Avanti running "Empty Coaching Stock" in both directions

[dk1]

Environmental implications come way down the list if at all. Operational requirements are all that will be considered.

 

[modernrail]

Environmental concerns about empty trains when travelling to a leisure activity that seems to use a lot of resources seems a bit odd.
You could have seen the same game, using less precious energy at home on TV, or in a pub showing the game.

It is called living life. I am not sure anybody who thinks we need to clean up our mess thinks we should also stop living life. We just need to do it in a way that doesn’t cause such a mess. Using trains powered by renewables is a great way to do that.

The exception to this of course would be if the OP is yet another Londoner following one of the superior northern teams

 

[Dai Corner]

It is called living life. I am not sure anybody who thinks we need to clean up our mess thinks we should also stop living life. We just need to do it in a way that doesn’t cause such a mess. Using trains powered by renewables is a great way to do that.

The exception to this of course would be if the OP is yet another Londoner following one of the superior northern teams

Electric trains nominally use nuclear power, but in fact use whatever mix is present at the relevant feeder points.

Another exception might be supporters of two northern football teams who recently travelled to London to play despite there being a number of apparently suitable venues close to home.

 

[Grumpy Git]

The 07.47 Liverpool Lime St. To Euston was cancelled this morning and is running empty now as the 07.48 on RTT.

My daughter was supposed to be on it. No guard available according to the Avanti platform staff at Lime St.

Interestingly she received two text messages yesterday from Avanti regarding general marketing BS, but none this morning to tell her it had been cancelled! Poor show Avanti.

 

[MKB]

It's more taking the Michael over a bit of a hyperbolic first post.
Lets face it, you had a legitimate concern over cancelled trains, but to use the Eco argument over a a trip to a very much energy intensive activity was a bit of an own goal.

I'd have left it at the cancellation question, before substituting it for an environmental concern.

I do sometimes like to use hyperbole for effect, but, if you think there was hyperbole in my opening post, your understanding of the device is different from mine. Everything I wrote was intended to be taken literally.

There's no own goal. As I said upthread, whataboutery arguments are flawed thinking. You would never deal with any issues in life, because you can always find a worse scenario.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 21 Apr 2022 ==

The exception to this of course would be if the OP is yet another Londoner following one of the superior northern teams

Not guilty on being a Londoner, or living anywhere near the south, but I'm a bit confused over the pluralisation of "teams"!

 

[modernrail]

Resource efficiency is super important in clearing up our mess and so I really don’t see the problem with the OP suggesting it should be a consideration. Let’s face it, a very long and heavy train leaving all its passengers behind twice and travelling 400 miles so the drivers can get home … on that particular train is…. Crazy. I would have thought the question is how often it happens. If rare, it is crazy but rare so okay. If happening regularly then it is not okay from any perspective.

 

[dk1]

Resource efficiency is super important in clearing up our mess and so I really don’t see the problem with the OP suggesting it should be a consideration. Let’s face it, a very long and heavy train leaving all its passengers behind twice and travelling 400 miles so the drivers can get home … on that particular train is…. Crazy. I would have thought the question is how often it happens. If rare, it is crazy but rare so okay. If happening regularly then it is not okay from any perspective.

The railway revolves around stock & traincrew diagrams. It could be enforced overtime for the driver of the 17:03 & 19:47 if either doesn't run. Also if the driver of the 17:03 works a later train back then how do they do that, have a pnb & work back on time? ECS workings in such instances have always happened.

 

[modernrail]

The railway revolves around stock & traincrew diagrams. It could be enforced overtime for the driver of the 17:03 & 19:47 if either doesn't run. Also if the driver of the 17:03 works a later train back then how do they do that, have a pnb & work back on time? ECS workings in such instances have always happened.

Obviously it does. That plus tracks, platforms and signals. Oh and I assume the reasonable expectations of fare paying passengers figure somewhere in the railway’s hierarchy of needs, although some responses on here make you wonder sometimes. Although hopefully those people don’t actually work on the railway and are just agitators.

How regularly would you expect such an incident to occur, and yes I do consider a TOC leaving up to 1200 passengers behind while their train shoots up and down the WCML to be an ‘incident’ and I hope TOCs consider it so as well if they are taking their job seriously.

 

[dk1]

Obviously it does. That plus tracks, platforms and signals. Oh and I assume the reasonable expectations of fare paying passengers figure somewhere in the railway’s hierarchy of needs, although some responses on here make you wonder sometimes. Although hopefully those people don’t actually work on the railway and are just agitators.

How regularly would you expect such an incident to occur, and yes I do consider a TOC leaving up to 1200 passengers behind while their train shoots up and down the WCML to be an ‘incident’ and I hope TOCs consider it so as well if they are taking their job seriously.

If there is no train manager there is no train manager. I don’t quite understand what point you are trying to make here.

 

[modernrail]

If there is no train manager there is no train manager. I don’t quite understand what point you are trying to make here.

A shame because it is a fairly simple point in the scheme of things.

If this happens rarely, fair enough. If it happens frequently. Not fair enough.

As you didn’t reply with your view on how often is acceptable, these things happen vs unacceptable must do better, it must be assumed you don’t have a view.

I think most taxpayers and passengers (otherwise known as the funders of the railway) would be pretty surprised to find out it happens at all and that there is not a more efficient way of getting staff where they need to be. There is also a certain irony that the hundreds of passengers that were just left standing on a platform don’t have the luxury of being able to insist on the same and so will be late to see their children, make meetings, see relatives in hospital, help people they were on their way to help. Perhaps you don’t see that irony, and you are happy for the railway to get things wrong that it should get right.

 

[dk1]

A shame because it is a fairly simple point in the scheme of things.

If this happens rarely, fair enough. If it happens frequently. Not fair enough.

As you didn’t reply with your view on how often is acceptable, these things happen vs unacceptable must do better, it must be assumed you don’t have a view.

I think most passengers would be pretty surprised to find out it happens at all and that there is not a more efficient way of getting staff where they need to be. There is also a certain irony that the hundreds of passengers that were just left standing on a platform don’t have the luxury of being able to insist on the same and so will be late to see their children, make meetings, see relatives in hospital, help people they were on their way to help. Perhaps you don’t see that irony, and you are happy for the railway to get things wrong that it should get right.

It can happen at anytime & has always done. Nobody is saying it’s not ideal for the passengers, of course it isn’t but the OP asked whether or not it was environmentally friendly running empty. All I am saying is that the environment doesn’t come into things from an operational point of view.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 22 Apr 2022 ==

It’s not a case of getting it wrong or right. There was no train manager so it couldn’t allow passengers onboard.

 

[modernrail]

It can happen at anytime & has always done. Nobody is saying it’s not ideal for the passengers, of course it isn’t but the OP asked whether or not it was environmentally friendly running empty. All I am saying is that the environment doesn’t come into things from an operational point of view.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 22 Apr 2022 ==

It’s not a case of getting it wrong or right. There was no train manager so it couldn’t allow passengers onboard.

Obviously it in theory can happen at anytime if that is the (quite baffling) procedure in such circumstances. How often does it happen is the question, and are some operators better at managing their contingencies than others.

If it happening more than once in a blue moon then of course it becomes an environmental question and if that is not ringing environmental alarm bells it should be. It raises a bunch of other questions as well such as the general competence of all involved that has led to the incident.

Obviously Covid times have thrown extra challenges at the planners and you can only do so much when absence rates are very high, but hopefully that risk is dropping a lot now cases are coming down again.

 

[zwk500]

Obviously it does. That plus tracks, platforms and signals. Oh and I assume the reasonable expectations of fare paying passengers figure somewhere in the railway’s hierarchy of needs, although some responses on here make you wonder sometimes. Although hopefully those people don’t actually work on the railway and are just agitators.

The reasonable expectations of passengers do figure, and one of them is being safe when using the railway. The train didn't have the required staff to ensure safety at station stops, so it couldn't accept passengers. Yes it shouldn't be happening as often as it does but the country at large is still dealing with the impact of Covid, the railways are more sensitive than most due to the high training requirement so its not like you can ask just anybody to jump on the train and cover the job.

How regularly would you expect such an incident to occur, and yes I do consider a TOC leaving up to 1200 passengers behind while their train shoots up and down the WCML to be an ‘incident’ and I hope TOCs consider it so as well if they are taking their job seriously.

Running a train ECS when it should have passengers on board is a cancelled train and TOCS are penalised accordingly.

 

[dk1]

Obviously it in theory can happen at anytime if that is the (quite baffling) procedure in such circumstances. How often does it happen is the question, and are some operators better at managing their contingencies than others.

If it happening more than once in a blue moon then of course it becomes an environmental question and if that is not ringing environmental alarm bells it should be. It raises a bunch of other questions as well such as the general competence of all involved that has led to the incident.

Obviously Covid times have thrown extra challenges at the planners and you can only do so much when absence rates are very high, but hopefully that risk is dropping a lot now cases are coming down again.

Avanti currently has issues with its traincrew hence the large amount of weekend cancellations. It’s been very well documented on several threads. I should imagine it’s happening a lot more frequently on their network than is norm across the UK.

 

[modernrail]

Obviously it in theory can happen at anytime if that is the (quite baffling) procedure in such circumstances. How often does it happen is the question, and are some operators better at managing their contingencies than others.

If it happening more than once in a blue moon then of course it becomes an environmental question and if that is not ringing environmental alarm bells it should be. It raises a bunch of other questions as well such as the general competence of all involved that has led to the incident.

Obviously Covid times have thrown extra challenges at the planners and you can only do so much when absence rates are very high, but hopefully that risk is dropping a lot now cases are coming down again.

Avanti currently has issues with its traincrew hence the large amount of weekend cancellations. It’s been very well documented on several threads. I should imagine it’s happening a lot more frequently on their network than is norm across the UK.

Genuinely interested, what is your sense of what is the norm. For long distance, once a week per TOC, once a month?

As for Avanti - if there internal organisation is anything like their website design, I am not surprised they are regularly letting down thousands of British travellers. Their service has become one I always book a train or two before the one I need, or just using Teams if for work.

 

[dk1]

Genuinely interested, what is your sense of what is the norm. For long distance, once a week per TOC, once a month?

As for Avanti - if there internal organisation is anything like their website design, I am not surprised they are regularly letting down thousands of British travellers. Their service has become one I always book a train or two before the one I need, or just using Teams if for work.

I would have no idea of an accurate figure but with my 30 plus years on the railway it’s just one of those things. I have had several instances where no guard has been available at Liverpool Street so I’ve taken the train ECS to Norwich for its next working. It’s just something that happens. I’m not sure why you are so bemused by that.

 

[43096]

I would have no idea of an accurate figure but with my 30 plus years on the railway it’s just one of those things. I have had several instances where no guard has been available at Liverpool Street so I’ve taken the train ECS to Norwich for its next working. It’s just something that happens. I’m not sure why you are so bemused by that.

Presumably running it as ECS means there’s not another cancellation due to no set for the back working (and consequent issues for the crew due to work it). So running empty stops a single cancellation becoming two (or more). I can’t understand why this is being made an issue of, when it’s the best way of running the service.

 

[dk1]

Presumably running it as ECS means there’s not another cancellation due to no set for the back working (and consequent issues for the crew due to work it). So running empty stops a single cancellation becoming two (or more). I can’t understand why this is being made an issue of, when it’s the best way of running the service.

Me neither mate but they're you go. What makes this Forum interesting sometimes.

 

[Mag_seven]

As has been noted above sometimes long distance ECS moves are necessary but not ideal. There is not much left do discuss here so we will now bring this discussion to a close.

If anyone would like to suggest strategies to avoid such ECS moves then they are welcome to start a new thread in the Speculation section of the forum.