Cancelling services short of the destination

[transmanche]

IIRC, Yorkshire crews cannot be taught the road as it would be transferring west side ex-FNW work to the ex-ATN east side which Northern apparently are not allowed to do.

When you say 'not allowed', is that because of the unions?

 

[tsr]

One service that has occasionally to be terminated short is the Leeds to Heysham boat train.

The section between Morecambe and Heysham isn't signed by the Yorkshire crew and is worked by Barrow crew, however, when they can't get to Lancaster (I believe they travel on the cushions from Barrow), the train terminates at Morecambe.

IIRC, Yorkshire crews cannot be taught the road as it would be transferring west side ex-FNW work to the ex-ATN east side which Northern apparently are not allowed to do.

Whilst I totally understand why a Barrow crew might not be able to make it, for whatever operational reason, the rest of that shows a typical example of railway politics and contracts getting in the way of actually providing a service to paying passengers (some perhaps with luggage and/or generally not needing another change of modes of transport!) which might be useful. It's hardly a massive undertaking of transferring a 50-mile metro frequency service, after all.

Of course, I am not blaming you at all. But that is a daft situation, if that's all correct (and I have no reason to suppose you aren't). I don't want to sound like I am making a big deal of it, but terminating a train of this nature short for that reason is very poor customer service - "west side" or "east side" disagreements, or not!

 

[dk1]

"make a situation worse" - Don't be silly. The professional train crew will have already liaised with the people who instructed the change to establish what the arrangements are to minimise inconvenience to customers. It will only take a few seconds to communicate that information over the tannoy. Hence why I suggested the customers hold the train, as obviously the failure to make that announcement was an oversight that is quickly rectified.

Holding a train in a platform that might add further minutes to a following service with the knock on effects go on & on. I agree that information must be relayed wherever possible but the bigger picture is far more important. You can't block running lines just to be polite.

 

[bb21]

Yes, what I meant was at Worcester the customers prevent the train leaving until the train staff have explained what arrangements they have made for the customers to complete their journey.

Why? Westbound pax have an LM service not far behind and southbound pax have their train running.

"make a situation worse" - Don't be silly. The professional train crew will have already liaised with the people who instructed the change to establish what the arrangements are to minimise inconvenience to customers. It will only take a few seconds to communicate that information over the tannoy. Hence why I suggested the customers hold the train, as obviously the failure to make that announcement was an oversight that is quickly rectified.

But you are making the situation worse. For a start, staff may not even know what alternative arrangements are. They take time to be arranged. Are you suggesting that if the westbound pax have not been informed of their arrangements, southbound pax should be delayed, then causing varying ripple effects to the rest of the network, affecting potentially thousands of other passengers, depending on where the train is held? I don't think dk1 is the one being silly here.

 

[island]

I recall some years ago being shown a photograph of a Iarnród Éireann station - I think it was on the Limerick Junction-Waterford line - with a payphone under the canopy. Next to the payphone was a sign saying something like "If this telephone rings, please answer it. There may be an important message from the signalman about the running of your train."

Good old Irish solutions to Irish problems!

 

[portervalley]

I would try and get others to club together for a taxi. You would like to think that FGW didn't cancel it at the last minute and there'd be time to pick it up at Ashchurch given how close the towns are together.

Google maps puts the car journey at 28mins vs the train which takes 36mins. Unless you'd arrived only just in time for the 1648 there's a chance to catch it.

I'd then try and claim the taxi cost back - no idea if FGW is culpable though.

In order to do this passengers at Great Malvern would need to know that the service had been turned short at Worcester and that the return journey south to Bristol and beyond was still serving Ashchurch. The OP stated that the boards at Great Malvern simply stated cancelled.

Not everyone has access to a smart phone and even if they do, the ordinary passenger may not know where to access the information on the web to inform them that the train had been turned short due to a delay.

 

[GodAtum]

Ive been left abandoned at Maiden head when the fast service to paddington doesnt stop.

 

[ushawk]

Ive been left abandoned at Maiden head when the fast service to paddington doesnt stop.

Not really comparable to Great Malvern is it ? Maidenhead has 4 trains an hour to Paddington - there would have been a 2 hour wait for the next service at Great Malvern.

Also, abandoned ? Really ? The station is staffed between 6AM and 9PM unlike Great Malvern, which was unstaffed at the time.

 

[FFC]

For a start, staff may not even know what alternative arrangements are.

Of course staff would know of the alternative arrangements.

It would be deeply unprofessional for any transport organisation to make an arbitrary change to its scheduled services without communicating the impact to its customers.

So it seems obvious that before anyone decided to stop a train before its destination, the standard operating procedures would require them to assess the impact of their decision, and if the impact was non-neglible, the actions they needed to take to minimise the impact.

 

[ainsworth74]

Of course staff would know of the alternative arrangements.

Staff in the control room maybe, staff on the ground? Not so much. I've heard and seen for myself plenty of instances where staff on the ground haven't got a clue what's going on and are relient on departure boards, the internet, other passengers or their mates to tell them!

A recent example came up during the Carlisle diversions on East Coast. South bound to London after leaving Carlisle the guard comes on the PA and informs everyone our train will be terminating at Newcastle and another train will be provided to take us on from there. An hour later at Newcastle I spoke to a member of platform staff to confirm which platform we were going from and they nor any of the colleagues knew anything about it!

 

[30907]

via Bromsgrove is not a permitted route. There is a negative easement which prevents its use (I have whinged about this on this forum before!). The only thing the Help Point was able to do was point out that the Bromsgrove option NRES threw up (unpriced) was not valid. There were no FGW staff around to endorse the ticket to travel via this route and given that it involved both LM and XC it seemed risky at best if a train manager took umbridge at it!

Sorry, didn't spot that - website throws up a fare, but the "two tickets" sign is hidden.

 

[Goatboy]

Sorry, didn't spot that - website throws up a fare, but the "two tickets" sign is hidden.

It's a particularly nasty little negative easement, I see no reason why a 'Not via Birmingham' fare is not valid via Bromsgrove.

 

[LBSCR Times]

Staff in the control room maybe, staff on the ground? Not so much. I've heard and seen for myself plenty of instances where staff on the ground haven't got a clue what's going on and are relient on departure boards, the internet, other passengers or their mates to tell them!

Most staff on the ground know that the alternative is the next service!

 

[FFC]

Staff in the control room maybe, staff on the ground? Not so much. I've heard and seen for myself plenty of instances where staff on the ground haven't got a clue what's going on and are relient on departure boards, the internet, other passengers or their mates to tell them!

I am sorry but I find that unbelievable, and no professionally run transport operation would act in such a manner. You must have misunderstood.

If the person making the decision and all the people in the chain did not ensure that the correct procedure to communicate matters to the customer, and put in place the necessary mitigation were followed, then I am sure disciplinary action would be taken to ensure the error did not reoccur.

 

[Tomnick]

Easy to say, fairly easy to implement for one service in isolation...but no doubt rather more difficult when things are going wrong and there are plenty of alterations to the plan!

 

[Eagle]

I am sorry but I find that unbelievable, and no professionally run transport operation would act in such a manner.

It is demonstrably true though.

You appear to be mistaking the British railways for a professionally-run organization :P

 

[FFC]

Are you suggesting that railway staff do not act professionally?

 

[Eagle]

No, that was clearly a joke.

What you actually appear to be assuming that the railway is a lot more operationally simple than it actually is. I mean in an ideal world all employees would be gestalt, and would immediately know everything and every detail, but in the real world things have to be communicated somehow to staff on the ground, and it's not as simple as someone in the signal box sending a mass text to everyone.

 

[Doctor Fegg]

One wonders who diagrammed a 4-hour plus journey cutting across a wide range of other services (as described above) to then have just a 15 minute turnround before setting off back on the return run.

Of course, it was never traditional for trains from the Bristol direction to run through Worcester to Malvern. The whole thing is just squeezed in as an obvious ORCATS raid to scoop some of the London Midland revenue on the Worcester to Malvern section, leading to this sort of unreliability.

The Malvern extension was introduced in Wessex Trains days (or it may have been W&W before them). Given that it's known to be fairly flakey, and that FGW already operate services between Worcester and Malvern, I'm slightly surprised they've retained it.

Terminating at Platform 3 at Shrub Hill would be more robust, but then it'd miss out on "central Worcester" passengers (i.e. Foregate Street).

Re: the OP's dilemma, if it'd been me I'd have gone via Bromsgrove and just smiled at the conductor - I've never known one refuse a spur-of-the-moment rerouting, especially a fairly modest one like this, when the alternative is a 2hr delay.

Nobody else provides service between Worcester and Cheltenham unfortunately (Well, there is an LM service at midnight for some reason).

LM used to provide a more frequent service which proved unsuccessful.

FGW and LM between them ran an hourly service - FGW one hour, LM the other. In reality, the services in one direction were separated by about 7 minutes, then nothing for 1hr53. Not really surprising it was unsuccessful...

 

[Goatboy]

The Malvern extension was introduced in Wessex Trains days (or it may have been W&W before them). Given that it's known to be fairly flakey, and that FGW already operate services between Worcester and Malvern, I'm slightly surprised they've retained it.

Terminating at Platform 3 at Shrub Hill would be more robust, but then it'd miss out on "central Worcester" passengers (i.e. Foregate Street).

They do this on a Sunday. Naturally, there is no connection from Worcester onto Malvern for 1 hour so you get to spend an hour at Shrub Hill!


(And none the other way either since LM improved service to Hereford on Sundays)

FGW and LM between them ran an hourly service - FGW one hour, LM the other. In reality, the services in one direction were separated by about 7 minutes, then nothing for 1hr53. Not really surprising it was unsuccessful...

A shame

 

[bb21]

If the person making the decision and all the people in the chain did not ensure that the correct procedure to communicate matters to the customer, and put in place the necessary mitigation were followed, then I am sure disciplinary action would be taken to ensure the error did not reoccur.

By whom?

You appear to have a very simplistic view of how things work on the ground.

 

[WessexEclectic]

I recall some years ago being shown a photograph of a Iarnród Éireann station - I think it was on the Limerick Junction-Waterford line - with a payphone under the canopy. Next to the payphone was a sign saying something like "If this telephone rings, please answer it. There may be an important message from the signalman about the running of your train."

Sounds like the 'phones at Dent Station.

 

[FFC]

By whom?

By their employer, who will have written the standard operating procedures for them to follow.

Or are you suggesting that the train companies don't have SOPs?

 

[Tomnick]

Meanwhile, back in the real world: no standard operating procedure could ever be able to prescribe specific actions when there are so many variables. Let's assume that the controllers were well aware of who needed to be informed of the changes though - it's still not a simple exercise. If it's all going wrong, the phone will probably be ringing non-stop in Control and they'll have more pressing things to attend to. When they do find time, they'll be trying to get messages to folk who will be busy attending to their own duties. It's no surprise that such messages sometimes get lost, then, when that's multiplied by however many services are being amended (sometimes at very short notice) during disruption!

 

[TheEdge]

By their employer, who will have written the standard operating procedures for them to follow.

Or are you suggesting that the train companies don't have SOPs?

Of course the railways do and the railways and staff endeavour to communicate as much information to passengers as possible. But its not magic, us railstaff are not connected to a hivemind, we don't immediately know everything.

The route controllers might be but getting that to filter down to all the drivers, station staff and conductors and countless out customer facing staff is very difficult. Yes, we have smartphones and yes we get company wide service messages but for the most part they are very general, getting specific details for a specific train takes time. And that time is usually spent with us on phones which looks to passengers like we are just on the phones chatting. Catch-22

 

[redbutton]

I am sorry but I find that unbelievable, and no professionally run transport operation would act in such a manner. You must have misunderstood.

If the person making the decision and all the people in the chain did not ensure that the correct procedure to communicate matters to the customer, and put in place the necessary mitigation were followed, then I am sure disciplinary action would be taken to ensure the error did not reoccur.

LOL

I guess you've never been at London Bridge during "signalling problems". Last time it happened for me, all the boards stopped updating (showed "Delayed"), there were no tannoy announcements, and the only visible member of staff was a guy with a bullhorn who would shout out platform assignments (inaudible above the background noise of 1000 people crowding the ticket hall) 30 seconds before each train left. And that was once things started running again.

It was only once people started threatening a full-scale riot (by then BTP was in attendance) did the bullhorn guy convince the control room to start using the tannoy.

And that's at a major London terminus; I can only imagine what it would have looked like at a "lesser" regional station.

 

[Sheepy1209]

I had an example of this a couple of years ago - wires down north of Euston, I'm there with three teenage kids on a London Midland rover ticket. I get to Euston to see everything cancelled but nobody yet knew what the prognosis was - it had only just happened.

I needed to get back to Nuneaton, and had an advance booked on VT from Crewe (long story, good reasons for doing that, net effect was I was making two separate journeys).

I could have hung around to get the official guidance but elected instead for a brisk walk to St Pancras to try the EMT service - where the staff just opened the barriers and crammed as many as they could onto the next train.

This was experienced staff acting with commonsense, because they'd seen what was happening and acted on it. At that point passengers weren't being told that tickets were accepted on EMT so they didn't have to take us.

What I'm saying is - experienced railway staff can often work things out for themselves without being constrained by directives from above. Every scenario is different but it's common for Euston passengers to be directed to St Pancras, so why not be one step ahead?

(Brilliant service from EMT that day by the way)

 

[TheEdge]

Different orders of magnitude.

If the wires go down stopping access to and from a London terminus the problem will be very quickly known and CSL2 in its various forms will be activated very quickly and those at other London terminals will know. For example is the Cross goes down the staff at Liverpool Street will expect to take a hit and visa versa.

If FGW has started one train short in rural Worcestershire and inconvenienced 30 people it is highly unlikely that guards and RPIs working for different TOCs will know about it.

 

[40135]

A couple of Saturdays ago, my friend caught the Northern service back to Barnsley from Sheffield having visited me for the day - bog standard express service with a 158. On arriving at Meadowhall, the woman sat next to her noted that the departure boards announced that the train would be routed via Wakefield Westgate for some reason or other, and would completely miss out Barnsley and Kirkgate. They asked the TTI what was going on, and he had no idea, telling them to go and find out on the platforms, and it was a few minutes before it was even officially announced.

My friend doesn't cope very well with situations like this and she phoned me in a panic. Luckily, I was able to use RTT to help her get home as Northern Rail weren't much use.

Instances like this are not uncommon, and it's just pathetic.

 

[Sheepy1209]

Different orders of magnitude.

If the wires go down stopping access to and from a London terminus the problem will be very quickly known and CSL2 in its various forms will be activated very quickly and those at other London terminals will know. For example is the Cross goes down the staff at Liverpool Street will expect to take a hit and visa versa.

If FGW has started one train short in rural Worcestershire and inconvenienced 30 people it is highly unlikely that guards and RPIs working for different TOCs will know about it.

Having re-read the thread I get your point - I'd responded to some of the later comments having forgotten what this was all about!

Nevertheless - whatever the situation it takes time to put everything in place and it's in that period of uncertainty that railway experience can make the difference.