London Midland Cancellations

[xtradj]

have been around 8 - 10 a day from lime st - birmingham

and around 7-8 a day from crewe to euston

'' member of the train crew being unavaliable '' what a farce

 

[87015]

There is a rather nasty lack of trains operating south of Northampton this evening. 7 out of 11 services from Leighton showing caped on LDB. Coming north 1950 off Euston running, next train 2128 off Euston...!...

Come back Silverlink, all is forgiven...

 

[Bayum]

The same things been happening at Leeds with a lot of Northern Services too

 

[xtradj]

pretty much every london midland service is being cancelled bar local birmingham services. member of train crew unavaliable? so they say

 

[Pumbaa]

Yes - LM handily forgot that with the new timetable, and depots learning only certain routes now with the introduction of Crewe - London, that they didn't have enough staff to cover the new TT. Well done them.

 

[Mintona]

London Midland seem to be in something of a pickle at the moment, short of both drivers and conductors at Crewe, and needing 2 conductors at Northampton and 8! at Bletchley.

 

[87015]

Whats the record for number of cancellations per day in recent times anywhere? This lot have been hitting three figure sums which must be up there.

 

[33056]

LM's average PPM at present is something like 74%

Think of me later tonight.........I am normally back at base around 2300, but am taking bets it will be gone mignight tonight :roll:

 

[CTRL_1]

I asked a driver yesterday about why all the cancellations were occuring and he said to me "Bad Planning!" brilliant!...

 

[A60K]

I asked a driver yesterday about why all the cancellations were occuring and he said to me "Bad Planning!" brilliant!...

yes, pretty much the same thing that did for Terminal 5 when it opened. The equipment's OK, but you need enough staff and give them time to familiarise with it.

 

[Chilled Phill]

Indeed. To me, asking for drivers out there if they know Crewe - Euston your only going to get say a handful of drivers and even then, most of those are employed by Virgin. Seems like an awfully long stretch of track for drivers to learn overnight, so I can't really see LM's service record getting a boost in terms of service.

Also, are these cancellations affecting New St. - Lime St. services? If so, then your going to have an unhappy Crewe on yours hands LM when Virgin stop calling their in the new year...

 

[westcoaster]

i read elsewhere that LM has had a stike from daft so thats one more and they are out, looks pretty grim, the other day there 160+ cancelations in aday.

Steve Banaghan, Managing Director of London Midland, says,

"The introduction of the new timetable for the West Coast route has been a major undertaking for the whole rail industry. London Midland worked in detail with Network Rail and the rail industry to stagger the introduction of the full timetable and as a result, London Midland is currently running fewer services than our published timetable until January.

"Also as part of the changes that came into effect from December 14 with the timetable change, we have introduced the first of a brand new fleet of trains on our longer distance routes and are also running more, longer trains than ever before into London Euston. This, together with some train crew and resourcing issues, as well as infrastructure and train failures, has resulted in poor performance for London Midland services over the last seven days.

"We apologise to our passengers for the inconvenience and impact on their journeys. This has not been the level of service that we should be providing and we are doing all that we can to ensure that passengers see an improvement in our services as quickly as possible."

Mr Banaghan said London Midland had a surplus of train drivers on West Coast routes for the last year in preparation for the extra services from December 14.

"We also continue to recruit and train new members of train crew, both drivers and senior conductors, to ensure that our manpower levels remain at the right level going forward."

 

[yorkie]

They had a surplus? A surplus of about 5 when they needed about 25 or something like that? Numpties! :roll:

 

[The_Rail_WAy]

Pile of ****e wne it comes to passenger services on any mode of public transport when it comes to Britain. What else would you expect?

 

[flymo]

Looking at this thread I cannot believe what I am reading. 160+ cancellations in a day????? What the flipping heck (or words to that effect) is going on?
If things are that bad then surely London Midland are in danger of losing their franchise. What is wrong with the new timetable? Not enough trains, not enough drivers, not enough conductors, bl***y stupid planning or all of the above.

Unbelievable

 

[Chilled Phill]

Are we saying LM is in deeper s**t than First Great Western was at the beginning of last year then?

 

[devon_metro]

They are catastrophically worse than FGW were

 

[Mojo]

Especially given a lot of FGW's problems were the DfT's anyway, whereas LM's are down to their poor internal management

 

[WillPS]

I hope their franchise is taken off them and given to Stagecoach, creating unity between East and West ex-Central franchises once more.

 

[The Planner]

And EMT are doing a grand job arent they.

 

[WillPS]

No, but in fairness EMT don't have cancellations - EMT have stock shortages, which would be eased with a larger network (like in the Central days, trains with massive diagrams etc.).

EMT are doing a pretty good job considering the awful allocation they've been given by DFT.

 

[Pumbaa]

Essentially - the middle managers at Lm are from Central, as are most of the top managers, including Banaghan. Having been on the receiving end of these cancellations too many times for my liking now, how did it happen? It's not as if though they are incapable of communicating, they've been working together for the last 5 years or more!

 

[Chilled Phill]

They are catastrophically worse than FGW were

But then, I remember reading in "RAIL" that the government were considering taking that franchise away from First because of the apparent severity of the situation.

As of yet, I haven't really heard any reaction media wise to London Midland cancellations. Too many comments about how fast you can get from Euston to Glasgow on a Virgin Train.

Then again, it's been a long while since I've actually bought a piece of specialist press for the railways...

 

[sven945]

The Midland services out of Euston have been laughably (though probably not for passengers) bad. Every time I walk into the station I'm faced with pretty much every Virgin service on time but a sea of Midland delays and cancellations.

This weekend, when they were running solely buses off platform 2 they had no staff telling anything, and it was left to the VT staff to tell people what's happening.

 

[P156KWJ]

But then, I remember reading in "RAIL" that the government were considering taking that franchise away from First because of the apparent severity of the situation.

As of yet, I haven't really heard any reaction media wise to London Midland cancellations. Too many comments about how fast you can get from Euston to Glasgow on a Virgin Train.

Then again, it's been a long while since I've actually bought a piece of specialist press for the railways...

but don't they see that taking the franchise away and letting either another bidder or the SRA run it would slow the solution rate down, thus making it absolutely no better, and worse if anything!

 

[MKB]

Was there something dodgy going on here?

Last night (1/1/09) I was returning from Euston to Nuneaton using a £15 London-Midland only Super Off-Peak. I planned to catch the last possible LM service which was the 19:46 changing at Northampton and at Coventry, getting into Nuneaton at 22:02.

At Euston, the only 19:46 listed was going to Bletchley. It turns out the Bletchley to Rugby section had been cancelled, although there was nothing displayed to tell you this. This meant there were no LM services left that would get me back to Nuneaton last night.

At the LM information desk at platform 11, I asked for the ticket to be stamped so that I could use the Virgin service. After checking with a supervisor in a back room (who would not come out to talk to me), the clerk told me that Virgin were aware of the situation and would accept my ticket.

What was odd was that the clerk refused to stamp my ticket or give me any proof that travel by Virgin had been authorised. His name badge was concealed and he refused to tell me what his name was because he said it wasn't him authorising the travel but his supervisor, and, no, he wouldn't give me his supervisor's name either.

I relayed all of this to the on-board Virgin Train Manager before we set off. He was not aware of any LM tickets being authorised for travel on his train, but let me travel anyway.

Is this some sort of dodge by LM to put their passengers on VT without actually remunerating VT?

 

[Pumbaa]

I think you got somebody at the end of their tether really. LM and Virgin have been working together, so that if it goes t*ts up (like it has been) they work together to sort it out. You should have been allowed to travel anyway yesterday, and the Virgin TM should have known. Equally, LM staff have been encouraging passengers to use Virgin services if appropriate.

The LM staff have unfairly been getting stick, particularly at Euston, although my local booking office hasn't been that well off either.

 

[D306]

Something similar happened to me a couple of weeks ago. I was on my way to Coventry to meet up with a mate, and got the 08:25 off MKC to Rugby to change trains to get a service to Coventry. Got to northampton, and was sitting there for about 10 minuites. I caught the info screen when I came into Northampton to see when I left. 8 mins later after the departure time, the driver came over the PA and said that the train had to run ECS to Rugby as there was no conductor, but there was a train leaving northampton in 2 minuites to Birmingham new street, and this was the train I was going to catch at Rugby. It's starting to get silly now, with all their cancellations

 

[Pumbaa]

Very silly yes. But until they've trained up more staff, there's a lot more of it to come!

The reopening of the MKC bay will help though.

 

[87015]

The reopening of the MKC bay will help though.

Yes. A nice Southern train each hour which will hopefully be a banker for actually running!!! (Although I've a slight suspicion that turning round at Watford won't be rare...)