Railway grades in danger?

[Class 466]

If this isn’t Southeastern paying someone up to £55k to come up with a scheme to close ticket offices then I don’t know what is.

 

[43066]

All you do is then pile additional work on the controlling signaller, we have to stop and caution every train after until Off Track (who are also critically undermanned) attend to cut the veg back, once that’s done we then need S&T to carry out a signal sighting assessment, again you guessed it their critically short staffed as well.

Your not sticking it to management, your screwing your fellow shop floor colleagues.

To be fair if signals are obscured they need reporting and dealing with.

 

[Bald Rick]

Judging by the state of the line side vegetation there’s no one employed to manage this now.

Maybe drivers have unwittingly taken on this role?

right now is the worst time for vegetation each year.

and this year has seen a particularly big growth due to the weather.

 

[Signal_Box]

To be fair if signals are obscured they need reporting and dealing with.

Of course, it was the tone the poster used came across as just report it even if the wind has obviously blown a branch into the eye line type report.

 

[2021_Signaller]

All you do is then pile additional work on the controlling signaller, we have to stop and caution every train after until Off Track (who are also critically undermanned) attend to cut the veg back, once that’s done we then need S&T to carry out a signal sighting assessment, again you guessed it their critically short staffed as well.

Your not sticking it to management, your screwing your fellow shop floor colleagues.

Agree with this. All the more annoying when subsequent drivers query it.

Perhaps the driver could report vegetation for the signaller to action, but not state it is obscuring the signal (unless it actually is).

 

[BrummieBobby]

All you do is then pile additional work on the controlling signaller, we have to stop and caution every train after until Off Track (who are also critically undermanned) attend to cut the veg back, once that’s done we then need S&T to carry out a signal sighting assessment, again you guessed it their critically short staffed as well.

Your not sticking it to management, your screwing your fellow shop floor colleagues.

Sorry but I disagree; I want drivers to report every obscured signal to me, I want to report it to Control and I want them to do something about it. A report and a fault number means that somebody has to do something, even if it is to just attend and sight the signal.

The state of line side vegetation has got noticeably worse in recent times (Indeed, I have been on trains in the past where line side foliage has been striking the train as it proceeded) as has been mentioned, this is probably due to the off-track teams being under-staffed.

 

[Falcon1200]

Lineside vegetation certainly is an issue and Drivers should be encouraged to report signals becoming obscured, so that action can be taken, preferably before trains have to be cautioned for signals totally obscured.

 

[Robert Ambler]

Hard for a government to claim anything is unaffordable when they’ve just today spent £10bn (the amount not covered by the “windfall tax”) on subsidising peoples energy bills.

Of course, whether they *want* to afford it is another matter.

Yes but of course that £10bn is money that is coming from you the taxpayer and effectively going into the profits of energy companies. The Government view that as a very different form of subsidy to taking money from you the taxpayer and using it to pay for public services.

As the late Robin Williams said Politicians should be made to wear sponsors jackets like sports stars do so you can see who owns them.

 

[Mintona]

As I understand it, the vegetation has obscured a signal so badly near Gloucester that all trains heading towards Cardiff are having to use the up main reversibly as the down main signal can’t be seen and Network Rail can’t spare anybody to go and trim it back. It’s been like this for a few days now.

 

[HSTEd]

Ultimately yet another problem that will (eventually) be fixed by ETCS....

 

[alxndr]

As I understand it, the vegetation has obscured a signal so badly near Gloucester that all trains heading towards Cardiff are having to use the up main reversibly as the down main signal can’t be seen and Network Rail can’t spare anybody to go and trim it back. It’s been like this for a few days now.

If it's the one I'm thinking of it's due to trees on third party land, so that requires co-operation from the third party.

 

[Evolution]

I went over one of our rarely used diversionary routes yesterday and the lineside vegetation was significantly worse than the last time I went over it. One signal was beginning to be obscured, which I subsequently reported.

The route looked unrecognisable in certain places, due to the massive growth. Will be ‘interesting’ in leaf fall if it isn’t trimmed back.

 

[Bald Rick]

Ultimately yet another problem that will (eventually) be fixed by ETCS....

exchange obscured signals for obscured Marker boards

 

[43066]

exchange obscured signals for obscured Marker boards

It’ll be “interesting” what happens if obscured signals or rough riding are reported next week. Presumably it’ll completely decimate the service as there’ll be nobody to go out to it.

 

[Bald Rick]

It’ll be “interesting” what happens if obscured signals or rough riding are reported next week. Presumably it’ll completely decimate the service as there’ll be nobody to go out to it.

there’s people to go out for them. Normal procedures apply.

 

[alxndr]

there’s people to go out for them. Normal procedures apply.

Mainly just managers and engineers who were not ballotted/not striking. They will be far fewer between and less practised than the usual teams. Even just not having the geographical knowledge will slow down response times.

 

[Falcon1200]

They will be far fewer between and less practised than the usual teams. Even just not having the geographical knowledge will slow down response times.

Given the limited number of routes open there will be fewer incidents to attend, however.

 

[Mainsideman]

Back to the original topic question - I’d add platform dispatch staff to the list. In many regards the growth of assisted travel for disabled customers as well as the general safety and security of customers at stations partially helps to reduce the likelihood for total axing of station staff, although I see many locations seem to have what look like agency, or at least lower-paid non safety critical staff.

It seems that many stations still retain dispatch staff I wonder perhaps as a hangover from the days of slam door stock, HSTs and long loco hauled trains where the RA might need to be repeated to the driver and platform staff would be needed to manually close doors to ensure an on time departure.

I’m not talking about every station here - many will retain platform staff for management of customers on the platform from a reliability perspective and of course the safety risks from PTI (platform train interface) incidents which is probably one of the biggest risks on the railway. There are also some locations like Birmingham New St where platform staff use the RA indicator to mitigate against SASPADs (starting against Spads), but it does beg the question how places like Watford Jcn retained platform staff to dispatch 1tph Pendolino in each direction where much busier 8 and 12 car local trains are self dispatch, and similarly all those platform staff provided on the XC network to dispatch 4 and 5 car Voyagers.

Adding to this. I would like to see a driver try and self dispatch from waterloo yesterday. The place was mayhem busiest ive seen it in some time!