Why are railways so costly?

[Roadkill]

Responding to RoadKill is the current situation a bit like just before the 194 rationalisation into the big four companies. Also remember that BR itself operated in regions as well so it wasnt just one big company and although I dont much about it I think the BR regions pretty much operated autonomously and hence the difference at privatisation between areas on rolling stock and infrastructure.

British Rail was divided into regions in 1948, mainly as a sop to the feelings of the big four's loyalists and staff. Until the 60s the regions were pretty powerful, but then the centre began to exert more control. The regions bore little relation to markets, and they resulted in duplication of effort and lack of co-ordination. In the late 70s/early 80s BR was reorganised into sectors based on traffic - InterCity, Freight, Network SouthEast and Cross Country - and the regional structure was broken up. I don't, therefore, agree that BR 'wasn't just one big company.' It was subdivided, but then so is every firm of that size.

The franchises are not really based on the old regions - more on key routes and traffic flows, which do bear slight resemblance to the old regional boundaries. They are based on BR's old sectors up to a point, but only insofar as most franchises are based on traffic from only one of them - i.e. Southern and SouthEastern are based on Network SouthEast.

I don't agree that the situation now is all that like the situation before the 1923 Grouping. The big difference is that the companies that existed then were all vertically integrated concerns, owning and operating their own infrastructure and rolling stock, whereas now those functions are separate. It is that fragmentation which is one of the key problems with the industry as it stands now. I don't really agree that more competition is the solution: I think it's part of the problem. What we need is some way of re-integrating infrastructure and operations, not separating them out still further.

On this thread there is some discussion of the railways and the record of the Big Four vs BR: http://www.urban75.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=189288&page=2&highlight=railways

 

[laptop]

British Rail was divided into regions in 1948, mainly as a sop to the feelings of the big four's loyalists and staff.

More that they didn't get around to integrating the old companies until, as noted, much later.

 

[Roadkill]

More that they didn't get around to integrating the old companies until, as noted, much later.

Up to a point it's the same thing, isn't it?

Tbh, given the attitude of many of the big four's managers towards nationalisation, and the state of the railways at the time, it's difficult to see what else could have been done.

 

[Isambard]

And the old pre-nationalisation rivalries continued. When the old LSWR/Southern Railway routes in Devon and Cornwall were transferred from BRs Southern to Western Region the old GWR loyalists set out to destroy the entwork and they did.

It was routes and networks that didn't really "fit in" with the regional bosses that got cut.

Somerset and Dorset Joint
Midland and Great Northern Joint
The Midland route between Birmingham and Bristol.
GWR north of Birmingham, with locals only beyond Oxford
Oxford and Cambridge Cross Country.

 

[davesgcr]

Although there was a lot of duplication in through routes - e.g. 2 routes to Birmingham , 3 to Manchester etc.

Remember the railways were in serious decline in terms of operational losses from 1955 onwards and by the 1960s were seen as a major liability for all bar the busiest commuter routes. Credit really to BR for holding the ring after Beeching (managers like Gerry Fiennes who came up with the reduced cost railway which kept a number of routes going - the East Suffolk line for example) - which have seen a renaissance since then.

Thats not to say there were some serious losses on the way - but the spoctres of Serpell etc in the 1980s could agian come back to haunt us.

Good things like Freightliner / Inter City 125 / and dare i say it - Pacer units kept the railway going where the alternatives if left to Marples et al were a much reduced network.

Still costs too much though ! ......

 

[Isambard]

Oh that dreadfull duplication of some routes!
If there were 3 routes from London to Manchester now it would stop c****s like branson using limited capaity to forve the fares up while creaming in subsidies.

When they extebded the M40 from Oxford to Birmingham, I didn't hear the road lobby bleating it was a duplicate to the M1 / M6 between London and Birmingham.

 

[Roadkill]

Although there was a lot of duplication in through routes - e.g. 2 routes to Birmingham , 3 to Manchester etc.

Remember the railways were in serious decline in terms of operational losses from 1955 onwards and by the 1960s were seen as a major liability for all bar the busiest commuter routes. Credit really to BR for holding the ring after Beeching (managers like Gerry Fiennes who came up with the reduced cost railway which kept a number of routes going - the East Suffolk line for example) - which have seen a renaissance since then.

Thats not to say there were some serious losses on the way - but the spoctres of Serpell etc in the 1980s could agian come back to haunt us.

Good things like Freightliner / Inter City 125 / and dare i say it - Pacer units kept the railway going where the alternatives if left to Marples et al were a much reduced network.

Still costs too much though ! ......

I suppose the saddest thing really is that if BR had got its act together in the 1950s and started cutting costs then, many of the Beeching cuts might never have happened.

If they'd got around to replacing steam-hauled local trains with multiple units and railbuses and made a serious attempt to cut operating expenses on the main lines, then the financial situation of the railways might not have been as bad as it was by 1960. There'd still have been cuts, but probably not nearly as many - and more of those duplicate routes (lest we forget, there are still two between London and Birmingham) might have survived.

I agree about the Serpell report. I read that not so long ago ... it makes the blood run cold. IIRC, the BR Board did quite a good job of trashing it though, highlighting its most extreme options to discredit the whole thing.

 

[Isambard]

BRs supposed failure to "cut costs" in the 1950s is a bit of a red herring Roadie. They were moving to more modern technologies in signalling, rolling stock etc etc but the accounting methods were skewed against them.

And the same time BR should have been cutting costs, the monies spent on roads and cars were exploding.

During the WCML upgrade there were trains to manchester from St. Pancras, we do need duplicate routes. Indeed the old Great Central route via Penistone from Manchester to Sheffield is a prime candidate for reopening.

What do people imagines in Europe when a new high speed line is openend?
There are still trains running on the old tracks parallel innit.

 

[Roadkill]

BRs supposed failure to "cut costs" in the 1950s is a bit of a red herring Roadie. They were moving to more modern technologies in signalling, rolling stock etc etc but the accounting methods were skewed against them.

True, but only up to a point. There were still branch line trains consisting of a steam engine and a single carriage well into the 1960s, rendering many rural lines heavily loss-making, whereas with a multiple unit or railbus they might have been viable. In general, BR stuck with steam traction for too long. They were building their standard steam engines well before the report on alternative forms of motive power had been completed...

It's true that their figures were made to look worse than they were (have you read The Great Railway Conspiracy, by David Henshaw, btw? If not, it's well worth a look...), but the situation wasn't good, and one reason for that was BR's persistence with labour-intensive steam traction and its slow-progress in reducing staffing levels and modernising services to attract more traffic.

During the WCML upgrade there were trains to manchester from St. Pancras, we do need duplicate routes. Indeed the old Great Central route via Penistone from Manchester to Sheffield is a prime candidate for reopening.

Good. Even Beeching wanted to keep the Woodhead Route because of its utility for heavy freight services. It was only closed in the 80s and all the track bed is AFAIK still there.

In general, I tend to agree on the duplicate routes thing. They've just spent a fortune on upgrading the Settle-Carlisle line, which if you remember BR was tyring to close well into the 80s. BR argued it was unnecessary as it duplicated the WCML: nowadays, it's heavily used by both passenger and freight traffic. Lest we forget, there are two routes from London to Birmingham now, both of them doing reasonably well for themselves.

I think it's unarguable that some lines had to go - especially rural routes. Either they catered for traffic that no longer existed, they could never be expected to attract enough traffic to generate a reasonable return or they were duplicates of routes too quiet to need two lines. Beeching's problem was that he had decided - or been told - what the solution was, and he found figures to back it up.

 

[Isambard]

How amy passengers, particuarly women, now feel happy using trains and stations at night where staffing levels have been cut?

CCTV or the ocassional oafish pair of security swaggering through the train doesn't give the same feeling of security as a guard or station master used to.

 

[Roadkill]

How amy passengers, particuarly women, now feel happy using trains and stations at night where staffing levels have been cut?

CCTV or the ocassional oafish pair of security swaggering through the train doesn't give the same feeling of security as a guard or station master used to.

Again, that's sadly true, but if BR had done it in the 1950s it might have helped to keep a few marginal lines going. Better an unstaffed station with CCTV than no station at all, leaving people dependent on buses and cabs.

Besides, I think station staffing was a pretty minor economy beside the savings they could have made from replacing steam traction and rationalising services earlier than they did.

 

[davesgcr]

This is a splendid and mature dialogue - Roadkill and Isambard are welcome in any railway staff messroom for a cup of stewed railway tea......

The points on cost cutting - or lack of - in the 1950s was a lost opportunity but it has to be seen in the context of a worn out railway afte the war and unfortunate tendancy to renew the old methods of working with new equipment - like building new non corridor local trains and a massive investment in marshalling yards which lost traffic due to the root cause being a lack of speed for freight trains (many of which were unbraked and low capacity and easy meat for the rapidly developing road transport lobby aided by the motorway and trunk road building frenzy) - if we would have had 75mph air braked trains with high capacity wagons and good transfer facilites our freight business would have surivived in far better shape.

Duplicate routes is a tricky one - but the investment in the West Coast electrification was only countenanced by the penny pinching Govt of the time if the parallel GW route to Bham Snow Hill and onto Wolverhampton and Birkenhead were run down to show "savings" and return on investment. The good thing is that we have managed to turn round some of these routes since - Chiltern to Bham was a dream 20 years ago with Snow Hill only just reopened for local trains and Marylebone officially on the closing list a few years before with an hourly slow stopping train the core business for much of the day.

Remember the plan to turn the West London line and the Northolt - Marylebone route into a busway ?

Will end by saying that the St Pancras - Manchester HST service of a few years ago was project managed , scoped and implemented by yours truly - one of the best things I ever did in a few days work - and worked a treat in keeping people on trains for a 15 month period while the Stoke and Crewe lines were bieng turned into a linear construiction site.


And I fully agree on station staffing - and conductors / staff on trains provided they dont hide in the back cab with the Metro ......

 

[oneflewover]

Indeed the old Great Central route via Penistone from Manchester to Sheffield is a prime candidate for reopening.

After cycling this section, by far the majority of it is still there. The tunnels are still used by CEGB or whoever does the power distribution now. The Hope line certainley suffers from congestion.

 

[franklin1777]

I know we might be kind of straying from the original question and I am playing catch up only just having caught up with the posts.

Thankyou roadkill for comprehensively answering my post, I was referring to the 1948 nationalisation group, but you covered all the points.

To address roadkills last point:

"I don't really agree that more competition is the solution: I think it's part of the problem. What we need is some way of re-integrating infrastructure and operations, not separating them out still further."

My example for what happens when there is little competition in the rail industry is quite topical, I present for debate First Great Western. They virtually own the south west rail network. Their first objective with the new super franchise, cut costs, cut seats, cut rolling stock and raise prices.

Beyond the network wide complaints re the infamous December 10th timetable they have now converted a Cornish train into a bus for a week while they use the rolling stock up at Bristol. Maybe they should not have returned other rolling stock back to the leasing company.

Without competition they don't need to worry about customer satisfaction they can provide minimum service for minimum cost. So just think what they would do if they had the infrastructure as well. All the branch lines would be closed because First already have a bus company down there. Of course it wouldn't start like that, the early and late trains would be replaced by buses, they would mess the timetable around and then present cases for complete closure.

Of course to stop this you would need govt intervention which I know has already been pointed out has its drawbacks but how else can you regulate crooks like FGW. Would you really want to hand them infrastructure as well?

BTW having thought through what would happen if FGW did get infrastructure, you would have to give these super companies, freight as well. Would a private company really want to juggle both completly seperate markets? Would freight not just wither away.

One example of the existing division working well is Chiltern Railways, they have partner shipped with Network Rail on major infrastructure projects such as Evergreen and the future looks to be even better. If the rest of the industry could work as well, then any further integration would appear un-necessary.

An economic suggestion to the original question might be that the high price vs capacity have reached an equilibrium level. Although ticket prices could be cut that would increase demand which would increase costs as companies invest to meet capacity reducing their profit. Plus over a 15 year franchise where is the incentive to do that. It could take all 15 years to get to a better profit equilibrium. So maybe ticket prices remain where they are because it is where companies can maximise profit, and manage demand.

 

[Roadkill]

The points on cost cutting - or lack of - in the 1950s was a lost opportunity but it has to be seen in the context of a worn out railway afte the war and unfortunate tendancy to renew the old methods of working with new equipment - like building new non corridor local trains and a massive investment in marshalling yards which lost traffic due to the root cause being a lack of speed for freight trains (many of which were unbraked and low capacity and easy meat for the rapidly developing road transport lobby aided by the motorway and trunk road building frenzy) - if we would have had 75mph air braked trains with high capacity wagons and good transfer facilites our freight business would have surivived in far better shape.

I can't disagree with that at all. Seems to me there was a real lack of vision and forward thinking at the top of British Rail in the 1950s. I suppose they had to concentrate on getting the network back on its feet after the war, but the fact IMO remains that they missed a massive opportunity by failing to replace old rolling stock and working practices with something that might have allowed the railways better to meet the growing competition from the roads.

Duplicate routes is a tricky one - but the investment in the West Coast electrification was only countenanced by the penny pinching Govt of the time if the parallel GW route to Bham Snow Hill and onto Wolverhampton and Birkenhead were run down to show "savings" and return on investment. The good thing is that we have managed to turn round some of these routes since - Chiltern to Bham was a dream 20 years ago with Snow Hill only just reopened for local trains and Marylebone officially on the closing list a few years before with an hourly slow stopping train the core business for much of the day.

Remember the plan to turn the West London line and the Northolt - Marylebone route into a busway ?

All too well.

<shudders at the very thought of Marylebone station being turned into a coach station>

It's to BR's credit that it invested heavily in the Chiltern line in the late 1980s IMO. Perhaps it goes to show what could have been done with other duplicate routes, had the money and the political will been there to turn their fortunes around.

I can't help but think that the reason Chiltern Railways (which I use a lot, and which offers a good service IME) has done well is that it inherited a newly modernised line, complete with new trains, from BR. I'd also be inclined to suggest that much the same could be said of GNER, though some would doubtless regard this as heresy...

 

[Isambard]

Remember the plan to turn the West London line and the Northolt - Marylebone route into a busway ?

Oh Jesus, my blood just ran cold rememberig that!

Will end by saying that the St Pancras - Manchester HST service of a few years ago was project managed , scoped and implemented by yours truly - one of the best things I ever did in a few days work

Really! I read about it in Modern Railways and was muchly impressed.

I know it was always planned as a temporary thing becasue of the WCML upgrade but I do wish it had been kept as an hourly HST service from St. Pancras to Manchester. If you live somewhere along the Midland line say around Luton or Bedford and you want to go to Manchester, are you going to schlepp into London to go from Euston or be prepared to change at least twice going on the normal trains......or get in the car?

I think there has been big demographic change in SE England over the last 50 years that needs to be reflected on the railways in terms of non London-radial routes.


Edit.

A lot of Chiltern's success is due to having to a large extent no other operators on its routes and a fairly self contained track infrastructure.
Compare that to 5+ franchises on a very complicated working timetable trying to squeeze in and out of Birmingahm New Street.

 

[Roadkill]

franklin1777,

It seems we reach an impasse, then! If a TOC has a monopoly in a particular region then it has little incentive to improve services; if it has competition, then the old problems of fragmentation come back into play. Complicated old subject this, isn't it?!

I'm aware that FGW have not exactly sparkled at managing the smaller routes in the south-west, but I didn't know it was quite as bad as that. It does seem to suggest that having the intercity and branch lines in one area in the hands of one company is not a good idea, and I do agree with you that I wouldn't be happy about handing First control over the infrastructure. But how typical is that situation? I'm not aware of another TOC having quite such a regional monopoly.

Moreover, I think the weight of evidence is still decisively in favour of the argument that separating track and trains is inherently inefficient, and that the current system is far more expensive than the old vertically integrated set-up. By and large, I don't think competition has worked - and tbh, I question how much difference giving the branch line operations to another firm would make even in the south-west, since they're not really competing against the intercity services.

One example of the existing division working well is Chiltern Railways, they have partner shipped with Network Rail on major infrastructure projects such as Evergreen and the future looks to be even better. If the rest of the industry could work as well, then any further integration would appear un-necessary.

At the risk of partially repeating mny post to davesgcr above, I think Chiltern works well for three reasons. In the first place, it's owned by a construction firm, so it is able to exert more control over infrastructure projects like Evergreen than other TOCs. Chiltern, then, is something of a special case. In the second, Chiltern Trains inherited a newly modernised service from British Rail. Unlike some, it started from a pretty good base and was able to build on that. In the third, as Isambard says above, it's a self-contained operator that doesn't have to worry about other operators on its lines.

A counter-example to Chiltern's record on infrastructure projects would be Virgin and the West Coast Main Line. The WCML was near enough falling to bits by the late 90s, BR's upgrade plans had been kicked into touch at privatisation, and the new upgrade plan agreed between Railtrack and Virgin was unrealistic. The upgrade ended up being completed several years late and at several times the projected cost (£9bn in the end, wasn't it?). In contrast, BR managed the East Coast Main Line electrification in the 80s on-time and within a very lean budget (too lean, which is why the OLE falls over in high winds!).

BR's record partly vindicates the idea that track and trains should be controlled by the same operator. One could go further back into history and suggest that the record of the Big Four and predecessors suggest the same. IMO it's no accident that pretty much all of the 19th century railway companies were vertically integrated concerns. Many of them managed some pretty impressive construction projects too, albeit in a different (and more favourable) economic context...

I don't know. I share your concern about giving companies like First and Shitecoach more control over the railways than they already have, but I remain convinced that the current, fragmented set-up is inefficient. The solution seems to lie either in greater co-ordination and regulation of what stands now ... or more radical changes in the structure of the industry. I favour the latter.

 

[Isambard]

What makes First's position in the South West worse still is that they also own the local bus companies now too, they have a TOTAL public transport monopoly.
And if you want to know what they are like, just try starting a thread on buses in Bristol.....

 

[Roadkill]

What makes First's position in the South West worse still is that they also own the local bus companies now too, they have a TOTAL public transport monopoly.

With the exception of Shitecoach, who run the buses around Exeter. Much as it pains me to say it, IME the service round there is quite good.

 

[davesgcr]

I think there has been big demographic change in SE England over the last 50 years that needs to be reflected on the railways in terms of non London-radial routes.

Too right - read some of the recent stuff in the press where certain individuals state we need electrification and upgrades of routes like Reading - Ashford via Guidlford and Tonbridge (Southern M25 rail bypass) , Guildford - Heathrow - Paddington (Airtrack) Oxford and Aylesbury to Milton Keynes and even a cunning Luton - Watford service (relieving the M1 and M25)

The railways are very radial orientated and need to check out and develop new routes which will expand the market and fit better with the demographics and economy of a post 1947 Town and Country Planning Act which of course created new towns and a greenbelt. The former were meant to be self sufficient - but is the new suburbia and the green belt has been leapfrogged by commuters - hence the 10,000 or so journeys a day from Milton Keynes and Northampton for work purposes. Much of the new rail investment in Paris for example is radial for the same purpose of serving new markets.

Finally - (even though its my day off) - there will inevitably changes in the structure of the rail industry - its too complex to manage through intrefaces and contracts.Its the sort of business that needs command and control with a proper remit and funding.(not more of the latter I stress) - we could call it the British Railways Board even !

The best years of BR - and I look back very fondly - were 1986 to 1989 when we were able to cut costs (sensibly without putting people on the street) - grow the business and relate to customers better - target where money was spent and quickly - and use the resources better.In my little area I had lots of freedom to do all this - and we could change things quickly with minimum bureaucracy - 2 sides of a page usually.None of this Track Access agreements / operating licences and regulatory / legal fodder and gravy train that was frankly "imposed" - all of whioch costs money and does nothing for the man on the Clapham High St platform. .

 

[Roadkill]

The railways are very radial orientated and need to check out and develop new routes which will expand the market and fit better with the demographics and economy of a post 1947 Town and Country Planning Act which of course created new towns and a greenbelt. The former were meant to be self sufficient - but is the new suburbia and the green belt has been leapfrogged by commuters - hence the 10,000 or so journeys a day from Milton Keynes and Northampton for work purposes. Much of the new rail investment in Paris for example is radial for the same purpose of serving new markets.

Again, I couldn't agree with you more. One tragedy of the Beeching closures is that so many cross-country routes were lost. A good example is the old Oxford-Cambridge route via Bletchley and Bedford. Bits of it are still open, but most of it's not ... and what would we give now for an east-west route avoiding London? Besides, just when the route's closure was being mooted, Milton Keynes, within easy reach of the line, was the fastest-growing town in the UK, which perhaps goes to show how ill-planned the whole process was!

Finally - (even though its my day off) - there will inevitably changes in the structure of the rail industry - its too complex to manage through intrefaces and contracts.Its the sort of business that needs command and control with a proper remit and funding.(not more of the latter I stress) - we could call it the British Railways Board even !

The best years of BR - and I look back very fondly - were 1986 to 1989 when we were able to cut costs (sensibly without putting people on the street) - grow the business and relate to customers better - target where money was spent and quickly - and use the resources better.In my little area I had lots of freedom to do all this - and we could change things quickly with minimum bureaucracy - 2 sides of a page usually.None of this Track Access agreements / operating licences and regulatory / legal fodder and gravy train that was frankly "imposed" - all of whioch costs money and does nothing for the man on the Clapham High St platform. .

Sad, isn't it? Just when BR was coming right, they broke it all up. BR made some awful cock-ups earlier on, but by the 80s it was doing pretty well.

Which former BRB member was it who said he thought the railways in Britain had probably never been better-run and more efficient than in the late 80s and early 90s? He might well have been right. It may also have been the same person who lamented the money thrown at the privatised railway and wondered allowed what BR could have done with investment on that scale. IMO it's nothing short of a tragedy that they weren't allowed to try.

 

[davesgcr]

Trust me - we will see Oxford - MK back on the network (if house building goes on) - plus some other sensible schemes! - more rolling stock / timetable recasts and electrification schemes like Nuneaton - Birmingham / gauge clearances for 9'6 boxes from Felixstowe and Southampton etc.

Watch out for some operator led strategic statements in the next few months - (Its the day job at the moment) - the trick is making sound economic cases without bleating on for undeliverable wish lists....sensitive territory all round.

 

[Roadkill]

I hope you're right.

Seems to me, though, that the cost of major projects is rendered prohibitive in all too many cases precisely because the 'web of interfaces and contracts' you mentioned above is so bloody expensive to administer!

 

[davesgcr]

Therein lies one of the root causes of extra costs .....especially like the West Coast project- if you can bear it download the National Audit Offices report on the (lack of) project management on the scheme until the cavalry in the shape of the SRA rode in and got a grip on the scheme / costs and outputs. Too late to stop some of the waste - but pulled it round and recovered something from the carnage. Without blushing the recovery team was referred to as small , competent and highly skilled.!!!!

There has to be something wrong when an industry has to pull in so called expertise from highly paid international consulatants (who will remain nameless) for advice when there are still enough sensible and competent home grown managers around who could have made a much better fist of things if the old establishment was around.

The ECML electrificaton project had 3 key managers who specified and delivered the project - in todays money they probabaly earned about £150K between them per annum.

A management consultant can charge out £2K a day for "advice" .....say no more.

And as for contractual arrangements - dont go there - "keep it in house i say" - apart from certain highly specialised functions which you use infrequently.

I was in Frankfurt about 18 months ago -in their impressive national control centre - and the DB stated they were considering a track access "performance regime" - (Where money changes hands for late running as a so called incentive) - I and my then boss put them right in such a manner it made the press !

We can but chip away and make a difference where we can .....

 

[pembrokestephen]

While we're on the subject of First, and the fragmentation of the railways, a slight rant.

My journey home from university involves getting a train into London at 1730, to arrive at Paddington a bit after 1830. There's a FGW train for Swansea which leaves Paddington at 1845, but I can't get that one because of ticket restrictions. That leaves me with the 1915: the last train I can get that will give me an onward connection on the last train to Milford Haven from Swansea (at 2225).

However, on about a third of the journeys I've made in the last 3 months, that train has either been delayed or (mostly) has ended up parked outside Swansea for 10 minutes, thereby causing me to miss my connection. The second time this happened, I realised why: three out of the four platforms at Swansea were occupied by FGW sets being stabled overnight, and the fourth one held the Milford train. So, in their wisdom, the solution to this problem was to hold the incoming train to allow the Milford one (let me just remind you: the last train to Milford of the day) to depart, then allow the London train into the platform that one occupied.

I expect you can see the flaw here. Now, I don't know to what extent the fact that the services are run by two different companies makes any difference (the West Wales services are run by Arriva), but I strongly suspect that a unified rail system would a) care a bit more about maintaining its connections, and b) wouldn't allow this conflict between train companies which involves one of them monopolising all the available platforms to develop on a regular basis.

What then happens is that I have to go and speak to the (Arriva) staff on Swansea station. It is often quite clear that they don't see it as their problem: I arrived late for an Arriva train on a FGW one, and their normal response is to say "get the next one to Carmarthen, and sort it out there". That entails a 40 minute wait for that one, followed by the entertaining task of persuading the staff at Carmarthen that they need to organise my onward transport due to something that happened at a station an hour away, caused by a train company which is nothing to do with them. Quite often, this will result in a further hour's delay while they get authorisation and then have to find a taxi firm that'll take me West.

It is hard to have any faith in the way the rail system operates while simple and avoidable situations like this prevail.

Furthermore, more and more train companies are now trying to load-balance by restricting travel on certain trains and routes. I discovered this Monday that this means I have to time my outward journey such that it doesn't involve travelling anywhere between Carmarthen and Cardiff during the morning "peak" (which seems to end at 1100, if my informant at Carmarthen is correct), but not on any train which is timed to arrive in London anywhere after 1630, otherwise that counts as a "peak" service too. What this effectively leaves me with is a window of about an hour and a half during which a Saver ticket from Pembroke or Milford is valid for the entire journey. It's also worth observing here that trains from Pembroke (my nearest station) run on a 2 hour headway. Things are so bad now that I actually tend to drive to Carmarthen (36 miles, plus the aggravation of trying to find somewhere to park, and paying for parking) rather than rely on the Extreme West service.

Annoyingly, the trains I am not supposed to travel on (eg the 1845 ex Paddington) or the trains after 1330 from Cardiff) are significantly emptier than the ones I'm allowed to use. There is some good news - many guards never notice the availability issue, and I suspect that many don't care, anyway. The one time I did get the 1845 and get challenged, I had a mini rant about the train being emptier than the one following and the whole missing-connections-at-Swansea debacle. When he still insisted I had to pay the difference between a Saver and an open return, I refused, said I'd leave the train at the next station and wait for the following one, and asked his name so I could quote him in my letter of complaint. He grinned, and said "stay on the train, but I never told you that".

It's really not any way to run a railway, though, is it?

A Saver Return for this journey is £68. An Open Return is £213. You can see my reluctance to have to pay for an Open Return ticket, even if it's only half of one for one direction of travel.

 

[pembrokestephen]

I think there has been big demographic change in SE England over the last 50 years that needs to be reflected on the railways in terms of non London-radial routes.

I just wanted to say how refreshing it is to hear an informed, knowledgeable and reasonable line from someone who's evidently very much on the "inside" of the rail industry.

I am absolutely certain that a lot of the frustration that people using railways in the UK experience would be reduced greatly if we were being spoken to the way you talk on here, davesgr - one of the most irritating things is the stonewalling that seems to arise every time any questioning of policy or operation takes place.

 

[Roadkill]

I just wanted to say how refreshing it is to hear an informed, knowledgeable and reasonable line from someone who's evidently very much on the "inside" of the rail industry.

I second that.

 

[davesgcr]

Thanks I am flattered......(but would love to say a lot more about some of the bollocks I have had to pick up on ... will write this up sometime when retirement happens down line)

Pembroke - can I suggest you email your comments on both ATW and FGW to the respective companies. There is something wrong with saver restrictions west of Swansea - a friend of mine regularly books a ticket to Gowerton but travels to Swansea which allows him to travel in the peak from London but costs about a pound more. The conductors know all about this and just say something like there are about 40 Gowertonians on the train but no sign of them on the connecting train - i suspect the restrictions are all about peak loadings out of Paddington geared at the "mid distance" flows to Swindon etc. Long distance flows like that need to be encouraged - full stop) - i will take it up personally next meeting at Cardiff.

Swansea incidentally is a bugger for capacity and my old scheme of redoubling Swansea West loop where all of the trains from West Wales comes over a single line is to be congestion busted in 2009 / 10 along with 2 tracks all the way to Llanelli plus a new station at Cockett. If this all happens - and I am confident it will - this will make the West Wales experience much , much better.

Not that I have any bias towards Wales of course .......

 

[Isambard]

Don't get me started on Great Western's fares!

x a lot!

 

[pembrokestephen]

Pembroke - can I suggest you email your comments on both ATW and FGW to the respective companies. There is something wrong with saver restrictions west of Swansea - a friend of mine regularly books a ticket to Gowerton but travels to Swansea which allows him to travel in the peak from London but costs about a pound more. The conductors know all about this and just say something like there are about 40 Gowertonians on the train but no sign of them on the connecting train - i suspect the restrictions are all about peak loadings out of Paddington geared at the "mid distance" flows to Swindon etc. Long distance flows like that need to be encouraged - full stop) - i will take it up personally next meeting at Cardiff.

Thanks - I'll do that. They used to advertise some of the trains ex Paddington as "No Savers, except west of Swansea", but that's gone now. There was also something about being able to pay an extra fiver on-train to "upgrade", but that appears to have gone by the board about the time the Advance First fares came in (and, coincidentally *cough*, at about the same time as the Saver restrictions got even more onerous). One of the biggest problems is actually trying to find out authoritatively what services are valid when - for a while, I was able to buy a "Not via London" ticket, but not a "via London" one, but nobody knew why. Since my up journey doesn't need to go via London (timescales aren't as tight), I'd settle for that and excess the down journey, but I hit a problem there once when I didn't have enough time to queue at Paddington for 15 mins to do that, and the gatebastard wouldn't let me through - that would have turned my journey into an overnight one. In the end, I waited until 2 mins before the train left, and gatecrashed it, ran down the platform and got on before anyone could do anything, but that's not a sound strategy.

Swansea incidentally is a bugger for capacity and my old scheme of redoubling Swansea West loop where all of the trains from West Wales comes over a single line is to be congestion busted in 2009 / 10 along with 2 tracks all the way to Llanelli plus a new station at Cockett. If this all happens - and I am confident it will - this will make the West Wales experience much , much better.

*nods* Yes, I could see how that might help a bit. I think that Swansea gets full because the through Carmarthen HST eventually comes back to Swansea (for stabling?) later that evening and adds to the congestion. What I'd really like would be a service that went through on the Swansea District Line, took the cutoff at Carmarthen to head straight down towards Pembroke, and ran on a half hour headway, all the way through up until about 1130. Wouldn't have to be HST, though - see, I am quite flexible

Even better would be if it cut off the whole loop round by Tenby and Saundersfoot, and we had a new line from somewhere around Narberth that went directly through to Pembroke, which would save an hour on the journey. If you could just slip that proposal into a big pile and hope nobody notices, that'd be great!

I suspect that the Pembroke line would probably be one that suffered if they did any more network cuts - my guess would be that they'd lose it altogether and just leave the line to Milford/Fishguard, or chop it off at Tenby. West of Tenby, it's a peculiar thing: it's like a 15 mile long single track block with no signals , and the Pembroke Dock trains are those funny little one-carriage things. When they don't break down, in which case there's nothing for 4 hours.

Not that I have any bias towards Wales of course .......

Well, quite *ahem*. Me neither...