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Question: How would you like GWR (Great Western Railway) to handle their inability to crew all trains timetabled?  (Voting closed: November 24, 2024, 09:28:21)
Run a reduced timetable - 10 (19.6%)
Run a guaranteed train timetable with extras where possible - 12 (23.5%)
Run as many as they can on the day - 2 (3.9%)
When thinning out, remove alternate trains - 3 (5.9%)
When thinning out, run at least one every 2 hours - 7 (13.7%)
When thinning out, close services completely - 0 (0%)
I don't know - 1 (2%)
I don't mind - 0 (0%)
It's more complicated - 16 (31.4%)
Total Voters: 35

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Author Topic: How would you like GWR to handle their inability to crew all trains timetabled?  (Read 8233 times)
Wizard
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« Reply #45 on: November 28, 2024, 12:21:24 »

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.
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IndustryInsider
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« Reply #46 on: November 28, 2024, 14:38:50 »

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.
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« Reply #47 on: November 29, 2024, 06:48:37 »

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   
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Starship just experienced what we call a rapid unscheduled disassembly, or a RUD, during ascent,”
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