Transpennine woes and a moan...

[DanNCL]

When was the last time a 185 ran to Newcastle?

Newcastle routes will be 802's as has always been the plan.

The last time I know of was about a month ago. But I don't use the route every day anymore, I haven't since reliability went down the pan. It's less stress now to use the 21 bus, which itself is chronically unreliable, but at least there's more than a 10% chance of getting to Newcastle in a reasonable timeframe with the bus, unlike TPE now.

I'm not disputing all trips are and will continue to be booked 802s - that's always been the plan as you've said. But it's also always been the case that 185s will be able to deputise when required.

 

[LittleAH]

The last time I know of was about a month ago. But I don't use the route every day anymore, I haven't since reliability went down the pan. It's less stress now to use the 21 bus, which itself is chronically unreliable, but at least there's more than a 10% chance of getting to Newcastle in a reasonable timeframe with the bus, unlike TPE now.

I'm not disputing all trips are and will continue to be booked 802s - that's always been the plan as you've said. But it's also always been the case that 185s will be able to deputise when required.

There's little to no need to deputise. Given that TPE have 19 802s which a) aren't being fully utilised b) won't be used as originally intended and are c) bi-mode.

 

[DanNCL]

There's little to no need to deputise. Given that TPE have 19 802s which a) aren't being fully utilised b) won't be used as originally intended and are c) bi-mode.

Of those 19 802s two are long term out of action (one accident damaged, one for battery trials) so that reduces it to 17. Availability isn't the best (though still good enough to cover their currently booked work), they're covering for 397s on the West Coast, and when there's disruption it's often the case the only unit in the right place to work a Newcastle trip will be a 185, indeed that's usually the reason behind 185 deputisations now rather than a shortage of 802s.

 

[Watershed]

First group is in a poor financial state, losing a concession that's causing them major reputational damage could actually go down well with shareholders, especially if it allows them to focus on more promising ventures like Lumo.

I don't think that the issues at TPE are causing any material reputational damage to FirstGroup. Most people don't know that TPE is owned by FirstGroup. And even if reputational damage were caused, getting a few million a year in profit is plenty enough to compensate for that.

I'm doubtful that Lumo is actually more profitable in absolute terms. And regardless, the amount of time that the Group spends on managing TPE isn't necessarily fungible in the sense that it could help improve Lumo instead.

 

[driver9000]

Out of interest with one of the Newcastle - Edinburgh diagrams being Glasgow crewed all day, could theoretically a 397 deputise on that if required?

No. 397s aren't cleared for the ECML. Then there is the whole TPE have to run in diesel mode too.

 

[mpthomson]

First group is in a poor financial state, losing a concession that's causing them major reputational damage could actually go down well with shareholders, especially if it allows them to focus on more promising ventures like Lumo.


But there clearly is a need or it wouldn't still be happening, or do you think they send the odd 185 to the Newcastle for a laugh? I certainly don't think that, when they send a 185 it's because they need to.

People have done an excellent job of explaining why a lot of the current issues on TPE are down to loss of route and traction knowledge; you are advocating more of it.

I'm not sure an operating profit of £66.5m for the first half of the year and about to receive a cash injection of c£110m due to the sale of a US business can be seen as a 'poor state'.

 

[Jamesrob637]

Are TPE getting a little bit better with "cancelled due to a short-notice change to the timetable?" i.e fewer trains being cancelled for this reason

 

[northernchris]

Are TPE getting a little bit better with "cancelled due to a short-notice change to the timetable?" i.e fewer trains being cancelled for this reason

It does seem this week has been better, however when I was passing through Leeds earlier they were 4 consecutive northbound TPE services cancelled

 

[Spartacus]

There seems to have been a change to more services terminating short again, such as terminating at Victoria instead of running through to the airport, which is perhaps masking the issue somewhat as they usually still short notice planned changes and so usually just show the new terminating point on departure boards, with no mention that it's now terminating short.

I was speaking to a TPE driver the other day who was most irate about the current state of things, particularly that services were being cancelled and amended due to a lack of traincrew when the messroom was full of crews who could work the services, but they weren't being asked. From his insider point of view it just looks like First are now largely cancelling services just to save money and pocket the benefits with 'short notice timetable changes', or planned cancellations, being an excuse that'll save them from having to pay certain fines.

 

[yorksrob]

It's clear that First Group no longer add any value to the travelling public. Time to get rid.

 

[Ianigsy]

Travelled Leeds-Liverpool with a Seatfrog upgrade on the 1715 last night - with the 1647 Huddersfield stopper and 1700 Victoria cancelled, this may have been a good idea as it was left to the Hull-Piccadilly to take up a lot of the slack.

Unfortunately the mobile mess room phenomenon was in evidence, with no drinks or snacks for passengers, but the oven being used to heat up sausage rolls and a curry (not at the same time) for staff- there may be legitimate reasons for that, but discussing it within earshot of passengers isn’t a good look.

 

[The Middle]

Unfortunately the mobile mess room phenomenon was in evidence, with no drinks or snacks for passengers, but the oven being used to heat up sausage rolls and a curry (not at the same time) for staff- there may be legitimate reasons for that, but discussing it within earshot of passengers isn’t a good look.

Completely blows my mind when people criticise staff for daring to get some hot food and is normally indicative of somewhere who has never worked in the service industry in their life. That may have been the only opportunity within a 10 hour shift they had to get anything down their necks.

 

[43066]

Travelled Leeds-Liverpool with a Seatfrog upgrade on the 1715 last night - with the 1647 Huddersfield stopper and 1700 Victoria cancelled, this may have been a good idea as it was left to the Hull-Piccadilly to take up a lot of the slack.

Unfortunately the mobile mess room phenomenon was in evidence, with no drinks or snacks for passengers, but the oven being used to heat up sausage rolls and a curry (not at the same time) for staff- there may be legitimate reasons for that, but discussing it within earshot of passengers isn’t a good look.

Seriously?!

Thankfully I don’t work for TPE, but our TMs can spend 10+ hour shifts on the same set with no rostered breaks hence the need to heat up food (that they’ve bought and paid for themselves - so hardly depriving passengers). It’s hardly their fault the TOCs have used Covid as an excuse to abandon proper hot food for passengers.

They’re also allowed to talk amongst themselves, last I checked.

particularly that services were being cancelled and amended due to a lack of traincrew when the messroom was full of crews who could work the services

Presumably that’s generally because a relief crew isn’t available at a later point in the journey?

 

[Ianigsy]

Completely blows my mind when somebody can’t or won’t understand how that looks to somebody who has paid extra for an upgrade and would have been quite satisfied with a cup of tea and a biscuit. And yes, I have worked in call centre environments where we weren’t allowed to eat outside of fixed breaks, quite often up to three hours at a time.

I appreciate that you can’t extrapolate from individual instances, but in this case the crew member who was apparently in charge of the kitchen did nothing that could be remotely described as customer service within two hours, so what were they being paid to do? Surely even TPE aren’t so incompetent as to give their staff two hour breaks!

 

[43066]

who has paid extra for an upgrade and would have been quite satisfied with a cup of tea and a biscuit.

Were announcements made about lack of catering? If you didn’t get something you were entitled to, why don’t you take it up with the TOC and ask for a refund/partial refund?

And yes, I have worked in call centre environments where we weren’t allowed to eat outside of fixed breaks, quite often up to three hours at a time.

Three hours isn’t ten hours.

I appreciate that you can’t extrapolate from individual instances, but in this case the crew member who was apparently in charge of the kitchen did nothing that could be remotely described as customer service within two hours,

How do you know they were in charge of the kitchen? It could have been a TM, or another member of staff travelling pass.

s, so what were they being paid to do? Surely even TPE aren’t so incompetent as to give their staff two hour breaks!

And this perfectly demonstrates why staff should be given proper breaks off trains and away from passenger view.

 

[Llanigraham]

Completely blows my mind when somebody can’t or won’t understand how that looks to somebody who has paid extra for an upgrade and would have been quite satisfied with a cup of tea and a biscuit. And yes, I have worked in call centre environments where we weren’t allowed to eat outside of fixed breaks, quite often up to three hours at a time.

I appreciate that you can’t extrapolate from individual instances, but in this case the crew member who was apparently in charge of the kitchen did nothing that could be remotely described as customer service within two hours, so what were they being paid to do? Surely even TPE aren’t so incompetent as to give their staff two hour breaks!

If there was nothing available for the catering staff to give to the general public, what were they supposed to do? I suspect that the food they were warming up was food those members of staff had bought for themselves. Perhaps if you had bought something in advance that could have been heated up, and had asked they might have done the same for you.

I'm sure lots of railway workers would love a 2 hour break!!

 

[Bletchleyite]

It's clear that First Group no longer add any value to the travelling public. Time to get rid.

GWR seems decent at the moment. This says to me that the main issue is a lack of quality TOC management leading to e.g. poor industrial relations.

 

[Bald Rick]

I was speaking to a TPE driver the other day who was most irate about the current state of things, particularly that services were being cancelled and amended due to a lack of traincrew when the messroom was full of crews who could work the services, but they weren't being asked.

An interesting viewpoint. I know a few TPE staff, driving grade, planning teams and management. There is no doubt the operation is ‘stressed’ at present, with planning teams and control in particular being stretched. Mistakes will be made. However I haven’t heard of messrooms full of crews, although no doubt that happens occasionally. TPE is quite a complex operation with many different routes / diversions / rolling stock combinations and keeping crew competency is a huge task.

From his insider point of view it just looks like First are now largely cancelling services just to save money and pocket the benefits with 'short notice timetable changes', or planned cancellations, being an excuse that'll save them from having to pay certain fines.

This is mistaken. First do not save money and pocket any ‘benefits’ from the short notice changes / planned cancellations. The DfT do, but that‘s a different story. It’s fair to say that those involved at TPE would much rather be running the service they should be.

 

[yorksrob]

GWR seems decent at the moment. This says to me that the main issue is a lack of quality TOC management leading to e.g. poor industrial relations.

Fair Play, yes FGW have been doing a decent job out west for years. Why is one branch good but the other isn't !

 

[Bletchleyite]

Fair Play, yes FGW have been doing a decent job out west for years. Why is one branch good but the other isn't !

FGW has to be fair had some bad times too, though not this bad! I think it is probably because Mark Hopwood is a very experienced railway manager.

 

[yorksrob]

FGW has to be fair had some bad times too, though not this bad! I think it is probably because Mark Hopwood is a very experienced railway manager.

Yes, it was once "Worst Great Western". That aside, I've been travelling on it regularly for fifteen years or so and it's generally been a service to rely on (hiccups at Bodmin Road excepted ).

 

[43096]

FGW has to be fair had some bad times too, though not this bad! I think it is probably because Mark Hopwood is a very experienced railway manager.

GWR's failure to provide an acceptable (any) service on weekends on large chunks of its network during IET implementation seems to have bene forgotten. Hopwood seems to be OK running a steady state operation - it was noticeable that GWR improved when Matthew Golton was in temporary charge when Hopwood was away at SWR. Golton is, of course, now the one fixing TPE.

The bigger question is why First get so many senior appointments wrong and/or take too long to recognise the issue: Avanti (Whittingham), SWR (Mellors) and TPE (Goodwin) have all had their MDs removed in recent times. Shouldn't the WorstGroup board be asking Steve Montgomery why he's making such poor people decisions?

 

[Bald Rick]

Fair Play, yes FGW have been doing a decent job out west for years. Why is one branch good but the other isn't !

Because one ‘side’ has had no rest day working by drivers for nearly a year, whereas the other still has it in place.

If GWR ends up with a RDW ban, you can expect a similar result.

 

[yorksrob]

Pathetic waste of space on the way back as well. First needs to go.

Lets face it, this is the Tory parties model for running the railway, and the Tory party has been in charge for the last ten years and they still can't get their model to work.

The phrase "useless bunch of cretins who couldn't be trusted to run a whelk stall" springs to mind.

 

[InkyScrolls]

I've never quite understood the aversion the using public money to run a public service.

 

[Clarence Yard]

I was speaking to a TPE driver the other day who was most irate about the current state of things, particularly that services were being cancelled and amended due to a lack of traincrew when the messroom was full of crews who could work the services, but they weren't being asked. From his insider point of view it just looks like First are now largely cancelling services just to save money and pocket the benefits with 'short notice timetable changes', or planned cancellations, being an excuse that'll save them from having to pay certain fines.

This is deliberate policy but it isn’t done for financial effects. It happens on other TOCs as well, over several OGs.

NR has made it clear that its network isn’t a train park for units without crew and the DfT doesn’t want stranded passengers en route so increasingly TOCs are cancelling trains if they cannot guarantee that the unit can be crewed either for the complete journey or for the complete diagram.

This means crews are sitting in mess rooms and aren’t being asked to crew trains because the TOC wants to avoid problems either further along the line or during the rest of the day. The more you have optimised crews in your diagram structure, the bigger effect you are likely to see.

Personally, I would ban this policy and also the kind of optimisation chaos that has gripped several TOCs but it needs someone to open the purse strings to employ/train more crew and return the diagrams to some degree of sensibility.

 

[Dr Hoo]

This is deliberate policy but it isn’t done for financial effects. It happens on other TOCs as well, over several OGs.

NR has made it clear that its network isn’t a train park for units without crew and the DfT doesn’t want stranded passengers en route so increasingly TOCs are cancelling trains if they cannot guarantee that the unit can be crewed either for the complete journey or for the complete diagram.

This means crews are sitting in mess rooms and aren’t being asked to crew trains because the TOC wants to avoid problems either further along the line or during the rest of the day. The more you have optimised crews in your diagram structure, the bigger effect you are likely to see.

Personally, I would ban this policy and also the kind of optimisation chaos that has gripped several TOCs but it needs someone to open the purse strings to employ/train more crew and return the diagrams to some degree of sensibility.

Genuine question: Is there a generally accepted definition of "(crew) optimisation"?

If the outcome for passengers, and staff (and, presumably, the TOC and DfT, at least in reputational terms) is, err, "sub-optimal" why is it called "optimisation"?.

 

[Watershed]

Genuine question: Is there a generally accepted definition of "(crew) optimisation"?

If the outcome for passengers, and staff (and, presumably, the TOC and DfT, at least in repetitional terms) is, err, "sub-optimal" why is it called "optimisation"?.

The relevant definition is likely to be "the solution requiring the fewest crew diagrams". Although ensuring an appropriate balance of diagrams between depots is also a consideration.

It's all a very theoretical calculation; as we well know, it simply doesn't work in practice.

 

[APT618S]

TPE to the rescue tonight.
XC 1S55 1427 Plymouth-Edinburgh failed a couple of miles north of Northallerton with a brake problem and declared a failure. Stood for approx 2hrs before setting back to Northallerton station and the passengers from 9 fairly full Voyager cars managed to squeeze onto the following TPE, 1P41 1954 Liverpool - Newcastle. Although some people may have waited for the LNER 30 minutes later.

 

[Huntergreed]

Must admit I'm starting to lose my rag with TPE.

Very often, at least a couple times a week, they cancel the only useable Lockerbie - Glasgow (with an Edinburgh connection) morning commuter service (1S30). This means that passengers are now instead piling onto the 06:47 Dumfries to Glasgow (ex Carlisle) service, which can be fun when commuters from Kilmarnock try to join this already packed train instead, or people end up driving, increasing emissions and reducing the passenger numbers (not that TPE care). I understand it isn't possible to run all services, but being this is the only useable commuter service from Preston to Glasgow/Edinburgh (no Avanti's until a few hours later), I would've thought they would at least try to keep it running if they can.

The amount of money I've had to spend on fuel and the amount of delay repay cases I've had refused and had to appeal as a result of this service is slowly driving me mad!