Great Western Coffee Shop

A "thought" piece - how do we make our rail services more robust?

Our railway has, I think, enough staff available if nothing goes wrong. But how well can it cope with ...  Cold weather; Diverted trains getting in way; Failed train blocking line; Fencing failure - cows on the line; Freight presents late; Heavy rain and floods; High tide and wind; Hot weather; Industrial action; It's Christmas day; Lack of available drivers; Lack of signal staff; Lack of train managers; Landslip or infrastructure failure; Level crossing failure; Not enough drivers with route knowledge; No authority from DfT to respond; Not enough working trains available; Overrunning engineering works; Planning error; Points failure; Signalling failure; Trees falling on to railway. With so many cancellations and other issues, it feels we have been trimmed down to a "fair weather" railway on which any or a combination of the problems above can lead to significant disruption to the extent that we now have an unreliable service - so unreliable that even our most ardent advocates think twice before using the train.

We will never get 100% reliable operation. Even with the railway staffing up to cope properly with most situations, there will always be those occasional days when circumstances transpire to frustrate.  And I haven't even listed none-industry issues that can cause problems ... Person hit by train; slowness in loading passengers; people taken ill (on train staff or passengers) during journey; lineside fire; hunt crossing the line; bridge strikes. Even most of these can be mitigated against, and are, but can never be 100% eliminated either.

Staffing and equipping up to lessen things going wrong, and/or to have the resources to react less disruptively if they do, costs money - or at least it does if you take the "bull at a gate" approach of having spare staff sitting in the mess room twiddling their thumbs (and that is poor for staff motivation too). One potential answer is to have staff in dual rolls; this was done (still may be) by at least one TOC in the recent past - with an important but not time critical job being done, shared with being on call to time critical operational help.

Now - I'm going to offer something extra controversial here - at times, the information age has it's issues by not letting things get quietly on. Journeycheck and others are a wonderful feed to this forum, but do we really need to be flagged up on a 10 car train replaced by 9 cars, or 5 by 4?  If the loss is over 20%, or on services that flag up as usually very busy, by all means.  And things like "08:41 Bedwyn to London Paddington due 09:52 will be delayed at Reading and is expected to be 5 minutes late" from this morning - provided it doesn't miss a connection, why flag it up?

On the subject of Journeycheck and the information it gives, has anyone else stopped receiving texts?  I’ve not had one about cancellations or delays in a few weeks now.  Still get emails however.

I agree that we increasingly have a fair weather only railway.
A reasonable person would expect disruption in truly extreme weather, but "truly extreme" should mean once or twice in lifetime events, not each time it rains heavily or is windy.

"Progress" often seems to mean greater complexity and LESS reliability. IETs like other new trains suffer from "computer says no" And on great western routes we now have OHLE that fails, together with new and less reliable signaling.

And what about the new Thameslink trains that stopped for hours after a brief and entirely foreseeable drop in grid frequency ? Older trains would not have cared. Or newer DC traction substations that tripped out during the same event ?

Trains and infrastructure need designing for reliability. One of the few redeeming features of the "electric" IETs was the inclusion of limited diesel power for when the wires come down.

More dual skilled staff could certainly help.

Better plans are needed for rescue from strandings. Thinking of the Lewisham debacle here. "Keep them on the trains no matter what" does not really work.
Sooner or later I expect loss of life from heat stress when a crush loaded train is stuck for hours in hot weather.

All new trains need in my view

Toilets that are functional without electricity or main reservoir air.
Emergency lighting that runs for at least 4 hours.
A public address system with battery power for at least 4 hours.
Opening windows, locked normally but released in case of hot weather stranding etc.
On electric trains a small diesel engine or a battery able to move the train at much reduced speed for at least an hour.

Train operators need more robust plans to deal with breakdowns, including evacuations.
If passengers are stuck in overcrowded or otherwise poor conditions, without toilets, heating, or lighting, then evacuation should be considered after 30 minutes and be an absolute requirement within 60 minutes.
If conditions are better with seats for all, ventilation, and working toilets, then evacuation is far less urgent.

If we are serious about the climate emergency, that means encouraging use of trains instead of cars or aircraft. And that in turn means a reliable service, even in moderately adverse weather.

Today is a good example of train crews being delayed by disruption.
Quite a few cancellations and VERY late running into the far West.

It almost seems as if alternative crew depots are needed between the main depots.

Now you mention it - yes, I think those stopped a while ago now you mention it. Costs, maybe?

The last one I got was on the 1st April(!).