Nope, Wigan and Bolton didn’t buy into the tram network, so there’s a big gap out our way!
Rail fares increasing again
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Absolutely! (By charging customers and taxpayers more)
You can get the guided bus route from Leigh, Atherton and Tyldesley.
It is almost like the timber wagon roads from the pits.
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Man of Honour
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At least with BR you usually got to where you were going. Locomotive has problems, take it off and put another one on. You can't do that anymore because they are all permanently fixed rakes now. These days a train can be cancelled anywhere along it's journey with the passengers just dumped on the platform to make their own way onwards. BR also used to put "relief" trains on if a particular route was busier than usual. Nationalisation can't come soon enough although the SNP doesn't have a good record with Scotrail. Ticketing is a massive mess. Aside from the vast variety of tickets those who have advance tickets for specific trains can be screwed if one train is late for them to make their next connection, especially if the next train is a different company as they may be forced to buy another ticket because their ticket isn't for that particular train.
I travelled from Elgin in NE Scotland to Penzance Cornwall last month (725 miles by road) and using my veterans railcard and split ticketing it only cost me £98 down and £99 back, I couldn't do it that cheap by car. The downside was these awful new trains are so very uncomfortable and my backside was numb within ten minutes of getting on one and by the time I got half way I was in agony. My return trip was a nightmare, no working air con on the Penzance to London and London to Edinburgh trains and all four of my trains were late. It wasn't a problem at London as I had a hour before the next train but on reaching Edinburgh I had to run through a jam packed Waverley station to catch my next train and only just made it. That train also had no working air con and was packed because the normal train was broken and they put on a shorter three car to replace it. That train was very late getting to Aberdeen but luckily they held the last train for us although I still had to leg it to catch it. That was the first (and last) time I had used the trains for many years and it was a thoroughly unpleasant experience that has put me off using them again. I can't complain about the price as that was fantastic, it's the seats, they are so hard with no give at all on the seat cushion. The person who designed them should be forced to sit on one for the length of the country and see how he/she likes it!! They need to go back and look at the old mk1 and mk 1a/b/c coaches and see what standard class comfort used to be like.
I have no problem with drivers earning a decent wage, it's a difficult job. They have to keep their concentration doing the same thing for hours at a time with the responsibility of several hundred passengers at risk if they do something wrong. Then there is always the chance that some selfish idiot decides to take their own life by jumping in front of their train. I knew a driver that happened to and he never drove a train again. He had nightmares for years. They deserve their pay. London Underground is completely different as the new trains are almost completely automated, mainline trains are not like that at all.
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I still haven't taken the train in years in the UK.
My choices are:
-national express when I don't need the car
-the car
As soon as 2 people are going it's car every time.
The train? I don't even check anymore. It's just ridiculously expensive. And it's unreliable too. I much prefer the national express bus if I'm going Cardiff to Gatwick/Heathrow. Sometimes it's 15 pounds one way.
My choices are:
-national express when I don't need the car
-the car
As soon as 2 people are going it's car every time.
The train? I don't even check anymore. It's just ridiculously expensive. And it's unreliable too. I much prefer the national express bus if I'm going Cardiff to Gatwick/Heathrow. Sometimes it's 15 pounds one way.
You can get the guided bus route from Leigh, Atherton and Tyldesley.
It is almost like the timber wagon roads from the pits.
I live just past the guided bit so don't know what the ride is on that but the V busses are pretty good especially in the morning though going back home after work can take forever especially if United are playing at home. With no European football this season
it won't be as often.Luckily my OH works for NR and I get discount train tickets so I use the train when I go to office once or twice a week.
Soldato
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while i don't want to turn this thread in to an X vs Y. i was checking the salaries of bus drivers, its not a great ratio and i'd argue Bus Drivers have more to worry about than train drivers, with the same type of responsibilities.
when stage coach were managing the South Western Rail they at least put buses on for passengers when there was major disruption to the railnetwork, the new lot? "you can claim back taxi fair". now its very much a case of your own your own at a random station with little or no information or staff to help.
Ahh yeah (although Burnham seems to want to extend the network out that way :/ ). Despite being part of Greater Manchester, Wigan and Bolton are quite far away and I think would be better served by the rail network rather than the tram network. I can't see many people wanting to use it to go from Wigan into Manchester if it's going to make 30 stops on the way and take well over an hour to get there. Annoyingly he seems to have this focus on connecting all the Greater Manchester boroughs by tram when trams are really only good for frequent stops across shorter distances.
it amazes me "trains and track maintenance" is listed separately from that and equally as huge
money they waste on the tube lines is completely separate to this too right?
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I know just the seats you mean. Ca just about last 35-40 minutes but my bum is also bit numb, takes a moment to wake up.
Designed to allow for more seating, being quite upright, minimal padding. The end result is a spine that start hurts half way through, it’s not agony but not great either. After several years you get used to it, more specifically the uncomfortable sensation.
Man of Honour
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Trains are listed seperately because the rail companies don't own them. They are leased from ROSCO's (Rolling Stock Leasing Companies) of which there are three main ones, Angel Trains Ltd, Beacon Rail Ltd and Eversholt Rail Group as well as several minor players. The leasing companies get the spec from the operating company, put it out to tender from which the operating company chooses which one suits them best then the ROSCO buys the rolling stock and leases it back to the operator. Long gone are the days when the operating company (BR) told it's own engineering company, BREL (British Rail Engineering Limited) to design and build it's own trains.
I injured my spine in the RAF and now have arthritis throughout it as well as waiting almost two years for a double knee replacement which is why I was in agony. I was also on trains for 16 hours each way!! The only good bit about the new seats is that there is loads of legroom. I am 6'2" with long legs and not once did I come anywhere near my knees touching the seat in front. Hope nobody responsible for trains reads this as they will probably make legroom shorter to fit a extra row of seats in!!
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Pull the other one. The last time they went on strike one of their demands was for 'no modernisation of the railways'.
Train drivers should be redundant, same as station attendants and people working in ticket kiosks. All they care about is protecting their jobs. Government should just call their bluff, develop all the automation in the background, next time they go on strike say bye bye implement the automation and make the railways better. If the public get arsey about it, reduce/subsidise the cost of rail fares for 5 years and the public will get on board immediately.
I'm all for workers rights. But this isn't about workers rights. It's about maintaining redundant jobs.
Most of these ex-national industries with large union presences are usually the worst businesses going because the unions have far too much power and take the mick. My brother used to work for British Gas and some of the stuff you hear about is just hilarious - it's no wonder they make no money as private enterprises. Some of the engineers had it so that they got paid the second they left the door, and there was no restriction on how far away they could live from site. No other job has benefits like this, it is ridiculous. The pension schemes were unsustainable. Loads of the staff were incredibly lazy, "oh I'm here to do a bunch of gas meters on a new build estate - but there's no roads yet and it's a bit muddy so I'm not doing it".
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‘Modernisation’ is not what you think it is.
In the context of a government and jobs ‘modernisation’ is the PR friendly word for attacking terms and conditions and changing jobs in a way which reduces pay or the cost to employ people.
What it doesn’t mean is improving the service.
P.S. the unions didn’t campaign against no modernisation of the railway, they are all for improving it. What they are not for is attacking the terms of their members.
As for ticket offices, it was customer groups that kicked off about that.
As for driverless trains, they don’t really exist. There are much newer and more automated signalling systems (similar to what’s on the new bit of the Elizabeth line) but most of the network is ancient and dates back to the Victorians so it’s kinda old. All that would need to be ripped out and started over to make it work.
In the context of a government and jobs ‘modernisation’ is the PR friendly word for attacking terms and conditions and changing jobs in a way which reduces pay or the cost to employ people.
What it doesn’t mean is improving the service.
P.S. the unions didn’t campaign against no modernisation of the railway, they are all for improving it. What they are not for is attacking the terms of their members.
As for ticket offices, it was customer groups that kicked off about that.
As for driverless trains, they don’t really exist. There are much newer and more automated signalling systems (similar to what’s on the new bit of the Elizabeth line) but most of the network is ancient and dates back to the Victorians so it’s kinda old. All that would need to be ripped out and started over to make it work.
Yup
One of the plans to "modernise" the railways was to do away with the manned ticket booths and many of the remaining platform staff with the explanation being that it meant the one or two people it freed up could now wander the platforms and people needing assistance could use the help points.
Which is a nonsense as it basically means there would now be no one at a known point if you needed help, and it didn't take long for it to come out that the staff answering the Emergency help points didn't actually have a way to find out which one was being triggered without the assistance of the person triggering it, IIRC either through lack of training on the system or lack of actually having them mapped out and identifiable to the controllers, when you pressed the button the controllers couldn't always see the platform/location of the help point (and possibly not even which specific station).
The staffing levels on a lot of the stations is already poor without enough capacity to easily cope with things like wheelchair users actually wanting to access the trains, especially as they've been doing away with the conductors on the trains.
You say that but the rail service is as good as its ever been and there has been no noteable decline in service for as long as I have been alive, if anything its improved considerably thanks to investment by the government.
Pretty much all the rolling stock in England is modern (has air con etc) and there are basically as many trains on the busy routes that capcity of the allows and each train has more seats than ever on said busy routes.
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I wouldn't be so quick to bitch about them if it was affordable. But it's so hilariously overpriced it's just not even funny anymore.
Hopefully the gov subsidizes rail travel once nationalized, like every other country with a decent rail network.
All the mod cons like air con are nice, yes, but you can't really use them if your train is consistently delayed or cancelled. I've often found that on a mainline train, i.e. London to Manchester, if a train is cancelled, the next train will often end up being filled to the brim with all of the passengers from the cancelled train and this train. Because of this, people are literally forced to sit on the floor in between the carriages because there are simply not enough seats. I really can't see how this is an improvement.
Soldato
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i agree with most of that, but i now have a reduced service at night after 7pm it goes to an hourly service, from every 30mins.
it makes going out harder to manage, and getting back from london as example late late
that said i am aware im luck to have a service with many many places with out any local rail infrastructure :/
they need loop lines to make it work better i feel
But nothing I said referenced the price, it was all about performance which has not degraded.
I would not count on it.
Why use an anecdote and a strawman when the government publishes the actual data every 4 weeks:
Cancellations are 3% of trains, and 1.7% of trains that run have a delay of over 15 mins.
One thing that is obvious in the data is when they were running less trains during Covid, performance improved a decent amount. That’s what happens when you run your network at maximum capacity 24/7, performance will take a bit of a hit. There is less time for maintenance and and problems with a single train can completely blow your timetable.