No matter the company, be it FGW^▸ (First Great Western), Network Rail, SWT^▸ (South West Trains), EWS^▸ (English Welsh & Scottish Railway Ltd, now known as DB Schenker Rail (UK^▸ (United Kingdom))) etc etc, the railway industry must work as a team to make rail the number 1 choice for Passengers and Freight.

Engineering works are, (whilst of benefit in the long term), really bad news for Freight and Passenger users alike, hundreds of thousands of would be passengers take to buses, cars, even planes (or don't travel) when engineering work cause buses to be used for part (or all) of a Journey.

Just remember if the passenger finds a plane (or car) cheap, quick and hassle free, that could well be a passenger that just doesn't come back to the railway at all.

So I was not at all pleased when Network Rail (NR^» (Network Rail - home page)) planned 4 days of engineering work on the Par-Newquay line from Good Friday-Easter Monday 21st-24th March.

Being a holiday destination the 4 day closure was at best at a very bad time, but if it means a better, faster and more reliable service to Newquay then maybe (just maybe) short term pain for long term gain is justified!

However the rumour mill has it that,

All the engineering work on this 4 day line shut down of the Newquay branch was cancelled

Sorry but if that's true then somebody should answer to it.

Anyone got the truth out there please!

Wouldn't it be nice if all trains ran to time, whilst customers of FGW^▸ (First Great Western) and other train services put up with crowded trains, expensive (and cheap) journeys at times, it's a common fact that it is important to people that services run to time, going to/from work, for connections and apointments, flights and shipping services arriving on time is sometimes a must.

Two things I will comment on:

For very important meetings, flights etc, I would suggest taking trains that get you in an hour or more early.
I often lodge in Hotels overnight when something important is on the next day.

As an old railway hand I'm not all that happy that train doors are now closed at least 1/2 a minute before departure and often underway 20 seconds before time, when I joined the railway trains never got the "right away" before time, but I guess things change.

Something passengers may not know is just how much time is spent by FGW, (and other TOCs^▸ (Train Operating Company)) looking into "lost minutes".
On a daily basis lost minutes are investigated, seaching for reasons, what lessons can be learnt and to agree/disagree with Network Rail where the "Blame for lost minutes lie", as of course NR^» (Network Rail - home page) charge for delays caused by FGW, likewise FGW reclaim charges from NR when NR cause delays.

I often think if all that time and money was rechanneled into projects we would have a much better railway.

It does seem strange to spend maybe an hour "Brain storming" why the 08.20 lost two minutes at the station.

So all you good passengers out there, rest assured FGW do care about your train running late, it might be costing FGW money, let alone Taxi costs for missed connections etc.

I'm going to share one of the items that get my hackles up.

It used to be that BR^▸ (British Rail(ways)) had it's own maintenance teams and every week we would have a visit from at least one member of the maintenance team based at the principal station up the line.
A simple request to the effect, "whilst you're here theres a light flashing in the ladies" and the job was done, no paperwork, no bill to pay, just a good service from staff who put the railway first, staff who had time to help the travelling public with any questions that were put to them, such as which platform for the Oxford train?

Today it's a culture of contractors, this alone raises questions on security, we used to known our in-house staff and if outside staff came in to work on railway projects it was always done under guideance of the in-house teams.

Now dozens of contractors seem to flood the railway, we have to sign them in, give a briefing and it's down to the station staff to ensure their safety, I'm not happy about this, we have our own job to do without being a nursemaid to contractors.

Now the real crunch, typically contractors do their work and come in with paperwork to be signed off, yet almost to a man, whilst  the paperwork has a description of work done and the arrival time, the rest is left blank, hours worked and departure time is blank.
I've challenged this before, just to be sworn at and called a job's worth.

Even worse I've had paperwork nicely filled in to sign, to find that the top copy is filled in with site times and leaving time but the copies underneath are blank.

To me this is fraud, I don't like seeing so called engineers claiming its taken 4 hours to change 3 light bulbs, cctv replay showed it took less than 1/2 an hour.

But then as it was put to me, under BR if a job took to long, question were asked and a dressing down would occur.
Under contract the longer a job takes the better, after all who is the Contractor looking after?

This has been raised at staff briefings but FGW^▸ (First Great Western) seem to hold the view that "the contract is signed, their's nothing we can do"

Then why keep signing up with the same contractor?

Well it's early on a Saturday, whilst many have weekends off, the railway is 24/7 I'm just leaving to get to work. Good day.

Trains would run to time if it wasn't for passengers.

That is spoken quite often by railway staff, it's not totally true as all manner of things hold up trains, but these are the big time delays, such as unit failure, signal and track problems.

However when trains loose time in stations it's more often down to passengers and a minute here, minute there and you are soon 10 down and just a few minutes delay causes Network Rail pathing problems especially where routes join, which train goes first?

Information to the public about train formations help reduce station dwell times, the simple act of closing a slam door behind you also helps.

On a visit (off work) to Falmouth for a weekend, I was very impressed with the manual station announcement at Truro about the formation of the train (1st class at front, then carriage E at the waiting room area, trailing back to A at the exterme end of the platform).
This was backed up by the despatch man walking along the platform just before the train ran in checking that only 1st class travellers where at the 1st class end of the platform.

I would estimate about 80 persons boarded and around 20 alighted at Truro and the train was given the  2nd battern to go within 50 seconds of the train doors being unlocked, impressive well done Truro.

Let me tell you of something that happen a while back.

Now at one station close to where I work a service arrives and has a booked station time of 10 minutes, however we had a problem phoned through to use that a mother had boarded her 3 and 5 year olds and then gone to the platform buffet for food or drinks, problem was train was 8 or 9 down on arriving and left on time, you get the picture.

Our problem we had a train coming to use and 2 small children to remove, quite rightly this was passed to the BTP^▸ (British Transport Police) who couldn't attend so civil police arrived, strange but it took several minutes for the free loaders to be located when the train (HST^▸ (High Speed Train)) arrived, whilst it arrived with us on time this incident caused a 14 minute delay in leaving.

I just wonder if there is a lesson to be learnt here.

Why didn't other passengers question such young children travelling alone?
The TM^‡(resolve) knew nothing of this untill the train was almost with use, he had started a search of the train.

Silly things like this will always occur but are totally outside the control of the railways
But at the end of the day "there's none as queer as folk"

ps Mother and Children were reunited very soon after.

I'm going to ask a question here and would like to see the feedback from fellow railway staff.

With the busy modern railway, I was personally greatly concerned to discover that many of the contractors who work on station do not have safety critical work cards, some do but most don't.

It might seem only a small point but non safety critical staff don't get to see the Network Rail safety videos and it's my impression that they look on working on the railway as as safe if not safer than working in other industries.

I've seen to many CIRAS^▸ (Confidential Incident Reporting and Analysis System) reports to be at ease with a lot of contractors.

This was reinforced in the past few days when contractors installing some new equipment (I don't want to say what, it would give a little to much away) broke of for lunch, it was only as they were seen, (at least 2 of them) to come back from a pub to restart work.

They were challenged about this, and after a short argument about drink and railway work they were given an option leave the station or face medical testing.
They left for the day coming back the next day (I think), the work has been finished.

By the rules they should have been screened for Drugs and Alcohol but I and my fellow staff don't want to get anyone the sack.

I'd be alot more secure about contractors if they had to have safety critical work permits.
The strangest thing is even some PTS^▸ (Personal Track Safety) holding contractors don't have safety critical permits, that just doesn't seem right.

Sorry flooding did cause problems to services, but that was mainly NR^» (Network Rail - home page) problem.

My post does refer to FGW^▸ (First Great Western) problems.

Without wishing to upset anyone, I'd just like to post the fact that during January I issued around 35% less taxi and bus replacement Dockets than for the month of December.
Should be taken into account that there are fewer passengers around in January than December (which is the busiest winter month).

Still far to many trains get cancelled, or short work, (turn back before end of booked working).

One suggestion I would make is that the Adelante units taken off hire should be made available by the Rosco's for short term spot hiring to cover for failed HST^▸ (High Speed Train)'s or other units.

With a spare Adelante around, a bit of unit swapping and that cancelled train can be reinstated.

I'm going to shock some people here, train crew mostly, but I'm going to side with Smokey on the issue of safety.

I don't deny that safety is first with train movements, but at the station I work at, we used to have a Small BR^▸ (British Rail(ways)) maintenance team (3 men) who looked after just about anything and everything for 50 miles up & down the line, this team were well know to all the staff from booking offices, to station staff, the permanent way (track workers), the signal box and signal maintenance teams.

Today we get hundreds of different contractors from all over the place, we don't know most of them, that in it's self raises a question of security, they have access to all sorts of rooms.

Train crews might be surprised to learn that contractors working at stations do not need pts, as work on platforms is
not deemed on or near the line.

Reading the posts on this web site, reliable train services is the top of most peoples requirements.

Let me look at this issue today and how it was under BR^▸ (British Rail(ways)).

In the BR days trains did break down but untill the HST^▸ (High Speed Train) introduction, all Western Region trains had buffers and if a train became a total failure the following train could 95% of the time be brought up to the Rear and push the failure forwards, or a rescue engine sent wrong line to the front to coupled up and drag the train forward.

Today often a total failure is that, and assistance from the rear is not an Option, because of different coupling types.
Resuce from the front these days can be tricky, some times possible, but more often than not a total failure is stuck untill fitters can arrive on the scene, this of courses causes real misery to the public.

More often trains fail before starting a journey because of safety issues, under BR with drivers and guards being muilt-disciplined if an express service failed, say at Swansea a local unit would be used to work the service to Cardiff where a spare express train would connect and work forward.

When FGW^▸ (First Great Western) get round to harmonising grades this would become an option once again.
Spare stock however, well BR had a bit laying around to cover for failures, relief trains and strengthing services when needed.
Today with Rosco's charging for every unit there is no spare stock, this is wrong, hire a tv from a shop and if it breaks down a spare tv is provided by the shop.
The Rosco's should have spare stock supplied at various locations to cover for failed trains.

Today servicing of trains is done at depots like Old Oak in London, Laira in Plymouth, however the resources to investigate failures are not in place, and units or HST failures don't get investigated as they should, no dis-respect to the fitters, the work they can do is limited by time and the need to get a train back to work.
It's frustrating to train crew and fitters that the trains suffer from repetitive failures.

In BR days all coaching stock had the Letters SP and a date on the external left hand end,
SP was shopping projected and was (I believe) done every 18 months when stock would visit works for a inspection, lifting from bogies, and any work required done, however stock having repetitive failures would be sent to works earlier than the SP date.

There was a lot of pride in BR workshops (Crewe, Derby, Eastleigh, Glasgow, Swindon, York) how many people realised that all screwheads inside a MKI coach were tightened and left with the screw head slots in alignment, no that wasn't excessive it was pride in the work that the staff were taught.

BR wasn't perfect but it provided value for money that today's railway doesn't. Given the money that poors into todays shareholders pockets and BR would have been the most upto date railway in the world.

What do other people think?

Station Manager.

Good day, I've been reading the coffee shop for several weeks, my user name might give a good clue to my job.

Let me state I'm a career railwayman and did my first turn of duty in my teens back in the late 70's. I've spent most, but not all, of my railway life at one of the principal stations on the western region.

I won't as a rule post items into the melting pot unless an issue posted is missing some factual evidence,
I do not need to say how badly things are run these days, web sites like this one, farce great western, I hate great western, and other anti-fgw sites say it all.

There are things going on these days that concern me greatly and I may well start some topics for others to support me (or not), railwayman have great input in this site, input from the public would also back up my concerns.

I look forward to 2 major sensible things happening on the railway.

1, Network Rail bringing in single line working at most engineering sites, doing away with most, but not all rail replacement bus services.
If for that to happen NR^» (Network Rail - home page) need to take relaying in house, then do it.

2, The Great Western franchise being run by somebody else, Anybody else! the sooner the better.
Whilst First run this franchise I can not see it ever getting better.
Far too much money is to be paid to the Government to run FGW^▸ (First Great Western)