EMT confusion

[LowLevel]

It very rarely causes problems - more often than not the trains go to Liverpool despite delay, I've terminated at Oxford Road once, ever - and we were a full hour late and the next train literally followed us in. As often as not it's Network Rail requesting the early termination in Manchester to ease congestion.

 

[6Gman]

I'm sure that even in BR days there would be situations where drivers weren't current on all the routes signed from a given depot. And it would be sods law that the diversionary route that they need would be the one that they were due to relearn next week.

The larger depots were often organised into 'links' which certainly didn't have universal route knowledge.

For example at Nottingham the Links which signed Skegness didn't sign Matlock and vv

As I found out when I issued a diagram which involved a trip to Skegness and back followed by a trip to Matlock and back!
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The staffing of the Liverpool - Norwich line has always been interesting to me. As much as Nottingham crews will disagree with me, I don't believe they should have ended up with the route under East Midlands. The nearest depot to Liverpool is Nottingham. If anything happens in Liverpool such as crew taken ill, incident or a fatality it's at least 2 hours by road to get to the unit on top of finding spare crew. A satellite depot at Liverpool or Manchester makes sense but the costing of additional spare probably makes it unlikely because of accountants as opposed to operational reasons. Norwich as the other extreme end of the service has a depot though so I'm unsure why the western end never ended up with one.

When it was Central, did Crewe men work any part of the Liverpool - Norwich service out of interest?


When the service goes belly up I don't blame EMT for terminating at Oxford Road. I suspect they have tight PNBs at Liverpool so any delay more than 10 minutes will have a knock on effect for the rest of the service.

Crewe men did not get involved. At all. (The guy who diagrammed Nottingham used to sit opposite me at work!)

Manchester men used to work to Nottingham, and the two depots used to watch each other like hawks to make sure the work was 'fairly' divided.

One year the guy opposite me came up with a rebalancing which saved a traincrew (but altered the Mcr/Ntm balance). Being an obstinate sort he pressed on regardless without agreement from the guy who diagrammed the Manchester crews (who sat a few yards away). The result on the first Monday of the new timetable was that some trains had two drivers, and some had no driver.

He was put firmly on the naughty step!

 

[dquebec]

I take it Norwich has a depot that runs the Liverpool trains?

 

[bunnahabhain]

Yes, Norwich depot runs approximately half of the services on the east end of the route, it was set up because Regional Railways couldn't afford to run it all from Nottingham under the Organising for Quality drive. The extra cost being paying signalmen to get trains to and from Norwich at the extremes of the service as the lines weren't open 24hrs a day.

 

[edwin_m]

May have had something to do with the fact that what are now the Anglia locals were at the time part of Regional Railways Central with the Liverpool service, so they would have had enough diagrams starting in Norwich to make a crew depot there viable.

 

[jamesontheroad]

I take it Norwich has a depot that runs the Liverpool trains?

Yes, Norwich depot runs approximately half of the services on the east end of the route, it was set up because Regional Railways couldn't afford to run it all from Nottingham under the Organising for Quality drive. The extra cost being paying signalmen to get trains to and from Norwich at the extremes of the service as the lines weren't open 24hrs a day.

As well as this remote depot, an additional EMT oddity east of Nottingham is the 0550 Norwich to Liverpool, the only diagram regularly scheduled with four cars all the way from Norwich to Liverpool, simply because it call calls all stops from Grantham and arrives in Nottingham in time for 9AM.

Have members of the NRW depot experienced any unease with the re-signalling of the Breckland Line in recent years? Presumably it is more cost effective to ECS trains from Nottingham to Liverpool every morning than open a new crew base there, but on the other hand it is more cost effective to maintain an existing depot in NRW than close it, make staff redundant, and start ECS the stock from Nottingham?

 

[edwin_m]

As well as this remote depot, an additional EMT oddity east of Nottingham is the 0550 Norwich to Liverpool, the only diagram regularly scheduled with four cars all the way from Norwich to Liverpool, simply because it call calls all stops from Grantham and arrives in Nottingham in time for 9AM.

Have members of the NRW depot experienced any unease with the re-signalling of the Breckland Line in recent years? Presumably it is more cost effective to ECS trains from Nottingham to Liverpool every morning than open a new crew base there, but on the other hand it is more cost effective to maintain an existing depot in NRW than close it, make staff redundant, and start ECS the stock from Nottingham?

With trains ending their day at Norwich after 2300 and starting at 0550 as mentioned, even with the signalbox issue gone away engineering access between Norwich and Peterborough may still be a problem. A Nottingham-Liverpool ECS has a choice of route the whole way between Mansfield Junction and Edge Hill but there isn't any alternative for Peterborough-Norwich short of going via London.

 

[bunnahabhain]

As well as this remote depot, an additional EMT oddity east of Nottingham is the 0550 Norwich to Liverpool, the only diagram regularly scheduled with four cars all the way from Norwich to Liverpool, simply because it call calls all stops from Grantham and arrives in Nottingham in time for 9AM.

Have members of the NRW depot experienced any unease with the re-signalling of the Breckland Line in recent years? Presumably it is more cost effective to ECS trains from Nottingham to Liverpool every morning than open a new crew base there, but on the other hand it is more cost effective to maintain an existing depot in NRW than close it, make staff redundant, and start ECS the stock from Nottingham?

I think its incredibly unlikely the depot would close unless the service was rerouted to Cambridge. As for the Liverpool end it manages quite well as it is, bearing in mind that beyond Manchester you've got at least two other trains an hour from Piccadilly at the extremes, and demand does drop off quite a lot for the last two, I would probably put my neck out and say that an extra service an hour later would make sense, but whether that would be better as an EMT or TPE service who knows.

 

[dquebec]

Norwich must be a pretty boring depot then! I can't see their staff having a chance to go anywhere other than Nottingham and back!

Sounds like somewhere you go to retire!

 

[bunnahabhain]

Norwich must be a pretty boring depot then! I can't see their staff having a chance to go anywhere other than Nottingham and back!

Sounds like somewhere you go to retire!

It is generally more of a retirement depot for Anglia staff, most turns are Norwich-Nottingham and back, with half of them also covering a Leicester or Worksop.