Saturdays on the railway in general

[danielcanning]

I don’t think that’s quite how it works with working from home . That doesn’t help everyone else travelling or the freight. Those upset by today will obviously not be happy for a week or two but in my experience soon start travelling again as the other transport options aren’t great either.

That type of thinking just lets the railway get away with a shoddy service, I hope that people do stay away, the TOC’s need to learn that our custom should not be taken for granted…

 

[dk1]

On a line equipped with simple or full reversible signalling, need to consider alternatives when buses not available, even if that is occasional windows in the works to let train pass on other track. Yes it means more care, but no more than a ballast or spoil train coming alongside the work zone.

There is absolutely zero chance of this happening.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 12 Nov 2022 ==

That type of thinking just lets the railway get away with a shoddy service, I hope that people do stay away, the TOC’s need to learn that our custom should not be taken for granted…

To be fair I have never known a problem like this occur at Ingatestone with RR before except when a serious RTA occurred on the route & that’s with being involved in this location since the early 90s.

 

[306024]

Yeah. It was astoundingly bad today. For non regular rail users, their future custom is lost.

Quite a bit of this should have been foreseen. Tottenham, West Ham, Rugby SF all kicking off around 3pm (plus Lord Mayor's show earlier)......and i have no doubt others can point to more London events.

Does make me think it might be an idea 2 have more engineering works midweek.

The Lord Mayor's show used to be on the list of events on the GE where buses weren't allowed. Clearly it has fallen off, although obviously the football today would be the final straw. Both stadiums now hold over 60,000.

Meanwhile getting home from Manchester tonight has about half the usual options unavailable due to planned engineering work or cancelled no crew, but hopefully I've found one way that works.

 

[dk1]

The Lord Mayor's show used to be on the list of events on the GE where buses weren't allowed. Clearly it has fallen off, although obviously the football today would be the final straw. Both stadiums now hold over 60,000.

Meanwhile getting home from Manchester tonight has about half the usual options unavailable due to planned engineering work or cancelled no crew, but hopefully I've found one way that works.

I’m wondering if this work has anything to do with the embankment issues between Ingatestone & Shenfield and the ESRs on all four lines between Brentwood & Harold Wood. These have been deteriorating rapidly since the end of the dry summer & therefore need attention as a matter of urgency.

 

[Llandudno]

If bad behaviour is causing issues on Saturday could the BTP be asked to increase their patrols? It could then help persuade staff to work more Saturdays.

Probably the BTP don’t fancy RDW on Saturdays either…!

 

[306024]

I’m wondering if this work has anything to do with the embankment issues between Ingatestone & Shenfield and the ESRs on all four lines between Brentwood & Harold Wood. These have been deteriorating rapidly since the end of the dry summer & therefore need attention as a matter of urgency.

Don't know when this possession went into the plan. It's not that many years ago the high output ballast cleaner treated a lot of the area, but the geology and recent weather hasn't helped.

Hopefully NR have done some remedial work if the possession wasn't originally designed for it, but getting all the resources together, against the background of industrial dis-harmony, isn't easy.

 

[mlb54]

And then you get people being hit by trains, St Neots on the ECML, to make everything worse.

 

[afc75]

That’s a difficult one now commuter numbers are picking up then there’s the sheer amount of freight that uses the GEML.

But the commuter numbers (80-95%) would work from home.

Leisure travellers trying to reach events. Need to use train, or use alterantives to train?

I don’t think that’s quite how it works with working from home . That doesn’t help everyone else travelling or the freight. Those upset by today will obviously not be happy for a week or two but in my experience soon start travelling again as the other transport options aren’t great either.

They will close over Xmas at times? Just saying a bit more Cost Benefit Analysis may need doing. Always going to disrupt. But if most commuters can WFH..........and only a (metaphorical) handful need rail replacement.

That is better, than annoying your variable revenue paying passenger.

 

[gazzaa2]

The overcrowding is ridiculous. It was bad enough in 2019 and now you have less services and less carriages.

LNWR stopper to Euston is like the Indian railway now on Saturday mornings. Cross Country always fully packed out, TPEX barely run at all, Avanti hugely reduced.

It's like the third world.

 

[dk1]

But the commuter numbers (80-95%) would work from home.

Leisure travellers trying to reach events. Need to use train, or use alterantives to train?

They will close over Xmas at times? Just saying a bit more Cost Benefit Analysis may need doing. Always going to disrupt. But if most commuters can WFH..........and only a (metaphorical) handful need rail replacement.

That is better, than annoying your variable revenue paying passenger.

You have to remember that not all these commuters can work from home. So many where furloughed last time. Also these trains are busy all day weekdays & the early very well loaded peak time trains have travellers that are for paying season tickets or premium fares unlike weekend passengers that are largely on off peak or heavily discounted tickets.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 12 Nov 2022 ==

And again you have to accommodate all those freight trains to & from Felixstowe Port on weekdays that do not run for most of the weekend. It’s just not practical & why this work gets done as it does.

 

[Edsmith]

And then you get people being hit by trains, St Neots on the ECML, to make everything worse.

Two such incidents today on Southeastern, there have been no trains between Otford and Maidstone East for a few hours now and few if any replacement buses available.

 

[Towers]

Probably the BTP don’t fancy RDW on Saturdays either…!

The BTP are, as with all police in the UK, largely non-existant. They seem still to be able to manage decent numbers for major sporting events, much to their credit, but for the network as a whole they are of precious little use regretfully. Just as regular police forces can't keep a lid on bad behaviour in our towns and cities with their severely limited numbers, the BTP struggle to do much about it on the rail network.

It's a wider societal issue; we are becoming a nation of deeply unpleasant attitudes with little or no penalty for unaccpetable behaviour.

 

[dk1]

The BTP are, as with all police in the UK, largely non-existant. They seem still to be able to manage decent numbers for major sporting events, much to their credit, but for the network as a whole they are of precious little use regretfully. Just as regular police forces can't keep a lid on bad behaviour in our towns and cities with their severely limited numbers, the BTP struggle to do much about it on the rail network.

It's a wider societal issue; we are becoming a nation of deeply unpleasant attitudes with little or no penalty for unaccpetable behaviour.

Having trained some police officers to drive trains I simply cannot believe how awful some of their conditions are. Even to the point of being on early shifts but told midweek that you are working Saturday evening now. No wonder they have died & gone to heaven in the railway industry & been paid more in the bargain.

 

[Taunton]

There seem some fundamentals here, applicable to rail, bus, whatever.

A premium of just 25% sounds unrealistic.

If the employees won't work at weekends (or nights, or earlies, or strike days, or whatever you cannot staff reliably) in these conditions of pay and experiences, then you just schedule appropriately and realistically, including closing whole services for the weekend. If the staff are not available, and the services are regularly and constantly cancelled, then any remaining passengers will stop coming anyway. Notably, this last week I travelled Weymouth to Waterloo. There were ... three in the carriage, not just leaving Weymouth, but arriving at Waterloo as well, at 5pm on a weekday. The parallel roads are packed at that time.

If all this is the case then you stop pretending, to politicians and others, that the railway/bus/whatever is, and ever can be, somehow a complete substitute for using your own car, which is typically readily available 24x7. For those without a car ... tough bananas.

You stop wasting money on capital investments, like HS2, which is supposedly to have operations managed by Avanti or their close successor, if the workforce to provide the service anticipated is not going to exist.

 

[Huntergreed]

Don’t think I’ve ever seen Avanti as bad as I have today!

It honestly feels that during some strike days they’ve ran a better service than today!

The number of cancellations being announced was unbelievable when I was at Crewe earlier, and the London Midland 350 I saw about to leave for Euston made rush hour on the tube look light!

 

[route101]

Been hard to get out on trips on a Saturday of late. The strikes have made it difficult. Working Monday to Friday means Saturday or Sunday is only option. I quite liked an early Saturday service as it was quiet and cheaper with off peak fares.

 

[chris_in_salop]

Is it time to stop treating Saturdays as off peak? So many problems are caused by excessive demand.

 

[BPN2022]

Must admit, after todays experience I don’t blame anyone. The behaviour of people on every train I’ve been on is ridiculous. Unfortunately, mostly down to football fans - smoking in toilet, vaping in carriages, talking about going toilets for their drugs etc.

And before anyone mentions, whether I have spoke to or texted BTP about it - no, what’s the point? They are understaffed and all it’ll do is probably disrupt my journey more. So you get on with it don’t you? As bad as that sounds.

 

[rob.rjt]

Is it time to stop treating Saturdays as off peak? So many problems are caused by excessive demand.

Excessive demand, or lack of supply, or both. Where I live, until very recently the trains on Saturday are half those on weekdays. The demand starts later because you don't have the morning peak, but later in the day it is there.

If people are like me, they value there personal time more than their work time. If I'm late for work, I can live with that. If I'm late for something on my day off, that is digging into time I have set aside for myself, which annoys me more. That may explain why people are less pleasant on weekends than weekdays.

 

[gazzaa2]

Is it time to stop treating Saturdays as off peak? So many problems are caused by excessive demand.

The demand is enormous on Saturday and the railway can't deliver even close to a 2019 service.

 

[L401CJF]

I agree with many of the above comments. I don't care about having weekends off for social reasons, but I hate working them. I never put in for rest day work of a weekend. Previously a bus driver, now a guard, and it was the same then as it is now. Often busier at weekends, usually more trouble (football fans, drunks, rogue kids) and just a lot more hassle to deal with.

Plus weekend shifts always seem to be longer hours - they definitely were on the buses. Get up at stupid o'clock book on at say 5.30am and rather than a nice early finish like in the week you'd be in work until 1530, whereas a similar book on in the week would see you finish at noon ish give or take an hour. Extra hours with extra hassle, no thanks!

 

[cambsy]

I have travelled today on Great Northern,Kings Cross to Cambridge early morning, then around Norfolk and Suffolk, on Anglia Plus day ranger, and think been lucky as no problems of note.

Few trains been busy, but nothing write home about,and punctuality generally pretty spot on, also been football fans about, Norwich vs Middlesborough.

Had conversations with some of them, and pretty well behaved, so overall good day out, and the Stanstead Express on now, quiet and punctual.

 

[dk1]

The demand is enormous on Saturday and the railway can't deliver even close to a 2019 service.

Apart from engineering works we are totally back to a full weekend timetable on Greater Anglia & never have rostering issues.

 

[Amos]

The overcrowding is ridiculous. It was bad enough in 2019 and now you have less services and less carriages.

LNWR stopper to Euston is like the Indian railway now on Saturday mornings. Cross Country always fully packed out, TPEX barely run at all, Avanti hugely reduced.

It's like the third world.

LNWR were preventing people boarding at Euston this evening as “the service is full”.

 

[gazzaa2]

Apart from engineering works we are totally back to a full weekend timetable on Greater Anglia & never have rostering issues.

Not the case on Avanti//LNWR/Cross Country/TPEX. All are a total mess. I feel a bit for LNWR who are having to pick up the slack for Avanti but they're still running a reduced service (i.e. Liverpool to Birmingham still reduced to hourly on a Saturday morning with several services 4 carriages).

 

[The Planner]

Network rail need to now seriously think about suspending non urgent engineering works until the bus driver shortage is addressed, waiting 90 mins for a rail replacement bus is not acceptable.

Define "urgent"? If a renewal is in the plan then its because its needed! You will just create a backlog so large you would be running RRBs more than you do now.

 

[dk1]

Not the case on Avanti/LNER/LNWR/Cross Country/TPEX. All are a total mess. I feel a bit for LNWR who are having to pick up the slack for Avanti but they're still running a reduced service (i.e. Liverpool to Birmingham reduced to hourly on a Saturday morning with several services 4 carriages).

Tell me about it. So proud of our showing this side regardless of the poor planning at Ingatestone today.

 

[gazzaa2]

An example of what Avanti's bad service has reduced LNWR to on Saturdays: https://twitter.com/ianjpoole/status/1591404061366300673

 

[Ridercross]

I know what you all mean about football fans on the train, I now only book a Saturday ticket after checking the fixtures for the day.

At the moment I am travelling back from Manchester via Wolverhampton and luckily was able to leave Manchester at 1927 when all the fans would already have gone home from the Man City vs Brentford match and went through Wolverhampton at 2041 which was halfway through the Wolves vs Arsenal Game!

 

[Ken H]

I have every sympathy with transport people expected to work weekends. I do office work and i wont do weekends.
GP's wont. Dentists wont. Hospital consultants generally dont.