London Northwestern Railway has announced that trains on the Marston Vale Line will not return in time for the new school term beginning.
The Class 150 trains have arrived from Northern, and maintenance technicians are now familiarising themselves with the trains.
Once this familiarisation and training has been completed, driver training can begin. The operator estimates that it will take three weeks (depending on whether they have driven a Class 150 before) per driver to train, and 24 drivers are required to implement a partial service.
LNWR says that three-quarters of its drivers have never driven a Class 150 before.
Driver training can not take place during strike action, or action short of a strike. It can also not take place when Network Rail are working on the line, especially since it is so long since trains last ran on the line.
No target date for a resumption of services has been confirmed, but the operator says that a service will not be in place before the new school term in September, and rail replacement buses will run for students until trains begin running in the Autumn.
So apparently it’s been delayed until later this year and some of the drivers have never driven a Class 150 DMU before.
The article does not mention that LNWRs new 730 units will be replacing the 319s. Driver training for mainlune 730s would take precedence. Training removes them from passenger duties, theeefore potential mainline service cancellationss. All the drivers that drove the Marston Vale line a year ago will be out of competence for route knowledge (you do know it has to be learned by heart right? Every junction name, speeds, crossings, hazards, braking points, in darkness/fog too etc). Would you rather it be run safely, or slapdash?
Those trains are nearly 40 years old what excuse can they come up with for not being able to drive them ?
It is extraordinary that the Government, while making electric cars compulsory from 2030, and pushing them hard now by fining manufacturers for producing ICE cars, has nevertheless failed to introduce much in the way of electrification of our railways. surely such electrification should be the first thing to do, when you want to decarbonise transport?
LNWR must think that the traveling public are mugs. There are plenty of photographs of class 150s operating on the Marston Vale line before, so saying that they have no technicians and drivers that know them seems a bit much. This line just doesn’t fit into their operating model and really needs to be run by someone else.
Article doesn’t mention that the trains are nearly 40 years old. Line was supposed to be electrified but useless government cancelled it.
What a perfect example of why the railways are never going to win passengers back. Every excuse under the sun to delay providing a useful service.
Not really. Rosters are usually very tightly planned. Training has to be factored in advance and to release people for training is headache in order to keep the entire service going. This isn’t unusual across the whole railway world. My employer is introducing new and refurbished locos and it takes time to get everyone trained. After I got trained it was a long time before I actually drove one and caused me to scratch me head a few times.
At last the voice of sanity.