News this evening - Delay Repay can
definitely be claimed against any train shown on the RailPlan2020.com website timetables, even if there is an "unadvertised cancellation" on the day.
There may be a difference between training new drivers and training existing ones. They're waiting to train new people (many existing GTR staff) so I'm guessing they are delaying that to focus on getting existing drivers fully up to speed with route knowledge.
I might be wrong but that could make sense.
You're absolutely correct, for the most part anyway.
The focus is on making sure all training resources are delivering the new route knowledge.
Obviously it had been known for many years that there was an aspiration for 24tph throughout the TL Core (one day, in a land far far away). Many of the driver trainers have been released to be pilot drivers through the Core with only a week or two to go, so the bulk of new driver training has ceased with minimal notice to prospective trainees.
Realistically, the need to train up drivers on the Core route for a high frequency service was known about for a very long time, even if the exact branches off the mainline (and then the exact service frequencies) were not known as soon. The bulk of the delays and disruptions to the TL services "on the day" has been down to a lack of training through Central London, although there have also been misbalanced drivers meaning trains could not be driven or piloted [route conducted] north or south of London.
If, for some reason, drivers could not be released soon enough to learn all of the Core between its reopening (in full, through London Bridge High Level) and the new timetable in mid-May, then these calculations should have been known well enough in advance to make sure that there were lots of pilot resources available. As it is, they were released at short notice and then stretched to the absolute limit.
This is one of the reasons why it has been so obvious to a number of other posters on this thread that somebody, somewhere,
did not release the unpalatable truth that there were insufficient drivers to take trains through the middle of London, let alone the bits in the Home Counties. This calculation would, by crewing standards, have been relatively simple and should have been prepared long before the winter just gone, when London Bridge became fully operational.
tsr is a good poster.
We are lucky to have him on here
*Bows and scrapes* I do my best!
Realistically I don’t think they can roll back to the previous timetable because of the knock on effects to EMT, VTEC, South Eastern, SWR etc.
I fear it’s going to be a long summer for passengers on GTR. I suspect this shambles is going to go on for months.
The satire in the Guardian was probably about right. They'll implement the May timetable by December, and the December timetable will throw its own challenges.
They can't go back to a previous timetable because everything else has changed around it, not least Southern with which the Thameslink timetable is integrated. Also some stations have no service other than Thameslink as they are no longer served by Great Northern or Southern.
A proper emergency timetable rather than unbalanced cancellations would be a better step.
You are quite right once again. Thanks also for previously explaining the Redhill route issues (I think it was you!).
The additional stops on Southern services are becoming more structured, so some places are basically temporarily returning to a Southern service.
The timings are such that you can only presently really reduce Thameslink by frequency rather than introduce new calling patterns, with all the timing issues and congestion that could cause.
At present looks like the current situation will continue until 15th July when a proper temporary timetable is scheduled to be introduced - what that will look like is anyone's guess though at the moment!
And of course to prepare such a timetable, they need to work out the drivers and units available. By mid-July, there will be a different number of drivers available on each route. One wonders just how restrictive an emergency timetable will have to be, in order to have even vague certainty about services running...