Hull Trains cancellations due to chronic shortage of available rolling stock

[Edders23]

One positive thing from this the level crossing barriers at TT will be letting more through

I always seen to get caught by HT 180's (and EMT 158's) and the wait is always much longer than for 91 hauled sets

 

[High Dyke]

I see there's one through service scheduled for today so I'm more optimistic my 06:26 will run ok tomorrow.

Best of luck with that... That said 180110 is currently heading towards London and is scheduled to cover two round trips today... Hope it doesn't go pop!

 

[Failed Unit]

I agree with @Starmill that it is completely unreasonable to expect ordinary rail using members of the public to think like this.

.

Maybe it is. But why are LNER the bad guys in this thread? Someone has bought a HT only ticket a less of a cost than a inter available ticket. Why are LNER getting criticised for not taking these passengers? Why is it LNERs problem? As i said earlier why are GC also not getting the same bad feeling as they could also help operating between Doncaster and London.

Maybe a better phrasing is you bought a cheap ticket you took your chance. They have had a few bad periods recently. These are often covered in the local press.

 

[mrcheek]

TBH, I take the passengers' side in this one (though they shouldn't be rude about it).

If I have booked a ticket from x to y, I do not care which operator I have booked it with; I want to get from x to y. Of course, if all the lines are blocked and there is no reasonable way to achieve this, I accept that. But if I'm not on my booked train through no fault of my own, and when there are perfectly good trains travelling along the route, I expect to be allowed to use those other trains. I expect the various operators to cooperate to make this happen as best they can; if they have commercial arguments with one another, they should not be making this my problem. UK rail needs to be seen as a national network, from the passenger's perspective, not a group of separate railways.

(I realise that that is not how things are at present. Please do not feel the need to tell me.)
(Yes, I have been personally burnt by this before, once again by the ECML operator, albeit under slightly different circumstances)

So if a company fails to deliver, another company must step in and make up for it? So all those people who lost money with House of Fraser should just go to Debenhams and get free stuff?

Try that on LNER and you will be politely asked to buy another ticket, or to leave the train.

Try that at an airport, and you will be roughly dragged away by security, and probably thrown in jail.

 

[Hadders]

We have a National Rail Network where it is claimed that Britain’s train companies work together.

Clearly Hull Trains have serious issues at the moment. In my view HT should make arrangements with other operators to get passengers to their destination by rail. I would expect money to change hands between HT and the other passengers involved but this should be no concern to the passenger and done ‘behind the scenes’.

I appreciate there is inconvenience to other operators but it should be possible to accommodate 5 carriages of HT passengers onto LNER services and it would be sensible to spread this over a couple of trains from Doncaster if necessary. I stress that HT would need to pay the cost of making sure that LNER or any other operators involved etc.

Comparisons to supermarkets are not appropriate. The food industry does not claim to operate a national network or claim that retailers work together.

 

[Failed Unit]

That is really my viewpoint. Are LNER getting paid to take the HT passengers? If yes then I will take the view that they are unreasonably not accepting HT only tickets. If they are not then why are they the bad guys?

This should be seamless to the passenger.

To me the perfect solution would be to accept HT only tickets on any Northern/ LNER train with first group agreeing a daily fee to pay then for doing so. Positive for the passengers and not concentrating the load on a small number of trains.

 

[Robertj21a]

Depends how you look at that. Their own figures show they have the worse performance in the industry. So therefore you are taking a risk booking with them. What are you looking for a big warning when booking highlighting this and pointing to this link?

Most passengers booking to travel by train will be checking the departure/arrival points and suitable times/fares. Why on earth do you seriously believe that 'normal' people need to do anything else ?

 

[yorkie]

But that’s my point! All those people have chosen to buy the cheaper “Hull Trains only ticket” buying the dearer “Any Operator” ticket doesn’t buy you problems if there’s no Hull Trains Service. You pays your money you takes your choice.
If I pay Tesco to deliver my food but then go to a different supermarket to buy it, is that not the same as buying a train ticket for one operator but then buying a ticket for another one? Which is exactly what HT say to do.

Comparisons with supermarkets are suitable for nothing other than amusement purposes; there is absolutely no valid comparison for serious discussion!

For a start there is no Supermarket Settlement Agreement, no Supermarket Delivery Group, no supermarket inter-availablity and no National Supermarket Conditions of Purchase!

There have been some very sensible postings in this thread by various members such as @Hadders, @Starmill, @Haywain and others who have a good understanding of the various issues involved.

 

[westv]

Except that this isn't necessarily true as has already been explained. HT are not a "low cost" or "budget" operator. Their Advance tickets can cost just the same or more than equivalent LNER tickets, especially in the case of the Beverley services. Hull Trains' popularity stems primarily from offering a direct train where few or none would otherwise exist, not really from the budget market.

This narrative is illogical and self-defeating.

Very true. I use HTs because it offers a direct service that gets me into London at a reasonable time on Monday morning. If LNER did the same I might have used them instead. The one direct service they offer now doesn't arrive until nearly 10am which is far too late for me.

 

[Haywain]

Maybe it is. But why are LNER the bad guys in this thread? Someone has bought a HT only ticket a less of a cost than a inter available ticket. Why are LNER getting criticised for not taking these passengers? Why is it LNERs problem? As i said earlier why are GC also not getting the same bad feeling as they could also help operating between Doncaster and London.

I'm certainly not suggesting that LNER are the bad guys.

Are LNER getting paid to take the HT passengers?

I am certain that LNER will only be paid for taking HT passengers on occasions when they actually do so.

To me the perfect solution would be...

For Hull trains to get in some alternative trains - hire a HST or 2 (and drivers) from GWR or EMT perhaps, or loco and stock from West Coast - and provide their own services or some of them, at least.

 

[Failed Unit]

I'm certainly not suggesting that LNER are the bad guys.

I am certain that LNER will only be paid for taking HT passengers on occasions when they actually do so.

For Hull trains to get in some alternative trains - hire a HST or 2 (and drivers) from GWR or EMT perhaps, or loco and stock from West Coast - and provide their own services or some of them, at least.

As long as LNER are getting paid and HT are not getting ORCATs (share of revenue if I have the wrong acronym) then this is fine.

I know alternative stock would be better, but I was lead to believe this would take to long.

 

[Skymonster]

Try that at an airport, and you will be roughly dragged away by security, and probably thrown in jail.

Most 'reasonable' airlines (I exclude the cheap-and-nasties such as Ryanair and easyJet from this) will rebook their customers on other carriers if they suffer a failure. For example, last time I went to Dubai via Frankfurt - because Lufthansa was cheaper than Emirates direct - but my connection beyond Frankfurt was cancelled. Lufthansa rebooked me on the next Emirates service, because the next Lufthansa departure was the following day. Likewise facing a cancelled United flight in Los Angeles, without asking I was rebooked on British Airways. The airlines pay each other for these rebookings - they do not expect customers to rebook themselves and then claim back. In a similar manner, Hull Trains should have staff at each station issuing holders of 'Hull Trains only' tickets with replacements valid on LNER, so customers do not have to engage the rediculous pay again and reclaim tactic. LNER should be taking the passengers, but it should be being paid by Hull Trains to do so, to enable HT passengers to travel roughly at the times they expect without further expenditure.

Furthermore, no 'normal' train passenger checks MTINs before making a booking, and would be unlikely to fully understand the measure even if they did. Do the popular booking engines put up a 'reliability / completion' rating against each service when they offer ticketing choices? In most (all?) cases no. Do they pop up a message saying "are you sure you want to buy this fare - which is on a TOC with a poor reliability rating - when for £xx more you could have a ticket available on any train?" No. So customers book the most convenient and most cost effective ticket for their journeys, and if that is Hull Trains then they make the purchase with an entirely reasonable expectation that the TOC will deliver most of the time, and if it doesn't deliver will make things right for the customer.

Going back to MTIN it is merely a measure an introspective industry uses to give some TOCs / depots a smug self-satisfied pat on the back. But it is meaningless to customers. MTIN takes no account of how many passengers are inconvenienced by a failure (either directly or consequentlally) - or for how long. The failure of Hull Trains to provide any services over the last week or so has inconvenienced thousands of its own customers - and made travel a little less comfortable for many thousands more on LNER, GTR, EMT and Northern services that have been either delayed or overcrowded. It is woefully apparent that Hull Trains is under-resourced in terms of the stock it has available to operate a reliable and consistent service day in day out, week after week, month by month. Clearly the firm needs more than four units to offer the resilience its customers have a right to expect. It is just a pity that the firm's track access agreement cannot be suspended until it gets its act together.

 

[Failed Unit]

Most passengers booking to travel by train will be checking the departure/arrival points and suitable times/fares. Why on earth do you seriously believe that 'normal' people need to do anything else ?

Normal people in GTR (Great Northern) read the papers and drive to the nearest underground station or travel by a different operator where possible. Surely normal people in Hull think wait a second the HT service is unreliable- the connection is more likely to get me to London even if it cost a little more.

If you google HT reliability, you get articles from December 2017, the spring when HT failed to deliver a service. You suggesting passengers are not more cautious now booking with them compared to pre class 180s?

 

[Robertj21a]

Normal people in GTR (Great Northern) read the papers and drive to the nearest underground station or travel by a different operator where possible. Surely normal people in Hull think wait a second the HT service is unreliable- the connection is more likely to get me to London even if it cost a little more.

If you google HT reliability, you get articles from December 2017, the spring when HT failed to deliver a service. You suggesting passengers are not more cautious now booking with them compared to pre class 180s?

I am talking about 'normal' people booking train tickets. Not those on a train forum who assume that ordinary folk go around Googling HT reliability. To many people, certainly the older generation, it's still just British Railways, split up a bit........

 

[Skymonster]

Surely normal people in Hull think wait a second the HT service is unreliable- the connection is more likely to get me to London even if it cost a little more.

No, most 'normal' / casual customers will assume that the TOC will provide a reliable service. Plenty won't see the local papers or hear the local news on radio / regional TV. And they won't check the performance of a TC, at least not until after they have been stung a few times - if that happens they might start to do a little research. If you are really advocating that customers should be better informed about the performance of each TOC, then perhaps all the booking engines should be forced to include figures for "% cancelled in the last xxx days" / "% delayed by more than xx minutes in the last xxx days" against every train listed?

 

[Failed Unit]

I know that GTR (Thameslink & Great Northern) don’t offer advanced purchase tickets. But word of mouth is basically don’t use them at weekends. Are you suggesting that these periods of poor performance are unknown to the people of Hull. Are you suggesting that people are not thinking after this week perhaps I won’t book with HT next time?

Because of the issues with GTR I have flown to Scotland recently as I can’t guarantee GTR will get me to London Kings Cross. I may not be normal because I am on this forum, but are you suggesting people from the Selby area are not thinking I will drive to York / Doncaster next time to avoid this? Are you suggesting in this world of social media they won’t be letting others know?

I am not expecting people to google before booking. The fact the articles were published I expect people read / heard about them at the time they were. When these articles keep appearing I suggest people think about alternative travel. This is certainly what I am witnessing in GTR land, with visibly less off-peak passengers.

 

[Haywain]

Do the popular booking engines put up a 'reliability / completion' rating against each service when they offer ticketing choices? In most (all?) cases no. Do they pop up a message saying "are you sure you want to buy this fare - which is on a TOC with a poor reliability rating - when for £xx more you could have a ticket available on any train?" No.

No, they don't. But perhaps it would be useful if booking sites gave operators a star rating in the way that is available for hotel bookings, for example. That would at least give an idea of what to expect.

 

[westv]

I see there's one through service scheduled for today so I'm more optimistic my 06:26 will run ok tomorrow.

As expected, latest update shows "runs as normal" - for the moment.

 

[Skymonster]

I know that GTR (Thameslink & Great Northern) don’t offer advanced purchase tickets. But word of mouth is basically don’t use them at weekends. Are you suggesting that these periods of poor performance are unknown to the people of Hull.

GTR has been on the national news, in the national papers, on a regular basis - and as such is rather different and more obvious case. Hull Trains has not. I travel by train regularly but I have no idea whether the local TOC typically arrives in London on time. I don't read the local papers or watch the local TV news. So the only way I would have of knowing is if that TOC consistently let me down. That's fine for a short-ish distance commuter run - I'd certainly be interested / bothered if my continued employed depended on being in the office on time every day. But Hull Trains isn't into the commuter market so much - it is a long distance TOC and I would wager a lot of its customers are not everyday travellers with the firm. Just as I don't check the punctuality of my local TOC if I need to get to London for a meeting, I am pretty sure most of Hull Trains customers don't make similar checks either.

...are you suggesting the people from the Selby area not thinking I will drive to York / Doncaster next time to avoid this? Are you suggesting that people are not thinking after this week perhaps I won’t book with HT next time?

A lot of them won't have any idea what has been happening until it affects them. And some of those won't have a choice but to use HT next time they need to travel to London, because they don't have access to cars or the alternatives do not offer services at the right time - or price.

I go back to what I was suggesting earlier. Customers have a right to expect their trains to run and run on or close to time, almost every time. They should not have to check on each occasion. And NO TOC should be in a position where it fails to run a service for a week. Currently Hull Trains appear to be failing on all counts.

Not that a lot of the above matters as much as Hull Trains failing to do the right thing for its customers. It should have its staff out there, providing its passengers with replacement tickets and not forcing them to pay and then claim back. It should be offering its customers alternatives that enable them to be where they need to be, when they need to be there - not pushing them onto a very limited set of services that result in them arriving hours later than they expected when they booked. And in reality it should be forced to reduce the number of services its runs each day until it can demonstrate it can consistantly prove those operations that remain can be run reliably with the units it has available.

 

[700007]

This 2036 Hull Trains from Peterborough to Hull last night that ran, this was in substitution of the 1948 from London King's Cross.

However, as passengers from London were told to get GTR services to Peterborough to connect with their train where they could connect with the Hull Trains service, the latest possible GTR train you could have gotten to connect with this left London King's Cross at 1916. This is 32 minutes earlier than scheduled departure and surely passengers turning up closer to the scheduled 1948 departure time would have realised that this connection is not possible.

Is this allowed, and if yes, is this the right thing to do regardless? I can only imagine it must have been a right pain had I been a regular Joe who wasn't in the know about the ongoing Hull Trains disruption.

Also silly question because I haven't seen this anywhere - is TPE doing ticket acceptance between Hull and Selby? I imagine it would make journeys from Hull to near the ECML somewhat easier and quicker rather than a bus or taxi?

 

[londonbridge]

Try that at an airport, and you will be roughly dragged away by security, and probably thrown in jail.

Most 'reasonable' airlines (I exclude the cheap-and-nasties such as Ryanair and easyJet from this) will rebook their customers on other carriers if they suffer a failure. For example, last time I went to Dubai via Frankfurt - because Lufthansa was cheaper than Emirates direct - but my connection beyond Frankfurt was cancelled. Lufthansa rebooked me on the next Emirates service, because the next Lufthansa departure was the following day. Likewise facing a cancelled United flight in Los Angeles, without asking I was rebooked on British Airways. The airlines pay each other for these rebookings - they do not expect customers to rebook themselves and then claim back. In a similar manner, Hull Trains should have staff at each station issuing holders of 'Hull Trains only' tickets with replacements valid on LNER, so customers do not have to engage the rediculous pay again and reclaim tactic. LNER should be taking the passengers, but it should be being paid by Hull Trains to do so, to enable HT passengers to travel roughly at the times they expect without further expenditure.

I'm with Skymonster on this, I once flew American Airlines, was due to go Miami-Boston-Gatwick, first flight was delayed to the extent that I missed the connection but got rebooked onto a Virgin Atlantic flight.

 

[mrcheek]

Most 'reasonable' airlines (I exclude the cheap-and-nasties such as Ryanair and easyJet from this) will rebook their customers on other carriers if they suffer a failure. For example, last time I went to Dubai via Frankfurt - because Lufthansa was cheaper than Emirates direct - but my connection beyond Frankfurt was cancelled. Lufthansa rebooked me on the next Emirates service, because the next Lufthansa departure was the following day. Likewise facing a cancelled United flight in Los Angeles, without asking I was rebooked on British Airways. The airlines pay each other for these rebookings - they do not expect customers to rebook themselves and then claim back. In a similar manner, Hull Trains should have staff at each station issuing holders of 'Hull Trains only' tickets with replacements valid on LNER, so customers do not have to engage the rediculous pay again and reclaim tactic. LNER should be taking the passengers, but it should be being paid by Hull Trains to do so, to enable HT passengers to travel roughly at the times they expect without further expenditure.

Furthermore, no 'normal' train passenger checks MTINs before making a booking, and would be unlikely to fully understand the measure even if they did. Do the popular booking engines put up a 'reliability / completion' rating against each service when they offer ticketing choices? In most (all?) cases no. Do they pop up a message saying "are you sure you want to buy this fare - which is on a TOC with a poor reliability rating - when for £xx more you could have a ticket available on any train?" No. So customers book the most convenient and most cost effective ticket for their journeys, and if that is Hull Trains then they make the purchase with an entirely reasonable expectation that the TOC will deliver most of the time, and if it doesn't deliver will make things right for the customer.

Going back to MTIN it is merely a measure an introspective industry uses to give some TOCs / depots a smug self-satisfied pat on the back. But it is meaningless to customers. MTIN takes no account of how many passengers are inconvenienced by a failure (either directly or consequentlally) - or for how long. The failure of Hull Trains to provide any services over the last week or so has inconvenienced thousands of its own customers - and made travel a little less comfortable for many thousands more on LNER, GTR, EMT and Northern services that have been either delayed or overcrowded. It is woefully apparent that Hull Trains is under-resourced in terms of the stock it has available to operate a reliable and consistent service day in day out, week after week, month by month. Clearly the firm needs more than four units to offer the resilience its customers have a right to expect. It is just a pity that the firm's track access agreement cannot be suspended until it gets its act together.

My point was that its not up to LNER to deal with this issue. If Hull Trains choose to rebook people on LNER, then thats ok, but if they do not, passengers do not have the right to demand that LNER take them

 

[Clarence Yard]

This “go on another company’s service and claim back of us” attitude goes throughout the industry and isn’t satisfactory. There should be a general obligation on operators to do the rebooking, not leave it up to the punter.

With the rise of dedicated fares and the frequency of disruptive events, both TOC and NR related, it’s almost a daily occurance now somewhere on the network so it’s about time a binding code of practise (enforced by fines) was imposed on operators.

As for Hull Trains, 3 out of 4 trains in service isn’t usually a big availability ask. They certainly don’t need to go 3 out of 5, especially if their maintainer is pants. That will just magnify their problem! What they need is someone who can better cope with cl.180 and to be able to access some alternative traction which they can train their staff up on so when the next incident happens, as it surely will with a cl.180, they can continue to operate.

 

[Haywain]

This “go on another company’s service and claim back of us” attitude goes throughout the industry and isn’t satisfactory. There should be a general obligation on operators to do the rebooking, not leave it up to the punter.

You claim this "goes throughout the industry", but it doesn't. In the vast majority of cases where a service cannot be run the operators arrange for ticket acceptance on alternative services or they provide alternative transport. Perhaps you could provide examples to back up your claim.

As for Hull Trains, 3 out of 4 trains in service isn’t usually a big availability ask. They certainly don’t need to go 3 out of 5,

Hull Trains have 4 class 180 units, and don't currently have 3 available for service. In any case, 75% availability is much easier to achieve in a fleet of 50 or 100 than it is with just 4.

 

[Phlip]

Then the HT passengers can buy those advances, then they can board. This has gone beyond previous reciprocal agreements to carry passengers now, HT are just expecting everyone to pick up the pieces from their mess.

The news article about LNER staff not being particularly happy with HT staff seems about right as well, if what I heard yesterday is true anyway. Several times over the course of the week HT passengers have tried to board LNER services despite being advised not to so and with a strong sense of self entitlement. One particular first class passenger has become fairly well known to staff after trying it at least twice and making all sorts of silly legal threats against staff when told they couldn't travel.

It is not the fault of Hull Trains’ passengers. They have journeys they need to make and are the ones who have been left in the lurch more than anyone else. There is absolutely excuse no for being rude to LNER’s staff but blaming the ultimate victims of this mess (the passengers) is beyond the pale. They have a right to feel more than a little frustrated and with good reason.

 

[Clarence Yard]

Examples of “throughout the industry”. London Midland (as was)/Virgin West Coast, for one. Been a victim of that one myself. I have also had a member of my family experience an out of office hours issue between SWT and GWR. Nobody available to authorise the acceptance was the excuse. It’s not as automatic as it should be.

Beg to differ on availability. It depends on your maintenance capability. Putting more units into a depot that can’t cope with what they already have is a receipe for disaster.

 

[Haywain]

Examples of “throughout the industry”. London Midland (as was)/Virgin West Coast, for one. Been a victim of that one myself. I have also had a member of my family experience an out of office hours issue between SWT and GWR. Nobody available to authorise the acceptance was the excuse. It’s not as automatic as it should be.

So two non-specific examples without context means that the whole industry is telling people to “go on another company’s service and claim back of us”? It's a bit like saying all cyclists ignore red traffic lights because you've seen a few do so.

Beg to differ on availability. It depends on your maintenance capability. Putting more units into a depot that can’t cope with what they already have is a receipe for disaster.

The point on availability in a very small fleet is that sometimes it depends on luck. As Hull Trains have found out a single incident has reduced their availability dramatically. In a larger fleet at somewhere like GTR it would need something catastrophic across their fleet for availability to suddenly drop from 75% (and I doubt it's ever that low) to 50% or lower.

 

[jagardner1984]

Two points to add here:

1. Couldn’t passenger / fare distribution be improved by printing QR codes or similar onto tickets to allow better tracking of how many passengers are actually carried by which operator on which services ? Many operators have the ticketing infrastructure for this already from my observations.

2. Shouldn’t there be an industry wide travel guarantee similar to that which covers tour operators. I appreciate they are different circumstances, but it seems right to me that a normal passenger paying to travel from Hull to London should expect, in the instance that one operator isn’t able to run a service for whatever reason, that they should be able to travel via another operator to get to their destination.

Fundamentally I think most people think they are taking “the train”, the operator they are travelling with are largely irrelevant to them. This situation is accentuated when operators sell tickets to all other operators services.

 

[Haywain]

There is absolutely excuse no for being rude to LNER’s staff but blaming the ultimate victims of this mess (the passengers) is beyond the pale.

But it was about the passengers and if they are being rude then they are ultimately to blame. As humans, whether they exercise it or not, they have the ability to moderate their own behaviour.

 

[Darandio]

It is not the fault of Hull Trains’ passengers. They have journeys they need to make and are the ones who have been left in the lurch more than anyone else. There is absolutely excuse no for being rude to LNER’s staff but blaming the ultimate victims of this mess (the passengers) is beyond the pale. They have a right to feel more than a little frustrated and with good reason.

I'm not sure I said it was their fault? Every right to be frustrated? Yes. Do they have a right to take that out on LNER staff? No.