Broken down train at Hanwell 03/05

[whole diary]

[ChrisB]

Yup, couldn't agree more. Sounds as though the PAD^» (Paddington (London) - next trains) staff on the ground were badly informed/not kept informed at all

[ellendune]

What if the franchise payment to DfT^» (Department for Transport - about) (or part of subsidy from DfT) depended on how well companies did this.  You could perhaps measure it generally by the number of complaints received by companies. A phone call might receive one point, a letter rather more all the way up to a complaint to PF^▸ (Penalty Fare) say. Perhaps ORR^» (Office of Rail and Road, formerly Office of Rail Regulation - about) could do some calling of complainants to see how well customers thought the complaints were handled.

You could then rank the TOCS on the score and they would either have to pay more premium (or get less subsidy) for the worst score.

Fanciful?

Well its been done in the water industry for the last three years (but the payment will only be in 2015 when the next price settlement is done).  And the result...

Is a total change of attitude to customer service.  Taking a bit of time to work it down to the man on the shovel but its happening.

What if this was written into every new franchise....


TOC^▸ (Train Operating Company) = Train operating company

[Timmer]

What I struggle to understand is that we hear the same stories time and time again whenever something like this goes wrong on the railways with the TOCs^▸ (Train Operating Company) either not or refusing to learn lessons on how things could be done better when this happens again.

For me the biggest thing is the lack of communication at times like this. As Red Squirrel so rightly points out people will put up with quite a bit as long as they know what's going on and this applies in all walks of life not just on the railways.

As discussed in another post, we have to put up with endless announcements both at stations and on trains when all is running well but as soon as things go wrong, the announcements dry up and the digital displays become useless just saying 'delayed'. These should be switched off with a human providing as much information as can be provided at the time.

It's also an embarrassment to the rail industry when passengers take to their smart phones etc and find out more than what the staff at the station actually know about a situation when something has gone wrong.

[eightf48544]

Re the issuing of Special stop Orders surely it would have been known what time approximatley the broken down train would be dragged back to Ealing Brodway, so that special stops could have been issued at Padd for trains to stop after it's arrival. and detraining. After all it's only 7 minutes non stop PAdd to Ealing Broadway.

It's another issue with separating the wheel from the track management. The TOC^▸ (Train Operating Company) cannot do anything without Networkrail's say so, all plans have to be cleared by at least two sets of managemnt or maybe more if other TOCs use the line.  The days of control ringing the signal box saying stop the XX:XX at Y and issue a special stop for X are long gone.

However, I thought that was the idea of GSMR (not sure teh exact acronym) that the signalman could issue such orders to indiviual trains otherwise what's the point of it?

I also think this obsession with measuring an individual train's delay rather than the overall delay so that it's better to have one train delayed 30 minutes rather than 2 trains 10 minutes each. The stopper infront of a late runnign express syndrone. Rather than delaying the stopper say 5/10 minutes to allow a late running express in front you allow stopper out in front and further delay the express.  Crazy system especialy as it is likely conenctions will be missed and in the worst case taxis have to be provided.

[Network SouthEast]

Re the issuing of Special stop Orders surely it would have been known what time approximatley the broken down train would be dragged back to Ealing Brodway, so that special stops could have been issued at Padd for trains to stop after it's arrival. and detraining. After all it's only 7 minutes non stop PAdd to Ealing Broadway.

It's only 7 minutes when everything is working though!

When fast trains and stopping trains are forced through a bottle neck on to one line it can take a lot longer. On the evening in question it was taking some departures from Paddington nearly half an hour.

I'm pretty sure that evening many HST^▸ (High Speed Train (Inter City class 43 125 units)) services were given priority over Turbos just to get them out of the way too.

[ChrisB]

Those trains were already outside PAD^» (Paddington (London) - next trains) when the failure was dragged. So the first opportunity to get a stop order on a train soon to leave was done....

[eightf48544]

If they were taking 30 minutes to get to Ealing then there would have been plenty of time to isue GSMR instructions.