Atrocious weather, even worse service
Much has been written about recent adverse weather and its effect on the railway. But how much of the operators’ problems were inflicted by Network Rail? There will have been many genuine cases of route closures caused by heavy snow and/or ice, but I can quote two examples which concern me.
On the evening of Friday March 2, South Western Railway (SWR) announced it would be unable to run trains west of Southampton on the Saturday. A little later CrossCountry said it’d be operating an hourly shuttle from Bournemouth to Reading to connect onward to Manchester.
Now clearly the existence of the shuttle proved the route was OK. So why wasn’t SWR running? It had the depot at Bournemouth and crews available. I gather that Network Rail was worried about the third rail and didn’t want SWR to test the route with an empty multiple unit. Why? And why didn’t Network Rail use its own de-icer to test it?
In the end, an EMU was allowed to set off from Bournemouth and it found no problems, so SWR was permitted to start running two trains an hour from mid-afternoon.
Meanwhile Network Rail’s over-caution inflicted reputational damage on SWR. Users wanting to travel saw that CrossCountry was running - and on time - and, naturally, blamed SWR. In a vertically integrated railway where the operator was in control this would never have happened.
A more dramatic case was offered by a reader who got stuck in Scotland for four days. His southbound Sleeper was cancelled so he spent two nights in a Perth hotel. Not willing to be delayed longer he decided by the Friday to leave.
How, when the Scottish rail network was closed and the operators said they ‘could not provide road transport’? Well he discovered that all the normal local buses were running: Stagecoach Fife, Parks of Hamilton and Scottish Citylink to name but three operators.
He took a bus to Edinburgh then Borders Buses to Berwick-upon-Tweed – yes, on the roads Virgin Trains East Coast said could not be used by replacement buses. True, there was no bus service south from Berwick, so he hired a taxi to Alnwick, from where he got on a bus to Newcastle and then back on to a train south and home.
My inclination is to think that the operators who said they could not run trains or provide replacement buses were doing so under instructions from Network Rail. This isn’t good enough, and the operators should place the blame where it belongs.
It is a severe embarrassment to the railway in general when, with bad weather, we’re told they can’t cope, while roads remain open and local buses run. It’s a reversal of the situation up until the 1970s when in severe weather the media told people not to drive but to use the railways instead.