Great Western Coffee Shop

What will 2024 bring to the railway industry in the UK, and to our own GWR area, to the Swindon to Westury line and to services to from and through my own home town of Melksham?

I don't know what it will bring - but I CAN tel you what I think we need here (where I write from in Melksham):

* We need more RELIABLE train services.  90% of services running and with capacity for passengers who want to travel may be ok where there are three or more trains per hour - Trowbridge to Bath and Bristol, Swindon to London, but it is uttery inadequate for a station / line / service is infrequent - where the following train scheduled after the 06:36 isn't until 09:10 southbound, or northbound if the 08:02 does not run the next train is at 10:02. I would like to see more trains, but we NEED reliability and that must be the priority.

* We need better USER/PASSENGER SUPPORT. Melksham Station feels unwelcoming, and local information and promotion from Great Western Railway, Wiltshire Council  and from the Community Rail Partnership has been lacking. The Station Cafe / Hub which could have been so supportive of the use of rail didn't connect with real passenenger, and the running costs associate with the model used meant it was not viable postCovid.

* We need to work with a STRATEGY that it is realistic to implement, and have it implemented.  Away from the station, there is a strategy in the Neighbourhood Plan and Local plan which puts the station at the heart of the transport network as we move towards a zero carbon future, and we need that for rail too.  It includes service provision up from a thin to an appropriate and connected level that makes non-fossil, non-CO2 public transport the automatic choice for the vast majority of journeys.

These looks forward are at / for the very local area, but could / should / must have similar strategic targets for the line, the GWR area, and indeed the country as a whole and even for other countries.. Issues we talk about generally on the forum fall into the categories above and indirectly provide answers at Melksham - and at Keynsham, Evesham, Cosham, Corsham, Topsham too.   Whether we're looking at GBR, Railway funding, ticketing, opening new stations, keeping the infrastructure open, providing enough staffing and carriages they all trickle down from Government.

I think the most important thing is government commitment, which is lacking from the current administration and I am not sure would be there in a succeeding one.

A change of government.

In the broader sense I agree, but in the context of the railways I would suggest being prepared to manage your expectations as to any meaningful change.

There is something which the rail industry needs which requires very little Government involvement and that's a cultural shift to become a customer focussed business and to look at its services and how it treats its customers in that context, putting them at the front of everything.

I fear that many in the industry are already focussed on the customer, which (however) is the Government.

The TOCs operating the trains and stations are merely the revenue collectors for the government to whom the money collected is passed, and the payments to the TOCs comes from the operating fees they receive. 

I think you know what I mean Graham - the end user - the passenger - the fare payer to whom the TOCs provide a service and who to a greater extent than any other industry I know are often disregarded.

The Government is not a customer of the railways by any recognised definition, and let's not get into semantics, otherwise the message is diluted.

Unfortunately ever since 15th September 1830 when a train killed William Huskisson MP Governments have always seen the need to interfere in the running of the railway; I often think Sectaries' of State for Transport and Rail Ministers were all deprived of having a trainset when they were children so now as adult they just have to play with the trainset.

GBR may not be completely the right answer, but is the one the Rail Industry are saying is what the shape of the National railway system should be.  GBR would mean however the DfT will have less influence which is counter to the normal control freakiness of Central Government.

Apart from the current Government statement in the recent Kings Speech to outline the GBR framework in Parliament, GBR will not progress outside of the groundwork the Rail Industry are doing which is subject to political will post the next General Election.

What the National rail system needs is to be allowed to do what it does best, run passenger and freight trains without the behind the scenes manipulation of Government Ministers  

The UK desperately needs a '7 days a week' railway if we are ever going to get close to a truly reliable train service. As a minimum all passenger service operators must implement ASAP, if they haven't already, employment contracts for all 'new' drivers and other on-train staff which specifies mandatory weekend working (?alternate Saturdays & Sundays) on a rota basis. At the same time subject specific negotiations between the TOC's and relevant trade unions and/or staff associations concerning the implementation of similar working conditions for all appropriate existing staff should be initiated. Additionally as part of this process the TOC's and DfT should agree that compulsory overtime - an oxymoron if ever there was one - and 'real' overtime & rest day working should be eliminated ASAP with TOC's being permitted to employ sufficient staff numbers to make this happen.
The UK passenger railway network is a customer service system and it should be organised to fulfill that obligation.
  

I'm reminded that it was the then SRA who put the kibosh on the Bristol to Oxford through services though (which went through with a generous helping of 'But no-one uses it'  from various industry sources, which wasn't exactly true).

Mark

Indeed, it may be a question of "careful what you wish for"

My memory of using the direct train from Chippenham to Oxford is "full and standing".   But is IS true that these 2 or 3 carriage trains carried fewer passengers per train than the 8 car London trains, even if the passengers per carriage was actually higher!

Stability.

If you really do need a 7 day railway then as well as staffing it you are going to have to work out when/how you are going to do engineering works which will mean more use of diversionary routes which emans those routes (e.g. the line through a certain west Wiltshire town) will need improving. 

Journeys I've made over the last few days suggest a need for resilience. I'm ignoring where the funding for this comes from, and whether or not other improvements should be sacrificed to resource this (issues not unique to railways) but from a passenger perspective there's a substantial need.

Thursday...
Fatality near London. 11:23 SWA-PAD cancelled - IIRC because down working cancelled so no stock. Intermediate CDF-PADs cancelled. 12:23 left late, having been severely delayed on previous journey (fortunately long planned turnaround, but still late enough to around departure time), and very busy as a result of previous cancellations, leading to further delay.

Unhelpfully, onboard announcements said it was late because of delay on previous journey. True, but looks like it's just "one of those delays". A few passengers seemed to think it was weather-related - that the TOC couldn't cope with fairly normal weather, or that they could have known the weather would be bad and cancel in advance so people could re-plan. Perhaps if fatality had been mentioned passengers would have been more sympathetic.

But the main point is as far as I could see the line had reopened. It's just that there were huge knock-on delays and cancellations. Surely an up working had been cancelled or terminated short earlier, such that balancing movements could have been made to avoid cancellations and crowding on journeys that started some way from the issue in both space and time. Obviously when things like this happen it is a huge challenge to reorganise resources, especially with staff's break and end of shift needs having to be met. But the outcome here for passengers is that resources being tight means that it's hard to get things back to schedule, not to mention having to deal with Delay Repay claims, passengers worrying about missed connections etc.

Monday...
This time actually weather-related. Flooding-related diversion. CDF-PAD additionals cancelled - a reasonable decision in order to use diversion paths efficiently. SWA-PAD
diverted via Box, up trains delayed 30+ mins, arriving around departure time at PAD, and therefore leaving 10-15 late, along with a few RDG turnarounds.  I suspect if CDF-PAD cancellations were also being used to ensure enough staff were available given longer journeys and effects on timings for PNB. Issue still 'live' so no way to avoid the fundamental delays, but could the cancelled stock have been used to step down the stock workings and avoid the late starts, I wonder. A lot of extra planning to deal with diagrams being messed around, but again there's a cost here in terms of providing a resilient service.

Delay Repay fiddly as CDF-PAD didn't even show in the journey search, perhaps because cancelled the night before. Still showing in planners yesterday, anbd still showing as cancelled on screens at PAD, so I decided Delay Repay still legit and manually entered, but not ideal entering multi-leg journeys manually.

Having contingency and engineering plans in place to work out what's done when each and every part of the network is not available for passenger trains makes sense.  This morning, Swindon to Bristol Parkway direct remains closed and the cancellation map looks horrific - and yet everyone will get where they need if they wish, all be it up to an hour or so late, and trains may be crowded.

There are places where you would be squeezing a quart into a pint pot but yet a preplanned (or standard diversion) which maintains a thinned service along the diversionary route with intermediate calls makes sense - and indeed things are made easier if people know ahead and alternatives can be switched in for a week.  The 24/7 railway (in initial reality, probably a very thin service in the middle of the night) can make for a whole, sensible, planned working ethos.

Yes - I WILL quote a local example ;-) - I think we have seen just about all of these; no easy planning matter yet in most  cases there is a sensible "contingency".  It may well be diversion and most have been sorta-done before.
Bristol to Bath closed
Bath to Trowbridge closed
Trowbridge to Westbury closed
Westbury via Pewsey closed
Chippenham to Swindon closed
Chippenham to Bath closed
Chippenham to Trowbridge closed

I won't describe each and every one, but "Bath to Bristol closed" diverts the Cardiff - Portsmouth service via Swindonm takes out the thin Swindon - Westbury service and adds calls at Melksham, Chippenham, Swindon and Bristol (Parkway) into the service. Local "Bristol Metro" services start from Bath Spa.

"Westbury via Pewsey closed" - again takes out the Swindon - Westbury service but has the semi-fast service calling additionally at Swindon, Chippenham, Melksham and Trowbridge.

There are a number of methods being looked at to carry out maintainenance and inspections under the Trackworker Safety regime now in place where track access is only granted during line blocks.

One method being explored is to remove train services from the time table at lightly loaded times, note this is a removal from timetable and not a cancellation.  Controversial ............ yes however it does have outline support from some TOCs if it results in an increase in reliability.  It may be for example no service Wednesdays between 11:00 and 14:00 

I completely understand that at times the railway has to be closed for engineering purposes. But I think the industry could do much better with respect to both the number and capacity of diversionary routes - redoubling of the sections between Bradford & Thingley Junctions and Yeovil Junction & Castle Cary are obvious examples; reopening of Okehampton<>Bere Alston would not only benefit local communities but provide an alternative when the South Devon route has to be closed (and not just by the engineers!). A greater willingness to use Single Line Working - rather than the much loved RRB (Rail Replacement Buses) - would also help to provide a usable, if somewhat reduced, service when maintenance gets in the way. Furthermore when the use of RRB is unavoidable make sure the service providers know what they are supposed to be doing - it wasn't that long ago that on an RRB journey between TAU & BPW I was using the driver got hopelessly lost in the Filton area of Bristol.   

Lack of Government funding is often used as an excuse for poor railway performance, but there are some things which the railway industry can and should be doing better which are down to the management eg
•   Better regulation and thus better punctuality
•   Better customer information, particularly when the service is disrupted.
•   Better incident management to get the service back more quickly.

I think there is a cultural issue to be addressed which encourages risk-averse management and discourages initiative.

From the I (https://inews.co.uk/news/thousand-trains-axed-daily-britain-railway-crisis-2942036) this morning - a longish quote from a very long article which I urge you to read

and this:


was in the Guardian today
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/mar/08/government-failing-targets-to-fix-uk-railway-system-watchdog-reports