Does anyone believe Ntwork Rails Announcements?

Question

The announcement that Track Maintenace will only be performed at night. Considering that most lines are only closed for 3 or 4 hours a night, do they really think they can get a full weekends work complete, especially in residential zones, during the hours of midnight and 4am before services start building up to the peak hours? And how much disruption do you think will happen with over running works?

Answer 1

I'm sorry folks I think the above answers are largely unfair and innaccurate. We all know that Network Rail and their contractors suffered severe over runs on 3 engineering projects over Christmas and New Year. However there were at leat 100 engineering close downs over the period that finished on time. The announcement where it is correctly reported states that more engineering work will be done ar night, not all, and it will involve shutting sections of track at around 8 or 9pm after the end of the peak commuting flow; this will give 7 or 8 clear hours of work. Where major projects are taking place such as re-signalling schemes, some weekend and holiday closures will have to take place. Britain's railways require far more maintenamce and renewal than those in some other countries because we run our services at very high frequency and because the infrastructure

was neglected by Network Rail's predecessor Railtrack. Network Rail is far from being the perfect organisation but it has made great strides forward in providing an improved infrastructure - the problems at Christmas perhaps being symptomtatic of undertaking too many modernisation schemes simultaneously.

Answer 2

As they appear to subcontract the maintenance work and not to be too efficient at that, no I don't believe Network Rail.

They will be reeling out the 'lessons will be learned' soon.

Answer 3

Network Rail should be called Notwork Rail. Its amazing, they receive £6 billion subsidy from the government (our money)  

every year and they still can't run a decent service.

Answer 4

That is how track maintenance and renewal were done before the government interfered with the structure of the railway industry (Always interesting that politicians "know" more about running transport than we professionals!)

It is all a matter of logistics and control.

Unfortunately, Network Rail have demonstrated a complete ignorance of both subjects.

So, the view of a transport professional is that it IS possible to meet the latest objectives of Network Rail, but Network Rail will NOT meet them.

Answer 5

the problem for notwork rail is that if a service gets canceled, then the train operator receives a fine for it being canceled but because it isn't technically their fault network rail ends up paying it. the problem with this is that they can't have a few services canceled to carry the work out with out getting hefty fines even if it is the last few services, which hardly anyone gets on, the fine is the same. they then try to do work in the dead of night which really isn't the best time to do it anyway (if they could do the work in off peak time by canceling a few trains it would work better, but they can't do that)

that said they are also generally useless, my Dad is a train driver, so has to deal with them. one incident occurred with them and a rather expensive train. my Dad's friend was pulling into a siding (no passengers no one hurt) when at 15 miles an hour the train de-railed, why? it was going over a set of points, except they needed some maintaince, notwork rail had taken them up, done the work, and signed it off as safe to use that track, they forgot one tiny detail, to relay the points!

Answer 6

I wouldn't believe Network Rail if it told me the sky was blue and the grass was green.

My husband works in civil engineering and has some experience of working track side.....they take pillows to work with them, that tells you how much gets done.