I Hate Long Commutes

I used to commute into town, hated it, got a nice little local job and a better life now.

I'm glad I gave commuting up a couple of years ago. Hope it gets better for you.

The whole rail industry would do itself a lot of favours if it would get together and publish why punctuality on some routes is so bad.

[i]I do not work for the railways[/i], nor have any financial interests in them save as a very occasional passenger; and I have been on services delayed or disrupted by various events.

I do though, have a broad lay interest in and basic knowledge of technical matters, so always look beyond the shallowness of instant blame and scapegoats.

I know it is NOT always their fault, but unfortunately we have been conditioned to expect the impossible: 100% reliability, 100% efficiency, instant results, etc., in everything, whilst expecting no expense in money or time by the proprietors striving to provide the best they can.


Last year I was two disrupted Cross-Country Trains (XT) services (these are State-owned... by Germany), and one Arriva or Northern.

One of the XT trains was among many in the North-East delayed by another train breaking down, blocking the path. The other, which I was on, was half-an hour late into Bristol thanks to some useless nonentity putting old furniture on the line - luckily on a long straight, in daylight, so the driver saw it ahead and stopped safely from probably 90mph, though we still struck it at about 10mph. The Arriva service was among many delayed in the Bradford - Leeds - Skipton area that afternoon, by some fool having let go party-balloons which became entangled in the overhead wires.


So what are the common problems in what areas of control ?

[i]Network Rail [/i] - track-work and other railway civil-engineering, own-electrical and signalling faults. Timetable changes for necessary maintenance, improvements and repairs. Clearing derailments and repairing the damaged track; clearing snow and leaf drifts. Contrary to the snide remarks from ignorant journalists who don't know a train from a locomotive, leaves ARE a genuine problem, for which Network Rail has a fleet of special rail-cleaning trains.

[i]Train Operating Company [/i] - train breakdowns, personnel shortages, e.g. by illness.

[i]Operations[/i] - Parts of the network are at maximum capacity, so one blockage has many ramifications. I believe the many closures of not only minor branch but also a lot of link lines in the 1960s, hatched a very large chicken only just coming home to roost. Dr. Richard Beeching is the scapegoat but he was obeying an ironically-Labour government with vested interests in road haulage and motorways. The closures removed many potential relief and diversion routes.

[i]External[/i] causes - many. The main areas in no special order are:

- Vehicles stuck on level-crossings or striking bridges.

- Obstacles:
- natural (tree-falls, snow, leaves, floods, landslips like the recent one in Scotland that killed three people),
-human accident or negligence (like those balloons)
-criminal acts (wilful obstacles, but also trespassing, vandalism, thefts)

- Accidents to people working on the line or using permitted rights-of-way across the line.

- Suicides. Yes,[i] suicides[/i]: one of the largest but least-mentioned causes of disruption. The poor driver can do nothing to stop hitting the person and must be in terrible shock. So he or she is automatically relieved, but this means finding another driver familiar with both the particular train or locomotive type, and the service route. I believe too that the train itself is taken out of service not only for a potentially gruesome cleaning task but also for forensic examination. (I don't know why the latter, Police requirement, is really necessary.)

===

After the furniture incident I contacted the railway company [i]to thank not curse[/i] the train crew first for safely stopping the train and clearing the obstruction from under it, and the operating-staff who found us a new time slot in Bristol Temple Meads so we could arrive there with minimum disruption to our and other services.

I asked one railway official why it seems to take so long to move a broken-down train to safety - perhaps commandeering the nearest freight locomotive to tow it. He replied that until privatising, locomotives and rolling-stock were sufficiently compatible for that, but no-one thought to enforce that compatibility on the new train-[i]owners[/i] (leasing companies). That is a fault of politicians, not railway engineers and managers.

++++

So... merely blaming the company whose badge is on the coaches, may be very wide of the mark! It is NOT always their "fault"; and NO humanly-made equipment or system can ever be perfect all of the time.

You could of course go by car, but whom would you blame if it breaks down or heavy traffic in bad weather forces you well below the legal speed-limit? While the HST on the adjacent main line races past your 50mph motorway queue at 100mph and on time.

Great Western to Paddington from the west are as bad.

most trains late now or break down and blame it on something else .