Thameslink tales
Back to Forum- This topic has 32 replies, 17 voices, and was last updated 10 Jul 2015
at 17:35 by transtraxman.
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SimonS1Participant@LP – lucky you! Normally you would find some opportunist at the rail company ready to charge a premium for that. But the Southerm franchise currently has the worst satisfaction of any rail company in GB.
@DavidGordon10 – on the change of platform. On 99% of occasions the northbound goes from platform 4. I wonder if a train had broken down or the platform got blocked? Since the new platform 7 opened at LGW it does seem to have settled down a bit there (apart from the long queues for tickets that is).
@NTarrant – yes fully agree. All we had to do was replicate the 4/5 regions that existed both pre and post nationalisation in 1948. The difference in those days and in most of the BR era was that railways were run by experienced railwaymen. These days they are run primarily by bean counters and bureaucrats – the West Coast shambles a good example of the result. In the privatised era any engineering work costs more than what it should do.
Good example of this – today’s article on the BBC about tube strikes. It says “The team negotiating for London Underground is new to this. The chief operating officer Steve Griffiths joined from Virgin Atlantic earlier this year, and my understanding is that no-one on the management side of the table has experience dealing with rail deals.”.
No-one with any experience of rail deals!!!!! That’s pretty impressive.
9 Jul 2015
at 12:36
MrDarwinParticipantDG10 – I had a similar experience to you recently. Arrived at Kentish Town and my train to LGW wasn’t on the board so I asked the two employees standing around chatting at the gates and they said “Platform 1” and went back to their conversation. Waited on platform 1 for a while with other confused people, because the train wasn’t showing as the next train on the screen. There was an empty train sitting with doors open at platform 3 however, so we all decided that it might be our train and hauled all the luggage back up and down the stairs and we all stood half in/out of the train not really knowing what to do. There were also no staff around on the platforms to ask. At the departure time the doors beeped so we all jumped on, still none the wiser about whether it was the right train or not! Thankfully it chugged off in the right direction and we were on our way. Poor communication, coordination and a lack of staff actually helping people and knowing what was going on.
Then there’s the trains – most of which are totally unsuitable for serving 2 busy London airports. I have been abused by other passengers for my luggage blocking seats because there’s no luggage racks. Even on the ‘new improved trains specifically designed with airport passenger needs in mind’ there’s hardly any space for more than a few bags per carriage.
Despite being the most convenient airports for me living on the Thameslink line, and costing significantly less to get to/from, I actively avoid LTN and LGW as the journey in a cab to Paddington and the Heathrow Express is far less stressful and more reliable than Thameslink.
9 Jul 2015
at 12:51
NTarrantParticipantSimonS1 – quite agree about bean counters et al, there is also a problem with too much reliance on graduates as ‘up and coming management’ but lack the experience. There is not enough promotion from within the ranks.
Sadly back in the day, some of the experienced railwayman were stuck in their ways and wouldn’t accept changes and new ways of thinking.
9 Jul 2015
at 16:25
andystockParticipantThe class 700 will have plenty of space for Luggage as they have far greater standing room. Important feature of the 700 is they are all 8 cars or 12 cars, do the end of 4 car trains!
Don’t forget Moorgate in December will become a full time station and all WGC and Hertford Loop stopping trains will go into moorgate. This will create additional capacity at the weekends and late evenings. Not sure what the plan is after Arsenal ho,me games for Drayton Park.
9 Jul 2015
at 17:20
openflyParticipantIn the South there are massive Sunday closures due to “engineering work”. Sometimes there is work actually going on. Most of the time it is because they haven’t got enough drivers for the services so they plan “engineering work”. Quietly solves a problem!
Imagine if airlines cancelled services on a Sunday because the pilots didn’t bother to go to work!9 Jul 2015
at 18:53
maxgeorgeParticipantMartyn – I see you’re still considering that career change to motorman. I’d encourage you to go for it.
In my younger world backpacking days, in need of funds for onward travel, I worked for a while as a fireman/trainee driver on the steam locomotives of Rhodesia Railways.
It was great fun, better even than a weekend in Brighton with Anne Widdecombe.
9 Jul 2015
at 19:07
NTarrantParticipantThat is nonsense Openfly, engineering work is planned by Network Rail and nothing to do with driver shortage. Just because you don’t see blokes digging up the track doesn’t mean that nothing is going on. Most signalling work is computerised and when work is required in this they can’t run trains.
As already mentioned it takes a year to get a driver trained, but they can leave in less than a month
9 Jul 2015
at 19:08
MrMichaelParticipantGolly, this thread has some legs.
Instead of bore you with my usual moans about SouthWest Trains five abreast seating hell, I will say this:-
Bemoaning the DfT is in many cases the wrong tack entirely. The DfT do as the minister says, and if minister says you have no money, you have no money. It boils down to public sector cuts, the DFT can advise minsters, cajole ministers, make it difficult for ministers, but they cannot get blood out of a stone.
Edited to add, I better declare an interest here, I am a consultant to the DVLA, an agency of the DfT.
9 Jul 2015
at 21:12
SimonS1ParticipantIn reality I think it’s a combination of both Mr Michael.
Ministers never think beyond the next election which is a bit of a disadvantage in the transport sector.
On the other hand the West Coast debacle which cost the taxpayer anywhere between £50m and £100m was down to incompetence at the DfT. It wasn’t ministers who pug together the faulty spreadsheets etc. The only winner in that was Branson who got a 5 year extension when the DfT would have sent him packing.
10 Jul 2015
at 08:40
JordanDParticipantI used to be on FCC’s Passenger Board – one gem is about those new trains from Siemens. For all the wonder of the tech in there, the Government procured them without any wifi – and only realised post procurement, at which point Siemens declined to fit them. In fact, putting the cabling through the trains for WiFi would actually be quite a tech challenge now.
Forward planning and all that.
10 Jul 2015
at 10:04
MrDarwinParticipantThe TL program didn’t exactly just spring out of nowhere, and common sense tells you that during periods of significant work where there are likely to be diversions that increase journey times you may need additional drivers. Given the lengthy time it does take to train a new driver, surely this should have been factored into their resource planning a long time ago, so that the impact now could have been covered or mostly covered.
Or is it a case of TL having the minimum numbers of drivers on the books and then not running the service they are contracted to deliver, knowing they’d be able to blame ‘external factors’ as to why this happened?
The Go Ahead group first half pre-tax profit this year was £44.7m.
10 Jul 2015
at 10:19
TimFitzgeraldTCParticipantOn the point of new rolling stock – almost all new rolling stock (90% plus) is underwritten by the government. The DfT have actually been directly responsible for the procurement of the new TL stock along with the new IEP stock. Because no private train operator is taking the risk on an asset with a 30 year + life span when the normal franchises are only 7-10 years. So whilst some like to show new rolling stock as a positive as privatization – this would have happened regardless.
10 Jul 2015
at 13:41
LuganoPirateParticipantThe trains were 2 + 2 seating club style. But yes Simon, maybe I was lucky as it seems many others I’ve spoken to share your opinion and are a lot less polite about Southern!
10 Jul 2015
at 13:49
MrMichaelParticipant@SimonS1, I was not suggesting for a moment that all DfT staff are brilliant, not by a long chalk, and most of the consultants they use are pretty useless too ( I am of course an exception!). I have never had dealings with the Railway chaps, but can tell you there are at the DfT the brilliant, the mediocre, and those that frankly are not worth the oxygen let alone the salary. And your bang on with Politicians, most can’t see beyond the next day’s Daily Mail let alone the next election. But, that’s the price of Democracy and I would not have it any other way. The alternative is North Korea, where those responsible for the East Coast mainline would be facing a firing squad.
10 Jul 2015
at 14:56 -
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