Shortage of train crews on Great Western Railway since September 2017 - ongoing discussion

[whole diary]

[TaplowGreen]

This won't help but I hope it's not too serious for those involved...

Cancellations to services between Penzance and Truro

Due to a person being hit by a train between Penzance and Truro all lines are blocked.

Indeed - it'll compound the situation - sympathy to all affected - disruption now expected until 1300.

[grahame]

70 cancellations now, Cornish branches decimated, Truro - Falmouth suspended.

How is this allowed to happen day after day? Is anyone taking responsibility for it? The last few weeks would suggest otherwise.

I have never run a big business - but I have run a small business, and also a small specialist department in a bigger company. Those operations have all required staff planning to cover scheduled opening hours, in one case cover from 06:30 or 07:30 to 21:00 with possible extension to 23:00 on short term demand.  And with someone always on call / able to be present within 15 minutes. And I would have been ashamed, and really feel I had let my customers down, if me and the team had been unable to achieve the cover - allowing for a failure of perhaps a few hours every year.  We did not have the addition of geographic spread nor safety work hour regulations (though we were, I believe, always safe) that the rail industry has.

So much of what we managed came down to working as a team, appreciating the need to look after the customers and for someone to work an anti-social shift to reach our combined objective. Often, this meant overtime hours over and above what made economic sense for the revenue raised during the extra shift.   Apart from the geography / work hour regulations / longer training periods in the rail industry, where are the differences? I suspect they're in staff relations, they're in recruitment where people who worked for me knew the mandated 24x7 cover when taken on, in the ability to pay for enough cover to ensure we could handle unexpected requirements, in the committment of everyone to the greater good and customer service and, dare I say it, to planning for the cover.

This is not just a GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) problem though ... I have been watching Recent Train Times logs for Northern on a facebook group (like the Transwilts one I posted here a couple of days ago) and they too have a lot of orange - perhaps the same proportion.  From a TransWilts viewpoint, the difference was the number of successive trains cancelled, and the wait time for the next service (if there was one) ...15 or 30 minutes is rather different to [insert number] hours.  I have even come across a rail industry organisation who are DfT^» (Department for Transport - about) recognised to represent the community who posted "We will be shutting up shop for the festive season from 24th Dec to 6th Jan. From all at [name deleted] - we wish you a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!" ... while we leave you to fend for yourselves!

[GBM]

This won't help but I hope it's not too serious for those involved...

Cancellations to services between Penzance and Truro

Due to a person being hit by a train between Penzance and Truro all lines are blocked.

Indeed - it'll compound the situation - sympathy to all affected - disruption now expected until 1300.

Cornwall Live not showing any additional information as yet
https://www.cornwalllive.com/news/local-news/live-trains-rail-cornwall-cancelled-3682861
Person hit by train and rail services cancelled across Cornwall - latest updates
continues..

[Timmer]

Looks like they’ve found someone to work the Southampton-Portsmouth’s as they’ve been removed from the cancellation list so some good news there.

[JayMac]

This won't help but I hope it's not too serious for those involved...

Cancellations to services between Penzance and Truro

Due to a person being hit by a train between Penzance and Truro all lines are blocked.

Indeed - it'll compound the situation - sympathy to all affected - disruption now expected until 1300.

Cornwall Live not showing any additional information as yet
https://www.cornwalllive.com/news/local-news/live-trains-rail-cornwall-cancelled-3682861
Person hit by train and rail services cancelled across Cornwall - latest updates
continues..

Sadly, the person died at the scene.

[LiskeardRich]

Welcome back to 55 cancellations and 15 services running short (as of 8am) mainly local services in Cornwall with all branch lines seeing quite a few cancellations. A few IC^▸ (Inter City) services affected. All good on the Transwilts so far.

70 cancellations now, Cornish branches decimated, Truro - Falmouth suspended.

How is this allowed to happen day after day? Is anyone taking responsibility for it? The last few weeks would suggest otherwise.

Christmas is always a pretty dismal time for customers with extreme overcrowding but at least in recent years the advertised service has (largely) run with a few additionals, this year GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) just seem to have given up.

Where are all the crew? (if the answer is "On holiday", then management need a boot to the backside for failing to manage their workforce to meet the needs of the business)

We went as a group of (including toddlers) 10 of us to Looe today, a 17 seater minibus was being used to replace the trains that weren’t running. We planned our day to come back on the 1506 which was showing running as wouldn’t be right to take majority of the transport as a large group.

Hypothetically if we’d wanted to come back at 130* or 140* would delay repay be eligible for us coming back at 150* because we chose not to take over the sole minibus. We took the kids to the arcade and the park to waste the extra time as it was a nice day so not a big problem for us (we’d intended coming back earlier)

[grahame]

Cornwall Live not showing any additional information as yet
https://www.cornwalllive.com/news/local-news/live-trains-rail-cornwall-cancelled-3682861
Person hit by train and rail services cancelled across Cornwall - latest updates
continues..

Sadly, the person died at the scene.

A little more from this is the West Country

A British Transport Police spokesperson said: "Officers were called to lines in Truro at 9.49am this morning following reports of a casualty on the tracks.

“Paramedics also attended however sadly a person has been pronounced dead at the scene.

“Officers are now working to identify the person and inform their family.

“The incident is not being treated as suspicious and a file will be prepared for the coroner.”

[RA]

Looks like they’ve found someone to work the Southampton-Portsmouth’s as they’ve been removed from the cancellation list so some good news there.

A lot of the early Southampton to Portsmouth cancellations were reported as being caused by a unit being vandalised at Fratton over the Christmas period and not being fit for service.

[TaplowGreen]

Similar crew shortage problems today causing cancellations/foreshortenings, to which are added an additional number of short formations from Penzance/Plymouth - Paddington (5 instead of 10), ensuring some extremely uncomfortable journeys.

[Timmer]

Similar crew shortage problems today causing cancellations/foreshortenings, to which are added an additional number of short formations from Penzance/Plymouth - Paddington (5 instead of 10), ensuring some extremely uncomfortable journeys.

Now now TG, you’re forgetting the mantra A five coach train is better than no train.

People can moan that Broadgage has gone on about it but we are continually seeing five coach trains in place of full length trains more than two years on from the introduction of the IETs^▸ (Intercity Express Train). It’s become quite clear this won’t ever change thanks to the myriad of reasons that you can come up with for only running a half length train. Only solution, lengthening the five car IETs. That means only one thing though... ooooozzzzz gonna pay for it!?

[grahame]

There will indeed be some crowded trains, and I note "more requiring service at the same time" type reasons.  A person was hit by a train near Box about a week ago, and a car hit by a train at Bradford-on-Tone soon thereafter. Another person was hit by a train in Cornwall yesterday.  Such events lead to a train requiring unscheduled attention before its return to service, and indeed also reduce driver availability for what I'm pretty sure is a longer period. How much could these events (and others I may have looked past) be causing part of the current shortage - a significant amount, or are they just a tiny bit of the story?

[broadgage]

Similar crew shortage problems today causing cancellations/foreshortenings, to which are added an additional number of short formations from Penzance/Plymouth - Paddington (5 instead of 10), ensuring some extremely uncomfortable journeys.

Now now TG, you’re forgetting the mantra A five coach train is better than no train.

People can moan that Broadgage has gone on about it but we are continually seeing five coach trains in place of full length trains more than two years on from the introduction of the IETs^▸ (Intercity Express Train). It’s become quite clear this won’t ever change thanks to the myriad of reasons that you can come up with for only running a half length train. Only solution, lengthening the five car IETs. That means only one thing though... ooooozzzzz gonna pay for it!?

I would argue that Hitachi should lengthen a few of the 5 car units to 9 car at their expense.
As compensation to the customer for not meeting the promised levels of availability and the consequent overcrowding.
We fairly regularly see a dozen or more half length trains a day, perhaps three or four diagrams.
Lengthening 4 of the 5 car units to 9 car would greatly reduce short formations.

It might be worth GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) paying for additional lengthening, but it seems reasonable for Hitachi to pay for the first few.

[IndustryInsider]

It might be worth GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) paying for additional lengthening, but it seems reasonable for Hitachi to pay for the first few.

That might be the best way of getting a deal done, but it won't be any time soon IMHO^▸ (in my humble opinion).

Allocations are all over the place today, as there's long formations (9-car units working 5-car diagrams) as well as the short ones. 

Though I will (once again!) stress that you can't believe anything on JourneyCheck, the following showing as 5-cars:
10:57 Paddington to Plymouth - but is a 9-car 800
11:57 Paddington to Penzance - but is a 9-car 802
15:15 Plymouth to London Paddington - but is a 9-car 800
17:50 Penzance to London Paddington - but is a 9-car 802

 I will give it until the end of January before, if it remains regularly more than one diagram a day that's short (for whatever reason other than really exceptional ones), I will agree that something should be done.

[tomL]

Speaking of all over the place today...

I took the 1330 from Swindon to Gloucester which ended up being 26 mins late (annoyingly close to the next delay repay tier  ). The reason for the delay was waiting for the driver from a late running Bristol to Paddington train which appeared to be scheduled for 1338 but arrived at 1350 in the end. Seems like some shuffling is taking place behind the scenes to keep things moving but surely this would never be possible as a standard diagram?

[IndustryInsider]

The reason for the delay was waiting for the driver from a late running Bristol to Paddington train which appeared to be scheduled for 1338 but arrived at 1350 in the end. Seems like some shuffling is taking place behind the scenes to keep things moving but surely this would never be possible as a standard diagram?

All being well they should have worked the 12:28 from Bristol to Swindon arriving at 13:03, but all wasn't well so they travelled on the one you mention arriving around 13:50. 

Diagramming crew together onto the same train for as long as possible is one way of helping deal with disruption and reduce the knock-on effects you might otherwise get.  But over the years there seems to have been a slow change towards trying to economise the number of diagrams and at the same time expand the number of depots, so more trains have crew swapping over mid-way through.  Saves money on paper, but causes additional problems in reality.