Skimbleshanks agrees

Telegrammed by J Alfred Prufrock
This from Nigel's blog over at Rail...

I’ve been a railway journalist since 1981 and that’s not how I remember it. The nationalised railway was declining fast in terms of usage and whilst privatisation has many faults it’s a fact that it is now carrying 1.1bn people a year in more than 20,000 trains a day, in trains of around 13/14 years old.

But what's this?

1952 total passenger miles 20.5 billion

1981 (Nigel arrives) total passenger miles 18.5 billion (down 10.5% on 1952)

1988/89 (Height of the last economic boom) total passenger miles 21.3 billion (up 15% on 1981)

1994/95 (Depth of subsequent recession) total passenger miles 17.8 billion

1997/98 (Gordon Brown ends Boom and bust) total passenger miles 21.5 billion

So perhaps not quite as serious a decline as some might think.

Otherwise one quite agrees with Nigel's point about linguistic aberrations.

After all, Skimbleshanks was a railway cat!

UPDATE: This just in from Sir William Pollitt...

Mr Prufrock may be confusing apples with pears.

The railways were either declining, or they weren’t.

There’s widespread agreement that the railways were privatised with ‘continued management of decline’ in mind'.

So were the railways not declining in the 1980-1995 period?

Surely we didn’t imagine all those double turnouts turning into wretched single lead junctions, all those double track routes singled, stations like Princes Risborough, and Newton Abbot, where services both ways were concentrated on one platform, the withdrawal of Speedlink?

All that rationalisation was a success, was it?

Perhaps not.

Update: This poetic response from Griddlebone...

I think my cousin Skimble - who is now not quite so nimble,
Would take issue with your claim of "no decline".
When his travellers were a'bed, lets remember what was said,
Of their journey down the old West Coast Main Line.

"They were fast asleep at Crewe and so they never knew
That he was walking up and down the station;
They were sleeping all the while he was busy at Carlisle.
Where he greets the Station Master with elation"

Now, can we say that today? No, more likely there's delay
As the OLE's got blown off in the wind;
Or those blessed signal circuits, have gone wonky once again; its
Time the wretched lot of them were binned.

We're 90 down at Crewe - so I hear you say "What's new?"
And we're waiting for the Thunderbird to couple..."clunk"
Yes, it's clear we're off via Settle, hope the steward's got a kettle!
I think I'll go and cat-nap in my bunk.

But wait....some things never cease - we're still going via Dumfries
And this journey, far from sleepy, is a mess.
Should I blame My Lord Adonis? or more likely Network Rail?
No, they'll just go and blame the dear old LMS.

PS - on Skimble's trains all coaches were "quiet coaches"

UPDATE: Captain Deltic wades in...

It is certainly the case that the original (old BR) management of Railtrack talked of managing decline.

But the structure of franchising, and let's be generous and assume it was intentional, meant that the only way to make money was by growing ridership.

We all know what happened when Stagecoach thought the key to success was cutting costs - and promptly found they were cutting into muscle and bone, not fat.

What was declining was the railways' share of the total travel market and it would be interesting to plot this over the last 20 years.

UPDATE: This from Nigel Harris over at Rail...

Hmm.

What an interesting discussion.

The Captain is right about Railtrack pronouncements (as if I’d dare suggest otherwise!) but I also recall Government and everyone else accepting that the graphs for rail ridership specifically were all heading downward too, hence my very general comment.

It would be good to get to the bottom of it for the fuller picture, and comparing rail’s figure compared with travel figures generally would indeed play a part.

Meanwhile back to axle counters, old signalling cabling and days of 21% punctuality......no prizes for guessing which route I’m writing about for the next issue......

UPDATE: Captain Deltic asks a question...

Great minds think alike.

I am subbing next month's column, in which a number not unadjacent to 21% also appears, and Nigel's comment has prompted the thought can we reasonably talk about 21% reliability?

Shouldn't it be 79% lateness?

More on the PAC report

This just in from Mutley...

Scrolling through the Letting of Rail Franchises report and paragraph 7 in chapter 1 caught my eye and may help explain a few things:

"The Department has operated with fewer staff than the Strategic Rail Authority, bringing the cost of managing franchises down from £7.3 million in 2004–05 to £5.7 million in 2007–08. Some 30% of staff had departed within two years of the change in responsibility.
The Department expects people to move on every two or three years and many Strategic Rail Authority staff had been in post for some time. The Department’s rail service delivery team does not normally recruit from the wider civil service. It recruits largely from the railway industry itself instead, and has difficulty in attracting and retaining staff because it pays salaries towards the bottom quartile of that industry."

The department expects resource to 'move on' every two to three years and has difficulty attracting and retaining staff because it pays 'bottom quartile' industry salaries.

As a result, 30% of staff have gone and operating costs reduced to £5.7m in 2007-2008.

In other words DafT franchise management costs have come down but the result is that the department is now populated by a revolving door of demotivated staff on burger-flipper wages!

But hang on a minute, is this the same department that spends £15m on consultancy fees to procure the frankenstein train which may or may not actually happen?

UPDATE: This just in from Robert Wright over at the Pink 'Un...

The section on how the DfT's franchising people weren't up to much because the organisation didn't pay enough was fascinating.

Perhaps a sign of how Network Rail may end up if the bonus-hackers get their way in future years...

UPDATE: This just in from J Alfred Prufrock...

So let's get this right.

If Coucher doesn't have the prospect of doubling his basic half a million plus a year he will either

A) Be demotivated and only go through the motions for his £250 per hour,

or

B) Say 'blow this for a game for soldiers and go and do something better paid and/or providing greater job satisfaction.

Must be hell being trapped in a job because you need the money.

I blame the ORR.

It's the system that's wrong.

They didn't need whips to get the rowers going flat out in the Greek triremes at the battle of Salamis.

But ORR assumes that the only way to get railwaymen to do a proper job is to make them dependent on bonuses for a half decent standard of living.

Lost in space

Telegrammed by J Alfred Prufrock
From a Press Conference at Euston today:


Turning to trains and track, Sir Richard continued: ”With a £1bn investment we could, within 3 to 5 years, see our trains running at 140mph with reductions in journey times between London and all West Coast destinations. What we are asking is that the Government re-thinks the franchise situation to give train operators the opportunity to invest, grow the rail business and lessen the burden on taxpayers.”

So three to five years. That's by the end of the current control Period. When Network Rail still hasn't decided what to do about the Stafford Bottleneck.

And nothing's going to happen until the next election in 2010, and then there's going to be a hiatus while the new government sorts out the funding priorities, then the Intercity West Coast franchise has to be re-let, then it's 2012.

There's more chance of Sir Beardie going into sub-orbital space than Pendolini running at 140 mph.

UPDATE: Dyspozytor over at Behind the Water Tower takes a different view...