Hi, is there one of these route cards for Aylesbury, Chiltern railway Arriva?
Yes, there's one for Aylesbury depot under the Chiltern Railways spoiler tab. Here it is again:
Traction:
165,168
Routes:
London Marylebone - Birmingham Snow Hill
London - Aylesbury Vale via Amersham
Princes Risborough - Aylesbury
Bicester - Oxford
South Ruislip - West Ealing (link 1 only)
Though I would be surprised if many people still sign the latter, with the minimal service that Chiltern have operated to West Ealing over the last 15 months!
Also, could someone help me understand them, take this one for example below, does that mean these are the route the drivers take, so for the fist one, birm to wolves then what, is that journey done then, what happens to the train from that point on etc, or does it then carry on from wolv to Liverpool? if so why not just have the route card birm to Liverpool. sorry if this sounds daft and any clarity would be greatly appreciated on how these route cards work and mean and what the trains are doing.
Routes:
Birmingham - Wolverhampton
Wolverhampton - Liverpool (link dependent)
Birmingham - Coventry
Coventry - Northampton (link dependent)
Birmingham - Walsall - Rugeley
Lichfield - Birmingham - Redditch/Bromsgrove Cross City Line
Wolverhampton - Shrewsbury (link dependent)
The list simply indicates the possible routes that a driver at that depot might work over. It doesn't show what drivers do on a given day (there's no way you'd manage to fit in a trip to all those destinations in a 10 hour shift!). It's the diagrams which show that - you can see some examples
here.
A link is a 'subsection' of a depot, so the phrase "link dependent" means that only some of the drivers at that depot sign a route. Big depots like Birmingham are split into several links - a big reason for that is simply that it's easier and quicker to replace people who leave, retire etc.
Let's say a driver in the top link (with the most/best routes) retires; by having a link structure you can replace their vacancy with someone from a lower link - who you only have to teach one or two extra routes. And you can replace the person from the lower link with someone off the street (or from another TOC) more quickly, because there are fewer routes to teach them in the 'starter' link.
For depots that are both big, and have extensive route/traction cards (e.g. Waterloo), you also need a link structure to make sure that everyone works over each route/traction frequently enough to maintain their knowledge. It expires, at the latest, after 6 months but drivers can (and will) ask for refresher training sooner than that if they're not 100% confident any more, so you don't want to leave it that long if you can avoid it.
As for why not everyone signs Liverpool - WMT have a local stopping service between Walsall and Wolverhampton (via Birmingham). So when the driver gets to Wolverhampton they might be relieved and take a break, or they could simply drive back to Birmingham/Walsall. Hence there is plenty of work for them just as far as Wolverhampton.
That said, I believe some of the Liverpool services do have crew changes at Wolverhampton.
I'll leave it in for now anyway until I get confirmation if it's no longer going ahead.
