How would you like GWR to handle their inability to crew all trains timetabled?

[whole diary]

[Wizard]

At the depot I am most familiar with, either of those situations you describe is incredibly rare.

A driver who regularly blows out of Sundays by not following the agreed procedures would very quickly get a very bad reputation amongst his/her colleagues who have to pick up their work as a result.

That’s not the case though, because there isn’t anybody else to cover the turns so the trains get cancelled. Hence the situation we see every Sunday. If you’re in the east maybe things are different.

[IndustryInsider]

Yes, there is often some spare Sunday capacity at several depots.  This Sunday throughout the day there are eight spare/standby drivers in my local depot and one uncovered shift.

They’re just not able to help much with the depots that are short as they don’t have the traction/route knowledge.

[Electric train]

Have Sundays always been completely reliant on overtime workers, or was there a time (in the recent past) when people were rostered to work on Sundays?

The whole National railway system in BR^▸ (British Rail(ways)) days was reliant on overtime to cover not only Sundays but the Monday to Saturday roster; yes railway workers were on a 6 day roster.

Even today NR^» (Network Rail - home page) maintenance and operations rely on quit heavily overtime to cover shortage of staff in key areas this becomes very acute at holiday peak times of the year.  Some of the maintenance gaps are covered by contractors but they are very expensive in the long term and the contractors call out rates are eye watering.

The whole industry suffers from skilled staff, difficult to recruit when the rates of pay and working hours / conditions are more favourable in other industries