place.

It's legally been the Scottish Government for about 10 years: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2012/11/section/12/enacted

From https://www.transport.gov.scot/medi...cted-version-for-publication-31-july-2014.pdf

Presumably they felt that Scotrail management wouldn't be able to deliver the major changes they wanted to CS along with handling all the rest of the Scotrail franchise.

It also meant that the franchise terms could be different. The day franchise was 7 years with an option to rebase after year five and extend to 10 years, whereas the Caledonian Sleeper franchise was up to 15 years with different terms around rebasing.

Cheers,
Ewan

 

[Sm5]

How much savings are actually available though? CS's accounts for year ending March 2021 (available here, page 33 is the tasty one) show that total Staff costs were £9.6m, of which £294,000 was directors pay (which can, presumably, be largely discounted).

What of the remaining £9.3m?
The guards will presumably be retained in full, anybody know what the number is?
Scotrail's back office teams will likely not have slack in their workflow to take on the full CS workload without at least some additional staff coming in. Say 50% of the backroom staff stay on.

You're looking at 66-75% of staff being kept on, presumably with the same terms, so a saving of what, £2.5m ish?
The Scotrail franchise payments to CS to keep running the service were £48m. A total profit of £10m was reported, so an effective subsidy of £38m was paid to keep CS running last year. The potential savings are between 10 and 25% of the losses.

So basically CS loses the cost of an Airbus every year, and carries about 2 flights worth of passengers each way daily…

They could buy BA an Airbus and fly the passengers for free for 25 years and still save more than it costs to run the sleeper, then hire the plane out for the other 16 hours a day the aircraft is doing nothing…and turn the whole thing into a profit.

 

[Bald Rick]

Absolutely. The savings are in the management team and back-office functions, which are duplicated at present.

But nowhere near duplicated in full. Someone with specialist knowledge of the sleeper market will still need to be employed in their revenue, marketing and sales channels - not something that can be easily picked up by a bit of slack in the Scotrail team. The managers of the Scotrail onboard crews will still be needed, I can’t imagine that the 100(?) or so on board staff could all be managed from within existing Scotrail first line supervisory management.

As I said upthread, there may be savings of a couple of million a year; not to be sniffed at, but easily lost if other things go the wrong way.

 

[JonathanH]

The guards will presumably be retained in full, anybody know what the number is?

Guards is the one place there could be savings in traincrew as rosters could be simpler if aligned with Scotrail work but the saving would be small.

They could buy BA an Airbus and fly the passengers for free for 25 years and still save more than it costs to run the sleeper, then hire the plane out for the other 16 hours a day the aircraft is doing nothing…and turn the whole thing into a profit.

What about rounding up all the travellers from all over Scotland to travel on that plane? It isn't just central belt to London.