Fife Circle - Flying Scotsman - 15/05/16

I wouldn't like to be NR's spokesman on Monday morning!!!

 

Inept cowboys ! Are they gauging locomotives on Windows 98 ? The timing of this is just outrageous. I hope NR get slaughtered for this from every media outlet going !

 

Interesting to read the local councillor's comments, I wonder what consequences this will have for NR...surely there will be some this time. A real shame this has happened, but it's about time this issue was exposed to the public eye. I thought that Scotsman would be a special case and surely NR would make sure all preparations had been made...wishful thinking it turns out!

 

Unlikely ! They seem to be above the law, when it comes to charters !

 

Scottish transport minister on the case

 

It's got to be the worst case of Network Rail incompetence ever. Given the amount of time tour bids are put in advance, and then for Network Rail to say it had not been able to carry out assessment work on the route in time is beyond belief.

It's bad enough not getting timings until a few days or a few hours in some cases ,before a trip, but this late gauging is becoming more and more frequent.

I seem to recall that when the planning department moved to Milton Keynes a spokesperson saying things will improve. Well I'm still waiting to see that happen

Makes you wonder if the rumour that's been mooted in the past that NR has a secret agenda to get steam off the mainline has a semblance of truth to it. Aren't some of the TOCS anti steam too?

I feel sorry for those that have paid out good money for this trip, and those who have worked so hard to make it happen, not forgetting the people in Scotland who may have made arrangements to see Scotsman.

A damn disgrace Network Rail.

Dave B

 

If it goes with a diesel, will the times be published ?

 

Sadly UK media moves faster than this, by monday it will be forgotten. But if it gets someone in NR out of their bed on a weekend it might be worth it.

People have been kidnapped for saying words like this.
But when Virgin satisfactorily proved that bods in the rail industry were pursuing an anti-Virgin agenda a few years back on the WCML franchise, I'm surprised it's not been put into the open sooner..
If you join the dots its not only conspiracy theorists who wouldn't fail to spot this pattern.


Seems Flying Scotsmans is becoming the Political Scotsman too.

 

Notwork Fail is plainly unfit for purpose.

 

And how does this help exactly

(1) Charter trains and steam locomotives are not - and never will be top priority to the company - which is quite firmly part of the UK Government now. That privilege belongs to meeting the DfTs requirements to facilitate franchised passenger operations and the the ORR requirements to facilitate freight and regular open access operators like Hull trains. Get used to it

(2) Yes its a cock up / admin error for which NR are to blame and for which they should make amends - rescheduling and compensating those unable to make the revised date is an acceptable response, plus a tightening of procedures to hopefully prevent a similar situation in future.

(3) As much as the media went hyper when Scotsman made her first trip, I don't recall them making much of a fuss when the overhaul ran into difficulty a few years ago. In fact most of the media look down on those who like trains as being 'weird' and as such Scotsman 'not fitting through stations' is hardly going to be something they will treat as seriously as you think.

 

And what purpose is that then - because I think you will find the SoS, the DfT, the ORR, etc will place serving the needs of regular travellers / freight over railway enthusiasts who don't fully pay their way in the first place.

Charter traffic is well down the bottom of the list and will stay that way unless the sector is willing to do what other TOCs and FOCs do - including taking full responsibility for any delays they may cause. The compensation payments to regular TOCs and FOCs as a result of the trespass seen at St Neots amounted to somewhere in the region of £68,000, all of which came out of NR coffers and which could far more productively be used to benefit day to day users.

 

Please get your facts right. Franchising is the sole responsibility of The Department For Transport

Network Rail has no input into the process of evaluating the bids - NRs sole input is restricted to technical data which has to be shared with all bidders. Bids are evaluated by civil servants in Whitehall and they were the ones found to be displaying an anti Virgin attitude when advising ministers.

 

I stand partially corrected.
I meant to say "rail industry" rather than "network rail', but it is 1am and past my bedtime.

 

Far too many people (as a generalisation) equate NR with BR style powers - and given our railway system has been privatised for 20 years now, ignorance of such basic separation in powers is no excuse for crude NR bashing. This is particularly the case on a railway related form where you are very likely to encounter those with professional involvement in the industry.

With the WCML franchising issue you highlight it doesn't take a great deal of searching on the internet to find the Governments official inquiry into the fiasco which proved the problems were entirely created by the DfT / Treasuary / Whitehall. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-21577826

Constructive criticism (as in complaining about NR forgetting / overlooking the gauge clearance issues and forcing the cancellation of a charter) is perfectly fine. Insinuating NR have an ulterior motive by using something in which NR had no involvement whatsoever is not.

 

Thinking back to some long-lost editions of Private Eye, I think there was some DafT bias against Virgin, this being one of the reasons why the projected new WCML franchise was temporarily granted to First in 2013. Then there was THE challenge from Virgin, DafT lost and the franchise renewal process collapsed.

As for low priority, this is not the issue- those of us on here with half a brain realise that charters are at the bottom of the pile. But there is still a basic level of customer service missing from the equation here, as it seems they had two years to say no, and certainly could have in the past twelve weeks. This just makes it crystal clear that companies like RTC take a lot of flak for NR's lack of service, and are left scrabbling around in the dark until a point is reached when they can't do anything about it.

 

That is not in dispute - Flying Scotsmans return to the mainline was eagerly anticipated by many and as such many people will be angry and disappointed by NRs inability to get the basics right - and not for the first time. As such NR do deserve criticism and should be held to account for their failings. But at the end of the day if the loco hasn't been gauged cleared then it hasn't been gauged cleared and NR cannot, under H&S rules cannot let the charter run. Yes appropriate compensation by NR should follow and yes, if the failure to undertake the gauge clearance was a deliberate oversight then disciplinary action should also follow. However it should also be remembered that there are many people within NR who are supportive of mainline steam and to use one or two incidents to demonise the whole organisation is not fair. Furthermore if you want such things to not happen again then encouragement to learn from mistakes usually produces better results than going round demanding scalps. Its why we have the RAIB to look into accidents rather than rely on Police investigations to give us the full details.

 

Maybe the prohibition caused NR to believe the train would not run so gave the gauging a lower priority. When the prohibition was lifted there was perhaps an oversight in reactivating it with a higher priority. No excuse but a possible reason.
Or we could go with the conspiracy theories.

 

I would probably go as far as to say you work for network rail reading your posts

No excuse for them getting this wrong. At all. Didn't have the right data? What a load of rubbish - they managed to gauge the engine for its first run out. So they have the engine gauging data. And if I'm not mistaken they run trains every day down the Scottish routes so they have that gauging data too.

I work in IT, and we have similar processes to gauging in our company for various other boring things, even the most complicated
Measurements and comparisons don't take any more than 5-10 minutes to get an answer from the computer. This is 2016, not 1984!! If you've got the data, and even if it takes 4-5 hours for it to be processed, that's still a fair window of time to either sort it out, or inform people if you have been told 12 weeks or even 2 years prior to the event!

I don't for one minute believe engineers have anything to do with it because they gauge trains all the time and undertake maintenance all the time - which means the data exists.

I think people have been incredibly patient with Network Rail over their last minute gauging 'difficulties' - the reality is probably that

A. The gauging office is a disaster area where people compare rear ends with elbows in an effort to discover where each should be attached..

or

B. Someone higher up didn't pass the gauging paper work or the request to the gauging office until 4pm Friday. They ran it down the software and it said no, and then they had to decide to stop Scotsman going that way. Either way it's a huge snafu for network rail, and it's about time they got a right telling off for it!

If something like this occurred in our company that was high profile and mistakes were made on his scale, it's likely the most severe action would be taken. I bet the gauging bods won't even get an email saying do better next time..

 

1) Yes, there are many in Network Rail who are pro both mainline steam & charters generally.

2) One or two incidents? I'm not sure where you have been for the last three or four years but even the briefest perusal of umpteen threads on this forum would indicate a failure rate by NR of one or two (or three) EVERY week. I'm also not sure how you can even justify the description of Network Rail as an "organisation".

3) Perhaps you could provide your estimate of just how many "mistakes" NR need to make before they are encouraged sufficiently to start getting it right ? Dozens ? Hundreds ? or thousands ? The hundreds mark was passed some time ago and the thousand mark can't be too far off. "Scalps" is an emotive word so lets use plain common sense terminology. If whatever Network Rail Manager specifically tasked with running the Network Rail charter unit is repeatedly incapable of gauging, timing or even managing the basic process then do you really think they deserve to be in the job?

 

Network Rail don't discriminate. They are equally useless with gauging and timing whether steam or diesel.