Thameslink Services/Timetable from May 20th 2018

[The Box Photter]

Quite a long post, sorry!

Allegations of Unions and Drivers making things awkward.

I'll deal with this one first:


Please explain how ASLEF, "prevaricate over recruitment of DI's".
Everyone knows there needs to be more DI's, especially the Union, who's own Trainee Driver members have at times been kept waiting for several months on Trainee wages until one becomes available for them. The company realise that DI's are needed and there have been regular vacancies for Driving Instructors posted, with on the GN side rarely if ever, the number of applicants going over double figures on each occasion, despite being freely open to anyone with the requisite years of experience. This is despite the GN side Instructors having a lucrative financial reward until the rôle becomes harmonised with TL Driver Trainers in October.

Route Learning norms: The 'normal' amount of time/trips needed to learn a particular route, with regard to complexity, and risks etc.
These were agreed in April - quite some time after route learning commenced. If ASLEF had wished to be difficult, they could've objected to the release of anyone to route learn until they had been agreed.
That didn't happen.

Instead the local reps offered to assist with picking who was to go route learning, only for the management to initially decline the offer and pick themselves. Unfortunately, when choosing at one depot they didn't take account of the depot's one large link being split into two smaller links and picked two drivers to learn a route that they wouldn't be working (as they were in a link that will work to a different destination).
Again, ASLEF could've been unhelpful and let the two drivers be released, and waited for the management to realise their error, having two drivers effectively being sent out 'on a jolly' knowing they'd be learning a route they wouldn't be working, pointlessly.
That didn't happen.
ASLEF pointed out the error, which was perhaps an understandable one as the change to two links at that depot were recent, even though their initial offer of assistance had been declined, and there was no delay to any route learning because of it.

It was also agreed that with the reduction in size of certain depots on both TL and GN, that the usual 'locker day', off roster, to clear out your locker when you transfer depots, would be a day's payment instead, which would stop literally tens and tens of drivers not being productive last week, as Blackfriars closed, Bedford, Kings Cross and Hitchin all reduced in size.
Why would a union with an axe to grind agree to help things go more smoothly? It would've been easy for them to just say no.


A few opportunities there for stalling, which could've been easily taken up. But weren't. Most probably because the Union's members are on the front line of being put in awkward situations of trainloads of people being diverted or turfed off trains when the timetable doesn't run as planned.



As for allegations of some sort of unofficial "Don't work overtime lads," I can tell you that's nonsense. Overtime during route learning has been encouraged. There is a Rest Day Work sanction that will run for the duration of this pay deal (until the next pay review in October 2020), and there is an enhanced scheme overlaid on this until this December (but you have to give four weeks notice of your availability to be eligible for this).
Sundays are at time and 55% - a good incentive.

Unfortunately, drivers didn't get four weeks notice of their roster that started in May though - it was only about a week, so other than the usual suspects who like their overtime, anyone else has been hampered a little in being able to plan what extra days they are available.
Bear in mind this is half term week, which was bad enough not knowing what days you were to work and which you weren't with short notice. Some on here seem to think train drivers should ask their wives questions like this, and that that is perfectly reasonable!:
"Shall I work an extra rest day in half term Dear, even though I can't tell you yet which days off I'm supposed to have?"


I expect conversations like this one though, DID take place in early May:

"Are you booked to work the first Sunday of half term?"

"I don't know yet."

"Because you're booked to do a late afternoon that would be okay, but a morning wouldn't work for us."

"I don't know yet!!"

"You'll have to put 'Not Available' then."


Cue a late afternoon being uncovered as plans at home fill up the whole day, and it WAS a late afternoon in the new roster.

Bank Holiday Monday.
No diagrams were issued until - well I don't actually know when. Very late indeed.
Bank Holiday roster is put up 14 days ahead, and as no diagrams had been issued in time for this, a Saturday service was assumed and drivers booked to Saturday sign on/sign off times. Because of the problems with Network Rail, it seems it's easier at such a late stage to run a Monday to Friday service with certain trains/groups of trains cancelled, as it was far too late to replan the timetable and resubmit it.
Consequently drivers are being told when they sign on, what job or part of a job to cover that fits the hours they were booked.
Add into that the on going problems of route conducting being resourced itself, and the snowballing effects of late running or cancellations.

Why did they wait until April to start route learning?

What business is it of ASLEF (or any union for that matter) how a train company decides to deploy its contracted staff? They all get paid, even when on route learning (or should I say hanging around on platforms, then going to sit in 1st class?).

When will TOCs bite the bullet and design rosters that require drivers to work shifts that cover weekend and Sunday shifts? They're already shift workers and in return for their already handsome remuneration, have agreed that they won't be working 9 to 5 like those of us who RELY on the trains they drive to get to work. If you don't like working shifts, get another job. If you want to be a train driver, accept that sometimes you'll be working on a Sunday afternoon, when some of your colleagues will be having a BBQ.

GTR should get rid of the notion that weekend working is optional. I sometimes have to work Saturdays, it's in my contract, I agreed to it when I took the job. You've had time to get enough drivers who want to work Saturdays. That process should have begun when you took over the franchise. You're training train drivers, not astronauts, AND you messed up this new timetable that replaces trains people needed with trains no-one needs (even if they run). What's the point of a train that runs from Cambridge to Brighton? We don't even need trains that run from Bedford to Brighton. Just run trains from outside London (where everyone lives) INTO London (where everyone works) in the morning, then reverse the process in the evening.

Railfail2020 should be cancelled immediately and the timetable should be recast to make the best use of trains and driver resources to provide a service for the people who need it. Imagine if BR had said in the 1970s to CEGB and NCB that they were going to completely recast the MGR circuits to offer new and exiting opportunities to transport coal from Yorkshire to Eastbourne, whilst at the same time reducing the number of trains it would be running from Shirebrook to Drax to one a day to make the timetable more robust. Then instead of running the trains from Yorkshire to Eastbourne, they'd just given up and dumped the coal at a random siding somewhere in Lincolnshire so they could run the train empty to Eastbourne to get it there on time for the return journey. We'd have all said BR was out of their tiny minds. Well, GTR and DfT (with the tacit assistance of the dinosaur unions) have just done a similar thing to hundreds and thousands of workers across the south east and eastern counties of England.

 

[Julia]

nationalrail.co.uk is clearly completely confused by it all as trying to buy a SNO-PBO single comes up at £32.50, routed via SVG and thence VTEC services...

 

[thedbdiboy]

Imagine if BR had said in the 1970s to CEGB and NCB that they were going to completely recast the MGR circuits to offer new and exiting opportunities to transport coal from Yorkshire to Eastbourne, whilst at the same time reducing the number of trains it would be running from Shirebrook to Drax to one a day to make the timetable more robust. Then instead of running the trains from Yorkshire to Eastbourne, they'd just given up and dumped the coal at a random siding somewhere in Lincolnshire so they could run the train empty to Eastbourne to get it there on time for the return journey. We'd have all said BR was out of their tiny minds. Well, GTR and DfT (with the tacit assistance of the dinosaur unions) have just done a similar thing to hundreds and thousands of workers across the south east and eastern counties of England.

I wouldn't use BR's treatment of it's customers in the 1970s as an example of how we want this to work....back then typically if you were a freight customer and the equipment BR was using was life-expired you'd be told to shove it or pay for its replacement. And passenger services were relentlessly cut back, Sunday services withdrawn etc.
The ambition of the new GTR timetable is great, what's needed is the capability to deliver it. The worst outcome would be for this situation to be used as an excuse to can further investment.

 

[carriageline]

Why did they wait until April to start route learning?

What business is it of ASLEF (or any union for that matter) how a train company decides to deploy its contracted staff? They all get paid, even when on route learning (or should I say hanging around on platforms, then going to sit in 1st class?).

When will TOCs bite the bullet and design rosters that require drivers to work shifts that cover weekend and Sunday shifts? FFS they're already shift workers and in return for their already handsome remuneration, have agreed that they won't be working 9 to 5 like those of us who RELY on the trains they drive to get to work. If you don't like working shifts, get another job. If you want to be a train driver, accept that sometimes you'll be working on a Sunday afternoon, when some of your colleagues will be having a BBQ.

GTR, grow some balls and get rid of the notion that weekend working is optional. I sometimes have to work Saturdays, it's in my contract, I agreed to it when I took the job. You've had **** knows how long to sack all the bolshy drivers that like a BBQ and replace them with new ones. That process should have begun when you took over the franchise. You're training train drivers, not ****ing astronauts, AND admit that you royally ****ed up with this new timetable that replaces trains people needed with trains no-one needs (even if they run). What's the ****ing point of a train that runs from Cambridge to Brighton? We don't even need trains that run from Bedford to Brighton. Just run trains from outside London (where everyone lives) INTO London (where everyone works) in the morning, then reverse the process in the evening.

Railfail2020 should be cancelled immediately and the timetable should be recast to make the best use of trains and driver resources to provide a service for the people who need it. Imagine if BR had said in the 1970s to CEGB and NCB that they were going to completely recast the MGR circuits to offer new and exiting opportunities to transport coal from Yorkshire to Eastbourne, whilst at the same time reducing the number of trains it would be running from Shirebrook to Drax to one a day to make the timetable more robust. Then instead of running the trains from Yorkshire to Eastbourne, they'd just given up and dumped the coal at a random siding somewhere in Lincolnshire so they could run the train empty to Eastbourne to get it there on time for the return journey. We'd have all said BR was out of their tiny minds. Well, GTR and DfT (with the tacit assistance of the dinosaur unions) have just done a similar thing to hundreds and thousands of workers across the south east and eastern counties of England.

Whilst you actually make some valid points, you ruin it with the anti union rant.

AIUI, the drivers ‘have’ to work their BOOKED sundays. If they want it off, it has to be covered by someone else. Same as Network Rail. They are paid slightly more for Sunday’s, but it’s almost compulsory, and if you decide you don’t want to do it, then the company have to find someone that does. Can’t find someone? Then you work it, simple as that.

It surely has nothing to do with drivers deciding they want to have a BBQ and will have the day off. This situation is different at the moment, as the rosters were very late being published

I’ll be very suprised if their roster has sundays/weekends uncovered, and they are reliant on people volunteering to work them. It simply doesn’t work like that. If it does, then GTR deserve this backlash.

 

[whoosh]

Why did they wait until April to start route learning?

They didn't.

These were agreed in April - quite some time after route learning commenced.

When will TOCs bite the bullet and design rosters that require drivers to work shifts that cover weekend and Sunday shifts? .........
........I sometimes have to work Saturdays, it's in my contract, I agreed to it when I took the job.

Saturdays are very much part of Driver's contracts.

A large amount of the railway is run with enough only staff to run Mondays to Saturdays.
Sundays are run on overtime. There are some advantages to that for the employer. It means less staff to employ, less pension contributions to make, no sick pay to pay for Sundays, less National Insurance to pay.
This franchise has not sought to bring Sundays into the working week.

There's plenty of volunteers to work on Sundays, but when there isn't enough notice as to what Sundays you are booked to work, or what shift they'll be - AMs, PMs or nights, then people won't make themselves available for voluntary overtime without sufficient information.
This is what I've tried to explain about why the May to December roster being posted with a week to go, followed by a Bank Holiday weekend in half term has ended up being a problem.

What's the ****ing point of a train that runs from Cambridge to Brighton?

What's the point of the rest of your post?

Well, GTR and DfT (with the tacit assistance of the dinosaur unions)....

Well, I'm glad you looked at all the information you've been given with a rational head on some sensible shoulders, instead of some preconceived bias. Good for you.

 

[Class2ldn]

Whilst you actually make some valid points, you ruin it with the anti union rant.

AIUI, the drivers ‘have’ to work their BOOKED sundays. If they want it off, it has to be covered by someone else. Same as Network Rail. They are paid slightly more for Sunday’s, but it’s almost compulsory, and if you decide you don’t want to do it, then the company have to find someone that does. Can’t find someone? Then you work it, simple as that.

It surely has nothing to do with drivers deciding they want to have a BBQ and will have the day off. This situation is different at the moment, as the rosters were very late being published

I’ll be very suprised if their roster has sundays/weekends uncovered, and they are reliant on people volunteering to work them. It simply doesn’t work like that. If it does, then GTR deserve this backlash.

At thameslink/GN nobody HAS to work their Sunday . If you chuck it in and it's uncovered then there's nothing the company can do.
Southern is different as they have to get it covered by someone else before they can chuck it in.

 

[Hadders]

The ambition of the new GTR timetable is great, what's needed is the capability to deliver it. The worst outcome would be for this situation to be used as an excuse to can further investment.

We shouldn’t underestimate this. The Treasury/DfT will look for any excuse to pull funding and an industry that appears not to be able to deliver will be a target for cuts which would affect the whole network.

I do hope the whole industry, in particular Network Rail and RDG is throwing everything at the Thameslink Project to get it sorted.

This is now a wider issue than just GTR incompetence.

 

[jon0844]

I believe Network Rail has said no to terminating trains intending to use the core at King's Cross due to the time they'll spend there, and the space they use.

As such they must terminate/wait at Finsbury Park and go through the core - however long that may take. Clearly blocking platforms and causing chaos (as we've seen the other way, a 9xxx train can then cause trains from the Cross to be cancelled as they can't even get through FPK).

I can't help but feel the only temporary solution is to cut the core trains in half, but if they can't go into KGX then the only solution, as appears to be happening, is to cancel them entirely.

Possibly another solution is to run shorter trains (4 car) into KGX so there's some service, but I guess that's a bit tricky when you just got rid of most of your 365s.

 

[The Box Photter]

They didn't.




Saturdays are very much part of Driver's contracts.

A large amount of the railway is run with enough only staff to run Mondays to Saturdays.
Sundays are run on overtime. There are some advantages to that for the employer. It means less staff to employ, less pension contributions to make, no sick pay to pay for Sundays, less National Insurance to pay.
This franchise has not sought to bring Sundays into the working week.

There's plenty of volunteers to work on Sundays, but when there isn't enough notice as to what Sundays you are booked to work, or what shift they'll be - AMs, PMs or nights, then people won't make themselves available for voluntary overtime without sufficient information.
This is what I've tried to explain about why the May to December roster being posted with a week to go, followed by a Bank Holiday weekend in half term has ended up being a problem.



What's the point of the rest of your post?



Well, I'm glad you looked at all the information you've been given with a rational head on some sensible shoulders, instead of some preconceived bias. Good for you.

I look at the situation as a fare-paying passenger, who has put up with a gradual worsening of the service I keep having to pay a larger and larger percentage of my post-tax earnings to "enjoy".

No-one comes out of this debacle looking good. The Government is looking the other way whilst GTR clearly haven't the slightest idea how to run a railway. Given their dogmatic anti-privatisation stance, I wouldn't expect the unions to be falling over themselves to help "the management". They know their members hold the whip hand as they're a valuable commodity that's in short supply. The railway unions have successfully maintained the staus quo of having too few drivers to comforably run a full service without overtime, and did so on London Midland & Southern previously. This keeps their members in control, since the operator has to offer sufficient incentive to encourage take-up of overtime rosters. Whenever route learning started, it was clearly too late.

GTR are effectively the same people who screwed up things under Connex and shouldn't have been allowed anywhere near the railway again. They also have a vested interest in driving custom onto the overpriced HS1 trains. GTR should have come clean to DfT that they hadn't a hope in hell of operating the timetable as published and suggested a delay until they had sufficient drivers trained on the new routes.

DfT should have known that the new timetable was gash just by looking at it and canned the whole thing. But then DfT knows nothing about running a railway. Why didn't someone ask whether the recast train times and destinations would be what the passengers need? It's obvious that passengers operate their lives around when the need to get to places, especially their work and that suddenly telling people that the train they've caught at roughly the same time each morning for the past XX years to get them to work at a time satisfactory for their employer will no longer be there from Monday, forever and they now need to get up half an hour earlier to try to get on a train that gets them half way to work, then they have to hope they can cram onto another already full train somewhere else that might just be cancelled, is going to seriously pi$$ people off. Who modelled the passenger flows? Who thought that people in Harpenden would be happy to get to work later on more crowded trains?

DfT and the relevant transport ministers have become obsessed with the really short bit of railway between St Pancras and Blackfriars. They seem to think that if they and their GTR henchmen can deliver a train every 2.5 minutes over that stretch of track, we'll be overjoyed and hail it as something close to the second coming of Christ. Well listen up Grayling, Johnson and Horton, we couldn't give a flying fcuk about that. No ****er lives in St Pancras or Blackfriars. We all live in places you might have heard of or seen as you speed through in your chauffered car. We live in Bedford, Flitwick, Harlington, Arlesey, Hitchin, Bromley etc and all we want is a regular, reliable journey into and out of London. We don't care where the train goes on the other side of the core and we certainly don't appreciate the way you've turned our inter-urban railway lines into another tube line. The media have also been duped by the hype. I recall reading an article in the Brighton local newspaper a year or so ago trumpeting that passengers from Brighton would soon be able to benefit from tube train like frequencies.

 

[bramling]

I believe Network Rail has said no to terminating trains intending to use the core at King's Cross due to the time they'll spend there, and the space they use.

As such they must terminate/wait at Finsbury Park and go through the core - however long that may take. Clearly blocking platforms and causing chaos (as we've seen the other way, a 9xxx train can then cause trains from the Cross to be cancelled as they can't even get through FPK).

I can't help but feel the only temporary solution is to cut the core trains in half, but if they can't go into KGX then the only solution, as appears to be happening, is to cancel them entirely.

Possibly another solution is to run shorter trains (4 car) into KGX so there's some service, but I guess that's a bit tricky when you just got rid of most of your 365s.

It possibly doesn’t help that the fast Cambridge service now has 40-minute turnarounds through most of the day, and the slow Cambridge service has roughly 30 minutes. In theory the former could be stepped up to save a platform, but this would cause a problem if the lengths didn’t match up with some services being 8 and others 12.

And were they to divert to KX, likely too many 12-car Undesiros, and the 8-car ones already committed.

Could turn a few trains via Canonbury, if the 700s can go there and anyone still signs it, but then risk causing overcrowding at Finsbury Park.

What a total mess. IIRC 10 out of the 21 365s are committed to ScotRail, which leaves 11. But then they would have to be returned from store, prepared for service, and found somewhere to stable.

I think the Thameslink brand is fatally wounded on the GN side now. People have had a taste of it and they don’t like what they have seen. Politically it will be impossible not to have to have a hard rethink of things now.

Incidentally the May 2018 timetable has now been uploaded onto SimSig if anyone wishes to try their hand at it...

 

[Clarence Yard]

I can’t think Chris Gibb (chair of the Thameslink Industry Readiness Board) or Chris Green (chair of the Thameslink Assurance Panel) can be sitting too comfortably at the moment.

What do they say about too many cooks? The DfT never seem to learn about setting up all these groups that just sit, wibble and distract.

 

[NorthKent1989]

I see the Rainham service has been up and down today, a few cancellations but some did make it through the core

I see the Thameslink 2000, 2010, 2020 or whatever year programme as a one big massive vanity project, they make a big show of the refurbished London Bridge station, the Bermondsey dive under, the canal tunnels, ATO section through the core, the shiny and glossy class 700 trains, and other station refurbishments on the route, but when it comes to actually running a service, after years of disruption and millions spent, the whole thing falls flat on its face spectacularly on its first day, you couldn’t make it up! All talk but no show, over ambitious by a large margin.

They have had years to prepare for this and yet they have completely failed to do anything about the mess that’s occurred since day one.

 

[bramling]

I can’t think Chris Gibb (chair of the Thameslink Industry Readiness Board) or Chris Green (chair of the Thameslink Assurance Panel) can be sitting too comfortably at the moment.

What do they say about too many cooks? The DfT never seem to learn about setting up all these groups that just sit, wibble and distract.

The words Thameslink Programme certainly aren’t something which will sit well on a CV at the moment...

 

[Agent_Squash]

The words Thameslink Programme certainly aren’t something which will sit well on a CV at the moment...

NR did at least appoint some good people for operational readiness - lots of LU controllers, for example. GTR, on the other hand...

 

[radamfi]

It looks like they've given up on the stopping service to Horsham today.

 

[jon0844]

I look at the situation as a fare-paying passenger, who has put up with a gradual worsening of the service I keep having to pay a larger and larger percentage of my post-tax earnings to "enjoy".

No-one comes out of this debacle looking good. The Government is looking the other way whilst GTR clearly haven't the slightest idea how to run a railway. Given their dogmatic anti-privatisation stance, I wouldn't expect the unions to be falling over themselves to help "the management". They know their members hold the whip hand as they're a valuable commodity that's in short supply. The railway unions have successfully maintained the staus quo of having too few drivers to comforably run a full service without overtime, and did so on London Midland & Southern previously. This keeps their members in control, since the operator has to offer sufficient incentive to encourage take-up of overtime rosters. Whenever route learning started, it was clearly too late.

GTR are effectively the same people who screwed up things under Connex and shouldn't have been allowed anywhere near the railway again. They also have a vested interest in driving custom onto the overpriced HS1 trains. GTR should have come clean to DfT that they hadn't a hope in hell of operating the timetable as published and suggested a delay until they had sufficient drivers trained on the new routes.

DfT should have known that the new timetable was gash just by looking at it and canned the whole thing. But then DfT knows nothing about running a railway. Why didn't someone ask whether the recast train times and destinations would be what the passengers need? It's obvious that passengers operate their lives around when the need to get to places, especially their work and that suddenly telling people that the train they've caught at roughly the same time each morning for the past XX years to get them to work at a time satisfactory for their employer will no longer be there from Monday, forever and they now need to get up half an hour earlier to try to get on a train that gets them half way to work, then they have to hope they can cram onto another already full train somewhere else that might just be cancelled, is going to seriously pi$$ people off. Who modelled the passenger flows? Who thought that people in Harpenden would be happy to get to work later on more crowded trains?

DfT and the relevant transport ministers have become obsessed with the really short bit of railway between St Pancras and Blackfriars. They seem to think that if they and their GTR henchmen can deliver a train every 2.5 minutes over that stretch of track, we'll be overjoyed and hail it as something close to the second coming of Christ. Well listen up Grayling, Johnson and Horton, we couldn't give a flying fcuk about that. No ****er lives in St Pancras or Blackfriars. We all live in places you might have heard of or seen as you speed through in your chauffered car. We live in Bedford, Flitwick, Harlington, Arlesey, Hitchin, Bromley etc and all we want is a regular, reliable journey into and out of London. We don't care where the train goes on the other side of the core and we certainly don't appreciate the way you've turned our inter-urban railway lines into another tube line. The media have also been duped by the hype. I recall reading an article in the Brighton local newspaper a year or so ago trumpeting that passengers from Brighton would soon be able to benefit from tube train like frequencies.

I thought it had already been clarified that HS services for SET aren't that profitable, if at all, due to high access charges. And just as most people don't go from one end of a tube line to the other, I think we can all agree the idea of creating new routes and linking people to the city and central London is a good thing if done properly.

A lack of drivers obviously means the new timetable could never work, and the DfT and Network Rail have a part to play in this. Network Rail leaving it to the last second to finalise things, and apparently having some 600 odd errors (not sure who is to blame) all doomed the new timetable.

I can see that the only solution is to get rid of the problem of the trains through the core by simply not running them so the ordinary trains can still run to time.. but of course that reduces capacity a lot. Still, at least people know what's happening than all the last minute cancellations and stopping pattern changes.

 

[gingerheid]

I think the Thameslink brand is fatally wounded on the GN side now. People have had a taste of it and they don’t like what they have seen. Politically it will be impossible not to have to have a hard rethink of things now

Still waiting for my first taste of it. Not managed to get a single train from Cambridge - Core since they started!

 

[otomous]

Why did they wait until April to start route learning?

What business is it of ASLEF (or any union for that matter) how a train company decides to deploy its contracted staff? They all get paid, even when on route learning (or should I say hanging around on platforms, then going to sit in 1st class?).

When will TOCs bite the bullet and design rosters that require drivers to work shifts that cover weekend and Sunday shifts? FFS they're already shift workers and in return for their already handsome remuneration, have agreed that they won't be working 9 to 5 like those of us who RELY on the trains they drive to get to work. If you don't like working shifts, get another job. If you want to be a train driver, accept that sometimes you'll be working on a Sunday afternoon, when some of your colleagues will be having a BBQ.

GTR, grow some balls and get rid of the notion that weekend working is optional. I sometimes have to work Saturdays, it's in my contract, I agreed to it when I took the job. You've had **** knows how long to sack all the bolshy drivers that like a BBQ and replace them with new ones. That process should have begun when you took over the franchise. You're training train drivers, not ****ing astronauts, AND admit that you royally ****ed up with this new timetable that replaces trains people needed with trains no-one needs (even if they run). What's the ****ing point of a train that runs from Cambridge to Brighton? We don't even need trains that run from Bedford to Brighton. Just run trains from outside London (where everyone lives) INTO London (where everyone works) in the morning, then reverse the process in the evening.

Railfail2020 should be cancelled immediately and the timetable should be recast to make the best use of trains and driver resources to provide a service for the people who need it. Imagine if BR had said in the 1970s to CEGB and NCB that they were going to completely recast the MGR circuits to offer new and exiting opportunities to transport coal from Yorkshire to Eastbourne, whilst at the same time reducing the number of trains it would be running from Shirebrook to Drax to one a day to make the timetable more robust. Then instead of running the trains from Yorkshire to Eastbourne, they'd just given up and dumped the coal at a random siding somewhere in Lincolnshire so they could run the train empty to Eastbourne to get it there on time for the return journey. We'd have all said BR was out of their tiny minds. Well, GTR and DfT (with the tacit assistance of the dinosaur unions) have just done a similar thing to hundreds and thousands of workers across the south east and eastern counties of England.

I think others have probably answered for me but a couple of points:

- if drivers have contracted Sundays they work them or find someone else to work. Sundays are not voluntary.

- TOCs don’t want Sundays to be a normal part of the working week. It will mean they must hire more drivers to meet working time regs. That’s more costs of recruitment, training, facilities, wages, NI and pensions.

- ASLEF wants Sundays in the working week.

- this has all been covered before on this forum. Please don’t try to suggest that drivers sabotage Sunday services. How does the railway manage to run most of its Sunday service if it’s voluntary?

- Route learning is run by the TOC not the union. In my experience they have neither enough personnel to brief or assess route learners, and this is what slows the process down. I’ve found myself in the position of being held up by staff shortages. When you are route learning, the COMPANY takes you off the roster. The driver cannot choose to work his normal trains instead. He may be asked to work on occasion during this time and cannot refuse. He could myself willing to work trains but be unable to do so. And route learning cannot be done for a full shift. The average person can’t take much more in after four-five hours; and some of the work is reading or swotting from a route guide. Furthermore no driver can be forced to accept a route learner in their cab. Some do not like the distraction. Others may not be allowed due to having had some sort of incident or are returning after a bereavement, for example. Or the driver may already have a route learner, a trainee, or be on a ride out with a manager or assessment himself. For all these reasons you will see drivers waiting on platforms for trains, and you may see them having to call it a day. Or they may be turfed our by a manager who wishes to do an assessment. They may be asked to sit behind the cab until the manager is done.

Might I suggest you contemplate that events are not always what you might assume them to be, and are actually occurring in a perfectly normal and justified manner - once you have the facts.

 

[The Box Photter]

I thought it had already been clarified that HS services for SET aren't that profitable, if at all, due to high access charges. And just as most people don't go from one end of a tube line to the other, I think we can all agree the idea of creating new routes and linking people to the city and central London is a good thing if done properly.

A lack of drivers obviously means the new timetable could never work, and the DfT and Network Rail have a part to play in this. Network Rail leaving it to the last second to finalise things, and apparently having some 600 odd errors (not sure who is to blame) all doomed the new timetable.

I can see that the only solution is to get rid of the problem of the trains through the core by simply not running them so the ordinary trains can still run to time.. but of course that reduces capacity a lot. Still, at least people know what's happening than all the last minute cancellations and stopping pattern changes.

I agree, but the people who've done this are supposed to be professionals. How much money has been thrown at consultants and planners? I can recall being lambasted on this forum by someone puporting to be a passenger flow expert who had modelled the movement of passengers on and off the Class 700s using a computer programme rather than going to stations and actually looking at how real people behave. The 700s were designed with wide gangways so passengers would spread out along the train, freeing up space. Unfortunately, real people don't behave like that and still stand next to the doors in the core, even when there are seats available right next to them. It often isn't possible the pass down the train, even when it's less than full. They designed the 700s with strategically placed luggage racks for the airport traffic, but most passengers don't want to put their luggage in a rack where they can't see it or have easy access to it. So the luggage goes in the gangway (because it's nice and wide) or on the seats opposite and passengers sit in the racks or stand in the luggage spaces during the rush hour because there aren't enough seats. I could have predicated that would happen and that the space would be wasted without the need for a qualification in passenger dynamics and a clever computer programme, but as ever, Deus ex Machina, technology will solve all our problems.

There needs to be an immediate injection of realism into the timetable. It's clear that the much-vaunted passenger consultation process actually consulted very few passengers. I certainly wasn't consulted and I've been commuting for 14 years. Please, ask people where they need to go, not where they'd like to go once in a blue moon. I'm sure if they'd asked passengers at Welwyn GC whether they'd like to be able to get the train to Gatwick, they'd have said yes, but would still only have used it once a year maximum. If they'd also been told "you can have trains to Gatwick but your train to work in the morning might fail to turn up and when it does it'll have fewer seats and by the way, they'll be less frequent, and slower." the good burghers of Welwyn GC would have told the questioner where to shove their trains to Gatwick.

Thameslink (BedPan), GN and the railways south of Blackfriars are primarily commuter railways. They should be optimised for that purpose and the timetable should reflect the needs of the passengers, not the operational convenience of the operators. They're not tube lines and they're not dedicated airport services. Thousands of passengers (who are in effect funding this entire debacle through their taxes and fares) have had the rug whipped from beneath their feet, whilst muppets such as Jo Johnson and Charles Horton try to spin some kind of postive outcome just to save their own worthless necks.

If Horton had any decency and backbone, he'd have resigned before the end of last week.

 

[otomous]

I look at the situation as a fare-paying passenger, who has put up with a gradual worsening of the service I keep having to pay a larger and larger percentage of my post-tax earnings to "enjoy".

No-one comes out of this debacle looking good. The Government is looking the other way whilst GTR clearly haven't the slightest idea how to run a railway. Given their dogmatic anti-privatisation stance, I wouldn't expect the unions to be falling over themselves to help "the management". They know their members hold the whip hand as they're a valuable commodity that's in short supply. The railway unions have successfully maintained the staus quo of having too few drivers to comforably run a full service without overtime, and did so on London Midland & Southern previously. This keeps their members in control, since the operator has to offer sufficient incentive to encourage take-up of overtime rosters. Whenever route learning started, it was clearly too late.

GTR are effectively the same people who screwed up things under Connex and shouldn't have been allowed anywhere near the railway again. They also have a vested interest in driving custom onto the overpriced HS1 trains. GTR should have come clean to DfT that they hadn't a hope in hell of operating the timetable as published and suggested a delay until they had sufficient drivers trained on the new routes.

DfT should have known that the new timetable was gash just by looking at it and canned the whole thing. But then DfT knows nothing about running a railway. Why didn't someone ask whether the recast train times and destinations would be what the passengers need? It's obvious that passengers operate their lives around when the need to get to places, especially their work and that suddenly telling people that the train they've caught at roughly the same time each morning for the past XX years to get them to work at a time satisfactory for their employer will no longer be there from Monday, forever and they now need to get up half an hour earlier to try to get on a train that gets them half way to work, then they have to hope they can cram onto another already full train somewhere else that might just be cancelled, is going to seriously pi$$ people off. Who modelled the passenger flows? Who thought that people in Harpenden would be happy to get to work later on more crowded trains?

DfT and the relevant transport ministers have become obsessed with the really short bit of railway between St Pancras and Blackfriars. They seem to think that if they and their GTR henchmen can deliver a train every 2.5 minutes over that stretch of track, we'll be overjoyed and hail it as something close to the second coming of Christ. Well listen up Grayling, Johnson and Horton, we couldn't give a flying fcuk about that. No ****er lives in St Pancras or Blackfriars. We all live in places you might have heard of or seen as you speed through in your chauffered car. We live in Bedford, Flitwick, Harlington, Arlesey, Hitchin, Bromley etc and all we want is a regular, reliable journey into and out of London. We don't care where the train goes on the other side of the core and we certainly don't appreciate the way you've turned our inter-urban railway lines into another tube line. The media have also been duped by the hype. I recall reading an article in the Brighton local newspaper a year or so ago trumpeting that passengers from Brighton would soon be able to benefit from tube train like frequencies.

And AGAIN! The unions do not control the “status quo” of keeping the driving grade short staffed. ASLEF wants as near to zero rest day work as possible. It suits the TOC to rely on RDW as I and others have tried to explain to you. Yes, sure there’s plenty of drivers who want RDW, but that’s up to the individual, not the union. If the TOC staffed properly in the first place, it wouldn’t be an issue.

 

[Domh245]

No-one comes out of this debacle looking good. The Government is looking the other way whilst GTR clearly haven't the slightest idea how to run a railway. Given their dogmatic anti-privatisation stance, I wouldn't expect the unions to be falling over themselves to help "the management". They know their members hold the whip hand as they're a valuable commodity that's in short supply. The railway unions have successfully maintained the status quo of having too few drivers to comfortably run a full service without overtime, and did so on London Midland & Southern previously. This keeps their members in control, since the operator has to offer sufficient incentive to encourage take-up of overtime rosters. Whenever route learning started, it was clearly too late.

ASLEF (to all intents and purposes the only union on GTR now that the RMT have been broken on Southern) want there to be enough drivers to institutionalised overtime. The lack of trained drivers is entirely a TOC/DfT issue, and whilst the unions could have been more helpful, the vast majority of the blame (99% +) has to be shouldered by the TOC/DfT

DfT should have known that the new timetable was gash just by looking at it and canned the whole thing. But then DfT knows nothing about running a railway. Why didn't someone ask whether the recast train times and destinations would be what the passengers need? It's obvious that passengers operate their lives around when the need to get to places, especially their work and that suddenly telling people that the train they've caught at roughly the same time each morning for the past XX years to get them to work at a time satisfactory for their employer will no longer be there from Monday, forever and they now need to get up half an hour earlier to try to get on a train that gets them half way to work, then they have to hope they can cram onto another already full train somewhere else that might just be cancelled, is going to seriously pi$$ people off. Who modelled the passenger flows? Who thought that people in Harpenden would be happy to get to work later on more crowded trains?

The DfT wrote the timetable - when have you ever know people, let alone government, rubbish something they've made before they've even let it loose in the real world? GTR just had to implement it, which they have done atrociously.

Also, why should people expect the timetable to remain the same for eternity, there would never be any progress that way? Also, if they were unaware of it happening then they've only got themselves to blame - it was heavily advertised in the months leading up to it. Obviously some people will have been inconvenienced by the implementation of the new timetable (there always have to be loosers in any reshuffle) but by and large people will benefit. I'm not convinced that the DfT are that inept or malicious that they would actively seek to inconvenience people on a massive scale.

DfT and the relevant transport ministers have become obsessed with the really short bit of railway between St Pancras and Blackfriars. They seem to think that if they and their GTR henchmen can deliver a train every 2.5 minutes over that stretch of track, we'll be overjoyed and hail it as something close to the second coming of Christ. Well listen up Grayling, Johnson and Horton, we couldn't give a flying fcuk about that. No ****er lives in St Pancras or Blackfriars. We all live in places you might have heard of or seen as you speed through in your chauffered car. We live in Bedford, Flitwick, Harlington, Arlesey, Hitchin, Bromley etc and all we want is a regular, reliable journey into and out of London. We don't care where the train goes on the other side of the core and we certainly don't appreciate the way you've turned our inter-urban railway lines into another tube line. The media have also been duped by the hype. I recall reading an article in the Brighton local newspaper a year or so ago trumpeting that passengers from Brighton would soon be able to benefit from tube train like frequencies.

I don't know how you are proposing to have enough trains running from the places you've listed without running them through the core - there isn't enough terminal station capacity to sustain the sort of frequencies that Thameslink will provide, and unless you either going to start building additional terminal capacity or parallel north/south cross London Routes, you aren't going to do much better. Whilst the capacity that was provided in the previous timetable was suitable, it definitely won't have been in a few decades time with continued population growth.

I see the Thameslink (PhlegmStink) 2000, 2010, 2020 or whatever year programme as a one big massive vanity project, they make a big show of the refurbished London Bridge station, the Bermondsey dive under, the canal tunnels, ATO section through the core, the shiny and glossy class 700 trains, and other station refurbishments on the route, but when it comes to actually running a service, after years of distruption and millions spent, the whole thing falls flat on its face spectacularly on its first day, you couldn’t make it up! All talk but no show, over ambitious by a large margin.

It's good to see a mature level of debate is going on!

It is a rarity that anything works straight out of the box, for example the 800s had a shocker of a first day (the press train being significantly late and was spewing water out of the AC system) but they've settled down and are now providing the sort of service that was expected, much like any new train. Once GTR have sorted out their own incompetence, the service should be pretty good.

 

[The Box Photter]

I think others have probably answered for me but a couple of points:

- if drivers have contracted Sundays they work them or find someone else to work. Sundays are not voluntary.

- TOCs don’t want Sundays to be a normal part of the working week. It will mean they must hire more drivers to meet working time regs. That’s more costs of recruitment, training, facilities, wages, NI and pensions.

- ASLEF wants Sundays in the working week.

- this has all been covered before on this forum. Please don’t try to suggest that drivers sabotage Sunday services. How does the railway manage to run most of its Sunday service if it’s voluntary?

- Route learning is run by the TOC not the union. In my experience they have neither enough personnel to brief or assess route learners, and this is what slows the process down. I’ve found myself in the position of being held up by staff shortages. When you are route learning, the COMPANY takes you off the roster. The driver cannot choose to work his normal trains instead. He may be asked to work on occasion during this time and cannot refuse. He could myself willing to work trains but be unable to do so. And route learning cannot be done for a full shift. The average person can’t take much more in after four-five hours; and some of the work is reading or swotting from a route guide. Furthermore no driver can be forced to accept a route learner in their cab. Some do not like the distraction. Others may not be allowed due to having had some sort of incident or are returning after a bereavement, for example. Or the driver may already have a route learner, a trainee, or be on a ride out with a manager or assessment himself. For all these reasons you will see drivers waiting on platforms for trains, and you may see them having to call it a day. Or they may be turfed our by a manager who wishes to do an assessment. They may be asked to sit behind the cab until the manager is done.

Might I suggest you contemplate that events are not always what you might assume them to be, and are actually occurring in a perfectly normal and justified manner - once you have the facts.

So, the answer must be that the TOCs need to employ more drivers. I know that will cost more money, but they can explain that to DfT when the franchise next comes up for renewal. DfT, for their part should ensure that the winning bidder has sufficient drivers to operate the prescribed timetable.

If ASLEF wants Sundays in the working week I'm all for it and stand corrected.

What ever happened to route learning saloons that allowed more than a couple of drivers to learn the route at once? It seems an oversight that a programme as extensive as Thameslink could have been planned without there being a way to mass-train drivers. I understand that there might be circumstances when it wouldn't be approriate to have a learner in the cab, but given the current circumstances, I'd expect to see someone sitting in the second seat in all trains until there are enough trained on the routes. I don't think it should be optional for a driver to decline to take a learner (except for those who've recently had an incident etc). I don't doubt for one moment how involving or taxing it is to learn a route and wouldn't want someone driving my train who kind of knew where the junctions and signals were. It's vital to be properly trained.

That's why I don't understand how this situation has developed. Somewhere in the management chain, someone has been fibbing to their boss. Because no sane manager could have signed off the full timetable and paid for all the publicity surrounding it if they knew what we know now. I suspect that it was the usual sitauation that at each stage up the chain of seniority, the manager painted a silghtly too rosy a picture of the situation they were seeing on the ground. After a few management meetings, "it's all **** and will never work" will have turned into "its a powerful plan which will deliver most of the key deliverables". We all know how it works.

 

[The Box Photter]

ASLEF (to all intents and purposes the only union on GTR now that the RMT have been broken on Southern) want there to be enough drivers to institutionalised overtime. The lack of trained drivers is entirely a TOC/DfT issue, and whilst the unions could have been more helpful, the vast majority of the blame (99% +) has to be shouldered by the TOC/DfT



The DfT wrote the timetable - when have you ever know people, let alone government, rubbish something they've made before they've even let it loose in the real world? GTR just had to implement it, which they have done atrociously.

Also, why should people expect the timetable to remain the same for eternity, there would never be any progress that way? Also, if they were unaware of it happening then they've only got themselves to blame - it was heavily advertised in the months leading up to it. Obviously some people will have been inconvenienced by the implementation of the new timetable (there always have to be loosers in any reshuffle) but by and large people will benefit. I'm not convinced that the DfT are that inept or malicious that they would actively seek to inconvenience people on a massive scale.



I don't know how you are proposing to have enough trains running from the places you've listed without running them through the core - there isn't enough terminal station capacity to sustain the sort of frequencies that Thameslink will provide, and unless you either going to start building additional terminal capacity or parallel north/south cross London Routes, you aren't going to do much better. Whilst the capacity that was provided in the previous timetable was suitable, it definitely won't have been in a few decades time with continued population growth.



It's good to see a mature level of debate is going on!

It is a rarity that anything works straight out of the box, for example the 800s had a shocker of a first day (the press train being significantly late and was spewing water out of the AC system) but they've settled down and are now providing the sort of service that was expected, much like any new train. Once GTR have sorted out their own incompetence, the service should be pretty good.

You live in Nottingham. You haven't got a clue what it's like to commute into London. Try it for a few years, then you'll be entitled to comment. Why does the timetable have to stay as it is? As I've been trying to explain to the hard of understanding, the people who use the trains rely on the trains as they are, at the times they are, going to the destinations the need now because they haven't all changed where they work or live overnight. We don't have the luxury of being able to decide to change jobs at a whim to fit into the new timetables or "journey opportunities". Imagine you go to bed tonight and during the night, someone bricks up your front and back doors. Tomorrow morning you want to leave the house, but can't use the doors and instead are told to make use of the new "exit opportunities" afforded by the windows. Its a silly example, but that's effectively what GTR have told all its existing passengers. And to just rub it in, they've decided not to run a lot of the trains, but they've still got our season ticket money.

 

[NorthKent1989]

ASLEF (to all intents and purposes the only union on GTR now that the RMT have been broken on Southern) want there to be enough drivers to institutionalised overtime. The lack of trained drivers is entirely a TOC/DfT issue, and whilst the unions could have been more helpful, the vast majority of the blame (99% +) has to be shouldered by the TOC/DfT



The DfT wrote the timetable - when have you ever know people, let alone government, rubbish something they've made before they've even let it loose in the real world? GTR just had to implement it, which they have done atrociously.

Also, why should people expect the timetable to remain the same for eternity, there would never be any progress that way? Also, if they were unaware of it happening then they've only got themselves to blame - it was heavily advertised in the months leading up to it. Obviously some people will have been inconvenienced by the implementation of the new timetable (there always have to be loosers in any reshuffle) but by and large people will benefit. I'm not convinced that the DfT are that inept or malicious that they would actively seek to inconvenience people on a massive scale.



I don't know how you are proposing to have enough trains running from the places you've listed without running them through the core - there isn't enough terminal station capacity to sustain the sort of frequencies that Thameslink will provide, and unless you either going to start building additional terminal capacity or parallel north/south cross London Routes, you aren't going to do much better. Whilst the capacity that was provided in the previous timetable was suitable, it definitely won't have been in a few decades time with continued population growth.



It's good to see a mature level of debate is going on!

It is a rarity that anything works straight out of the box, for example the 800s had a shocker of a first day (the press train being significantly late and was spewing water out of the AC system) but they've settled down and are now providing the sort of service that was expected, much like any new train. Once GTR have sorted out their own incompetence, the service should be pretty good.

So people whose lives have been distrupted by this shoddy start should just be patient for a bit longer? This business of GTR bedding in the timetable is nonsensical and just an excuse, some places have not had a train service like Higham in Kent, this isn’t a good start to something that was implied to bring tube style frequencies through the core, they’ve had time to prepare for this! And not all changes mean progress, The Medway service has been reduced to a stopping service this isn’t progress.

We’re not just talking about a faulty train here this is something that has effected a large part of the South East and maybe beyond, as a commuter I’m done with making excuses for Thameslink

 

[Domh245]

So, the answer must be that the TOCs need to employ more drivers. I know that will cost more money, but they can explain that to DfT when the franchise next comes up for renewal. DfT, for their part should ensure that the winning bidder has sufficient drivers to operate the prescribed timetable.

If ASLEF wants Sundays in the working week I'm all for it and stand corrected.

What ever happened to route learning saloons that allowed more than a couple of drivers to learn the route at once? It seems an oversight that a programme as extensive as Thameslink could have been planned without there being a way to mass-train drivers. I understand that there might be circumstances when it wouldn't be approriate to have a learner in the cab, but given the current circumstances, I'd expect to see someone sitting in the second seat in all trains until there are enough trained on the routes. I don't think it should be optional for a driver to decline to take a learner (except for those who've recently had an incident etc). I don't doubt for one moment how involving or taxing it is to learn a route and wouldn't want someone driving my train who kind of knew where the junctions and signals were. It's vital to be properly trained.

Route Learning has to be done on in-service trains on busy infrastructure - which is what the Thameslink core is, route learning saloons aren't an option. Re your point about every secondman's seat being filled, that isn't necessarily the best way to do it - GTR are still trying to run trains in between the route learning, and filling all of the second seats means fewer drivers actually driving trains. Similarly, not every train is going over useful track for learning - the issues AIUI are mainly GN drivers through the core and down to Rainham - Wimbledon loop services (as an example) are of use to neither.

I would direct you to the London Reconnections article on this debacle, which is in depth and informative. I will pull out a couple of highlights that are relevant to your first point:

"This lack of drivers actually predates the GTR franchise. Both the previous incumbents (First Capital Connect and Govia’s Southern) informed the DfT almost six years ago that the department would need to fund a ramp up in driver recruitment and training to prevent a major driver shortfall. They were informed then that would prevent the services being run as intended both during, and after, the London Bridge rebuild."
...
"Although some of the blame for the above will likely be laid at GTR’s door, to a certain extent they are also victims of issues at the DfT. The biggest indicator of that is perhaps that many of the driver issues can be traced back to the GTR franchise bid having too few drivers specified. Yet this is partially the result of a DfT error in the numbers given to bidders. GTR’s assumptions were based on those numbers."
...

 

[NorthKent1989]

You live in Nottingham. You haven't got a clue what it's like to commute into London. Try it for a few years, then you'll be entitled to comment. Why does the timetable have to stay as it is? As I've been trying to explain to the hard of understanding, the people who use the trains rely on the trains as they are, at the times they are, going to the destinations the need now because they haven't all changed where they work or live overnight. We don't have the luxury of being able to decide to change jobs at a whim to fit into the new timetables or "journey opportunities". Imagine you go to bed tonight and during the night, someone bricks up your front and back doors. Tomorrow morning you want to leave the house, but can't use the doors and instead are told to make use of the new "exit opportunities" afforded by the windows. Its a silly example, but that's effectively what GTR have told all its existing passengers. And to just rub it in, they've decided not to run a lot of the trains, but they've still got our season ticket money.

It’s beggars belief that those who are directly effected by this shambles are being told to be patient GTR will soon provide a good service, no they were supposed to do this days ago! They should talk to people in Higham and see where that talk gets them

 

[whoosh]

I look at the situation as a fare-paying passenger, who has put up with a gradual worsening of the service I keep having to pay a larger and larger percentage of my post-tax earnings to "enjoy".

I would be massively annoyed if I was paying for this 'service' and the extra hours of time it was stealing from me.

The railway unions have successfully maintained the staus quo of having too few drivers to comforably run a full service without overtime, and did so on London Midland & Southern previously.

How? They aren't in charge of recruitment. They don't pretend to put job adverts up on the company's website whilst secretly not doing so!
So the Union go, "I'll tell you what Mr Employer, we don't want more members for our union, and the extra subscription funds they'll bring us - but you keep your N.I. payments and pension contributions for non-existent drivers, those shareolders need feeding," do they?!
That makes no sense.

Whenever route learning started, it was clearly too late.

^Nail on head.

GTR should have come clean to DfT that they hadn't a hope in hell of operating the timetable as published and suggested a delay until they had sufficient drivers trained on the new routes.

Perhaps they did, who knows?

 

[Hadders]

I’ve just walked from Euston to Kings Cross to get a train home to Stevenage.

I walked through St Pancras and there was absolutely nothing to say that services to GN destinations were starting from Kings Cross. As late as this morning booking engines were saying they were going to/from St Pancras.

I asked at the desk and did get the correct message, so we’ll done to that member of staff. I knew exactly where to go to get my train home but how many ‘normal’ passengers wouldn’t?

It’s not that hard to print a few posters to display at St Pancras. Even better would be an additional departure board showing Kings Cross departures to GN destinations.

It can’t be that hard. Then again this is GTR...

 

[Domh245]

You live in Nottingham. You haven't got a clue what it's like to commute into London. Try it for a few years, then you'll be entitled to comment. Why does the timetable have to stay as it is? As I've been trying to explain to the hard of understanding, the people who use the trains rely on the trains as they are, at the times they are, going to the destinations the need now because they haven't all changed where they work or live overnight. We don't have the luxury of being able to decide to change jobs at a whim to fit into the new timetables or "journey opportunities". Imagine you go to bed tonight and during the night, someone bricks up your front and back doors. Tomorrow morning you want to leave the house, but can't use the doors and instead are told to make use of the new "exit opportunities" afforded by the windows. Its a silly example, but that's effectively what GTR have told all its existing passengers. And to just rub it in, they've decided not to run a lot of the trains, but they've still got our season ticket money.

I grew up in London for 18 years and commuted to school on the District line for a good 8 years*, so I think I do have at least rough idea of what London commuting is like (A: awful, and I'll be more than glad if I never have to do it again)

I am not convinced however that the situation is as bad as you make out in terms of changing destinations though, trains still run to London from the places you listed and in a number of cases will get people closer to their places of work then Kings Cross or Charring X. Changing times are a nuisance, but at the same time, if we never changed train times we would still be running to the timings of old steam trains - a faster journey from Bedford means an earlier train from every station down the line.

Like I said, people have had plenty of notice about the timetable change, and unlike the North they have been able to see the new timetables for a while so it shouldn't have come as a shock. That isn't to say that the way Thameslink have done it is the right way, but sticking to the status quo in perpetuity is definitely the wrong way.

*I've gone back to London and commuted a few times since leaving for uni as well, if that helps to boost my commuting credentials?

So people whose lives have been distrupted by this shoddy start should just be patient for a bit longer? This business of GTR bedding in the timetable is nonsensical and just an excuse, some places have not had a train service like Higham in Kent, this isn’t a good start to something that was implied to bring tube style frequencies through the core, they’ve had time to prepare for this! And not all changes mean progress, The Medway service has been reduced to a stopping service this isn’t progress.

We’re not just talking about a faulty train here this is something that has effected a large part of the South East and maybe beyond, as a commuter I’m done with making excuses for Thameslink

Well, yes. I am not going to defend the implementation of the timetable, because it has been shocking, but running back to the old timetable the second the new one ran into issues isn't a sustainable solution in the long run. Like I said, nothing works out of the box first time, there will always be a need to test and tweak it once you start to actually do stuff with it rather than admire it from afar. Unfortunately timetables are the sort of thing where you can't really test them on a dedicated test track in the Midlands, or distribute to a closed beta testing group. If we reverted back to tried and tested every time there wasn't a good start, we wouldn't have half of the things we do now. One of the things that I often lament is the lack of progress made by those before us in terms of infrastructure and so on - but if they were up against this sort of hostility for everything they did, I can perhaps understand why things are as they are!

I agree that not all change means progress - it is rare that change does mean progress for everyone, but you can't please everyone all the time, there have to be winners and loosers, and the aim is to maximise the number of winners (or potential winners)

 

[ComUtoR]

Route Learning has to be done on in-service trains on busy infrastructure - which is what the Thameslink core is, route learning saloons aren't an option.

GTR sourced 2x Q paths specifically for route learning Kent side.

Re your point about every secondman's seat being filled, that isn't necessarily the best way to do it - GTR are still trying to run trains in between the route learning, and filling all of the second seats means fewer drivers actually driving trains.

100% on both points.

What ever happened to route learning saloons that allowed more than a couple of drivers to learn the route at once? It seems an oversight that a programme as extensive as Thameslink could have been planned without there being a way to mass-train drivers.

2x Dedicated Q paths with around 6 route learners per trip were organized and run.

I understand that there might be circumstances when it wouldn't be approriate to have a learner in the cab, but given the current circumstances, I'd expect to see someone sitting in the second seat in all trains until there are enough trained on the routes.

How can you understand that there are exceptional circumstances bit still expect all trains to have learners :/

I don't think it should be optional for a driver to decline to take a learner (except for those who've recently had an incident etc). I don't doubt for one moment how involving or taxing it is to learn a route and wouldn't want someone driving my train who kind of knew where the junctions and signals were. It's vital to be properly trained.

On both points. There are multiple circumstances where you are not allowed a second person in the cab and sitting in the secondman seat generally means you are NOT being properly trained. You are not being trained at all. You are simply observing.