Great Western Failway, again

Mon 21 May 2018, 10:03

Stephen, if you want an overall picture of the state of GWR's services (or any other train operator) on any given day and reasons for cancellations. delays and alterations, Journeycheck is the best place to go.

Yesterday was probably the worst single day for Cotswold Line cancellations - weekend or otherwise - since the abysmal Saturday of the Easter weekend.

This Saturday just gone, there were no cancellations on the Cotswold Line, and cancellations overall are far fewer in recent weeks than there were earlier this year and at the back end of last year.

Most cancellations or delays in the past week were down to Network Rail's infrastructure failing, rather than anything that GWR can control. One cancellation was, I gather, due to a driver being taken ill during a journey, with the service halted at Oxford.

The problems with driver training go back deep into last year, due to GWR not being given access to the new trains and the sign-off to use the overhead power lines between Reading and Didcot to start training last May, as they had anticipated. Indeed technical problems affecting signalling equipment meant they only got the go-ahead in September, just a few weeks before the IETs entered service - they have been playing catch-up ever since, as Mark Hopwood indicated in his letter.

Emergency timetables may sound like a good idea but if your favoured trains are the ones that get dropped, then you won't like it, and the Cotswold Line is not an island - its services form much of the fast service between Oxford and London - so do you just cancel the legs of the journey west of Oxford or the whole service? - some of the trains used also work on other routes during the day, e.g. starting or ending the day in Bristol/South Wales, and crews come from Worcester, Oxford, Reading, London and Bristol. It would be little different from trying to write a whole new timetable and crew rosters from scratch. And just one driver or guard calling in sick when staff who would normally be 'spare' to provide cover are on training duty can knock out several services at one fell swoop.

Simon, there are two simulators for IETs - one of which had a fire that put it out of action for a fortnight, as Mark Hopwood says in his letter - and whether a driver is being trained in a simulator or on an actual train, they are still not available to drive services carrying passengers. The IET is a world away from the HSTs and Turbos technologically, so there is a lot more to the training programme than just sitting them down in a cab and telling them what to do to make the train go, such as diagnostics systems, fault-finding, etc. And the overwhelming majority of the drivers are already on GWR's books, not new entrants, so have to be taken off normal duties to be trained.