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Railtrack's delay minutes have increased by 45% since the Company was put into Adminstration – but is it all down to Railtrack?
When I first saw this graph the message was clear. The top line shows delay minutes attributable to Railway up to 24 November 2001 . The bottom line is the delay minutes for the 34 weeks leading up to the Hatfield derailment in October 2002. So, chronologically, the bottom line lags by about a month.
As you can see, delay minutes were improving until Railtrack plc was put into Administration on 7 October, whereupon they climbed almost in a straight line and by 24 November had gone from 200,000min a week to 290,000 min a week – up 45%.
At the same time it has been a pretty benign leaf fall season. No sudden frost followed by a gale to bring juicy leaves down on the line. More Multi-Purpose Vehicles are out on the track water blasting and sanditing and more multiple units have been fitted with sanding.
So, obviously, since Adminstration the Railtrack management has gone AWOL from the railway, too busy fighting for the shareholders's lost billions to worry about performance or safety. And demoralised staff who have seen their savings wiped out have departed or given up. QED.
Well, that's what I thought, until I started thinking and asking questions.
First, anecdotal evidence. My morning peak trains at WAGN have been arriving at Welwyn Garden City (where our local commuter group has started putting photocopies of this column in their display case on the platform) around 10min down. And drivers have been crawling along. But nary a sign of underfloor slip or slide action have I detected.
Other observers confirm this experience.
Next, during the first week in December, Southern Region had its best day in three years for ‘delays above 200 min' attributed solely to Railtrack, with a total of 340min. On a good day you would expect delay minutes to total around 1500min, but despite a minimal number of big incidents, that day's total attributed to Railtrack was 11,000.
For comparison, on the same day East Anglia Area recorded 8,800 delay min of which 7,300 were represented by just three big incidents.
On London North Eastern Region on a day when everything seemed to be going exceptionally well, with lots of green signals and no obvious slippery bits, one informed source described the delay minutes for the day as ‘ridiculous'.
So something doesn't add up. And my preliminary theory is that zero tolerance of Signals Passed At Danger is having an effect. When you can lose your job by sliding a couple of yards past a platform end signal, you are going to drive very cautiously.
Significantly, some months back, the safety boys and girls started talking about ‘professional' driving, rather than ‘defensive' driving. But when you are a newly qualified driver who has never been out in leaf fall time before; when a SPAD is the ultimate crime, you are going to drive to defend your job and to hell with the timetable.
I suspect that I am not hearing slip/slide because if you notch up genrtl you can't get up to a speed where you might slide into the job centre.
Add to this the effect of all those Temporary Speed Restrictions. One at Hitchin costs 60 delay min on a good day. On a bad day it can reach 500 delay min.
Don't forget, too, that one late running train can affect several and that the effect is cumulative.
So, I am sure that leaf fall is having an effect, as is a decline in morale and motivation of the staff. But equally, adhesion related delays, which are attributed to Railtrack are being exaggerated by driving habits matched to a zero tolerance railway.
This is just a theory. Observations from drivers and guards in the readership would be welcome.