Could Transport Scotland guarantee that LNER Scottish services run during industrial action?

[Starmill]

Moderator note: Split from https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/scotrail-hsts-4-years-in.239365

The stored fleet wil be gradually brought them back up to standard for re-entering service. The in-service fleet gets the WSP mods first, then the stored vehicles.

Also, HA08, which was at Doncaster, moved to Wolverton on the 24/10 for corrosion repairs. It will remain there until February then will return to Haymarket and be available for service.

The other sets at Doncaster will follow suit in due course next year.

Note there is no planned uplift this December, but there are genuine suggestions of a modest increase in June for the summer traffic.

This is likely just by one diagram up to 16, but a potential rearranging of diagrams to make known busy services HST-booked if viable, is another possibility. There should be at least 23 sets available by June (up from 22 presently) and all 25 by next December if things go to plan.

One of the most useful things Transport Scotland could do for capacity in summer would be agree a special deal with LNER that their services to Aberdeen and Inverness would run as booked during ASLEF industrial action. Of course, politically that's rather a hard sell.

The next best thing would be to arrange reliefs to replace LNER with five car sets, but of course, they can't do that in a planned way because they don't know if or when ASLEF's action, or indeed any proposed settlement of the dispute, may arise.

As such, planning to do it every Friday, Saturday and Sunday would incur vast wasted resources.

Scottish Minsters have quite limited influence over the LNER contract group, but blanket withdrawal of LNER services North of Edinburgh still has the capability to torpedo ScotRail's service quality.

The only solution that would give full certainty would be to get LNER to give up their rights, but of course, nobody really wants that either because commercially those through services to England are important, and a big political point for both sides. They really can't win.

 

[JonathanH]

One of the most useful things Transport Scotland could do for capacity in summer would be agree a special deal with LNER that their services to Aberdeen and Inverness would run as booked during ASLEF industrial action. Of course, politically that's rather a hard sell.

How could this work? Transport Scotland can't pay LNER to pay their staff more, and any diversion of relevant traincrew who are managers or not in the union would result in fewer trains running between London and Edinburgh, which presumably is more remunerative.

 

[hexagon789]

One of the most useful things Transport Scotland could do for capacity in summer would be agree a special deal with LNER that their services to Aberdeen and Inverness would run as booked during ASLEF industrial action. Of course, politically that's rather a hard sell.

The next best thing would be to arrange reliefs to replace LNER with five car sets, but of course, they can't do that in a planned way because they don't know if or when ASLEF's action, or indeed any proposed settlement of the dispute, may arise.

As such, planning to do it every Friday, Saturday and Sunday would incur vast wasted resources.

Scottish Minsters have quite limited influence over the LNER contract group, but blanket withdrawal of LNER services North of Edinburgh still has the capability to torpedo ScotRail's service quality.

The only solution that would give full certainty would be to get LNER to give up their rights, but of course, nobody really wants that either because commercially those through services to England are important, and a big political point for both sides. They really can't win.

I don't think ScotRail have the stock available to replace the LNER workings, definitely not regularly and certainly not on a direct capacity for capacity basis.

As it is, I believe one of the paths of former XC workings is now a ScotRail 'runs as required' but has yet to be utilised.

That does suggest though that the potential to convert these routes to pure ScotRail operations does exist in theory.

As it is, I appreciate the disruption with industrial action in England affecting LNER workings (and with less effect XC), at present is very frustrating and problematic because the ScotRail workings have nothing like the capacity; but I feel that getting rid of them entirely is not the solution.

While having spare stock, drivers and the ability to use those LNER paths is a nice idea, it's definitely not an efficient use of resources - in the long-term the solution would seem to be for LNER to have its industrial relations dispute resolved AND for new, higher-capacity stock to be introduced on the ScotRail services.

Both those are almost certain to happen at some point, the real question as with everything is - when?

 

[JonathanH]

The only solution that would give full certainty would be to get LNER to give up their rights, but of course, nobody really wants that either because commercially those through services to England are important, and a big political point for both sides.

I assume that you are thinking about Scotrail getting to a position whereby they run hourly from Edinburgh to Aberdeen all day, rather than with the gaps created by the through services.

Are they actually commercially important? At least one 9-car unit is always north of Edinburgh, and at times more than one. Could LNER earn more money using those units elsewhere, particularly if it meant they could remove IC225 sets, or run additional services south of Edinburgh?

 

[Starmill]

How could this work? Transport Scotland can't pay LNER to pay their staff more, and any diversion of relevant traincrew who are managers or not in the union would result in fewer trains running between London and Edinburgh, which presumably is more remunerative.

Indeed. That is the only option, although it likely still wouldn't be sufficient because they'd have immense difficulty covering the lodge turns on an Aslef strike day, even if they ran zero services from Edinburgh to London.

Both those are almost certain to happen at some point, the real question as with everything is - when?

Indeed. I would be very surprised if next summer isn't affected at all by industrial action at LNER. Therefore the status quo is the most likely outcome.

 

[Gaelan]

It seems like it'd be valuable to have a few ScotRail drivers sign 800s, and a few Edinburgh-based LNER drivers sign some ScotRail diesel stock (either HSTs or 170s). Then ScotRail drivers could operate the 800s in the LNER slots when LNER is on strike*, and LNER drivers could operate ScotRail stock when (non-DfT) disruption means LNER isn't running past Edinburgh/Newcastle, but ScotRail is.

No idea what the practicalities of all this would be, though - and still requires ScotRail to have the stock going spare, which I have no clue about either.

*Though, come to think of it, this gets quite close to crossing a picket line - I wouldn't blame ScotRail drivers for refusing.

 

[John Bishop]

It seems like it'd be valuable to have a few ScotRail drivers sign 800s, and a few Edinburgh-based LNER drivers sign some ScotRail diesel stock (either HSTs or 170s). Then ScotRail drivers could operate the 800s in the LNER slots when LNER is on strike*, and LNER drivers could operate ScotRail stock when (non-DfT) disruption means LNER isn't running past Edinburgh/Newcastle, but ScotRail is.

No idea what the practicalities of all this would be, though - and still requires ScotRail to have the stock going spare, which I have no clue about either.

*Though, come to think of it, this gets quite close to crossing a picket line - I wouldn't blame ScotRail drivers for refusing.

Never going to happen.

 

[Starmill]

It seems like it'd be valuable to have a few ScotRail drivers sign 800s, and a few Edinburgh-based LNER drivers sign some ScotRail diesel stock (either HSTs or 170s). Then ScotRail drivers could operate the 800s in the LNER slots when LNER is on strike*, and LNER drivers could operate ScotRail stock when (non-DfT) disruption means LNER isn't running past Edinburgh/Newcastle, but ScotRail is.

No idea what the practicalities of all this would be, though - and still requires ScotRail to have the stock going spare, which I have no clue about either.

*Though, come to think of it, this gets quite close to crossing a picket line - I wouldn't blame ScotRail drivers for refusing.

It would definitely be interpreted as strike-breaking by ScotRail drivers, so it would be very likely to precipitate a new dispute.