Charter operators complain about late-notice times
Charter train stakeholders have criticised Network Rail’s planning team for failing to deliver timings on time, causing knock-on effects when late-notice engineering works are announced.
Citing an example of a charter where there were several changes in locomotives, stock and route, Richard Corser, Account Manager for Charters, Special Trains and Resource Hires at DB Cargo, claimed that NR sat on proposed timings for 13 weeks after first receiving the bid to path a diesel charter, until three weeks before the train was due to run.
Train operating companies have to submit bids 14 weeks before the train is due to run, and Network Rail is supposed to provide timings at least four weeks before it runs. Corser claimed any delay causes problems with the high number of engineering possessions currently taking place across the national network, which can then have an impact on the route and length of the route the train may take.
“Network Rail is still not meeting the T-4 deadline. If they were able to meet the deadline, it would give us all more time to plan,” Corser told the charter conference in York.
“Network Rail must introduce a process that ensures bids are actions and offers made in accordance with established timescales, and they must allow a free flow of information relating to problems arising during the preparation of times to the train operator. It’s a very rocky conversation when you have to say ‘the tour you’ve been selling for the last year cannot run in its current form’ to your customers.”
GB Railfeight General Manager Paul Taylor echoed Corser’s concerns.
He commented: “We made a big effort earlier this year to put in our specs in January when it was quiet - well in advance, sometimes eight or nine months - and the timings weren’t looked at until ten days beforehand. At the moment, the people who do the timings are under the cosh and can’t do anything under reasonable timescales.”
Graeme Bunker, from the A1 Steam Locomotive Trust, added: “Everyone is hitting T-14 - they might fiddle around with the timings afterwards, but they are hitting the base. But Network Rail isn’t even getting close to T-4, and until someone resolves this issue of what happens when a bid is received and who is responsible for an engineering change, it won’t. Nothing is changing, because NR isn’t changing it. And you won’t solve it until you actually accept it is your problem.”
Responding to the concerns, Paul McMahon, Managing Director, Freight and National Passenger Operators at Network Rail, said NR “needs to stick to the dates and execute that with discipline, so it at least gives people more time to do things correctly”. He said he was hopeful that the addition of fixed charter paths into the Working Timetable would ease problems.
McMahon added that NR is in the process of increasing the number of people who work within the organisation’s train planning team, concluding: “We’ve known for quite some time that we need to grow our resource base. For the last year we’ve been bringing in a dozen people every five weeks and putting them through the train planning process, so as the months go by you should be seeing the fruits of that.”