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  1. #1
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    Northernrail to be Nationalised ?

    About time too!

    The Government has taken the first step to Nationalisation of Northernrail by issuing a "request for proposals" from the firm and the Operator of Last Resort (OLR).

    David Brown, managing director at Northern, said the firm had faced several challenges in the past couple of years, outside the direct control of Northern.

    The most significant of these is the continuing late delivery of major infrastructure upgrades, including the North West electrification, which is more than two years late.

    Can anybody explain to me how multiple cancellations every week because of 'Staff Shortages' is outside of their control?





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  3. #2
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    Quote Originally Posted by Alikado View Post
    About time too!

    The Government has taken the first step to Nationalisation of Northernrail by issuing a "request for proposals" from the firm and the Operator of Last Resort (OLR).

    David Brown, managing director at Northern, said the firm had faced several challenges in the past couple of years, outside the direct control of Northern.

    The most significant of these is the continuing late delivery of major infrastructure upgrades, including the North West electrification, which is more than two years late.

    Can anybody explain to me how multiple cancellations every week because of 'Staff Shortages' is outside of their control?
    Are the staff self employed? Note the following - oh, wish!

    "The publicly owned systems in Germany, Switzerland and other European countries operate on a far simpler system. They have one dominant publicly owned train operator, and one publicly owned rail infrastructure manager" Wikipedia

  4. #3
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    Good. It's a bloody awful service.

    I use the route to Manchester regularly. It's terrible. Ancient carriages. Completely hit and miss whether or not the train turns up.

    Miss a train out completely, then put just two carriages on the next to arrive. Or get to Wigan and the rest of the journey to Southport mysteriously disappears until another train comes, or worse. You get stuck in Wigan. Nobody ever wants that.

    I reckon 'staff shortages' just means they won't employ enough people.

    Good riddance.

  5. #4
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    Quote Originally Posted by said View Post
    Are the staff self employed? Note the following - oh, wish!

    "The publicly owned systems in Germany, Switzerland and other European countries operate on a far simpler system. They have one dominant publicly owned train operator, and one publicly owned rail infrastructure manager" Wikipedia
    The German system is Deutsche Bahn which owns Arriva and Northern Rail. Northern Rail was previously run by Serco/Abellio. Abellio is owned by Nederlandse Spoorwegen, the Dutch national rail company. So why can't these nationalised undertakings which run successful transport operations in their own countries not do the same over here?

    Previous posts about staff shortages on Northern Rail have cited loss of newly trained staff to other rail companies offering better rates of pay.

  6. #5
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    Quote Originally Posted by Alikado View Post

    Can anybody explain to me how multiple cancellations every week because of 'Staff Shortages' is outside of their control?
    Say Northern need 1000 drivers to cover their booked services, then they need 200 more to cover Annual Leave and Sickness, then they need 20 SPARE drivers to cover empty stock movements, stock going to rescue a failed train, drivers involved in incidents ie Suicides, Signal irregularities, derailments or god forbid collisions. That may be their normal compliment BUT the line has been electrified x number of drivers require training on electric traction, the WHOLE LOT need training on the brand new trains but they can't bring in 1000+ to cover for that as when training finished they would be 1000+ over compliment who is going to pay for 1000+ drivers with nothing to do. So canceling trains was the only option. They can't train drivers on electric traction until the line has been electrified can they? They can train drivers on New trains in service once they have done the theory and static duties on the New trains but they still need an instructor with them until they are competent and normally an Instructor has 2 or 3 trainees with him so that is 2 or 3 trains that have no driver.

  7. #6
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    Quote Originally Posted by Little Londoner View Post
    Say Northern need 1000 drivers to cover their booked services, then they need 200 more to cover Annual Leave and Sickness, then they need 20 SPARE drivers to cover empty stock movements, stock going to rescue a failed train, drivers involved in incidents ie Suicides, Signal irregularities, derailments or god forbid collisions. That may be their normal compliment BUT the line has been electrified x number of drivers require training on electric traction, the WHOLE LOT need training on the brand new trains but they can't bring in 1000+ to cover for that as when training finished they would be 1000+ over compliment who is going to pay for 1000+ drivers with nothing to do. So canceling trains was the only option. They can't train drivers on electric traction until the line has been electrified can they? They can train drivers on New trains in service once they have done the theory and static duties on the New trains but they still need an instructor with them until they are competent and normally an Instructor has 2 or 3 trainees with him so that is 2 or 3 trains that have no driver.
    18 months ago they were blaming shortages on staff shortages and staff training but early this year they claimed they were up to full staffing. They obviously don't have the staff trained on enough routes and the controllers don't utilise staff of cancelled services to cover for later services with delayed staff prefering to send them back to Manchester as passengers or in a taxi.

  8. #7
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    Quote Originally Posted by Alikado View Post
    18 months ago they were blaming shortages on staff shortages and staff training but early this year they claimed they were up to full staffing. They obviously don't have the staff trained on enough routes and the controllers don't utilise staff of cancelled services to cover for later services with delayed staff prefering to send them back to Manchester as passengers or in a taxi.
    Also don't forget Train Drivers under British Railways were ALL on the same rate of pay (except London Depots with London Weighting), come privatisation different companies have different rates of pay so Northern being one of the lowest paid lose drivers to other companies on a regular basis hence recruitment and training is a never ending problem.
    The answer obviously is to normalise the pay among Train Operating Companies but we all know the suicide rate among Virgin Drivers losing money would be phenomenal, the system can't stand every company paying Virgin (and their successors)
    wages.

  9. #8
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    Quote Originally Posted by Little Londoner View Post
    Also don't forget Train Drivers under British Railways were ALL on the same rate of pay (except London Depots with London Weighting), come privatisation different companies have different rates of pay so Northern being one of the lowest paid lose drivers to other companies on a regular basis hence recruitment and training is a never ending problem.
    The answer obviously is to normalise the pay among Train Operating Companies but we all know the suicide rate among Virgin Drivers losing money would be phenomenal, the system can't stand every company paying Virgin (and their successors)
    wages.
    They know that the staff retention rate is low and they aren't recruiting enough, that is in their hands, also they aren't training enough drivers on the routes, it appears the routes are fragmented with several changes of personel on the journey, one slight delay and the network grinds to a halt. Manchester - Southport line always seems to involve a change of crew at Wigan, if as I experienced one Sunday in summer 2018 there was a delay (works) on the Blackpool line This caused the driver to be late at Walgate this lead to cancellation of the Southport service, the driver turns up, Train Cancelled, Driver sent in Taxi to Longsight to await instructions. Same scenario 1 hour later, I spoke with one of the drivers who said the problem is at York, they have a set of instructions and they keep to them with no flexibility.

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