2018 - A cursed year for the railway ?

Thirty years as a regular train traveller and I've never experienced anything like it.

Never-ending engineering works, timetable meltdown, never ending industrial action, and now the whole of Kent has self-immolated.

I suppose the years of the closure programme were bad in the long term.

Can anyone think of a year as excrable as 2018 for the railway ?

yorksrob said:

Thirty years as a regular train traveller and I've never experienced anything like it.

Never-ending engineering works, timetable meltdown, never ending industrial action, and now the whole of Kent has self-immolated.

I suppose the years of the closure programme were bad in the long term.

Can anyone think of a year as excrable as 2018 for the railway ?

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2000 - the Hatfield derailment and its consequences?

bramling said:

2000 - the Hatfield derailment and its consequences?

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Yes, that was terrible. I can't remember how long it took the timetable to get back on an even keel. That said, my Leeds -Bradford commute at the time wasn't affected, so I was probably sheltered.

yorksrob said:

Thirty years as a regular train traveller and I've never experienced anything like it.

Never-ending engineering works, timetable meltdown, never ending industrial action, and now the whole of Kent has self-immolated.

I suppose the years of the closure programme were bad in the long term.

Can anyone think of a year as excrable as 2018 for the railway ?

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I mean we could measure cursed as, lets be honest, in the big scheme of thing fairly minor things.

Or we could drop with the hyperbole. Recent times, maybe Oct 1999 to Oct 2000 where we had Ladbroke Grove and Hatfield. 2001 with Great Heck. 2002 with Potters Bar. 2004 with Ufton Nervet. How about further back, 1954 with Harrow and Wealdstone, 1916, Quintshill.

Every single one of those years is easily far far more cursed than any of the issues we've seen this year.

Not been cursed this year, just badly managed.

TheEdge said:

I mean we could measure cursed as, lets be honest, in the big scheme of thing fairly minor things.

Or we could drop with the hyperbole. Recent times, maybe Oct 1999 to Oct 2000 where we had Ladbroke Grove and Hatfield. 2001 with Great Heck. 2002 with Potters Bar. 2004 with Ufton Nervet. How about further back, 1954 with Harrow and Wealdstone, 1916, Quintshill.

Every single one of those years is easily far far more cursed than any of the issues we've seen this year.

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This is true - certainly for those unfortunate enough to be involved in those accidents.

But accidents aside, this year, I've experienced major disruption pretty much every other week. That was simply not the case for 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2004. In terms of widespread disruption, I still say I've never known a year like it.

philthetube said:

Not been cursed this year, just badly managed.

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Yes, well I can't disagree with that.

yorksrob said:

This is true - certainly for those unfortunate enough to be involved in those accidents.

But accidents aside, this year, I've experienced major disruption pretty much every other week. That was simply not the case for 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2004. In terms of widespread disruption, I still say I've never known a year like it.

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I haven't really been that disrupted, the only major problem has been GWRs IET shortforms

cactustwirly said:

I haven't really been that disrupted, the only major problem has been GWRs IET shortforms

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Possibly true. Northern England seems to have been most heavily afflicted (I personally haven't been that badly affected by the goings on on TPE anfd Hull Trains, but I know people who have).

bramling said:

2000 - the Hatfield derailment and its consequences?

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I remember that, it was quicker going long distance by Coach than rail in the immediate aftermath of that, i remember reading about one journey Blackpool-Leeds that took 10 hours

I agree with the "badly managed" sentiment. I sense that 2018 is the first time that significant numbers of people responsible for running our railways have either (or both) lost touch with reality by insisting on implementing impossible timetables and have forgotten the purpose of running passenger trains, for example by "skip-stopping" to make their performance figures look less bad than they otherwise would be.

As a passenger I have lost the confidence that I used to have that the people who operate our railways would be aware of my needs and respond to them. Problems occur, often not of "the railways" own making, but I would always get to my destination somehow.

I feel a significant change in 2018 and that the repercussions could be immense, we already see people moving away from season tickets because of more flexible working practices, but there could be a more significant shift away from railways unless the problems that have manifested themselves in 2018 are fixed soon.

That's just my feeling, I can be proved wrong, but I've been travelling by train in South Manchester since September 1970 and I can't remember the service ever being as bad as it has been in 2018. But it's the managers and leaders rather than the majority of staff I encounter in person whom I blame.

Yeah, I don't think you can class accidents under the same heading as what's gone on this year (as tragic as they are - they are usually one-off events based on bad luck, unless they're caused by systematic maintenance failure or somesuch).

This year seems to have been a whole run of events sparked off by managers who either don't seem to understand exactly what it is they're doing, don't seem to care or are simply trying to score political points by doing it 'their way'. Also, as someone alluded to earlier, the need for Statistics Above All Else seems utterly crazy. What is the point of a passenger railway that runs all its trains on time, yet leaves half of their passengers stranded on platforms, some in fear of losing their jobs because they can't get to work on time?

Personally, it seems that the management teams are striving for high ideals through sudden and massive change... without any real idea how to achieve them or what the actual consequences will be if it goes wrong (hence the mess).

As I've said before, this will push many people into flexible working arrangements and companies will have to consider them seriously, rather than on an ad-hoc basis (which I have no doubt will make their workers happier and companies more productive... but that's another debate entirely).

jfollows said:

I agree with the "badly managed" sentiment. I sense that 2018 is the first time that significant numbers of people responsible for running our railways have either (or both) lost touch with reality by insisting on implementing impossible timetables and have forgotten the purpose of running passenger trains, for example by "skip-stopping" to make their performance figures look less bad than they otherwise would be.

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I think it is worse than that. It is the first time for a number of years the railway has had to implement large scale changes affecting large areas of the country and I don’t think it has competent enough managers to implement these changes. Ticking along OK when there isn’t much going on is one thing but having enough people with the correct skills and competence to implement large scale changes is another.

With the introduction of the new CAF trains being delayed and Northern intended to make fairly major changes to the timetable again in May I see the same thing happening again next year.

1994 - the Railways Act , which leads us to where we are - with Hatfield on the way.

Adding to the woes already listed, we also had the Beast from the East that left me stranded in Edinburgh for 2 days while snowploughs battled the North Sea 'breezes' to clear the line across the border - as fast as they cleared the snow, the winds blew it back again.

Speaking of bad management, is it true that connections are no longer held (presumably to mitigate 'delay' statistics)? I recently travelled from Bristol to Oxford, changing at Swindon and Didcot; at Swindon we were delayed leaving because of a door problem (on an IET) and got into Didcot seconds after the Oxford connection had left. What's the point? A platform of angry passengers, an over-full next Oxford service, and I missed my lunch engagement. In the 'old days' Swindon would have phoned Didcot and said hold that connection, it's the railway's fault that all these passengers left Swindon late.

Fearless said:

Speaking of bad management, is it true that connections are no longer held (presumably to mitigate 'delay' statistics)? I recently travelled from Bristol to Oxford, changing at Swindon and Didcot; at Swindon we were delayed leaving because of a door problem (on an IET) and got into Didcot seconds after the Oxford connection had left. What's the point? A platform of angry passengers, an over-full next Oxford service, and I missed my lunch engagement. In the 'old days' Swindon would have phoned Didcot and said hold that connection, it's the railway's fault that all these passengers left Swindon late.

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It does seem to me, as a casual outsider, that The Railway is now a very inflexible beast, with the inability to cope well with any form of disruption due to a myriad of reasons, both technical and admin.

Bertie the bus said:

With the introduction of the new CAF trains being delayed and Northern intended to make fairly major changes to the timetable again in May I see the same thing happening again next year.

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You have no idea how accurate this statement of yours is. There is a very real risk of it happening again, and worse besides.

J-Rod said:

It does seem to me, as a casual outsider, that The Railway is now a very inflexible beast, with the inability to cope well with any form of disruption due to a myriad of reasons, both technical and admin.

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In the case of the missed connection at Didcot , and yes I know I am a Dinosaur) - the BR Chargeman / Supervisor would have held the train for a couple of mins on his own initiative - and herded the passengers onto it with maybe a 2 or 3 min delay but passenger journeys completed. No need to bother "Control" with that.

Now we have delay attribution clerks in distant offices - who stare at screens and have zero passenger facing duties. Is that a benefit.? A senior railway manager wrote of the "don't see, don't care" attitude of some elements of the railway structure today. Note , I said "some" - there are some great staff out there ......there was one at Luton Airport Parkway yesterday helping out the confused diverted air passengers.

ChiefPlanner said:

In the case of the missed connection at Didcot , and yes I know I am a Dinosaur) - the BR Chargeman / Supervisor would have held the train for a couple of mins on his own initiative - and herded the passengers onto it with maybe a 2 or 3 min delay but passenger journeys completed. No need to bother "Control" with that.

Now we have delay attribution clerks in distant offices - who stare at screens and have zero passenger facing duties. Is that a benefit.? A senior railway manager wrote of the "don't see, don't care" attitude of some elements of the railway structure today. Note , I said "some" - there are some great staff out there ......there was one at Luton Airport Parkway yesterday helping out the confused diverted air passengers.

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Oh yes, I agree - there's always going to be great people doing whatever job but I can totally understand that the 'Don't See; Don't Care' attitude being exacerbated by that mode of working, if you're in a windowless office miles away from the actual issue.

I guess the current management practices will try and remove the ability of on the ground staff to act on their own initiative because it might go against diktat X,Y, or Z... which then might hurt the company financially (which is awfully bad for the shareholders, dontchaknew).

It's funny, I never had much of an opinion on nationalisation vs privitisation but this year it does seem to me that full nationalisation will go some way to curing some of these ills. Can't see it happening though, certainly not within the next few governments anyway! I suppose we'll be stuck with this weird half-way house that we have at the moment.

There are some outlandish claims made on this thread and some downright wrong/silly things.

@TheEdge has it right.

Ps - this year has been fine for me railway wise. Dealt with much worse! One example was when it took nearly 4 hours to get from darlingtin to Newcastle due to Hatfield speed restrictions.

But yeah 2018. Worst.Railway.Year.Ever!

I think the reason 2018 seemed so disappointing is the potential it had to be a proper game changer when we would see a bunch of new investment some to fruition: Crossrail and Thameslink, new trains and all the rest.

It does set 2019 up to be a doozy, though there remains the possibility Crossrail will not open before 2020 in which case that latter year will have to have so much happen!

DarloRich said:

There are some outlandish claims made on this thread and some downright wrong/silly things.

@TheEdge has it right.

Ps - this year has been fine for me railway wise. Dealt with much worse! One example was when it took nearly 4 hours to get from darlingtin to Newcastle due to Hatfield speed restrictions.

But yeah 2018. Worst.Railway.Year.Ever!

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Which particular claims would you say are outlandish, out of interest ?

squizzler said:

I think the reason 2018 seemed so disappointing is the potential it had to be a proper game changer when we would see a bunch of new investment some to fruition: Crossrail and Thameslink, new trains and all the rest.

It does set 2019 up to be a doozy, though there remains the possibility Crossrail will not open before 2020 in which case that latter year will have to have so much happen!

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In terms of crossrail, I suppose that to an extent, you can't miss what you've never had.

Personally I've found that services that have more or less operated without incident for ten to twenty years, have been unusable or non-existant a lot of the time.

I agree its been a cursed year - so much "seat" chat........

TheEdge said:

I mean we could measure cursed as, lets be honest, in the big scheme of thing fairly minor things.

Or we could drop with the hyperbole. Recent times, maybe Oct 1999 to Oct 2000 where we had Ladbroke Grove and Hatfield. 2001 with Great Heck. 2002 with Potters Bar. 2004 with Ufton Nervet. How about further back, 1954 with Harrow and Wealdstone, 1916, Quintshill.

Every single one of those years is easily far far more cursed than any of the issues we've seen this year.

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Good sensible point – it’s too easy to fall for the emotive trap of believing that the current year is the worst things have been, but we’ve been through much worse years than this.

Just since the Millennium we’ve had years with devastating crashes, we’ve had the “no growth” years, we’ve had various big decisions deferred or projects cancelled.

2018 hasn’t been an unqualified success but we’ve had new trains, we’ve had improved frequencies, we’ve had a fairly safe year (not a lot can be done about people sticking heads out of windows or Level Crossings). Franchises have been agreed with lots of new investment, recently awarded franchises are bringing their new stock, we've various new train building facilities being built, we struggle to get some other trains built because the order books are so full!

The majority of problems we currently have are:

Information is much more widely shared - we are made aware of every derailment/ significant delay/ fatality almost instantly - some enthusiasts even go trawling Twitter to find examples of disgruntled passengers - like they are voyeurs in other people's misery - desperate to know of every setback

The promise of the CP5 announcement hasn't been delivered on time/on budget - some things have been deferred or delayed or postponed. That's not unique to 2018. The fact that things are being delivered slower than expected doesn't make things *worse*, it just means they aren't getting better at the speed promised by over-optimistic people a few years ago.

The expectations on here are rather OTT - the kind of people who will criticise a newly opened line for having some single track sections or will complain about new trains they haven't even been on

Unions - the strikes, the rolling stock being delayed because of Union concerns - the pay negotiations that hang over passenger plans and make people reluctant to book far in advance - I hope 2019 doesn't repeat 2018 at Northern and TSGN

We seem to have forgotten about a lot of bad years if we think that 2018 has been "execrable". I'm not saying it's been perfect, mind. The constant growth of the past generation seems to be slowing down, there are certainly concerns about the structure of the industry, I'm not confident about Network Rail's abilities to deliver what it promises to, I'm not happy with the DfT's attempts to interfere with things (which is why I think that Nationalisation is just going to hand total control to the people who are already failing)... but it's not been a terrible year. Most of the complaints on the Forum tend to be about things like the seating, wibble about paint, complaints that we aren't as perfect as Switzerland etc (or minutia like a peak Dunblane - Edinburgh service now running five minutes earlier!) - if that's the biggest gripes that people have then I think the railway is mucking along alright. Could be a lot worse (though some may be too young to remember such times).

yorksrob said:

Possibly true. Northern England seems to have been most heavily afflicted (I personally haven't been that badly affected by the goings on on TPE anfd Hull Trains, but I know people who have).

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Umm I’m sure GTR customers would advise you to speak for yourself.

But actually aside from management ineptitude it’s not been over bad. No massive accidents.

Cambridge North opened last year. Its means I have a 20 minute walk to my office, instead of an hour from Cambridge or Waterbeach.

Until May, the first off peak train from Ely was £4.60 and meant going into Cambridge and back out again. Now the first off peak train is direct, and leaves 13 minutes earlier. However, I there are now fares just for Greater Anglia trains. Fares are £4.90 (peak) £2.30 (off peak), and after 10am I can use a discount card to pay £1.85! I can buy Greater Anglia tickets on my phone as I walk down to the station, so I don't have to queue at a ticket machine.

I don't think I can grumble.

Worst year? Depends where you are, and whether or not you’re a passenger experiencing prolonged and repeated disruption.

I’ll admit that I’m at the extreme end of the spectrum – my station has been the worst in the entire country (by a considerable margin) for delays and cancellations over the 6 months of the May timetable – and there are large parts of the network that have been unaffected by timetable chaos.

tbtc said:

2018 hasn’t been an unqualified success

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I'm sure Leo Goodwin would agree with you.

tbtc said:

but we’ve had new trains, we’ve had improved frequencies,

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No improved frequencies for me. Quite the opposite.

tbtc said:

The promise of the CP5 announcement hasn't been delivered on time/on budget - some things have been deferred or delayed or postponed. That's not unique to 2018. The fact that things are being delivered slower than expected doesn't make things *worse*, it just means they aren't getting better at the speed promised by over-optimistic people a few years ago.

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Your experience might be that things are getting better, but only slowly. I’m pleased that you haven’t had inflicted on you the same chaos and incompetence that I have suffered since the 20th May timetable change. Sorry to say my experience is very different.

jfollows said:

I sense that 2018 is the first time that significant numbers of people responsible for running our railways have either (or both) lost touch with reality by insisting on implementing impossible timetables and have forgotten the purpose of running passenger trains, for example by "skip-stopping" to make their performance figures look less bad than they otherwise would be.

As a passenger I have lost the confidence that I used to have that the people who operate our railways would be aware of my needs and respond to them. Problems occur, often not of "the railways" own making, but I would always get to my destination somehow

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The timetable, even had the trains run according to that timetable, is worse than in 1990. There was never any promise of improvements, the new timetable represented a significant deterioration in service. Trains have habitually been cancelled, omitted my station to make up time or been terminated short of their destination. The number of days when this hasn’t happened barely reaches double figures. Sometimes a 20-mile journey from Manchester has taken over 3 hours, because TPE cancelled consecutive hourly trains. TPE are quite keen to get their trains back into the right place but have shown no interest in trying to get their passengers to the right place. So, for me, it’s been by far the worst year that I can recall.

tbtc said:

The expectations on here are rather OTT - the kind of people who will criticise a newly opened line for having some single track sections or will complain about new trains they haven't even been on

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I don’t think expecting trains to run roughly according to the timetable is OTT. I don’t think expecting to be able to get home the 20 miles from Manchester in less than 3 hours is OTT.

tbtc said:

Most of the complaints on the Forum tend to be about things like the seating, wibble about paint, complaints that we aren't as perfect as Switzerland etc (or minutia like a peak Dunblane - Edinburgh service now running five minutes earlier!) - if that's the biggest gripes that people have then I think the railway is mucking along alright. Could be a lot worse (though some may be too young to remember such times).

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No-one around here is complaining about seating or paint. They're not even complaining about delays of less than 10 minutes, because anything less than 10 minutes late has come as an unexpected bonus.

As a regular user of the railways of West Yorkshire, (thankfully avoiding Leeds at rush hour most of the time), whilst the May timetable debacle is well recorded I have not been too badly affected. My grumble are the constant slightly late services - 3-10 minutes being typical on a regular service I use.

I am also wondering where all the refurbished Northern units are because I'm not seeing many! In carriage display panels excepted, new seats, charging points, wi fi etc are still rare.

cjmillsnun said:

Umm I’m sure GTR customers would advise you to speak for yourself.

But actually aside from management ineptitude it’s not been over bad. No massive accidents.

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That's a fair point in that GTR is another of those areas where I've not personally been affected but others have been, which bolsters my point.

Management ineptitude can result in electrification schemes being late or over budget which might give the treasury a fright, but so long as trains are still running, doesn't stop people getting where they want to be, when they want to be. I'm specifically talking about prolonged disruption week after week after week in some cases for the whole year.