The Bristol Railway Archive

Extract from the Railway Herald. <BJ>

''The last few weeks have not been happy for the railtour industry with a number of cancellations recorded, of which some have been within a few days of the operating date.


What is becoming clear is that charter companies using DB Schenker are not out of the wood, by a long way. Both UK Railtours and Steam Dreams have lost charters at quite short notice due to the inability of DBS to resource contracted charter trains.

It seems that the resolution of the drivers dispute at DBS is going to take time to work through the system to provide the crewing levels required to enable the freight operator to meet all its contractual commitments. Their plight was illustrated last weekend with the late cancellation of Steam Dreams Blackpool charter, which was not helped by engineering work, and then UK Railtours losing its South Wales branch line train on 3rd November, just three days before the actual trip. This provoked a furious reaction from UK Railtours John Farrow in a newsletter to UK Railtours customers.

The loss of his Amman Valley Raider came on the back of a dubious exercise by DBS by insisting that an earlier railtour to North Wales should be delayed to await an assisting locomotive at Holyhead following the earlier failure of Class 67 No. 67025 on the outward working at Nuneaton, just to avoid potential delay penalties. The charter arrived very late at Euston, where it is reported one of the passengers unfortunately suffered a fatal heart attack.

DBS has got a big problem, which the recent industrial action merely emphasised. Their drivers are vital to their business, yet it is has been said that there has been a policy of making do for far too long. Now the company is beset with a drivers pool that is short of numbers and short of route knowledge. With the Rail Head Treatment Train season now well under way, DBS has already had to 'hand back' around half of its contracted workings. Engineering trains are also suffering due to the lack of drivers, which according to John Farrow has resulted in Network Rail 'going ballistic' at the freight operator for its lamentable performance. As a consequence it is easy to see why charter trains are suffering in order to resource the far more profitable RHTT and engineering work.

This is a situation which is not going to go away overnight, and those charter companies who rely on DB Schenker are likely taking a long hard look at their future programme. So are, no doubt, Network Rail.

But it has not been plain sailing either for the main charter train provider in the UK, West Coast Railway Company. It, too, has sustained a number of high profile problems recently, the most lamentable being the need to cancel the first planned outing of the Steam Railmotor on 4th November due to failure of the Class 47 which was booked to haul the Railmotor from Bodmin to Liskeard. The Great Western Society at Didcot took an early decision to cancel the workings due to the anticipated problem in getting the Railmotor to Liskeard. This follows on from earlier problems with the failure of No. 44932 en-route to Shrewsbury to haul Railtourer's Welsh Borders charter at the beginning of October, and the unavailability of the water carrier which sank Vintage Trains non stop Birmingham Snow Hill to able one working a week later.

On top of all of this, Pathfinder has announced the cancellation of its charter from Bristol Temple Meads to Portsmouth Harbour on 1st December due to lack of bookings. They suggest that the absence of premier dining and the continued unavailability of No. 34046 Braunton may have been at the root cause of lack of interest in this train. Another casualty is UK Railtours working to Oxford in December with No. 35028 Clan Line, although whether this is down to DBS issues or other problems is yet to be established.

The late cancellation of charters is bad news all round, as it can only generate a negative attitude from potential customers. There are many instances of passengers committing to hotel and travel bookings in order to travel on specific charter trains, and while they may get a refund on the cancelled charter train ticket they are left potentially out of pocket for other expenses. This is an unacceptable situation, and while it is acknowledged not to be the fault of the charter operator, they are left to sort out the problem. Hopefully they can rely on the respective train operating company to shoulder its portion of the blame and provide compensation to out of pocket passengers''.

Spare a thought for those who work for them. Its not just drivers they are short of ground-staff are low in numbers aswell. So much work has been handed to the other freight operators as well.
But to try and look at things from their side. This is the first time any of the company's from the break up of BR have gone through a recession and with a downturn in work that occurred they found themselves with what the books showed as surplus drivers . The bean counters willingly allowed them to leave ( No Compulsory redundancy's) was the official line. But now we are starting to see a return to rail in some areas although they only seem to be interested in large volumes of traffic. Speaking to FLHH staff they are busier then ever having taken work from D.B. But they are also short in Drivers numbers as well. With TOC about to increase their numbers the demand for qualified drivers is on the increase yet apart from the passenger toc's the only freight operator to train staff to date is DB. Although I understand that FLHH are set to release a number of their ground staff to train up.
Morale is low amongst DB staff in the local area not knowing what happens when Didcot shuts next year and the business manager turning up to so say speak to drivers and not venturing out of the office to speak to them.