I was one of the ‘victims’ of the Network Rail engineering fiasco of 27 December.
I won’t over-encumber you with details but the experience has certainly shaken my faith in railways as a means of long distance travel. No doubt there will be equivalent experiences with roads and airlines to bring me back into line as well as the usual desire not to wreck the planet with my travel arrangements.
In fact my family of five (including 80 year old mother) escaped the train at Peterborough (unscheduled stop to offload some passengers who had boarded ‘by accident’) and used a taxi to get to the East Midlands line. Not cheap but much better than the active maltreatment waiting for us at Finsbury Park. But we had Twitter, which was more than East Coast railways seemed to have.
Does any of this matter? Yes, it does rather. We do need people to use railways more and this won’t encourage rail travel.
Indeed the Secretary of State was kicking off big time by the time we had finally got home. Not often I cheer a Tory.
There are some key policy points here. Firstly there is the immediate question of how engineering works could overrun by a full 24 hours. Second, why the risk was taken with the East Coast line when there was already a planned total closure of the West Coast line.
Third why there were no apparent (or at least workable) contingency plans. Finsbury Station is a minor commuter interchange, which is prone to close when there is a local football match because it is hopelessly incapable of handling large numbers of people.
If there is to be a serious investigation, the decision-making processes of Network Rail’s senior management need to be looked at – together with the bonus culture which has already been much criticised and supposedly (but not actually) reformed? Does this encourage senior management to wing it?
And what will be the consequences for the highest paid executive currently pulling in well over half a million a year? Big salaries mean somewhat less mercy than would and should be afforded to more moderately remunerated staff.
Nor should the responsibility of the Train Operating Company (East Midlands) be overlooked. It’s currently run by Directly Operated Railways after National Express handed in the keys. A new franchisee consortium has been announced.
It is often said that East Coast is a fine example of what a nationalised railway company can achieve. But yesterday I saw a company which had little idea of what was going on, was short of drivers, unwilling or unable to give information and which tried to persuade me that King’s Cross track works had meant the cancellation of everyone’s seat reservations.
It might be tempting to say roll on privatisation. But perhaps the greater urgency is to reintegrate track and trains – a John Major mistake that neither this nor the previous government has had the guts to address.
* Chris White is a former Leader of the Liberal Democrats on St Albans Council, Councillor for Hertfordshire County Council and Regional Chair: East of England
Follow @libdemvoice.org on Bluesky
Like us on Facebook
Subscribe to our feed
Sign-up for our daily email digest
Have resignations led to a rethink?
High Fell leaflet watch (2)
No, Leave didn't win the Brexit referendum because of Northern working class voters
Two new Makerfield by-election polls gives Burnham 5 and 12 point leads
Geoffrey Payne
Richard Whelan
David Raw
Tom Reeve
25 Comments
I would not call Finsbury Park is a MINOR commuter station. It is and always has been a very important rail and bus hub and interchange on the North London tube and surface rail lines, it has been so even in the days of my first job back in the 1960’s commuting from the City to Enfield when the Victoria line did not exist and trains also ran to Broad Street, now demolished and Moorgate via Kings X. It has been used as a replacement to Kings Cross in the past and if my memory serves me correctly it has 6 or 7 platforms above ground.
It is easy to slag off Network Rail, but until we know the full reasoning it would be premature to make judgements.
You’re getting East Coast Trains and East Midlands Trains mixed up. This was nothing to do with East Midlands Trains.
You don’t say where you were going to, Chris. It would help to know.
There were obviously at least two major cock-ups. (1) failure to re-open the line into K’S X in time. (2) communications with passengers – often a major problem on the railways when things go wrong, and something they don’t seem to plan for properly.
But…
Since the whole timetable was thrown into disarray it would have been impossible to maintain seat reservations, which are specific to particular departures.
And if the trains could not get into K’s X, where else than Finsbury Park would you try to start and finish services? Stevenage? And how would passengers get there?
Tony
I have now realised you were travelling to London. I don’t think that passengers arriving at FP were being “actively maltreated”. The problem was congestion – trains from the north could not get into the platforms at FP which has half the number of platforms as K’s X. It also seems from pictures that East Coast trains may have been stuck in K’s X and unable to get out which if so would have reduced EC’s ability to run services north of FP (which were reported as running every half hour rather than the more usual half dozen an hour).
An interesting question would be – where did you set off from and at what stage did you know there was a problem?
Tony
Whatever happened to mess up the projected time to complete the works into KGX will obviously need investigation. However, it must be stated that the Christmas break genuinely was the best time to perform this work. Passenger volumes at this time of year on that line are about half that of the average during any other week.
Yes it sucks that you, specifically, got stuck in it. Yes, there could probably have been better remediation planning. But Network Rail are right to work on cold hard facts when scheduling rail maintenance and construction. They put a total blockade on Nottingham Station for 5 weeks to rebuild the junctions, because it was a better option than 86 weekends of lockdown.
Not everything revolves around the individual traveller.
“It might be tempting to say roll on privatisation.”
Why? And who here do you think is tempted to say that?
“….but the experience has certainly shaken my faith in railways as a means of long distance travel”
Why?
So you had one day when things went wrong?
If you applied that criteria to motorways, none of us would ever again travel a long distance by car or coach.
In almost forty years I was a daily suburban commuter but also was lucky enough to be sent all round the country by train as part of my job.
Most of the time the system worked perfectly well. The integrated services before privatisation were better but even with the present arrangement it is a far superior means of transport than trudging round in a car or having to put up with airports.
I have often been struck how the people who complain most about train services are the people who use them least.
>There are some key policy points here. Firstly there is the immediate question of how engineering works could overrun by a full 24 hours. Second, why the risk was taken with the East Coast line when there was already a planned total closure of the West Coast line.
Not sure how these are somehow policy points. Perhaps we should be asking whether the policy of shoehorning substantive engineering works into very tight timeboxes with little real contingency, really is a sensible way of maintaining our transport infrastructure.
However in any case the delays where known about the previous evening, so I can assume you boarded a train in the knowledge that the service was disrupted by engineering work. Hence I suspect your issue isn’t so much about the overrun but that the problems weren’t resolved by the time your train made it’s unscheduled stop at Peterborough, forcing you to make a decision that should of been made earlier in your journey: namely change at Doncaster and avoid the Peterborough (to Corby/Kettering/Wellingborough?) taxi. As for the taxi fare, I assume you did get the station manager at Peterborough to arrange the taxi? and so it didn’t actually cost you.
It’s not East Coast’s fault that Network Rail’s planned works overran.
Is this the first time you’ve taken a train for a while? Us regular travellers know there are many, many problems with the rail companies, and believe me, East Coast are actually one of the better ones. You should try Greater Anglia if you want the full awful rail experience.
In fact, as a regular traveller, I’m glad these works were done at a time when there are far fewer people travelling on the rail network. Imagine the cost to the economy if this had occurred on a working day?
First Great Western is also not without its problems.. Empty first class carriages almost every evening while commuters are standing, squashed like sardines, in second. Signalling problems all the time – often near Slough for some reason! I arrived three hours late on the first day of a new job recently because a cable had been cut.. That problem caused delays all week. And the price of an annual season ticket from Bath to London? £8,400 a year! At times the whole system feels like it is in meltdown. I know a lot of FGW’s problems are due to Network Rail’s failures so it’s certainly not always fair to blame the rail companies, but why build HS2 when existing services for commuters are so unreliable? I remember with nostalgia the days of British Rail and the 125 when the journey from Paddington to Bristol was 15 minutes quicker.
‘Empty first class carriages almost every evening while commuters are standing, squashed like sardines’
I am consistently surprised by how little that gets bought up – it seems to me to me a much better criticism. I think Chiltern Railways removed some first class seating.
Judy: some of your criticisms about ‘First Late Western’ are valid, especially the bit about empty First Class carriages, but some of the problems are being addressed. Reading was always a pinch point on the line, but that station has been expanded considerably. And the Coalition Government (when Norman Baker was Transport was Minister) have agreed electrification of the line from London to Bristol & Cardiff (a decision which previous government’s delayed for many years). Poor communication has always been a problem, and you’re right too much gets blamed on ‘signalling problems.’
If signals are such a problem, then where is the investment to repair them?
>Is this the first time you’ve taken a train for a while? Us regular travellers know there are many, many problems with the rail companies
I think we can give Chris and other irregular rail travellers some leeway (yes I’m aware of my previous comment).
One of the big problems we now have on the national rail network is making it visible to the traveller!
Travel on any train these days and I challenge you to find on the train (or at a station) a network map for the whole country. Yes you can view a variety of national network maps on National Rail’s website, but you need to be a bit of a train buff to know how to easily change from the East Coast line to another TOC’s line, and some determination to find relevant train times (website journey planners are great when you only want to go from A-to-B, rather than via some alternative route – a task the old fashioned book of timetables made relatively simple).
Roland,
I think we can give Chris and other irregular rail travellers some leeway (yes I’m aware of my previous comment).
Perhaps if politicians, even local ones like Chris, travelled via the railways more often they might have a greater understanding of the problems. For most travellers lost seat reservations at busy times are unremarkable. It’s not air travel, there is no guaranteed seating (in contrast to most railways elsewhere in the world), with or without a reservation. Instead we are packed like sardines, charged a small fortune, and on ‘modern’ trains have to put up with a stench from the toilets escaping into the air conditioning (an acknowledged problem).
We have to put it up with it because it’s not a problem that typically affects those who supposedly represent our interests.
The train is always my choice of mode of travel. It is incredibly civilised. Perhaps I have been fortunate in that I have never had a problem and with a senior rail card and advanced split tickets,I can travel in comfort and cheaply.
I have always found East Coast Rail excellent and even when not travelling with East Coast Rail, I book my tickets through them.
I was listening to Sir Menzies Campbell on the radio today and he was criticising the timing of the rail works, but as the interviewer pointed out, this would have been the least busiest time to undertake them.
The overrun was posted on the National Rail Enquiries “Services alternation details” webpage just before 5pm on Boxing Day. There were also regular updates on National Rail’s twitter feed during Boxing Day.
If you have a smartphone it is a good idea to install the National Rail app as this not only gives timetable and live train updates but will also give alerts on your specific journeys.
On East Coast if you’re delayed by more than an hour you can claim up to 100% of the cost of a single ticket, two hours and it’s up to 100% of a return ticket (assuming you purchased a return ticket). A claim takes a few minutes to submit online.
Would someone please explain exacty what these expensive engineering works are ?
The fundamental problem seems to be that previous Governments have let the railways deteriorate to a very poor state. To perform the necessary maintenance and upgrades, Network Rail now needs to close lines for longer than people are prepared to go without a service.
Obviously, mistakes were made over this Christmas period. However, the basic intention was good – to try to do a much as possible with as little disruption as possible. It seems that Network rail tried to do to much, but that is in part because there is so much to do.
Perhaps we will need to accept that, for the next few years, there will be a “Sunday Service” with some line closures through the whole period between Christmas and New Year.
The work outside Kings Cross was primarily an important upgrade. New overhead power equipment was installed to link the new Canal Tunnels, which join the lines linking King’s Cross to the North, with the Thameslink route through St Pancras.
This will enable trains from Peterborough and Cambridge to eventually run through London to the South Coast, starting in 2018.
In addition there was maintenance at Harringay and Holloway to improve the performance and reliability of services.
I have a relative who works for a company on a contract with Network Rail, though nothing to do with the East Coast line. He has discovered that the track laying machine broke down at the tunnel north of Kings Cross and it took over half a day to get another machine to the site. One answer to this problem is to have many more such machines in reserve around the country, but apparently they are very expensive.
I can, however, also tell you that experience working for Network Rail is not good; they often change their minds about their requirements, even after engineers have already designed and made plans for the relaying of track and after Network Rail has approved the engineers work. Sometimes these changes of mind happen because they suddenly discover a problem they had overlooked and sometimes it is just because they had not thought through what they want in the improvements; the engineers find them extremely frustrating to work for. The private companies do not loose out because they can then simply ask Network Rail for the extra money involved.; however, the people in these companies still do not like it because they have great difficulty recruiting sufficient engineers, the UK being extremely short of highly skilled staff. Every time Network Rail mess them around, there is a knock on effect on other contracts the company has signed.
Just some clarifications.
John and others who picked up his assumption. I am a regular rail user (those of you who follow me on Twitter will know of my tedious experiences on FCC and now Thameslink). Until very recently I was a daily commuter and am currently a twice weekly one. Not sure why you, John, on no evidence at all, accused me of being an occasional rail user. But I know from previous postings you are for some reason not a fan of mine.
The point is that we need to make rail desirable. As I pointed out very clearly, John, (‘No doubt there will be equivalent experiences with roads and airlines to bring me back into line as well as the usual desire not to wreck the planet with my travel arrangements’), I am sure that I will get the same or worse by other means. But the avoidable should be prevented. If motorways – especially those on parallel routes – were closed on bank holidays there would/is be an outcry. If air traffic control centres fail there would be/is an outcry. This is the equivalent and there was an outcry.
Jayne: I was surprised at East Coast given their high reputation. They should have had their own contingency plans and ensured that the ones that they had were workable.
Kevin. Yes: East Midlands slipped in at one point (despite proof reading – sorry). The TOC is East Coast as I said elsewhere.
Bolano: the temptation seems to lie with some in government. As I make clear later I personally question the track and trains divide. I never supported privatisation although was unimpressed by British Rail as an organisation.
Those who have issues should not only be complaining to Network Rail and the TOC’s concerned but we do have a Transport Minister and the wonderful DPM, you can try contacting them and you might be lucky and get a reply, I am still waiting for one.
Since Norman Baker left Transport it as been down hill all the way.
Most of the criticisms seem to involve co-ordination within and without Network Rail, communications with the public, and, perhaps, better marketing of the rail system as a whole, as a network.
Seems to me that what is needed is British Rail, by other means, and I say, ‘Bring Back British Rail’.
Not the BR of old, at at the mercy of motorway and car -obsessed Treasury mandarins, but an adequately funded organisation that didn’t have to Maximise profits to pay shareholders, and costing the taxpayer about half the current amount, in the process. For half the money, you would get a publically accountable, fully-integrated system which is how you begin to deliver an efficient, effective mode of public transport.
That being the case . . . . just imagine what you could do with the Same amount of taxpayer funding that currently goes into the railways.
The bankrupt City Link was formerly responsible for delivering BR’s Red Star parcels and has been losing money for years. Why is it that anything to do with railways seems to be mismanaged – maybe the managers are no good ? This seems to be the case with City Link and possibly explains why no one else wanted to take it on. They wanted the assets and the customers but not the people. I wonder why ?