Service levels influenced by locally resident management?

[whole diary]

[grahame]

... a large number of Wessex trains key personnel lived in Melksham ....

Really? ... that's news to me!  Can you provide data to back up that statement?  I would be most interested to learn more.

[The SprinterMeister]

... a large number of Wessex trains key personnel lived in Melksham ....

Really? ... that's news to me!  Can you provide data to back up that statement?  I would be most interested to learn more.

No actual data other than Westbury drivers telling me that they stopped and picked up various manager types at Melksham each day. You don't need to have too many managers living at a location in order for a franchise to lay on a train service it seems.

[JayMac]

No actual data other than Westbury drivers telling me that they stopped and picked up various manager types at Melksham each day. You don't need to have too many managers living at a location in order for a franchise to lay on a train service it seems.

So. Mess room gossip then? And none of these managers stayed with the franchise when First took over?

I find it hard to believe that a service pattern was decided upon based on where managers lived.

Incredulous.

[The SprinterMeister]

No actual data other than Westbury drivers telling me that they stopped and picked up various manager types at Melksham each day. You don't need to have too many managers living at a location in order for a franchise to lay on a train service it seems.

So. Mess room gossip then? And none of these managers stayed with the franchise when First took over?

I find it hard to believe that a service pattern was decided upon based on where managers lived.

Incredulous.

Up to you. Just telling it as it is. Or was under Wessex Trains.

Are you suggesting the Westbury drivers made it up?

[ChrisB]

I find it hard to believe that a service pattern was decided upon based on where managers lived.

Certainly used to happen under Bob Reid....

[Zoe]

Certainly used to happen under Bob Reid....

Which one?

[ChrisB]

Sir Bob....trains used to stop for him

[Btline]

Certainly used to happen under Bob Reid....

e.g?

[ChrisB]

Sir Bob....trains used to stop for him

[grahame]

Sir Bob....trains used to stop for him

I looked up Robert (Bob) Reid on Google as he was around at a time I lived far from any station ... surely it wouldn't relate to Melksham ... and learned about his concerns as the Chairman of British Rail in the lead up to privarisation.   I read in The Independent, 31st January 1993:

Sir Bob is also concerned about the motives of private operators. 'The regulator (who will oversee prices and competition after privatisation) must have a deep concern that there is no hidden agenda from a private operator to try to schedule trains in such a way as to have a long gap and force people, say, to use the same operator's buses for some of the journey,' he says.

I can't imagine what he was thinking. He couldn't have been imagining that a train operator would be allowed to leave a gap from - say - 07:20 to 19:48 where there had previously been services at  05:52, 07:45, 13:35, 17:02 and 21:33, surely?

[The SprinterMeister]

Ah - I think I may be beginning to see the picture here, and a picture I can recognise.
So - I think you're right, SprinterMeister - that the Westbury drivers stopped and picked up manager types, and it would seem that was to the extent of it being notable.

Not the same managers same time every day though. Surely there are limits to how many days you'd stay overnight in Melksham, much less make a career out of it...?
 

[Btline]

So a driver would see Bob on the platform and slam on the breaks?

[Zoe]

I looked up Robert (Bob) Reid on Google

Watch out though, there were two of them.  In this case you have the right one though as he was Sir Bob.

[gaf71]

I seem to remember in Wessex days, of a manager that lived at Newton St Cyres on the Barnstaple branch. It may be my failing memory, but I'm sure a lot more trains stopped there then, than they do now!

[grahame]

I've been taking a further look at this ... talking with a few people.

To this day, where a senior manager lives on a particular line / uses a particular train, there remains a tendency for little issues to get fixed far quicker than might be the case otherwise.   When you think of it, that's natural; Colin, let's call him, notices that the bins are overflowing at Fireplace station when he gets on the train there and drops a quick email to the right department.   And Colin's also going to be quick to notice (and at the early planning stage) when a planned change of a train time by a couple of minutes removes a guaranteed connection and will let folks within know - for the good of all passengers.

Colin may also notice within his own community a frustration that a train speeds by twenty to 10 each morning going exactly where they want to go shopping.  He also notes that it has just spent six minutes twiddling its proverbial thumbs at the previous station, and suggests that an extra stop might be better use of its time, and generate some more revenue.  And knowing who to talk to, there's a chance of this happening - Colin's inputs will also be treated with considerable seriousness as he's not "just a passenger who doesn't understand how complicated these things are".

This is all very good for the railways - in fact, it might be a good idea to spread senior managers across all the lines as my contacts tell me that there's some clustering at the moment.   And - to my continued knowledge there isn't / wasn't / never was a cluster based at Melksham or anywhere else on the TransWilts.  I do understand that there may have been one (scarcely a large number) in the years leading up to and after privatisation, but I never came across him / her, and I was actually meeting customers / dropping them off at the station from the first week of the enhanced service in May 2001.

As regards to bigger changes, Colin can again be the eyes and ears of the railway industry and provide feedback - but these days there isn't stock lying around between the MO service and the next train it works which is the FO return.  So extra trains are hard fought, hard costed and pretty thoroughly justified.   I don't believe that a local resident manager at Melksham would as of him / herself bring a miraculous service improvement, and I've not seen that direct linkage at 7 other manager home stations that I knew/know of in recent years.