SWR "Summer timetable"

[Dr_Intoxicated]

Windsor is probably busiest off peak in August. With school holidays and tourists visiting Thorpe park, Legoland and Windsor castle. It will be standing room only

 

[pompeyfan]

Of course he’s going to say it’s the worst performing line though, because it’s his local patch.

Salisbury - Exeter Rail Users Group would like a chat….

As others have said, there are fewer rest day volunteers during August, so to enable 701 training at the current pace something needs to give.

The company should have just been honest and published a list, but perhaps they were concerned about the public backlash about “relying on overtime” “how long have you known these were being introduced” etc

Is this the first time that SWR have PG’d trains in this manner?

 

[Craig1122]

Is this the first time that SWR have PG’d trains in this manner?

It's the first time I can remember anything like this outside industrial action. They do plan cancellations on certain lines to divert resources for big events, Ascot, Twickenham etc

SWT cancelled everything Ascot - Guildford to catch up with Desiro introduction training but were very clear with the comms as to why and what the long term benefits would be.

 

[markle]

Local MP for Runnymede posting on Facebook, don't think a link will work so text quoted below. Comments vary but generally they're blaming nationalisation and anticipating more cuts to come. If the reason is as speculated on this thread then this is why SWR need to be open & honest about it, the current approach, which seems to be just hoping no one will notice, is a PR disaster.

Now saying in BBC News today that it's due to driver training: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c3ene4wq7eeo

They added that since the transfer to public ownership, a new trains programme has been unlocked and 14 Arterios are in daily service.

The timetable reduction will help protect the driver training programme, while also minimising the risk of on-the-day cancellations due to "colleagues taking their annual leave during the school holidays", the spokesperson said.

 

[Craig1122]

Now saying in BBC News today that it's due to driver training: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c3ene4wq7eeo

That's something, think I'd have left the annual leave bit out though! They must need to drop the "quieter off peak trains" from the messaging now.

 

[Big Jumby 74]

That's something, think I'd have left the annual leave bit out though! They must need to drop the "quieter off peak trains" from the messaging now.

The PR theme can be a difficult thin line to tread for those involved with the wider Press. In railway terms, the planning/operational people will always do their utmost to produce plans that deliver what is expected of them, but that is dependent on those at a higher level more often than not. Those in the PR side of things will have to adjust what information they are given to best suit the wider 'public' audience. When it comes to railway based PR and Operational teams, my own experience is that both often lack a detailed understanding of the others roles, and that is understandable as neither would normally have a regular face to face contact base, as in planners & signallers, or railway PR dept and National daily papers. Hence a degree of misunderstanding will sometimes happen and will cause consternation in the wider world from time to time.
I speak as a former planner who was 'rescued' - in the media sense - by a well respected PR person on one occasion many years ago, for reasons that I have no wish to go in to here!

 

[Craig1122]

When it comes to railway based PR and Operational teams, my own experience is that both often lack a detailed understanding of the others roles, and that is understandable as neither would normally have a regular face to face contact base, as in planners & signallers, or railway PR dept and National daily papers. Hence a degree of misunderstanding will sometimes happen and will cause consternation in the wider world from time to time.

At one time SWT had a very experienced press team who were absolutely on top of the operational detail. I believe those individuals were ex BR so had the breadth of experience that's often been lacking in the privatised railway. Unfortunately they were disbanded and the function was centralised at Stagecoach in Perth to save money. It's shown ever since with the quality of comms.

 

[Big Jumby 74]

At one time SWT had a very experienced press team who were absolutely on top of the operational detail. I believe those individuals were ex BR so had the breadth of experience

Completely agree. It was one of same who got me out of a slightly embarrassing moment as I alluded to above!

 

[Craig1122]

Completely agree. It was one of same who got me out of a slightly embarrassing moment as I alluded to above!

They were a class act! Never afraid to tackle things head on and explain rather than trying to hide behind PR speak.

I notice the wording has now been changed on their tweets to remove the reference to "quieter off peak" trains, is someone reading this thread?

 

[FRSZMZ56]

They were a class act! Never afraid to tackle things head on and explain rather than trying to hide behind PR speak.

I notice the wording has now been changed on their tweets to remove the reference to "quieter off peak" trains, is someone reading this thread?

I also noticed that, along with the new link to a dedicated page showing exactly which services are cancelled on each branch: https://www.southwesternrailway.com/plan-my-journey/temporary-summer-timetable

 

[silverfox58]

Sorry to ask can anyone confirm 2S54 & 2S56 are cancelled today, they were yesterday and no unit numbers shown on RTT Thanks

 

[bb21]

Sorry to ask can anyone confirm 2S54 & 2S56 are cancelled today, they were yesterday and no unit numbers shown on RTT Thanks

They ran as booked today.

These two services are part of PM half-day diagrams so the allocations may not be known in the morning, unlikely most other Weybridge services.

 

[silverfox58]

They ran as booked today.

These two services are part of PM half-day diagrams so the allocations may not be known in the morning, unlikely most other Weybridge services.

Thanks for the update

 

[Bumblerail]

Travelled on 0909 Reading to London Waterloo today. 0839 has been culled as one of SWRs lightly used off peak services. What utter drivel, 0909 rammed solid and delayed at Sunningdale whilst space was found for 2 wheelchair customers. Knock on effect busy A30 now has huge traffic build up and train losing time at every station. Nice one SWR. One train in an hour from places like Wokingham,Bracknell etc. As usual railway run for business needs not customers.

 

[Bald Rick]

As usual railway run for business needs not customers.

Evidently you haven’t read upthread. SWRs business needs is its customers. What it is doing now will benefit many more customers in the long run.

 

[davews]

Travelled on 0909 Reading to London Waterloo today. 0839 has been culled as one of SWRs lightly used off peak services. What utter drivel, 0909 rammed solid and delayed at Sunningdale whilst space was found for 2 wheelchair customers. Knock on effect busy A30 now has huge traffic build up and train losing time at every station. Nice one SWR. One train in an hour from places like Wokingham,Bracknell etc. As usual railway run for business needs not customers.

Thanks for that comment about the 0909. Surprised it was crush loaded as early as Sunningdale, that really tells you something. My friend was planning to use it yesterday for a London walk - though suspect he cancelled anyway as the weather was awful. He has a heart issue and once some while ago when there were issues on the Paddington line so that train was crush loaded he fainted on the train and had to be taken off at Clapham Junction, jam packed trains are a real issue for him and many others. Has SWR considered this aspect, I suspect not.

Wonder how that train will fare today. Currently a axle counter failure between Egham and Staines with London bound trains diverted from Virginia Water with huge delays. Ah, see it is now cancelled....Not a good week for SWR.

 

[wokspotter]

Evidently you haven’t read upthread. SWRs business needs is its customers. What it is doing now will benefit many more customers in the long run.

I see that the 1239 Reading to Waterloo,which is the first train that "Evening Out" tickets are valid on, has also been chopped.Nice one!

 

[Dr_Intoxicated]

I see that the 1239 Reading to Waterloo,which is the first train that "Evening Out" tickets are valid on, has also been chopped.Nice one!

Yes they seem to be targeting the first trains after the fares change rather than mid off peak trains. First 3 off peak trains from Feltham in the morning are all cancelled . Thats why the 9:09 from reading (10:05 from Feltham) is so busy.

 

[pompeyfan]

Yes they seem to be targeting the first trains after the fares change rather than mid off peak trains. First 3 off peak trains from Feltham in the morning are all cancelled . Thats why the 9:09 from reading (10:05 from Feltham) is so busy.

I think you’re possibly overthinking it. I don’t think the timetable planners have been told to target particular trains. As @Big Jumby 74 mentioned earlier the planning team have been given a framework “free up x driver diagrams and reduce these service groups to roughly hourly” and that’s what they’ve done. It’s the busiest time of the year for the STP team as they’ve also got to plan for various events across the network as well the upcoming engineering blocks so I can’t imagine they took a huge amount of time writing the various stock and crew diagrams.

 

[Dr_Intoxicated]

I think you’re possibly overthinking it. I don’t think the timetable planners have been told to target particular trains. As @Big Jumby 74 mentioned earlier the planning team have been given a framework “free up x driver diagrams and reduce these service groups to roughly hourly” and that’s what they’ve done. It’s the busiest time of the year for the STP team as they’ve also got to plan for various events across the network as well the upcoming engineering blocks so I can’t imagine they took a huge amount of time writing the various stock and crew diagrams.

But that's not the case on the Windsor lines, those three trains in a row are cancelled and then the service seems to return to normal for most of the day it's not a simple reduction to an hourly service.

 

[Craig1122]

But that's not the case on the Windsor lines, those three trains in a row are cancelled and then the service seems to return to normal for most of the day it's not a simple reduction to an hourly service.

The problem with taking out a set number of diagrams as they've done is that it can be very hard to avoid consecutive cancellations. You can start the day with cancelled trains not near each other but then as end to end run times vary the cancellations come together.

Basically it looks like they've done this in the easiest way you can without re-writing all the crew diagrams. This is probably as someone has said up thread due to the workload on the planning department, especially as the whole thing looks like a last minute decision.

Yes it's poor (I'm one of those effected) but I don't think there's any conspiracy around which trains they've chosen.

 

[Stephen42]

But that's not the case on the Windsor lines, those three trains in a row are cancelled and then the service seems to return to normal for most of the day it's not a simple reduction to an hourly service.

The brief is more likely to have been "free up x driver diagrams while minimising passenger impact". As part of that no individual service pattern is allowed to go below hourly and nearly all peak flow services will be in the high impact camp.

Very few crew diagrams will work services solely between the peaks so cuts need to extend beyond. The cuts at Waterloo before 9am are nearly all outbound services, at a guess to reduce late morning crew diagrams who might take over from an early morning diagram going on their break. They might be doing that somewhere on the round trip rather than necessarily at Waterloo itself.

In some places this works relatively neatly, a Wimbledon Park empty leaves at 6:20am does Waterloo to Alton and back getting in at 9:58am, similarly a Guildford via Cobham return working with an hour layover at Guildford reduces peak crew requirement (with some amends perhaps). The second half of these might be coverable from other diagrams or with the smaller number of cancellations throughout the day.

For the Windsor lines the individual routes have different journey times. Weybridge and Reading are the longer round trips so the 7ish departures are cancelled to avoid cancelling an inbound towards end of peak on another route. That makes it harder not to cancel a Windsor service later on to avoid consecutive route cancellations which makes all three cancellations arrive at Waterloo in close succession.

 

[Class15]

Currently only cancellations to passenger services are entered. Some corresponding empty stock workings haven't been removed (5A11 shouldn't be needed if 2A11 doesn't run). At a guess the final amendments might remove inbound empty stock workings or add wait in platforms before running in outbound unused stock paths/add new ones. Taking the first cancellation 2S09 from Waterloo, they might remove 5U09 into Waterloo at the adjacent platform 4 minutes after and use the stock from the cancelled 2S09 for 2U09.

Ah, thanks, that’s interesting. So rejigging of some diagrams to make the changes work. Many thanks.

 

[Watershed]

That's all well and good, and the reasons from a practical viewpoint are well understood. But it's not much use for customers. The railway is already far too "production orientated"; it needs a drastic change of attitude to become more customer focused.

This situation has primarily arisen as a result of poor workforce planning and inadequate recruitment - it shouldn't come as a surprise that more traincrew will want to take annual leave during the summer holidays!

Beyond that, why did SWR's planning department not make use of the years of time they had before the 701 training programme started, to plan a proper reduced timetable? One that doesn't leave huge gaps or cut the first Off-Peak/Evening Out service? Again, it points to a complete lack of coordination and customer focus.

 

[Bikeman78]

That's all well and good, and the reasons from a practical viewpoint are well understood. But it's not much use for customers. The railway is already far too "production orientated"; it needs a drastic change of attitude to become more customer focused.

This situation has primarily arisen as a result of poor workforce planning and inadequate recruitment - it shouldn't come as a surprise that more traincrew will want to take annual leave during the summer holidays!

Beyond that, why did SWR's planning department not make use of the years of time they had before the 701 training programme started, to plan a proper reduced timetable? One that doesn't leave huge gaps or cut the first Off-Peak/Evening Out service? Again, it points to a complete lack of coordination and customer focus.

A reasonable mitigation for the latter point would be to allow people to travel on the previous train for the duration of the temporary cuts.

 

[Watershed]

A reasonable mitigation for the latter point would be to allow people to travel on the previous train for the duration of the temporary cuts.

Indeed. That would be merely half of what people who bought tickets further ahead for the cancelled first Off-Peak service would have (two trains before/after), or that everyone would have in the event of an on-the-day cancellation.

Clearly no-one in the Planning or Media teams has thought particularly far about the impact of the cuts, otherwise such an easement would have been published.

 

[Craig1122]

Beyond that, why did SWR's planning department not make use of the years of time they had before the 701 training programme started, to plan a proper reduced timetable? One that doesn't leave huge gaps or cut the first Off-Peak/Evening Out service? Again, it points to a complete lack of coordination and customer focus.

The planning team won't be the ones specifying outputs, I get the impression this was very much a last minute instruction from senior management so they wouldn't have known it was going to be required a year ago.

Further I don't think it's unfair to assume that there's a greater sense of urgency under new ownership to get a grip & get the trains in service ASAP. After all as this somewhat long thread demonstrates the introduction has just been drifting along for far too long with little progress.

 

[bb21]

The planning team won't be the ones specifying outputs, I get the impression this was very much a last minute instruction from senior management so they wouldn't have known it was going to be required a year ago.

Further I don't think it's unfair to assume that there's a greater sense of urgency under new ownership to get a grip & get the trains in service ASAP. After all as this somewhat long thread demonstrates the introduction has just been drifting along for far too long with little progress.

Correct. The situation had been constantly evolving and this latest requirement to rejig things would not have been known several months ago. Whether that was due to some pressure coming from the new leadership team I wouldn't know, however there is also a delicate balance to be struck between cancelling by diagrams or by chosen combination of services as the former may just be the most efficient way of doing things. I suspect if you start mixing and matching different diagrams then you may end up having to cancel more services as you try and get crews to the right places. In hindsight I suspect there are things that could have been done better, but that would have been true with any such alterations. I agree comms seems a little poor at the start, however the planning part is likely the best the team could have conjured up given the various constraints they had (remember they would still have their normal STP planning work to do as well).

 

[Nicholas Lewis]

The planning team won't be the ones specifying outputs, I get the impression this was very much a last minute instruction from senior management so they wouldn't have known it was going to be required a year ago.

Further I don't think it's unfair to assume that there's a greater sense of urgency under new ownership to get a grip & get the trains in service ASAP. After all as this somewhat long thread demonstrates the introduction has just been drifting along for far too long with little progress.

Thats fine and eminently sensible if not entirely desirable but why not just tell passengers this is what we are doing and the long run benefits will be this.

 

[Watershed]

The planning team won't be the ones specifying outputs, I get the impression this was very much a last minute instruction from senior management so they wouldn't have known it was going to be required a year ago.

Oh, I'm well aware of how such situations can arise when an instruction comes from "up high" where they're oblivious to the practical implications or side effects.

The issue is that senior management, or at least those in charge of the 701 introduction, should have been on top of any reduction needed for training purposes. The fact they weren't, and that they give the appearance of having been taken by surprise, speaks volumes about management competence in my view.

Further I don't think it's unfair to assume that there's a greater sense of urgency under new ownership to get a grip & get the trains in service ASAP. After all as this somewhat long thread demonstrates the introduction has just been drifting along for far too long with little progress.

That's as may be, but you can't throw the baby out with the bathwater. And as mentioned, even if this timetable reduction is the best that could possibly have been done to achieve the desired aims (which I'd strongly doubt) then it could still have been handled so much better in terms of communications and helping customers to navigate around the cancellations.

Correct. The situation had been constantly evolving and this latest requirement to rejig things would not have been known several months ago. Whether that was due to some pressure coming from the new leadership team I wouldn't know, however there is also a delicate balance to be struck between cancelling by diagrams or by chosen combination of services as the former may just be the most efficient way of doing things. I suspect if you start mixing and matching different diagrams then you may end up having to cancel more services as you try and get crews to the right places.

Quite possibly so if done as an STP (or STP-lite) plan - but if this formed the part of the introduction plan it should have done (e.g. as a contingency measure if training falls behind) then reductions could have been limited and more carefully targeted.

In hindsight I suspect there are things that could have been done better, but that would have been true with any such alterations. I agree comms seems a little poor at the start, however the planning part is likely the best the team could have conjured up given the various constraints they had (remember they would still have their normal STP planning work to do as well).

The comms were appalling and are only just starting to improve. After such a poorly managed fleet introduction, you don't insult your customers by hiding the real reason for cancellations. You don't gaslight them by claiming you're cancelling "less busy" services - many of which are the first off-peak services and thus busy because of constraints the company chooses to impose.