Northern Rail could be re-nationalised

Dr Hoo said:

So the highest paid Northern director gets less than half what several (public sector) Network Rail directors do, for example those responsible for Infrastructure Projects and Route Services, i.e. including North west electrification and the 2018 timetable? Right...

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I'm sorry I don't agree with six figure salaries for failure.

Djgr said:

I'm sorry I don't agree with six figure salaries for failure.

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Realistically how much do you think the CEO of a major company would get? I’m talking the salary, not the performance bonus.

I’ve definately seen much fatter fat cats than £172k!

Andyh82 said:

Realistically how much do you think the CEO of a major company would get? I’m talking the salary, not the performance bonus.

I’ve definately seen much fatter fat cats than £172k!

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If the CEO of a major company presided over a catastrophic failure I would expect them out of the door.

Out of interest, what was the cause of the 41 min delay to
1J28 0637 Manchester Victoria to Leeds this morning, as this was the service used to illustrate an example of why Northern should lose their franchise on Look North tonight. (Accupanied by shots of TPE 185s of course)

RealTrains07 said:

Northern is improving though. The new trains are better over the pacers plus i thought the timetable was getting sorted?

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Try telling those commuters on the Donny-Leeds line with daily class 331 cancellations due to “train faults”. I’m sure many would be happy with continuing pacers and class 32x’s if it meant a running service

js1000 said:

The idea of 're-nationalisation' as an overnight panacea for all of Northern's problems is nonsense.

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PR1Berske said:

I agree.

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Whilst I disagree, it's not going to fix any TOC's problems, just change them for a different set of now likely keep the current set for now only for a new set to come to the fore later.

LNW-GW Joint said:

Stadler were possibly an option (I don't know if they bid for the Northern contract).
But they are not having it easy over at GA either with 745/755 (not an Arriva operation).
CAF had the benefit of the Caledonian Sleeper order and some past experience from the 332/333 EMU projects and the NI DMUs.
TPE have also been caught out with over-optimistic bids from CAF.
We'll soon see if First Trenitalia order any CAF stuff for the WCML.

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To be fair to CAF, Bombardier has been hopeless with the Aventra introduction too. Siemens and maybe Stadler have been the least worst...

Djgr said:

If the CEO of a major company presided over a catastrophic failure I would expect them out of the door.

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Just like them at Thomas Cook, but they made sure everyone went out the door, with no pay while they had already had there big bonus for complete failure, no doubt ready to walk into another top paid job with bonuses elsewhere.

Grumpy Git said:

I work for myself, (I can't hack the corporate bullcarp). If someone asks me to quote for a job and I'm "too dear", I walk away. I have plenty of customers who have asked me back to rip-out inferior stuff (where I lost-out originally), to install the "expensive" gear in that I quoted year(s) earlier.

I don't have any trouble sleeping at night either.

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Golden rule - in life you generally get what you pay for. Also if you pay peanuts you eventually end up with monkeys.

LNW-GW Joint said:

Stadler were possibly an option (I don't know if they bid for the Northern contract).
But they are not having it easy over at GA either with 745/755 (not an Arriva operation).
CAF had the benefit of the Caledonian Sleeper order and some past experience from the 332/333 EMU projects and the NI DMUs.
TPE have also been caught out with over-optimistic bids from CAF.
We'll soon see if First Trenitalia order any CAF stuff for the WCML.

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Hang on the 332 and 333 were seimen builds? Why would CAF have involvment?

RealTrains07 said:

Hang on the 332 and 333 were seimen builds? Why would CAF have involvment?

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It was a joint project with CAF.

RealTrains07 said:

Hang on the 332 and 333 were seimen builds? Why would CAF have involvment?

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Because they were a joint venture of Siemens/CAF built by CAF in Spain.

Just pipped me @driver_m! Lol

WYSH said:

Try telling those commuters on the Donny-Leeds line with daily class 331 cancellations due to “train faults”. I’m sure many would be happy with continuing pacers and class 32x’s if it meant a running service

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Well overall its slowly improving with 400 extra services on sundays soon as well as 2,000 during the week including direct services from Bradford to Wakefield, Sheffield, Nottingham, Liverpool and Hull. Leeds to Chester and Bridlington. Lincoln to Leeds and Manchester airport to Warrington, Bradford and Halifax (40% increase in capacity) so they havent exactly done a totally mess so far

Andyh82 said:

Out of interest, what was the cause of the 41 min delay to
1J28 0637 Manchester Victoria to Leeds this morning, as this was the service used to illustrate an example of why Northern should lose their franchise on Look North tonight. (Accupanied by shots of TPE 185s of course)

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It was 38 minutes late leaving Newton Heath. I don't know why, but other trains leaving the depot were fine, so I'd guess either train fault or staff shortage, both of which are Northern's fault.

That train is particularly important at the Yorkshire end as one of only two, or at Brighouse the only, Leeds arrival between 8 and 9am. As a result of the delay Brighouse didn't have a train to Leeds via Dewsbury for over 90 minutes during the morning peak, Batley and Morley 70 minutes etc.

Mikey C said:

Pretty sure CAF was the only option in town for DMUs at the time, Bombardier have stopped making Turbostars, and weren't interested in a DMU version of the Aventra.

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BT do offer a bimode version, they were just slightly ahead of UK government thinking.

So desperate to have the new stock seen in service they are ignoring dangerous software faults. Six months into the new stock being put into service, we are barreling towards operating them in degraded working mode. Far too much demand in too short a time. I feel we had a two year strike over nothing, because these trains are at this time totally incapable of being operated in DCO mode. Some of the issues are truly frightening. 737-MAX of the railway world.

It's all going to end in tears I tell you.

For those of us far from Northern metals, what is / are the actual root cause(s) to Northern's problems? I hear the viewpoints of both Grant Shapps and of Northern's MD, David Brown and I can't determine if it's Network Rail, Siemens & CAF, Northern's own management incompetence or a mixture of all of them. Who bears the brunt of the blame here and what can be realistically fixed?

nlogax said:

For those of us far from Northern metals, what is / are the actual root cause(s) to Northern's problems? I hear the viewpoints of both Grant Shapps and of Northern's MD, David Brown and I can't determine if it's Network Rail, Siemens & CAF, Northern's own management incompetence or a mixture of all of them. Who bears the brunt of the blame here and what can be realistically fixed?

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You will find answers across this thread and elsewhere but in short (and I don't necessarily agree with all of these but by way of summary)

1. The extent of the Northern "region"
2. The ordering of new stock, the delay in receiving that stock, and the potential issues with that stock not being entirely fit for purpose
3. Electrification delays
4. RMT strike action
5. The continued use of Pacers
6. Lack of drivers in the west, and connected contract issues with drivers for Sunday/overtime shifts

nlogax said:

For those of us far from Northern metals, what is / are the actual root cause(s) to Northern's problems? I hear the viewpoints of both Grant Shapps and of Northern's MD, David Brown and I can't determine if it's Network Rail, Siemens & CAF, Northern's own management incompetence or a mixture of all of them. Who bears the brunt of the blame here and what can be realistically fixed?

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You're right about it not being one thing but an accumulation of many overlapping issues, some more predictable than others.

One not in this list is the deadline set to replace or refurbish so much rolling stock by the end of 2019. That's the ticking time bomb that was not tackled soon enough by the industry. The result is the capacity to design, build and test new stock has proved inadequate and the time too short to achieve target. The same goes for refurbishments which are taking longer than expected.

Net result is we have to take it on the chin. We shall have to use Pacers for another year, and there are still other things to resolve. Sadly new technology has a habit of not working as designed when exposed to the real world!

Nationalisation in some form may work, or may be thought to have worked, but the reality is there is no silver bullet. Imposing unrealistic time limits and targets won't work, but in 2 or 3 years time we should be in calmer waters. There's more pain to come if we keep beating ourselves up in the meantime.

nlogax said:

For those of us far from Northern metals, what is / are the actual root cause(s) to Northern's problems? I hear the viewpoints of both Grant Shapps and of Northern's MD, David Brown and I can't determine if it's Network Rail, Siemens & CAF, Northern's own management incompetence or a mixture of all of them. Who bears the brunt of the blame here and what can be realistically fixed?

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It's a perfect storm.

The main cause was years of under investment. Then we had a government who decided to invest, but set the timetable far too ambitiously. Nobody saw that the two original franchises should never have been merged in the first place. Grayling set about having a war with railway staff.

Then the game moved on.

Timetable changes were introduced that anyone with a brain, plus any knowledge of railway matters, could see were destined for failure. Then we had Networkrail who seem hell bent on taking longer to build a platform at Leeds than it took to build the whole of the Settle-Carlisle. But Northern also decided to go to war with it's staff also at a time it needed them on board, and I'm talking about on board in a business sense. People who knew the railway were replaced by idiots who ordered milk for Tesco's in their past roles. TVM's sprung up everywhere, roll out of e-tickets, no thought about protecting revenue came into the plan, couldn't even issue staff with 'Star-mobiles' that could scan a ticket. Now we have the introduction of new stock where the software is so unreliable the trains are failing on a daily basis.

I could go on. But the root cause is all round incompetence, and a management who seem hell bent on taking no advice from anyone.

Over the last couple of weeks I've noticed Northern units (150s specifically, 131 and 128 being two examples) returning from PRM mods / refurbs with no Arriva / Northern branding. No logos on the exterior, and interior refurbs limited to PRM mods only - no rebranding from (e.g.) ex-FGW colours, seat covers, etc.
Obviously there could be plenty of explanations for that, but it's easy to see how you wouldn't apply branding to trains, only for it to be removed a few weeks later.

Thanks all, appreciate the thoughts about what's gone / going wrong there. A proper spider web of delay, incompetence, underinvestment and a lack of any overriding strategy.

nlogax said:

Thanks all, appreciate the thoughts about what's gone / going wrong there. A proper spider web of delay, incompetence, underinvestment and a lack of any overriding strategy.

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and a shed load of buck passing

Gems said:

It's a perfect storm.

The main cause was years of under investment. Then we had a government who decided to invest, but set the timetable far too ambitiously. Nobody saw that the two original franchises should never have been merged in the first place. Grayling set about having a war with railway staff.

Then the game moved on.

Timetable changes were introduced that anyone with a brain, plus any knowledge of railway matters, could see were destined for failure. Then we had Networkrail who seem hell bent on taking longer to build a platform at Leeds than it took to build the whole of the Settle-Carlisle. But Northern also decided to go to war with it's staff also at a time it needed them on board, and I'm talking about on board in a business sense. People who knew the railway were replaced by idiots who ordered milk for Tesco's in their past roles. TVM's sprung up everywhere, roll out of e-tickets, no thought about protecting revenue came into the plan, couldn't even issue staff with 'Star-mobiles' that could scan a ticket. Now we have the introduction of new stock where the software is so unreliable the trains are failing on a daily basis.

I could go on. But the root cause is all round incompetence, and a management who seem hell bent on taking no advice from anyone.

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Thank you for that excellent post.
Pity it was not included wholemeal in the last Queen’s speech.

It's true Arriva have had a lot of external problems to deal with. But most of these have been entirely predictable...

Electrification delayed? Who'd have thought?
Government backtracking on investment plans? Inconceivable!
New trains with reliability problems? Literally the first time that's ever happened.
Rail unions vehemently opposing downgrading roles? Why ever would they do that?
Ambitious new timetable falling apart? Never heard of anything like that before...

The basic problem appears to be that the plan for the franchise required all these issues either not to occur or somehow to resolve themselves. It is entirely predictable that they happened. Failure to plan for this is a failure of management.

Arriva is still failing to provide a basic reliable service. It is not 'slowly improving'. The reliability stats from 2016 show consistently worsening performance. There was a particular dip in summer 2018 but this is superimposed on a general decline. This is backed up by the anecdotal experience in my area. The Airedale and Wharfedale lines to Leeds used to be pretty reliable. Cancellations were rare; delays usually only a few minutes. Largely unaffected by timetable changes, it would be expected that the service should have continued as it has done. However, cancellations are now commonplace, with peak morning trains cancelled multiple times during a single week. PPM and right time stats are significantly down. It's now at a level when you can't trust a train to turn up; that's a real problem. And this is for a part of the network which hasn't been subject to major timetable overhaul or delayed infrastructure. Arriva have to take responsibility for this.

I hear many voices on here giving a counsel of despair: 'nothing can be done', 'it would be just the same with someone else' etc. This is demonstrably not the case. We have seen failing franchises before (Connex, Arriva Trains North - first incarnation, National Express East Coast) which have been significantly improved by their replacement, whether they be private or public.

Particularly for city commuter networks, it seems that direct public ownership (London Underground) or concessions (Merseyrail, T&W Metro, Overground, TfL rail, pretty much all light rail) are reasonably successful arrangements. I don't think a merger with Transpennine would be a good idea; management focus would inevitably fall on the premier routes to the detriment of others. Governance arrangements also need to be simplified with full decision making and budget holding at regional or city-region level.

ElectroSoldier said:

The amount of times I see a Northern train sitting at a signal waiting for class 1 trains to pass makes me wonder.

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In The Times today it says: "The Office of Rail and Road said only 55.2 per cent of Northern trains reached stations within a minute of their scheduled arrival in the year to the end of June, down by 1.5 percentage points compared with 2018."

The Northern train I use is frequently held outside the station due to other late running services. A few times there have been an LNER, TPE and Cross Country train each come past - even though the Northern service left the previous station on time. If this happens on the evening it might be a LNER or Cross Country train still in the platform when the Northern one is due.

Is there attribution for delays like that or does it still count in the 44.8% of trains which didn't arrive within a minute?

Mathew S said:

Over the last couple of weeks I've noticed Northern units (150s specifically, 131 and 128 being two examples) returning from PRM mods / refurbs with no Arriva / Northern branding. No logos on the exterior, and interior refurbs limited to PRM mods only - no rebranding from (e.g.) ex-FGW colours, seat covers, etc.
Obviously there could be plenty of explanations for that, but it's easy to see how you wouldn't apply branding to trains, only for it to be removed a few weeks later.

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PRM mods are being prioritised in order to get as much of the fleet converted before the deadline as possible. Other 'superficial' mods will then follow at a later date. Knowing Northern there's a distinct possibility that later date will be never.

geml90 said:

In The Times today it says: "The Office of Rail and Road said only 55.2 per cent of Northern trains reached stations within a minute of their scheduled arrival in the year to the end of June, down by 1.5 percentage points compared with 2018."

The Northern train I use is frequently held outside the station due to other late running services. A few times there have been an LNER, TPE and Cross Country train each come past - even though the Northern service left the previous station on time. If this happens on the evening it might be a LNER or Cross Country train still in the platform when the Northern one is due.

Is there attribution for delays like that or does it still count in the 44.8% of trains which didn't arrive within a minute?

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Delay attribution generally kicks in for ‘incidents’ of three minutes or more. More precisely, an ‘excess time’ through a TRUST section (typically between two junctions or locations around 10-15 miles apart) of three minutes longer than scheduled.
So it is quite common for a train to be (>1 minute) ‘late’ with no ‘delay’ recorded. This has always been the case, back to when BR introduced delay attribution.
(There are slightly different arrangements for issues that are not discrete ‘incidents’, such as an ongoing temporary speed restriction or poor adhesion.)

palmersears said:

PRM mods are being prioritised in order to get as much of the fleet converted before the deadline as possible. Other 'superficial' mods will then follow at a later date. Knowing Northern there's a distinct possibility that later date will be never.

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Yeah, I get that (actually makes sense in the circumstances to do that, I guess), but you have to wonder how much extra time and effort it would have been to stick the Northern/Arriva vinyl logos on them. I mean, otherwise the exterior refurb is completely done. Just feels like an odd thing to miss out in the name of time saving unless it's a precursor to branding them with something else.

The new franchise operation now sees gritting as not required. For the second time this autumn the timber platform I used this morning was like an ice rink. No sign of anyone visting to grit, which wasn't the case under the previous franchise. First sign of cold weather and the access path and platfom were gritted.

How much would it cost Northern if someone fell between platform and train?