Recent content by MS805

I sort of half agree and half disagree: my take would be that train crew have indeed signed up for a job with shifts and so shouldn't moan about the fact of that but, equally, it's good to do everything reasonably possible to maximise both safety (1st) and work-life balance (2nd). (Edit: While...

We have a number of pairs doing this already, although there is usually more demand to stick to earlies, especially for people with children - school run and all that, I guess.

It strikes me that it would be better to vary the shifts less frequently. We have a long weekend every three weeks, with a Wednesday and Thursday off halfway between. Why not do just earlies or lates the whole time between those long weekends? Or, at least, from the long weekend to the midweek...

In any case, this is all a bit irrelevant as the arguments that the Liverpool - Norwich service is slower than via London and thus a bit pointless are a red herring, because that's not the only journey people do on that service. It maybe true that Liverpool or Warrington to Norwich is quicker...

I have woken a young lad up at Nottingham who joined the train at Liverpool South Parkway, apparently rather the worse for wear after returning by plane from his hols, and managed to miss his stop at Widnes, i.e. he got on at 2147 for a stop reached at 2156 and I woke him up at about 0050.

Well, no, which is why I pointed out that the shouters need to know what the system is for. Sounds like you were doing exactly what was intended. Up until dispatch, there is no restriction on where people are standing or walking, if a train is in the platform. After all, as I imagine you are...

The idea of the red line is that people STAND behind the red line and WALK along the platform between the red and yellow lines. This is better than previously, when people used to stand up to the yellow line and, in effect, force people waking along the platform to do so too close to the edge...

On the summary screens it's even safer with "London Liv St" and "Lime St Liv", so the dangerous "Liverpool" word doesn't appear in full on either.

But there has to be some kind of latitude, otherwise a TOC ends being responsible because of being stuck behind a train in the platform ahead at Manchester Piccadilly, which is over time because of an unexpected passenger in a wheelchair. You can improve punctuality fairly easily if you...

One issue with being robust is the use these days of those "tip up" wagons to transport complete switch and crossing assemblies. Whilst this makes renewals much quicker, the "old" system of bringing it all in bits and assembling on site allowed the use of very long sleepers, i.e. across the...