Network Rail don't care about disruption, providing maintenance costs are saved: what could be done about this?

Port Road · 19 Jul 2026

Moderator note: Split from

Edinburgh-Haymarket disruption 19/07/26

Edited as requested. Signalling fairure to the West of Edinburgh Waverley, looks like it's all gone Pete Tong (I was on a delayed Fife service). Some trains have been standing for 90 minutes and counting....

www.railforums.co.uk

Edited as requested.
I've been saying for years (not on here) that Network Rail couldn't give two hoots about delays as long as they are saving money on maintainance ("...to hell with the 'passengers'..."). Question is, how long is this going to be allowed to continue?

I have it on good authority that this debacle today only became a debacle due to the above policy.

Axle counter failure leaving a set of points route-locked reverse in Princes Street Gardens. No S&T on duty due to maintainance 'savings'; took 3 hours to get someone there and another hour to fix the problem. But, hey, NR couldn't give a cuss 'cos they're saving £xx per year, right?

Sack the Chief Executive? ('Jeremy Westlake'; annual salary c.£550,000...lots of maintainace/S&T cover for that amount of cash, eh?)

Am I being too harsh? Ask someone (anyone) who was on 9S54....

RailUK Forums

voyagerdude220 · 19 Jul 2026

Port Road said:
Am I being too harsh? Ask someone (anyone) who was on 9S54....

No, I quite agree.
Coincidentally I noticed yesterday at work 9S54 was fully booked, as my colleague mentioned he had sold a family tickets for it yesterday but unsurprisingly it was fully booked. I'm guessing with it being a 9-car, not 11, it was very busy.

Vexed · 19 Jul 2026

Unfortunately, I think there's too much reactive maintenance and not enough proactive maintenance.

And with red zone working gone S&T have less opportunities to do maintenance during the day so they'll be less of them around to react to faults.

speedy1 · 19 Jul 2026

£60bn+ in debt, up from £34bn in 2013. Where is the money going?? How'd it get into that state?

High Dyke · 20 Jul 2026

speedy1 said:
£60bn+ in debt, up from £34bn in 2013. Where is the money going?? How'd it get into that state?

Payments for all the experienced staff that were allowed to take voluntary redundancy?

Fair enough, you can't always predict equipment failures, but when the first question asked is: "are trains being delayed?", and the answer is no, then you can see where priorities lie. Some locations have had faults for some considerable time, but all you get is finger pointing between departments and nobody takes responsibility.

alxndr · 20 Jul 2026

Vexed said:
Unfortunately, I think there's too much reactive maintenance and not enough proactive maintenance.

And with red zone working gone S&T have less opportunities to do maintenance during the day so they'll be less of them around to react to faults.

Scotland hasn’t had red zone working for a long time now, they outlawed it before everywhere else.

There’s simply fewer S&T (and staff in other departments) around these days. My section lost 23% of our staff to “Modernising Maintenance” on paper, figures will vary from section to section.

HSTEd · 20 Jul 2026

There are obvious tradeoffs between the cost of increasing the number of staff available on call and the cost of increased disruption from staff taking longer to arrive on site to fix things.

All this stuff has to be paid for, there is no such thing as a free lunch and all that.

mike57 · 20 Jul 2026

Surely the Network Rail situation is another example of the failure of rail privatisation. Up until that point infrastructure and operations were all part of the same organisation, This situation existed from the birth of railways through grouping and nationalisation. I understand they were probably different departments, but ultimately all reported to the same board/boss.

The current situation where the bean counters try and pare everything back to the absolute minimum to 'save money' probably does on paper, but if you look at the wider costs resulting from disruption for example it doesn't. It just means other organisations and individuals have to absorb the costs and inconvenience resulting from failures of Network Rail to invest to fund things.

The Planner · 20 Jul 2026

The wallet is empty.

JamesT · 20 Jul 2026

mike57 said:
Surely the Network Rail situation is another example of the failure of rail privatisation. Up until that point infrastructure and operations were all part of the same organisation, This situation existed from the birth of railways through grouping and nationalisation. I understand they were probably different departments, but ultimately all reported to the same board/boss.

The current situation where the bean counters try and pare everything back to the absolute minimum to 'save money' probably does on paper, but if you look at the wider costs resulting from disruption for example it doesn't. It just means other organisations and individuals have to absorb the costs and inconvenience resulting from failures of Network Rail to invest to fund things.

British Rail never tried to pare back the costs? Aren’t there various bits of the network where capacity is limited because BR cut back to save on maintenance. (E.g. singling previously double track lines)

HSTEd · 20 Jul 2026

JamesT said:
British Rail never tried to pare back the costs? Aren’t there various bits of the network where capacity is limited because BR cut back to save on maintenance. (E.g. singling previously double track lines)

I think they are arguing that British Rail tried to pare back total costs.

Network Rail and other actors in the industry today all pare back their own costs without respect for total industry costs.

Then you end up with cross cutting behaviours that undermine potential overall savings.

AndrewE · 20 Jul 2026

A year or two ago we had a link to a NR document which I thought I had saved, but can't find now. It laid out clearly the likely consequences of the maintenance cuts that they were implementing, which included (IIRC) increasing failures of lineside equipment which would cause delays. This would be acceptable though because everything failed to safety...

Bletchleyite · 20 Jul 2026

Is this not one of the things vertical integration through GBR is supposed to address, so there aren't different motivations between TOC and Network Rail? Might not work in Scotland though as it will for now at least remain separate there.

alxndr · 20 Jul 2026

HSTEd said:
There are obvious tradeoffs between the cost of increasing the number of staff available on call and the cost of increased disruption from staff taking longer to arrive on site to fix things.

The vast majority of S&T aren’t on call, that tends to just be in a few more remote areas where there isn’t 24/7 cover. Traditionally S&T will have staff on duty 24/7 either doing maintenance where still possible during the day or on standby for fault cover.

If there were no staff in Edinburgh then most likely they would need to come from another depot with staff on duty rather than as a call out from home.

JamesT · 20 Jul 2026

Bletchleyite said:
Is this not one of the things vertical integration through GBR is supposed to address, so there aren't different motivations between TOC and Network Rail? Might not work in Scotland though as it will for now at least remain separate there.

Hasn't Scotland been semi-integrated from some time already? There was the alliance agreement between Scotrail and Network Rail Scotland, and Alex Hynes was head of both.

Network Rail don't care about disruption, providing maintenance costs are saved: what could be done about this?

Port Road

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Edinburgh-Haymarket disruption 19/07/26

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voyagerdude220

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Vexed

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High Dyke

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