Railways will run every day of year

[Metroland]

Trains will run 365 days of the year for the first time in half a century under new Network Rail plans, The Times has learnt.

Engineering works, the main cause of rail delays and shutdowns, will be completed at night in a fraction of the time it currently takes, according to Iain Coucher, Network Rail’s chief executive.

Passengers should no longer be forced to catch replacement buses at weekends and should have services over Christmas, when the network shuts normally for 60 hours.

In an interview with The Times, Mr Coucher said that Network Rail had let passengers down last Christmas by failing to complete engineering works on time at Rugby and Liverpool Street, East London. He said that the company would find new ways of working to carry out all engineering works at night, and keep to deadlines.

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/transport/article3213273.ece

 

[Mintona]

Well, it sounds good. Less Rail Replacement Buses? Make things a lot easier. Not too optimistic about this bit though: the company would find new ways of working to carry out all engineering works at night, and keep to deadlines.

 

[Craig]

Engineering works, the main cause of rail delays and shutdowns, will be completed at night in a fraction of the time it currently takes, according to Iain Coucher, Network Rail’s chief executive.

So that means engineering work will probably end up taking longer. The time required to set up a possession is the same regardless of whether you're working overnight or for a weekend.

 

[me123]

Whilst I support trains running on Boxing Day and New Years Day, I fail to see why using nights for work is a better solution. Some work needs full, long-term closures, and will just result in the same problems. Work that doesn't may overrun by even a couple of hours, and this could cause major problems for commuters.

Weekend work just now is a bit crazy, with the ECML shut, Aberdeen-Dundee shut, to name but a few, and this is obviously seriously detremental to passengers and, fair enough, night time work here shouldn't cause major problems. But from what I understand of Rugby and Paisley's over-run works, it would still involve a full closure. And buses.

I have to say the only way to resolve the recent crises is to ensure that work is completed on time, and the only way to do that is to monitor engineering possesions, ensure they are working to schedule and, if they are going to overrun, endeavour to get the track back to a useable condition on time then "book" another slot for a later date to close again, when passengers can be forewarned about the possession.

I don't know about the other places, but the situation in Glasgow was appauling. Problem was, it was only announced that the line would remain closed a few hours before it was due to open, so no-one had any chance to make alternative arrangements. Keeping passengers up to date should also be their priority.

 

[O L Leigh]

Either Coucher has got his language wrong or the media have been misreporting him.

It may be possible for TOC's to run 365 days a year and to banish the replacement bus service to the dusty pages of history, but that doesn't mean that the TOC's are going to seize on this opportunity. Either way, it's his own company that is preventing such service improvements. Precisely how he intends to carry out the required level of essential maintenance together with delivering upgrades and improvements to the infrastructure without disturbing the running of trains is something I shall be most interested to learn.

Just get your house in order and keep to the promises you've already made before you start trying to promise us the Earth.

one TN

 

[voyagerdude220]

Am i hopefully right in thinking, that the probability of this actually happening (the engineering side of it at least), is quite low?

If this did happen, would I be right in assuming that no diversions would take place?

 

[Metroland]

Iain Coucher, the man ultimately responsible for the rail chaos over the new year, looks exhausted. His eyes are red and his face is drawn and pale. In the corner of his London office behind Euston station is a monitor that beams in updates about any delays on the network. He looks up to see that the doors of a train have failed to close near Watford.

Mounted on the wall is a colour-coded map of Britain illustrating all the rail upgrades that are being carried out by his company, the rail infrastructure operator Network Rail. Next to it, his young son has drawn a smiley stick man with a speech bubble saying 'Hello' to cheer his dad up. Coucher also suffered a bereavement - a close family member - over the holiday period.

Slung across the back of his chair is a blue anorak emblazoned with the Network Rail logo. On a stormy Thursday evening, it looks rather as if he is ready to head off into the night to start laying track and overhead lines himself, to make sure everything is finished in time.

Over the new year, six days of planned engineering work at Rugby as part of the £8.7bn upgrade on the West Coast Main Line overran by four days. Passengers were herded on to coaches between Birmingham and Northampton, adding about two hours to their journeys.

Planned engineering work also overran at London Liverpool Street by an extra day on 2 January. National Express, which operates the Norwich to London line, only found out in the early hours of that morning, having been repeatedly assured that everything was on target. In total, more than a quarter of a million passengers' journeys were disrupted.

'I've had better weekends and starts to the new year. We're not looking for sympathy,' Coucher says wearily. 'I just want the travelling public to know what we do every single day is an engineering miracle. We would like to be measured over more than one weekend.'

But things are about to get worse. This week, Network Rail will announce the preliminary findings of its own internal investigation into what went wrong. And on Wednesday, Coucher faces a grilling by the House of Commons transport select committee over the fiasco.

Initial findings into the Rugby delays are astonishing. It appears that the West Coast Main Line was crippled because 10 to 15 freelance overhead-line engineers (out of 67 booked) failed to turn up. Amazingly, Coucher admits they may not have reported for work as planned because they had been 'double-allocated' (double-booked to you and me) by contractors to work somewhere else on the network at the same time.

'We don't know if they said "Oh yes, I'll turn up at Rugby" to one person and "Oh yes, I'll turn up [somewhere else]" to another. They may well have been working on other work sites for other contractors,' says Coucher.

As a result of the investigation, Network Rail will employ more overhead line engineers in-house. When it needs to hire more, it will employ them directly, rather than allowing different contractors to hire them on a piecemeal basis.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/jan/20/4

 

[Bonemaster]

To be fair if I was running a railway company the current way of weekend possessions would most likely be preferable to night time possessions, having a railway closed for 6 periods a year means 6 risks of overrun which can be planned at times of year when demand is lower, having it closed 200 nights a year means 200 risks upon which it is difficult to agree mitigating times to avoid wide ranging disruption to peak services, whilst remembering that it isn't leisure passengers that form action groups, protests etc and gain press headlines, it is the bread and butter commuters that do this.

 

[djw1981]

_Part of the problems is that TOCs are very short term-ist and don't see the benefits in 2-3 years of the pain they have to go through now. They need to understand that for improvements to happen, renewals will affect services. What would be more understandable would be if the renewals could be planned.

What if I knew, that every Tuesday my line would finish at 8 not 11, with buses laid on - the TOC can arrange bus replacement for every Tuesday on a planned way, pasengers can be well informed that it happens every Tuesday for 6 months. That gives NR 26 8hr possessions. On another section of line it could be wednesday etc. This would allow more engineering to move from a weekend.

Or on Tuesday. run the train service hourly not half hourly and employ SLW to allow work on the other track.

NR could be more creative in its engineering solutions. After all we used to run trains all night all over the Uk!

 

[O L Leigh]

DJW1981: Your assertion about the short-termism of TOC's is mystifying. TOC's have next to no say about the timing or duration of engineering possessions, although it will always be in the interest of the TOC to keep disruption to a minimum and they will impress that onto Nitwit Rail. However, in almost every other respect, the TOC's are at the mercy of Nitwit Rail.

As for trying more creative engineering scheduling options, you really don't want to be doing anything that's going to interfere with the peaks. Anything that would prevent the TOC's from running their normal services at such times would be most unwelcome, therefore you need all the capacity you can get.

Some jobs are quick and don't require much of a possession, if any at all. Quite a few maintenance jobs (digging wet beds, minor track repairs, S&T cabling, vegetation clearance, ultrasound checks using hand-propelled trolleys, inspection of the line and other infrastructure being the most obvious) actually happen around the clock without the need to disrupt the normal movement of trains. If you're going to take possession of a line it's because you're going to do something big like replacing sections of track, lifting switches (points and diamonds), renewing the OLE/CRE, regauging or replacement of major structures like bridges. It just isn't possible to run trains among all that. Therefore, lines will have to be taken under possession from time to time.

The early shutdown with replacement buses you suggest is a common strategy that is widely used. We get it quite a lot whenever there are works between Bishops Stortford and Cambridge of an evening. It seems to work well, but it only suits those jobs that can be done incrementally. As a consequence, it isn't necessarily the most efficient way of working because the gangs will only commit to as much work as they feel they can comfortably complete in the 8 hour window available to them.

SLW is an option for the layman, but I just can't see it being allowed for a number of reasons. Firstly, on-track plant operating in a worksite is very often out-of-gauge which would cause a collision hazard to movements on an adjacent line. Secondly, if you've lifted one track and have the other open for SLW, how are you going to get the new ballast and track up from the engineers train? Thirdly, SLW alongside a worksite would cause a hazard for the engineers as well as seriously restrict the amount of space in which they can safely work. Fourthly, it would be an operational nightmare with the PICOP, ES, Pilotman and Signaller all trying to coordinate different responsibilities for different types of train movements and other operations, together with shuffling service and engineers trains into the right order. Fifthly, SLW is a horribly slow way of operating trains and adds hugely to journey times while dramatically slashing line capacity. It's for this reason the SLW is generally used for out-of-course or emergency situations.

Let's not forget that this entire story has come from Nitwit Rail. I'd love to think that they have some stumbled on some whizzer scheme that means that they can carry out all the necessary maintenance, renewals and upgrades without having to interfere with the normal running of trains, but I just don't see it. I can't help but think that they've gone and shot themselves in the foot by making these wonderful claims.

one TN

 

[adamp]

How are they getting things done in half the time? New + better equipment/technology??

 

[djw1981]

Hmm one TN, your opinion is very interesting, because many 'old' hands in railway land such as Roger Ford made the points I had suspected, and which I expressed above. He obviously has better industry contacts than the likes of me or other forum dwellers, and he has been strongly making the case for a return to the engineering practices of the past albeit on a more crowded railway.

 

[O L Leigh]

Got a link to anything?

I have to say that I'm not entirely in disagreement with you; I just can't understand the reasoning behind Nitwit Rail's claims. It isn't possible to run a 24/7/365 railway just because the chief exec says so.

There has to be some major progress made on engineering practices and management if there's even the remotest chance that they will deliver on their big promise. To quote the opening post in this thread, Coucher is promising that "engineering works ... will be completed overnight in a fraction of the time", and that "passengers should no longer be forced to catch replacement buses at weekends". I'd like to see something more from Nitwit Rail to give me the confidence that they can actually deliver it.

Until then, TOC's will continue to have their services disrupted every time Nitwit Rail take possession of a section of line.

one TN

 

[Metroland]

Hmm one TN, your opinion is very interesting, because many 'old' hands in railway land such as Roger Ford made the points I had suspected, and which I expressed above. He obviously has better industry contacts than the likes of me or other forum dwellers, and he has been strongly making the case for a return to the engineering practices of the past albeit on a more crowded railway.

Hmn, relaxation of red and green working and single line working at the weekends? I don’t think so, especially with some of the recent safety scares. While the railway is the safest it’s ever been, the critics of the railway (of which there are many) would jump on this should anything go wrong! More to the point, BR used to pay a few pounds an hour top relief signalmen or pway gangers to handsignal. When the contractors came in, they charged £50 an hour plus for a man to stand with a flag on the ground at part of possession arrangements. It’s far cheaper to arrange replacement buses than to arrange Single line working – under the current regime.

Bi directional signalling? Well that doesn’t sit will with the accountants, especially as new schemes cost far more money than they did, and since a few contractors put diggers through the sides of trains (normally being used to motorway work), nothing but a complete blockade suffices on today's fragmented railway.

If NR can pull off their factory assembly ideas, all well and good – we’ll have to wait and see.

 

[Nym]

I wonder if they'll run to Reddish North and Denton 365days a year...?

I'll beleive it when I see it!

 

[me123]

^Maybe they'll run to Reddish South 365 days a year?

 

[Kneedown]

Coucher faces a grilling by the House of Commons transport select committee over the fiasco.

I wonder if he would have been summoned to parliament so quickly if the overrun had occurred on the Midland Main Line or Liverpool-Norwich run, instead of affecting passengers from one of the governments pet cities, ie Birmingham or Manchester?

 

[voyagerdude220]

I've always thought along the lines of that Kneedown, but i'm afraid it's how it works these days, with this pathetic Government...

After all, they can't get their priorities right over far more serious issues such as law, so I doubt they've got much chance with the railway.

 

[Nym]

I wonder if he would have been summoned to parliament so quickly if the overrun had occurred on the Midland Main Line or Liverpool-Norwich run, instead of affecting passengers from one of the governments pet cities, ie Birmingham or Manchester?

*jumps for a treat from the goverment*

nup, not gonna get one. the tax us beyond belieif to subsidise a metrolink service on an existing railway line that works quite well in the first place, now they want to put a congestion charge on us, and refuse to fund companies like northern and TPE to lengthen their trains and electrify routes and put nicer trains on, so in effect, we get nowt really, I'd rather be commuting from Bridlington to Hull than Bolton to Manchester or reverse. At least they have nice comfy 158s and 156s.

 

[Kneedown]

*jumps for a treat from the goverment*

nup, not gonna get one. the tax us beyond belieif to subsidise a metrolink service on an existing railway line that works quite well in the first place, now they want to put a congestion charge on us, and refuse to fund companies like northern and TPE to lengthen their trains and electrify routes and put nicer trains on, so in effect, we get nowt really, I'd rather be commuting from Bridlington to Hull than Bolton to Manchester or reverse. At least they have nice comfy 158s and 156s.

Perhaps you should head on down to the grim old East Mid's, then you wouldn't look at your current service with such contempt.
More electrification? We havn't got ANY!
Lengthen trains? We need that too, BADLY! The best we get is one or two coaches.
Congestion charges are on the horizon here as well, along with a tax on workplace parking!
Nicer trains? I think the majority of trains up there are nicer than ours! I will concede that the 142's are worse though.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---

I've always thought along the lines of that Kneedown, but i'm afraid it's how it works these days, with this pathetic Government...

After all, they can't get their priorities right over far more serious issues such as law, so I doubt they've got much chance with the railway.

Agree with you there 100%.