What do train crew do during planned engineering works?

[craigybagel]

Having passed through Gloucester yesterday on a RRB (rail replacement bus), I noticed XC were not running any services at all beyond Gloucester towards Cardiff. I assume this means a huge reduction in crews needed to operate what is now Cheltenham to Nottingham service as you’ve just chopped about 3 hours from each round trip.

What happens to the spare crew capacity? Presumably you can’t just cut people’s hours without agreement and presumably the rosters are drawn up months in advance so people should be working on anll affected days.

Just curious as XC have a severe shortage on Sundays and are about to cut services on this line but presumably it’s adequately staffed during the rest of the week.

Route learning? Help with training new crew? There’s probably a load of things that could be done.

The answer will very much vary depending on the scale of the engineering work, the location of the TOC's traincrew depots, and the rules around how much their traincrew can have their diagrams amended.

As others have said, engineering diagrams are usually a lot more inefficient than the regular diagrams. You also end up with trains that can't be covered by their normal crews because they can't be in place owing to the engineering work.

Using this example, on paper it looks like Birmingham depot will have less work because they'll only be working to and from Gloucester and not going all the way to Cardiff. But if the engineering work means that it's harder for Bristol crews to be in place to work the trains they're normally booked to work, then Birmingham might need to cover those diagrams instead. Those Bristol crews may instead be covering stuff that Birmingham aren't able to do, and so on.

Rest assured it doesn't mean there's people sitting around getting paid to do nothing. Engineering work can actually mean longer days for traincrew.

 

[Flange Squeal]

Another thing that can dictate whether there will be spares or not is the general staffing level at any given time. There's certainly been periods in the past where covering the work on even a normal day has relied on large amounts of overtime/rest day working (be it staff shortages after several people have retired in close succession and their replacements are still in training, and/or periods where sickness/off-track is high). As a result, engineering works have meant noticeably less duties required but everyone still has a job allocated to them with no spares, as had there not been engineering works then it would have just been another day of needing to get rest day workers in to run the normal timetable.

Engineering work closing one line and reducing work at Depot A can also see those staff end up covering for staff shortages at Depot B where they sign the same route(s), or being used instead to work extra trains in connection with a large sporting event that has extra services running on another line, for example.

 

[Horizon22]

Using this example, on paper it looks like Birmingham depot will have less work because they'll only be working to and from Gloucester and not going all the way to Cardiff. But if the engineering work means that it's harder for Bristol crews to be in place to work the trains they're normally booked to work, then Birmingham might need to cover those diagrams instead. Those Bristol crews may instead be covering stuff that Birmingham aren't able to do, and so on.

Rest assured it doesn't mean there's people sitting around getting paid to do nothing. Engineering work can actually mean longer days for traincrew.

I’ve found there’s also quite a bit of “passing” going on to because there’s some desire too ‘equalise’ the workload - within reason - between depots so that one depot doesn’t do anything because of the geographic location of the works, whilst some depots would bear the brunt of all the shuttles / diversions.

 

[bunnahabhain]

Having passed through Gloucester yesterday on a RRB (rail replacement bus), I noticed XC were not running any services at all beyond Gloucester towards Cardiff. I assume this means a huge reduction in crews needed to operate what is now Cheltenham to Nottingham service as you’ve just chopped about 3 hours from each round trip.

What happens to the spare crew capacity? Presumably you can’t just cut people’s hours without agreement and presumably the rosters are drawn up months in advance so people should be working on anll affected days.

Just curious as XC have a severe shortage on Sundays and are about to cut services on this line but presumably it’s adequately staffed during the rest of the week.

Route learning? Help with training new crew? There’s probably a load of things that could be done.

It all depends on what's happening, for example for a lot of EMR blocks out East you can end up with Boston or Norwich crew covering the Eastern side of the block doing shuttles whilst the Nottingham crew on the Western side pick up everything that side. With the odd taxi ride across the block where there's an imbalance of crew. Sometimes you'll find your diagram is amended because part of it is missing but the rest remains the same, and other times your diagram is entirely cancelled and you revert to being spare, maybe picking up a new job.

Where there is a large engineering block taking place, such as Derby or Nottingham resignalling, you'll find a temporary roster and diagrams are put in place.

 

[riceuten]

Sadly, there will be a certain type of passenger who thinks that staff shouldn’t be paid if there’s no work to be done - no fault of the train staff.

I don’t want to give them ideas but I remember lengthy IT outage over Xmas at a former employer and we were forced to take 3 days annual leave (from our entitlement, not extra statutory days). I knew there was nothing we could do anything about it but I went through the motions of getting legal advice from UNISON’s solicitors and they told us what I knew to be the case - that our annual leave could be directed by our employers. I was not popular thereafter - a case of ‘don’t shoot the messenger’ but what they did was perfectly legal, if ill-advised

 

[dk1]

Sadly, there will be a certain type of passenger who thinks that staff shouldn’t be paid if there’s no work to be done - no fault of the train staff.

You really have to worry about their state of mind. Either that or it’s just the usual green eyed monster brigade.

 

[bramling]

Sounds like a TCS that isn’t going to get much joy asking for favours*.


(*For the uninitiated that usually means helping out by doing something that crew aren’t obliged to do and often outside of the job’s T&Cs. Usually when there’s a problem.)

It does cut both ways though. Every train crew supervisor will be able to recount tales of letting someone go hours early on numerous spare duties, helping them sort rest day swaps (etc etc etc), then the one day the job goes up the wall and they ask the self-same person to put a train away or something and they’re met with a caustic attitude - and it’s often the people least expected too.

 

[truecrimelover]

When GWR had engineering works fairly recently between Moreton in Marsh and Worcester, I believe they put 2 Train Managers on the trains between Moreton and London Paddington, with one of them operating the doors and the other checking tickets

 

[800301]

When GWR had engineering works fairly recently between Moreton in Marsh and Worcester, I believe they put 2 Train Managers on the trains between Moreton and London Paddington, with one of them operating the doors and the other checking tickets

And Paddington picked up about 8 extra diagrams mainly covering Pad to Oxford work