Not just Northern… Thameslink, who weren’t too badly affected on Christmas Eve, have just announced that there will be many cancellations on NYE, warning that it could be hours between services in the afternoon and evening. They also won’t run services overnight like they usually do.
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Extremely limited service on some Thameslink routes NYE
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Thameslink are very heavily reliant on rest day working, and have highly depot specific route knowledge making cross coverage difficult, so it’s likely they simply won’t have enough driver resource despite their committed Sundays arrangement.
Presumably Northern have more cross coverage between depots, so that drivers from depot A can cover some or all of depot B’s work, if necessary.
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The problem comes when you check and realise you don’t have enough!
Sleepy
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Limited overtime volunteers New Years Eve weekend ? Well that's a surprise - to nobody except GTR management it seems !!!
Bishopstone
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Looks like all of the Royston/Finsbury Park - Brighton Thameslinks are cancelled this afternoon and evening. That said, the Peterborough - Horsham service, which sees a third of the timetable cancelled on an average weekend, seems to be running well so I presume resources have been re-deployed internally to these diagrams.
And it’s only going to get worse.
None of the thru services Bedford to Brighton will run all the way, all will be either terminating or starting at London Bridge.
No overnight services on any line at all.
Bedford / Three Bridges to Horsham services will be cancelled entirely.
Royston to Brighton services will be cancelled entirely from the afternoon onwards.
Everything else (eg Sutton loop services) will run as planned however everything i’ve said is subject to change at the last minute as it already has done today.
Cricketer8for9
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My 07:34 East Croydon to Littlehampton train this morning made additional stops at Three Bridges and Balcombe to cover for delayed Thameslink trains. I was off side of the train and didn’t see whether any passengers got on or off. Southern seemed to be running fine; Thameslink very definitely Not.
Cricketer8for9
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Makes sense. Get Brighton and Haywards Heath passengers to East Croydon where there are more Thameslink trains and a Southern Service to London Bridge fast as well (it does stop at Norwood Junction).
From what I've seen even the "better" operators only just have their heads above water at the moment in terms of staffing levels; not just for crew but also things like station staff, control etc.
Sleepy
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Extended industrial action since covid thanks to the inept government has hardly painted the railway as a good career choice ?
bramling
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Exactly, another problem which is going to be an issue in the medium term. All of a sudden the notion that operators can be picky with their recruitment is probably going to be another thing that went out of the window in the 2020s.
TrainGeekUK
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The overnight service isn’t free this year according to TFL..
Major works and events
Information about service changes required for upgrade works and major events. Includes driving, walking and cycling as well as public transport
tfl.gov.uk
The overnight service isn’t free this year according to TFL..
Major works and events
Information about service changes required for upgrade works and major events. Includes driving, walking and cycling as well as public transport
Don't think it was free last year either and maybe not in 2021.
D1537
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No, it wasn't - the last free year was 2020.
Edit: it turns out it was actually 2019, though I dare say few people used it in 2020 anyway.
And will probably remain the last for some time to come I imagine.
Adrian1980uk
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TFL have a larger budget/subsidy than any other TOC simply because they shift more people daily than anyone else but the other side to that story is that they have less options to cancel services too, cancelling a couple of consecutive peak central line trains and stations come to a grinding halt as they have to shut for safety reasons and would probably take over an hour of running train after train to recover.
Interestingly it is stated the timetable will be updated in the morning, which means delay repay will be due as they have missed the 22:00 night before cut off time.
The government take the revenue risk though, so should any train operating company be concerned about meeting this 22:00 target?
Given drivers are giving their roosters head of time, at what point would GTR know they don't have enough staff? Aftee they try to hand out all the rosters and find they haven't all been handed out?
The government take the revenue risk though, so should any train operating company be concerned about meeting this 22:00 target?
Given drivers are giving their roosters head of time, at what point would GTR know they don't have enough staff? Aftee they try to hand out all the rosters and find they haven't all been handed out?
ChiefPlanner
Established Member
Very well used one gathers (though not sure if SWT would compensate for Thameslink (North or MML route)
Did NYE in London once and never again! It wasn’t that the train service was bad, in fact it was reliable and frequent but the crowds meant you were stuck on bridges and couldn’t move. EDIT - I notice SWR have a near-normal NYE service in place to get people out of London ….Why now specifically does GTR have a driver issue ?
I’m going to guess this one but they probably knew for a while. I assume they have been trying to rally more drivers out to cover services before announcing their very limited service, which is what looks to be happening. Originally, the Bedford to Brightons were going to be cut completely when I checked on Friday but when O checked this afternoon, it was revised to be an every hour service instead.
Worth bearing in mind the usual extra-late additionals on GN will not be running this year either.
12LDA28C
Established Member
Something wrong, indeed. Rail staff not willing to volunteer to work on a Sunday on New Years Eve, instead preferring to spend the day with friends or family. Shocking behaviour.
Add to that GTR's point blank refusal to pay any enhancement to encourage volunteers, as was done the last time NYE fell on a Sunday.
Of course, unlike the DfT controlled operators, TfL are no longer in dispute with their staff, and are free to provide the necessary incentives to ensure sufficient staff coverage. Hence - while subject to the usual engineering constraints - they’ve operated an excellent service over the festive season.
I had an idea that GTR paid £1k(?) per shift to drivers to cover festive season Sundays some years ago. I seem to recall it causing some consternation on here!
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It certainly wasn't THAT much but when managers are being paid £450 additional per day to drive you get an idea why no one volunteers. The basic timetable runs on overtime and goodwill, there's none of the latter left. Absolutely no chance of running additional services for NY without significant rest day working.
Totally foreseeable and (somewhat) avoidable but management/DfT simply don't give a sh*t. A bit like the Brighton Pride fiasco they are more interested in attempting to generate headlines blaming drivers than running a train service.
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