Near 24/7 railway, potential for another grayrigg??

Dave1987 · 4 Mar 2013

Nowadays the railway seems to be edging towards being a 24/7 service. Trains start very early in the morning and don't finish running until the small hours. This leaves in some cases just a couple of hours of no trains running. This is clearly not enough time to cary out engineering works. Weekend works seem the obvious choice but there seems to be increasing hostility towards bus replacements at the weekends. When they do get possessions for a decent length of time they must be under enormous pressure to get as much stuff done while they have the line. If NR cannot get decent length possessions to carry out engineering works and when they do they are under pressure to hand it back, is there not the potential for another incident like at grayrigg??

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The Ham · 4 Mar 2013

Possibly, however there is also the push towards being able to run trains on adjoining lines whilst engineering works happen so as not to need replacement buses, whilst still being able to run a limited service.

Also passengers are less prone to annoyance with trains finishing earlier so as to allow longer overnight workings.

yorksrob · 4 Mar 2013

Are we really anywhere near it though? As a passenger I'd happily settle for a train service that lasted until midnight let alone the small hours. I simply don 't recognise this near 24/7 railway that you speak of.

Gemz91 · 4 Mar 2013

yorksrob said:
Are we really anywhere near it though? As a passenger I'd happily settle for a train service that lasted until midnight let alone the small hours. I simply don 't recognise this near 24/7 railway that you speak of.

Possibly with empty stock movements and frieght trains running through the night on certain routes, it makes it almost 24 hours, albiet not passenger services. Still limits the amount of engineering work that can be carried out.

gimmea50anyday · 4 Mar 2013

Depends on which area of he country you live in. There are a few TOC's who run through the night such as gatwick express and TPE have overnight services between man airport and Sheffield, Preston and York. N both these cases however they have alternative routes that can be used which other routes may not be able to benefit from. In my experience tho there has been very little demand for thee services save for one or two late night airport arrivals and the inebriated returning from a night out. Now I think the TOC's are missing a trick here, as a well marketed overnight train would easily fill if cheap tickets were offered and might just encourage people to travel later on quieter services. These services will obviously be affected by engineering works hence the diversions would have to be allowed for, but this would benefit train crew in keeping route knowledge up to date.

Newcastle to edinburgh for a fiver, London a tenner? I would!!!

sarahj · 4 Mar 2013

We work a 24/7 service on the BML between Gatwick and London. In fact the last train between london and brighton is 1.00 and the first is 4.00, not much of a gap there. (though I have to admit sometimes its a bus from three bridges to Brighton as thats where the 4 track line ends). There is some slack built into these night trains as you cross from one line to the next, then back again, sometimes you go via the quarry, sometimes though redhill.

Mr50, back in BR days there was the concept of nightrider services between Newcastle and london. It was found that since most passengers were on cheap tickets it was just not paying for itself and was dropped

GatwickDepress · 4 Mar 2013

I'm pretty sure First Capital Connect run hourly services throughout the night from Bedford to Three Bridges (and vice-versa). Four tracks playing its part once more?

I wonder if there would be a market for a sole 171 to run one service at around 0230 from Brighton to Ashford International on Friday and Saturday nights, maintenance permitting.

Suggesting the idea because I would be the only one to benefit from it? Moi?

asylumxl · 4 Mar 2013

GatwickDepress said:
I'm pretty sure First Capital Connect run hourly services throughout the night from Bedford to Three Bridges (and vice-versa). Four tracks playing its part once more?

I wonder if there would be a market for a sole 171 to run one service at around 0230 from Brighton to Ashford International on Friday and Saturday nights, maintenance permitting.

Suggesting the idea because I would be the only one to benefit from it? Moi?

Not quite. It also has a gap just llike mentioned above for the BML.

GatwickDepress · 4 Mar 2013

asylumxl said:
Not quite. It also has a gap just llike mentioned above for the BML.

National Rail Enquiries show FCC have an hourly service from 2342 up until 0342 the following day .

yorkie · 4 Mar 2013

gimmea50anyday said:
.... Now I think the TOC's are missing a trick here, as a well marketed overnight train would easily fill if cheap tickets were offered and might just encourage people to travel later on quieter services. ....

It's even worse than that, as TPE charge peak fares to use these trains on flows such as York-Manchester! Although some of them can be used on off-peak tickets.... if you buy before midnight!

Oswyntail · 4 Mar 2013

Shades of the "Nightrider" come galloping up.
As with so much, as capacity becomes more precious, working practices will have to change. For instance, I can see demand for passenger paths driving freight into night-time running, resulting in a 24-hour railway. Maintenance procedures and schedules will have to be changed to accommodate this, probably with much resistance. But, rather than simply squash doing the same things into shorter timeframes, leading to the unacceptable pressures the OP is rightly concerned about, there must be a co-operative process of redesign.

HSTEd · 4 Mar 2013

We have a lot more high output plant than we used to though.

We can relay track, do wire rewiring and a host of other tasks at speeds that would make late-BR permenant way teams look green with envy.

As to the 24 hr railway, in the end the answer is probably slab track.

carriageline · 4 Mar 2013

Also with the measurement trains, a fault is alot more likely to be found in running hours

swt_passenger · 4 Mar 2013

AFAICS they haven't ever announced a general change to a '24/7 railway' at all (notwithstanding certain specific all night services as mentioned above - and they seem to have four tracking in common).

What they are aiming for is the so-called '7 day railway', but the idea of that is only to have major routes running normally on most Sundays by mid afternoon. The flip side is longer overnight maintenance periods Monday - Thursday. This 7 day railway only applies to certain listed routes in each route area as well, basically the main intercity service's routes, and in the SE area the 'main lines'.

Mutant Lemming · 4 Mar 2013

How many routes could actually have a viable 24 hour service ? The Thameslink route is probably the only real 24 hour service in the country with an hourly service from around 01:00 to 04:00 apart from Saturday night Sunday morning and it is well patronised with standing room only on certain trains.
There used to be all night services to Southend and to Hertford North and Stevenage at a time when the St.Pancras-Bedford daytime service was just an hourly DMU. What is it that makes the all-night service viable on the Thameslink route yet not on others?

ukrob · 4 Mar 2013

Dave1987 said:
This is clearly not enough time to cary out engineering works.

Can you back this up with facts, or let us know what knowledge of all the heavy plant you have to make such a sweeping statement? Or are you just scaremongering?

Dave1987 · 4 Mar 2013

ukrob said:
Can you back this up with facts, or let us know what knowledge of all the heavy plant you have to make such a sweeping statement? Or are you just scaremongering?

I'm not scaremongering. I'm not making a statement of fact. When you look at the WON, at the sheer volume of work they schedule for the possessions they get, you think how can they possibly do it all in the time frames they have. Have you not watched the recent TV documentaries where NR and TFL are pushing very hard to give the line back on time? I am merely asking the question as to whether people think this creates the potential for another incident like grayrigg. Haven't they recently found lots of broken rails on the ECML? Ov course I'm not scaremongering.

asylumxl · 4 Mar 2013

GatwickDepress said:
National Rail Enquiries show FCC have an hourly service from 2342 up until 0342 the following day .

Times must have changed :P. Perhaps I'm used to when the core closed overnight.

Goatboy · 4 Mar 2013

Dave1987 said:
I'm not making a statement of fact.

No, you are not. Your comment is inherently opinion. It might be a valid opinion, it might be a very good opinion, but its not fact.

D1009 · 4 Mar 2013

Most main lines are already open 24 hrs for freight, I'm not sure what the point of this thread is. If the line needs to be closed for engineering work, trains need to be diverted or buses provided.

Flying Snail · 4 Mar 2013

Dave1987 said:
Nowadays the railway seems to be edging towards being a 24/7 service.

What do you base that on?

From everything I can find there are less overnight passenger services now than there has ever been. The few routes already mentioned as well as the sleepers are the main ones (although the sleepers don't exactly fill in the big gaps in IC downtime). There are also a few other London commuter routes with late/early but not 24h services such as Peterborough and Miltom Keynes and one or two others but in comparison to the services ran under BR (pre sectorisation in particular with the extensive network of passenger+mail overnights) the current provision is very thin.

Skimpot flyer · 4 Mar 2013

Mutant Lemming said:
What is it that makes the all-night service viable on the Thameslink route yet not on others?

The fact that it serves both Luton & Gatwick Airports, and goes via London ?
Passengers travelling to airports for early flights need even earlier trains than they did pre-9/11, with having to check-in ridiculously early these days.
Late-night revellers travelling North from St Pancras or South from Blackfriars / London Bridge make use of trains running in the small hours.
These two factors may add up to enough custom to make the services viable, financially-speaking ?

306024 · 4 Mar 2013

Skimpot flyer said:
The fact that it serves both Luton & Gatwick Airports, and goes via London ?
Passengers travelling to airports for early flights need even earlier trains than they did pre-9/11, with having to check-in ridiculously early these days.
Late-night revellers travelling North from St Pancras or South from Blackfriars / London Bridge make use of trains running in the small hours.
These two factors may add up to enough custom to make the services viable, financially-speaking ?

And for the most part Thameslink trains run on a 4 track railway apart from the central section. The same commercial demand exists for earlier trains from Liverpool St to Stansted Airport, but the maintenance requirements preclude it. Some of the overnight trains currently only run on the busiest days of the week, which is all planned around NR's engineering access.

Dave1987 · 5 Mar 2013

My point on this thread is that NR seem under a lot of pressure to give back possessions. I've seen on a few TV docs when they have a huge amount of work to do in not a huge amount of time. With that pressure comes the potential for mistakes to be made. This is what I'm getting at.

steverailer · 5 Mar 2013

Dave1987 said:
My point on this thread is that NR seem under a lot of pressure to give back possessions. I've seen on a few TV docs when they have a huge amount of work to do in not a huge amount of time. With that pressure comes the potential for mistakes to be made. This is what I'm getting at.

As someone who works on OHLE throughout the country, and looking at it only as a lowly machine op, the TV Docs you have seen missrepresent the actual work. The vast majority of jobs I have been on have plenty of time to get the work done, especially on the ECML. Have had 2 shift possesions where we could have done all the work in 1. Jobs where there is a 'huge' amount of work and little time have 'huge' amounts of manpower to ensure that they are done on time.

TBH, the majority of the pressure comes not from the hand back time, but from the time the actual possesion and isolation are granted (usually late)

ainsworth74 · 5 Mar 2013

steverailer said:
Jobs where there is a 'huge' amount of work and little time have 'huge' amounts of manpower to ensure that they are done on time.

It's almost as if those that are planning this sort of thing know what they're doing...

steverailer · 5 Mar 2013

ainsworth74 said:
It's almost as if those that are planning this sort of thing know what they're doing...

I wouldn't go that far

tbtc · 5 Mar 2013

Dave1987 said:
My point on this thread is that NR seem under a lot of pressure to give back possessions. I've seen on a few TV docs when they have a huge amount of work to do in not a huge amount of time. With that pressure comes the potential for mistakes to be made. This is what I'm getting at.

There's potential for anything - and if anything does go wrong then no doubt there'll be all sort of self-appointed "experts" telling us that they knew all along...

Reality is that we have fewer overnight trains than we used to, some engineering work over-runs, you could argue that Health & Safety has never had more priority on the railway.

ukrob · 5 Mar 2013

Dave1987 said:
seen on a few TV docs when they have a huge amount of work to do in not a huge amount of time. With that pressure comes the potential for mistakes to be made. This is what I'm getting at.

Ah - based on a TV show then. Just the same as having no knowledge.

Dave1987 · 5 Mar 2013

Steverailer thanks for answering my query. The possessions are clearly not as tight as it thought they were.

Again to everyone acusing me of being a "TV expect", I was merely asking the question, not making statements of fact.

Near 24/7 railway, potential for another grayrigg??

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