How bad are train driver rotas?

[whoosh]

Only 9 or 10 rostered Sundays a year, depending on roster position. Surprising!

Although only every third Saturday off - not so good.

Yes, not many Sundays would mean they would be easy to get rid of if you didn't want the overtime.

Not everywhere in the country has as few Sundays rostered!

 

[12LDA28C]

Yes, not many Sundays would mean they would be easy to get rid of if you didn't want the overtime.

Not everywhere in the country has as few Sundays rostered!

Blimey 2 out of 3 Sundays rostered! Are Sundays in or out of the working week? I'm guessing in?

 

[Sly Sloth]

Yes, not many Sundays would mean they would be easy to get rid of if you didn't want the overtime.

Not everywhere in the country has as few Sundays rostered!

Wow……that’s awful

 

[whoosh]

Blimey 2 out of 3 Sundays rostered! Are Sundays in or out of the working week? I'm guessing in?

Well... the answer is that they are outside, but there is a compromise over the commitment to work them.

It is a Thameslink roster from a couple of years ago. At Thameslink, Drivers who joined before 2016 must commit to work 8 Sundays per year, and Drivers who joined after that must commit to work 12 per year. The remaining ones are voluntary still.
This depot's answer has been to put as many Sundays in the roster to provide the biggest choice for which 8/12 you'd be commiting to.
If they were all committed (as is the case in other TOCs who have 'committed Sundays') then I would say there would be less Spares (marked As Required [AR] in this roster) on Sundays, but it would certainly be a lot more Sundays worked than the Blackburn one (probably 1 in 3).

However, with Sunday frequencies being touted as being increased, committed Sundays across the country might end up looking more like this roster.

I know the original question was about Blackburn, but thought this was perhaps worth including given the thread title.

 

[Iamanoob]

Of course you get paid, any time at work is paid even if you're sitting with your feet up

Meant paid extra as you will be finishing after your supposed finish time.

 

[SJN]

Meant paid extra as you will be finishing after your supposed finish time.

Well we’d get paid until the time we finish back at our home depot.

 

[12LDA28C]

Well... the answer is that they are outside, but there is a compromise over the commitment to work them.

It is a Thameslink roster from a couple of years ago. At Thameslink, Drivers who joined before 2016 must commit to work 8 Sundays per year, and Drivers who joined after that must commit to work 12 per year. The remaining ones are voluntary still.
This depot's answer has been to put as many Sundays in the roster to provide the biggest choice for which 8/12 you'd be commiting to.
If they were all committed (as is the case in other TOCs who have 'committed Sundays') then I would say there would be less Spares (marked As Required [AR] in this roster) on Sundays, but it would certainly be a lot more Sundays worked than the Blackburn one (probably 1 in 3).

However, with Sunday frequencies being touted as being increased, committed Sundays across the country might end up looking more like this roster.

I know the original question was about Blackburn, but thought this was perhaps worth including given the thread title.

So if a driver worked all their rostered Sundays, including those that are voluntary then that must be worth a lot of money on top of their base salary (a minimum of £12000 at a guess, depending on Sunday agreements) - certainly worth doing for those that like their overtime.

 

[dk1]

You get used to it & just end up working your life around your career. Rosters can look rather gruelling initially but with many passenger operators they are set in stone so you can arrange everything in advance. There are also plenty of opportunities to swap shifts & rest days. I personally often get out of my first or last parts of the job if spare or trainee drivers offer to take your work or the duty managers are shuffling the pack. It’s never going to be more than 35hrs per week on average if you don’t want it & chances are it will be a lot less. I’ve never looked back.

 

[43066]

You get used to it & just end up working your life around your career. Rosters can look rather gruelling initially but with many passenger operators they are set in stone so you can arrange everything in advance. There are also plenty of opportunities to swap shifts & rest days. I personally often get out of my first or last parts of the job if spare or trainee drivers offer to take your work or the duty managers are shuffling the pack. It’s never going to be more than 35hrs per week on average if you don’t want it & chances are it will be a lot less. I’ve never looked back.

Yep, same here really. Equally I’m not sure I’d recommend the job. The shifts are massively anti social and hit like a sledgehammer. There’s a reason why a higher than average % of the driver population is on anti depressants/mood stabilisers.

Fair play to the OP for asking the question.

 

[dk1]

Yep, same here really. Equally I’m not sure I’d recommend the job. The shifts are massively anti social and hit like a sledgehammer. There’s a reason why a higher than average % of the driver population is on anti depressants/mood stabilisers.

Fair play to the OP for asking the question.

I must admit that if I’m on super early or start/finish very late I tend to be in a crap mood but other times I’m happy as Larry & get some shifts where I go home thinking that I’ve enjoyed today so much I’d do it for nothing lol. So glad I don’t have to do nights anymore but know it suits some.

 

[43066]

I must admit that if I’m on super early or start/finish very late I tend to be in a crap mood but other times I’m happy as Larry & get some shifts where I go home thinking that I’ve enjoyed today so much I’d do it for nothing lol. So glad I don’t have to do nights anymore but know it suits some.

Same here, to be fair. I still can’t decide whether I love it or hate it, seven years in…

Probably a bit of both .

 

[dk1]

Same here, to be fair. I still can’t decide whether I love it or hate it, seven years in…

An interest in railways certainly helps. I know several who once they pass out find it dull & lonely. Yeah I get that but being an only child, it never bothers me. I have trainees with me much of the time these days but enjoy being on my todd too just as much.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 23 Jan 2023 ==

Also I love when it’s out of course working. Adds interest to the day.

 

[Harbon 1]

What I've found with freight is that there is generally not a lot of work content in some shifts by passenger standards, but that can work against you. The shift I struggle with the most is a 2000 book on, booking off at 0400. However, the start of the shift is travelling passenger. Your work (driving) doesn't start until after 0100. By which time, if you've not prepared properly, you can be really hanging. The opposite way, 0100 to 0900 is a lot easier because the work is at the start of the shift, with the final four hours spent waiting for and travelling on passenger trains.

 

[43066]

An interest in railways certainly helps. I know several who once they pass out find it dull & lonely. Yeah I get that but being an only child, it never bothers me. I have trainees with me much of the time these days but enjoy being on my todd too just as much.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 23 Jan 2023 ==

Also I love when it’s out of course working. Adds interest to the day.

Yep, I‘m a bit of an enthusiast, and on some level have wanted to be a train driver since I was about three years old (the passion has somewhat worn off since then!).

Having an interest is not a pre requisite to being successful in the role, of course. But how on Earth people stand to do this job if they don’t have any interest at all defeats me.

 

[Class2ldn]

That TL roster above isn't as bad as it looks, as said you only have to work 8 or 12 depending when you started, the rest you can chuck in with 7 days notice if you don't fancy it, just gives the ones who like them the chance to grab them while they can.

 

[deltic]

Possibly a daft question but why are drivers rostered to start their shift at a different time each weekday in any given week? Eg in the Blackburn link posted by @Efini92 the first three weekday shifts start at 13:33, 11:57, and 14:04. Why wouldn't a driver start at 13:33 each day that week?

 

[dk1]

Possibly a daft question but why are drivers rostered to start their shift at a different time each weekday in any given week? Eg in the Blackburn link posted by @Efini92 the first three weekday shifts start at 13:33, 11:57, and 14:04. Why wouldn't a driver start at 13:33 each day that week?

Because if you look at turn lengths they are all different. It’s trying to balance this out into a weeks work. Also variety is the spice of life. This job certainly needs spice sometimes.

 

[deltic]

Because if you look at turn lengths they are all different. It’s trying to balance this out into a weeks work. Also variety is the spice of life. This job certainly needs spice sometimes.

Would moving to an annual hours time arrangement help to address that and bring greater stability to working hours?

 

[dk1]

Would moving to an annual hours time arrangement help to address that and bring greater stability to working hours?

No chance lol

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 23 Jan 2023 ==

it has to be done over the particular link you are in. For example mine is 32 weeks. It is then averaged out with the spare turns taking up the slack.

 

[Evolution]

There’s no doubt about it, the train driver shifts are extreme and they do take their toll pretty quickly.

Our earlies start at about 04XX and lates can get you in around 0130. Then there’s some nights (I don’t do any myself).

We can do as many as 6 days in a row with 2-6 days off depending on the line in the link.

There’s pros and cons to it really, you’ll miss plenty of social events, that’s a fact of the job but the flip side is you can swap and juggle things around a bit.

It’s not a bad job overall and can be enjoyable with reasonable pay but when you’re in work you’ve got to be switched on at all times, especially if you want to keep that license clean. Not as easy as it sounds on day 6 after getting up at 230am.

Today I had to make an emergency call and throw it all in whilst doing 110mph due to a trespasser on an adjacent line (very busy section of line with 4 tracks). This could be your first trip at 04XX and you still need to be razor sharp in your decision making in these situations etc.

 

[12LDA28C]

Also I love when it’s out of course working. Adds interest to the day.

Absolutely. Driving can be rather dull and monotonous but when there's disruption, signal failure, diversion off the booked route etc it makes things rather more interesting.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 24 Jan 2023 ==

Possibly a daft question but why are drivers rostered to start their shift at a different time each weekday in any given week? Eg in the Blackburn link posted by @Efini92 the first three weekday shifts start at 13:33, 11:57, and 14:04. Why wouldn't a driver start at 13:33 each day that week?

If a driver worked the same shift every day for a week, chances are they would be driving the exact same trains, in terms of traction, routes etc. Not only would this be rather boring, but a driver needs to regularly work each type of traction they sign over every route they sign which is one of the reasons why they do a variety of 'jobs' each week to maintain that traction and route knowledge.

It certainly makes more sense from a fatigue perspective to not vary booking on/off times too much during a week - for example booking on at 0411 one day, 0843 the next, 0505 the next day then 1125 the day after would really mess with sleep patterns but it's not really possible to start and finish at the same time every day. An exception to this might be if you were a Depot driver working nights etc, you might be rostered 2230 start all week.

 

[martin2345uk]

I hate it when I get the exact same turn number 3-4 times in a row, I much prefer a variety, but as people say as long as it's not going from nights to earlies to lates etc.

 

[whoosh]

Having the same duty several times in a row is inviting trouble when the next duty after those has a different stopping pattern.

 

[Dieseldriver]

Also completely unworkable to have the same turn four/five days running if you’re spare at any point and get marked up to cover another job within that stint of turns