To what extent does it matter if the rail industry can't do everything itself?

[JonathanH]

From https://www.railforums.co.uk/thread...ff-lease-march-23.174866/page-96#post-6256458

I just find the modern railway's inability to move redundant stock by rail very frustrating - it shouldn't be so hard/expensive to use the railway for rail vehicles.

The post above expresses concern that the rail industry can't move redundant vehicles by rail, instead putting them on the back of a low loader.

I recognise that the sight of a rail vehicle on the back of a lorry may indicate a railway that is subservient to road transport, but is it really a failure of the railway not to be the easiest way to transport a redundant rail vehicle that needs money spending on it to be able to move safely on the network?

What is the particular concern about spending money on the services of a road haulier? Is it that money is going out of the industry? If so, how does it differ from the railway not manufacturing its own bricks for building, its own uniforms, buying in electricity or diesel. All represent money flowing out of the industry.

Is the railway a particular industry that should try to do everything itself to ensure that no money leaves the industry? How workable is that in reality?

 

[Irascible]

If it's regular enough then maybe NR can offer the service... moving vehicles by road is not something I have a problem with, especially if they're just going to trip up actual services - I think that particular topic is a bit of a red herring. What I do have a problem with is haemmorhageing money on managing multiple contractors etc instead of using in-house teams, and I believe NR had enough of a problem with that to start taking operations back in house for some maintenance & so forth. Now, if only other public services could/were permitted to do the same...

 

[RobShipway]

Well, as per page 95 of thread https://www.railforums.co.uk/thread...units-to-go-off-lease-march-23.174866/page-95 you have the three remaining class 769 units being taken away from Reading to wherever, by low loader. Now, if these are going to somewhere that is connected by rail, then I would have thought could have been hauled as a unit to that location by rail, rather than having a separate low loader for each carriage in each unit.

So this is where I have to agree with @Irascible that in-house teams should have been used, rather than managing an outside contractor or contractors to move a unit to another destination.

Until further reading the above thread, I had not realised that there is a bridge collapsed between Didcot and Oxford. The class 769, are apparently not cleared to be moved via Ashchurch which is the diversion route.

 

[Irascible]

The question is if there's enough movements by road to justify NR having a team - that one seems slightly unlikely ( although they could always hire their team out as general heavy haulage specialists inbetween, it's just deciding if that's something they want to bother with - at that point it's it's own business unit & you're not far off just hiring outsiders ). Day to day stuff is where I get annoyed, which I don't think we've reached for abnormal stock moves...