The train now arriving….

Swindon Borough Council today lifted a carriage into the former GWR Barracks in the Railway Village. It is to be a feature of their The Platform youth centre. These are highlights of a photographic record of the work to lift £10,500 of scrap railway carriage into place. The few slight scares were very slight indeed.
All photographs © komadori.

The Scene

Preparing for the lift

Great Western airborne

A tight fit

Putting it all back together

Man on the roof

Push!

Almost done

Putting up some wires

Yesterday’s announcement of plans to electrify the railway line between London and South Wales is, in principle, good news for those that travel on the route. When completed, journey times should be less, and the cost of running the trains should be less and they should be cleaner and more reliable. All that is just a consequence of the technology. But much of the rest that has been claimed for the plan will depend on political decisions.

Whether there will be more seats depends on whether the government allows the railways to buy electric trains with more seats than on the old diesel ones. Whether the lower running costs will turn into lower fares depends on how much the government charges First Great Western or its successors for the privilege of running the railway. The current government has, almost without exception, given rail franchises to the highest bidder with little regard to the quality of service to be provided. And then there’s the scope for budget overruns that are endemic whenever politicians and civil servants get involved in contracts and procurement projects.

With at least two general elections between now and the planned completion of the electrification, the chances that it will be derailed by political interference must be high.

Which way are they going?

Whilst I can see the advantages of doubling the rail line from Swindon to Gloucester (the ‘Stroud Valley Line’ according to locals, or the ‘Golden Valley Line’ according to the operators), I suspect that Ms Girling (a councillor on more councils than is reasonable) may be rather disappointed with the outcome if Gloucestershire County Council’s campaign is successful. She seems to overestimate the area’s commercial attractions.

Without the extra track there is a real danger that the growth in new housing will far outstrip new jobs leading to a slowdown in the local economy, more people commuting out of the area and the inevitable knock-on effect of more congestion.

Err… commuting is a two-way thing, and improving the rail service will make it just as easy to commute out of the area as it will to commute into the area. I suspect that Swindon’s employment might benefit more than the Stroud Valley.

Ms Girling’s comments remind me of those of Sheffield City Council during the 1990s. They were adamant that the opening of the tram line from the city centre to the Meadowhall Centre would revitalise the city, encouraging the thousands that went to Meadowhall for shopping to make the journey to the city centre’s run-down shopping areas. It didn’t. What it did was enable city centre workers to make the trip to Meadowhall within their lunch break, further depleting trade for city centre stores. It took another ten years for the city centre to recover. I suspect this is not the effect that Ms Girling has in mind.

Town on track for low-speed trains

I see that the Adver has a report on a feasibility study by Network Rail on five possible high speed rail lines, one of them through Swindon.

One of the proposed lines would run alongside First Great Western’s London to Bristol route and that could see trains transporting Swindon rail users at speeds of 100mph.

Perhaps the reporter is too young to remember when the trains that run the current mainline service through Swindon were introduced and called the InterCity 125 because they ran at 125 mph… as they still do, on a good day, on the line between Swindon and Didcot.

Getting there

It’s taken a little time for our local press to accurately report on the Department for Transport’s imposition of penalties on First Great Western for failing to comply with the standards of service required for their franchise. The official announcement is quite robust.

First Great Western is being issued with a Remedial Plan Notice for exceeding the threshold on cancellations in the second half of last year….

The company is also being issued with a Breach Notice for misreporting its cancellations. This stipulates the steps First Great Western must take to rectify the problem.

In addition a £29m package of passenger benefits, fully funded by First Great Western, has been agreed….

Failure to deliver these new commitments would be a default of the franchise agreement which could lead to the Government terminating First Great Western’s franchise.

Reading the Adver’s first attempt at reporting this, at 8.50 this morning, you’d think that FGW had just chosen to splurge £29M on extra trains entirely of their own volition.

SWINDON train company First Great Western will invest £29m to improve services, it has emerged today. First will address poor performance in relation to cancellations and delays. It acknowledges its service has fallen short of its own standards and the expectations of passengers. The company says it is committed to improving performance and will take the necessary action to ensure cancellations and delays are minimised.

In the past year the company has come under fire from passenger groups and regulators for the service they provide.

A slight hint of criticism, but nothing more. The second report, twelve hours later, gets it right.

SWINDON train company First Great Western has been forced to make £29m worth of improvements. First Great Western (FGW) says it will now take action to ensure cancellations and delays are lowered for customers.

The company was ordered to make the changes by the Department for Transport.

The Beeb have done no better, hinting at nothing more than ‘discussions with the DfT’ as the prompt for this expenditure. All led astray by the railway company perhaps? Hardly. Their press release is quite clear about why they are spending the money.

The £29m plan has been put together to address poor performance, particularly in relation to cancellations and the subsequent contravention of our Franchise Agreement.

Who needs spin-doctors with reporting like this? The Beeb also give space to the group running a campaign of fares evasion.

But this is the result of passenger power, that independent groups like us and our fare strike have been responsible in a great part for these things happening, by bringing them to the attention of the government and making First lose face.

Really? I’m struggling to see anything more than penalty clauses in a contract being applied. This would have happened (and indeed has happened to other rail companies in the past) regardless of the actions of a small band of fares-dodgers.

Being taken for a ride

However bad First Great Western’s rail service may be (and, undoubtedly, it is poor), today’s widely reported so called fares strike is nothing more than dressed up fares evasion. If you’re not satisfied with a product or service, don’t use it: buy from an alternative supplier. As the focus of the campaign is local trains around Bristol, not the mainline service to London, there are alternatives, such as local bus services or private car. But that would inconvenience the campaigners….

If someone suggested a campaign of shoplifting to protest about queues in supermarkets, I’m sure it would be met with derision. It’s strange that this campaign is not regarded in the same way.

Biorail

You might think that people from an organisation with its offices right next to the railway station would prefer to get away from the railway for an ‘away day’. Apparently not. With fifty four staff on the away day, that’s roughly a £5000 public sector donation to the Swindon & Cricklade Railway. It’s almost worth it, just to see the Adver, for once, not referring to people that work at the Research Council’s Swindon offices as ‘boffins’.

Dreaming of trains

I do wonder at the quality of reporting in the national media sometimes. Under the headline ‘Train boss promises improvements’ the leading paragraph reads

The incoming managing director of First Great Western has promised more trains, less overcrowding and better services.

But listen to what he says in the associated video clip.

We are scouring the land for the right sort of rolling stock for that, but it’s not currently available.

He says a lot about promising improvements in reliability (as does the train company’s press release); he talks of increases in train capacity that have been made in the recent past, but on what First Great Western will do about the current overcrowding the message is clear: there is nothing they can do. And even if they wanted to, the restrictions in their franchise, where they will be busy paying money to the government for the privilege of providing the rail service (£1,130.5M over ten years), mean that there is little they could do to increase capacity here.

Going off the rails

I have found an explanation for the abysmal punctuality of First Great Western Trains. It seems the wheels are coming off their trains! Walking to work on Wednesday, there was a set of wheels lying on some short rails in The Park on Faringdon Road, near to one of the stones dropped a few months ago by the council, not far from the railway line. The wheels definitely weren’t there on Monday.

A ride on the fantasy express

Another day, another government announcement, this time a white paper on the railways. Lets see how many times they can contradict themselves or write total rubbish in one page. Lets try page seven of the summary booklet.

The Government will encourage progress by funding research and will write environmental objectives into passenger franchises. But the Government will not subsidise train operators to undertake efficiency measures that pay for themselves via reduced fuel bills. Train operators must take responsibility themselves.

Err… if environmental objectives are written into franchises and potential operators put in higher bids as a result, we the government ends up subsidising them, no?

Over £10 billion will be invested in enhancing capacity between 2009 and 2014, with overall Government support for the railway totalling £15 billion. The total investment in rail improvements will be greater than in 2004–09…. Having paid the bills in the difficult years when costs rose and under-investment needed to be tackled, we can now ease back the burden on the taxpayer.

If the spending investment will be higher between 2009 and 2014 than between 2004 and 2009, then surely that’s increasing the burden on the taxpayer rather than easing back, yes? (It is made clear elsewhere in the white paper that the figures quoted here are government expenditure and don’t include expenditure funded commercially, i.e. from fares.)

Finally, if you’re feeling optimistic about the improvement in services to Swindon that the reported expansion of Reading station will bring, don’t be. The statement about this in the appendix to the white paper is quite guarded (paragraph A16).

The Secretary of State also wants to see works undertaken at Reading station to deliver the increased capacity required in CP4 and to meet other longer term passenger and freight movement requirements. Network Rail is to undertake further development work to confirm the full scope and timing for delivery of this scheme, which the Secretary of State expects to be delivered within a maximum CP4 expenditure of £425 million. The Secretary of State expects a regulatory protocol to be established with Network Rail that sets out governance arrangements for delivery of this programme. The Secretary of State believes that delivery of the works is achievable within the statement of funds available.

Which roughly translates as they haven’t worked out what they’re going to do yet nor when they’re going to do it, but the woman at the top has plucked a figure and a time out of the air and expects them to stick to it.

A pasty, an ice cream, a mug of tea and a pint

Not all at the same time, I hasten to add. I took a day-trip to Looe in South East Cornwall yesterday and very enjoyable it was too. Excellent food and beautiful weather.

Sadly, the same cannot be said of the journey home. When I boarded the 16:41 Virgin Trains service from Liskeard, I noticed that the seats in half the carriage I had entered were taped-off. A little later the customer service manager came and told us the reason was that on the way down to Newquay there had been some passengers who were ‘a bunch of animals’ and had been ‘sick all over the place’. He apologised for the smell (which was hardly noticeable) and said if we wanted to move to another carriage, we could (an offer not repeated later in the journey when the train was fuller). A little inspection showed that a fair amount of vomit (and other rubbish) remained. Once home, a quick look at the timetable* showed that the train had spent most of the day (five hours) sat at Newquay. Apparently not enough time to clean the carriage — what little smell there was coming from the taped-off area was definitely of vomit without a hint of disinfectant. I appreciate that facilities at Newquay station are limited, but were a mop, brush and disinfectant not available?

It has recently been announced that Virgin Trains have lost the cross-country rail franchise to Arriva. With service like this, I doubt that many of the travelling public will be disappointed.

* Links are to pdf documents.

Customer service

Whilst travelling yesterday, I noticed three of First Great Western’s staff at Cheltenham Spa station helping elderly passengers with their luggage. I’ve not seen this level of service elsewhere for a long time, nor at such a relatively small station.

So why not elsewhere? The platforms at Cheltenham Spa station are not readily accessible to the disabled, so the Disability Discrimination Act and recommendations of the Disabled Persons Transport Advisory Committee mean that First Great Western has to provide the service, by law. Given the poor image that First Great Western has for the quality of its service, ’tis a pity they don’t seem to realise how good an impression it gives, in comparison with the installation of lifts which is, apparently, the preferred way of complying with the regulations.

Ideas above his station

Clearly, Tewkesbury is a very important place for it’s MP. I’m not sure that many in the rest of the country would share Mr Robertson’s view of its importance though.

“There’s a train only every one hour and 52 minutes,” Mr Robertson told the House of Commons. “On a lot of the trains you have to change if you want to come to London. The cost of an open return is £139. This really is a very, very poor service between a very important area of the country and London.”

Hmm… Tewkesbury, such an important town that its station in called Tewkesbury Grand Central Ashchurch.

Whilst I’ve been away

Shock, horror… very little has happened whilst I’ve been concentrating on the pain in my shoulder rather than the local news. The aforementioned Councillor Glaholm has flown his nest, influenced, in part, by a below-the-belt election letter distributed in several wards, and the response from his former nest.

I was appalled when I saw it and I could not believe that someone in the group would stoop so low, and then for them to make light of it and make out it was nothing was just outrageous. Hopefully, sometime in the near future the person responsible for the leaflet will be disciplined by the party.

The only other thing that caught my attention was the local railway company’s decision to reduce some off-peak fares. Given that off-peak trains between Swindon and Gloucester have been almost empty for years, one wonders why it has taken so long for them to reduce the fare by 48%.

The MP arriving (grumpily) at platform 1…

It seems that one of our local politicians has not quite grasped the approach his own government takes to railway privatisation. He has put down an early day motion in the house of commons

That this House notes with growing concern that despite First Great Western train services making substantial profits and introducing significant fare increases, passengers on these services have had to endure poor levels of punctuality, cuts in services and severe overcrowding; is further concerned at reports that 12 extra trains introduced by the company to alleviate the collapse of rail services in Bristol and the West of England last winter will be withdrawn by the end of this year and that this again will result in train cancellations and amount to an astonishing 20 per cent. reduction in the number of trains since First Group took over the Greater Western franchise in April 2006; believes that the interests of passengers should come before the interests of shareholders; and therefore supports the call by passenger groups and rail unions for First Great Western services to be run in the public sector.

The problems with this diagnosis are that most of those ‘substantial profits’ will have to be paid to the Treasury in hefty franchise premium payments, and the cuts in services were as directed by the Department for Transport. It’s not the interests of shareholders that are being put before those of the passengers, it is the interests of the Exchequer. Perhaps said local politician just does not like First Group. If they are making such big profits, why does he feel the need to back throwing even more public money at them? The rail company’s reaction is rightly dismissive.

Travel by First Great Website

It seems that First Great Western are very proud of their website:

The First Great Western website… has won a prestigious Award from Revolution magazine, in its Travel and Leisure category…. Says Tim Hayne: “We are delighted that www.firstgreatwestern.co.uk is achieving the recognition and acclaim it deserves, through independent assessment, as well as through the popularity with our customers.”

What is the source of the popularity of FGW’s website?

Most of the visitors to the website are seeking information about train times, want to buy tickets or check latest travel news.

(My emphasis.) Yes, people are visiting the website to find out just how late the trains are running. If only FGW were winning awards for their train service too, rather than apologising for it.

A rambling (and cycling) we can go!

Either it’s been a slow news day or there’s an election in the offing for this to be worth attention.

RAMBLERS and cyclists in Swindon should find the way forward a little clearer as they pursue their leisure activities.

In three years’ time, the council hopes that 90 per cent of the town’s footpaths and cycleways will be easy to use.

At the moment 86 per cent of the 211 miles of public rights of way in Swindon meet the Government standard.

So an extra 4% of 211 miles will be easy to use. Hmm…. If the quote in the Adver from a personage in the local branch of the Ramblers’ Association is correct

“I haven’t noticed a dramatic change over the years – perhaps the overgrown footpaths that exist do not lead anywhere in particular.”

then perhaps I won’t bother to seek out those extra eight miles.

The chairman now arriving at platform four…

As it seems to have received very little attention elsewhere, I’ll give a small toot here to a recent government announcement that the outgoing chief executive of Network Rail will be spending a little more time in Swindon.

Anyone making jokes about getting research onto the right track will be unceremoniously ejected from the nest!

The trains not now arriving

The BBC repeated several times today that the government will be providing 1000 extra trains which it will pay for. But read the speech that this is based on and it says no such thing. The exact words are

So in the High Level Output Specification this summer, we will specify that 1,000 new carriages should be targeted at the most congested routes to effectively tackle passenger demand.

In this way, if the price is right, I anticipate that we will significantly increase the number of carriages on the network by 2014.

The High Level Output Specification will be the government’s expectation for what the railway will deliver over the coming years. It does not mean that the government will pay for this. In fact, if you consider that most of the recently let rail franchises require the Train Operating Companies to pay the government a premium within one or two years rather than receive a subsidy, it is the passengers that will be paying for the trains, not the government. Methinks some people in the DfT and the Beeb must be feeling very dizzy at the moment.