Snow Hill route recovery plan - December 21

Monday, 20 December 2021
  • Latest News
December 2021 edition.

The pandemic ... 21 months and counting.

As we look ahead into the new year, let’s hope that Covid-19 is an - “auld acquaintance, that is soon to be forgotten” - we can but hope. Sadly, with the spread of the new Omicron variant and its as yet unknown reach, it does seem like for the short term at least, we will be living with the pandemic for a while longer.

As we have discussed before in this blog series, Covid-19 has led to sustained periods of high levels of absence within our teams which has significantly impacted our ability to run services at various points over the last 21 months. The pandemic’s malevolence is twofold, both reducing the number of colleagues available each day to operate trains in the short term and hampering our driver training programme in the longer term, meaning it is taking much longer to get our new recruits qualified and out on the line.

This longer-term legacy of the pandemic has been amplified on the Snow Hill route by a high number of recent retirements within the local teams. Forecasts back in the spring of 2021 started to show that the scale of this issue would be significant and as such, we began developing a route recovery plan. While we understand that we are still seeing too many cancelled trains and overall timetable performance is still lower than it should be, we’re pleased to say that behind the scenes our recovery plan is progressing as expected.

Snow Hill train stats.

With this progress in mind, we remain on track to rebuild our teams beyond their pre-pandemic size and up to the required levels to operate a fundamentally more reliable service with increased resilience built into the base plan by summer 2022. We also remain hopeful that the impact of any new guidance relating to the spread of the Omicron variant is minimal on these plans. However, as we have seen before with the pandemic, its reach and influence can be difficult to predict, and circumstances can change with little warning. We are continuously monitoring the evolving public health advice and will make every effort to keep our people safe, while also keeping our catch-up plan on track.

Festive season timetables

The festive period often presents some unique seasonal demands for the railway. We see usual peak-time commuter numbers fall, surges in leisure travel on certain days as passengers make holiday journeys and large-scale engineering improvement works scheduled by Network Rail undertaken while the railway closes down for Christmas. For obvious and understandable reasons, it is also a very popular time of year for our hardworking teams to seek to take time off to spend with their loved ones.

While different in so many ways, this year is also no different regarding many of the factors outlined above. The number of commuters through Snow Hill & Moor Street has already started to fall in the wake of the “work from home if you can” guidance being reintroduced, and the number of peak-time passengers will drop further as schools and colleges break up.

In the context of our recent operating challenges and recognising the importance of communication and engagement, our team have been in regular contact with many of the local schools and colleges to understand their end of term arrangements and look after our student customers wherever we can.

While it is difficult to exactly predict where, when and indeed if any issues may arise, we know a key concern for our customers is limiting the length of any potential delay in getting you on the move.

Every day between now and the early new year, we will have at least 45 coaches located at key hub stations around our network, ready to mobilise without delay in the event of emergencies, disruption and unavoidable cancellations occurring.

If you live, work or travel on the eastern arm of the Snow Hill route, out towards Stratford upon Avon, it is worth noting the planned closure of the railway between Dorridge and Stratford on the 27th - 29th December 2021. Network Rail will close the line for three days to upgrade and replace a life expired canal/railway bridge. During this period, we will operate rail replacement coaches, in place of trains in both directions to keep you on the move. Chiltern Railways will also operate a replacement bus service, calling at the smaller local stations.

For more information about timetable alterations during the festive period close down, as well as Network Rail engineering schemes in the area, please head to our dedicated December travel advice webpage.

Additional colleagues from our head office and management teams have been deployed at Birmingham Snow Hill and Moor St, as well as Worcester Foregate Street to support our station crews and assist customers during the busy festive market season this November and December.

WMR staff helping at Birmingham Snow Hill

Storm Arwen and our battle-scarred fleet

During a difficult summer, our engineering team had to contend with the effects of the ‘pingdemic’ which reduced the number of maintenance colleagues available each day to keep the wheels turning on our fleet of over 100 carriages based at Tyseley & Worcester depots.

Following these challenges earlier in the year, we have seen a largely stable phase with all our trains available for use each day for much of the autumn. Unfortunately, the winter storms and Storm Arwen, in particular, have left us with some battle-scarred units which are now stopped and awaiting major repairs.

170 battered and bruised.

As the photographs show, the wintry conditions took a significant toll on our fleet with various incidents leading to damaged body panels, windscreens, engines and coupling mechanisms. Four of our own carriages, and three which we maintain at Tyseley on behalf of another train company, sustained such extensive damage that they remain out of service weeks later.

170 battered and bruised.

Our fleet engineers quickly assessed the damage and started to plan what repair work would be required. The scale and complexity of the restorations mean we are awaiting the availability of specialist body repair contractors and replacement components being manufactured. Based on these resources coming together, the team at Tyseley have this work scheduled to be undertaken over the Christmas period with the aim that all of the affected units will be returned to service early in the new year.

The West Midlands was by no means the only area to be affected by the storms. As such many other depots across the country have similarly wounded trains sitting in their sick bays at present. This, coupled with constraints in the supply chains currently seen across multiple industries, means that we have waited longer than we would usually have liked, to get the repairs arranged for these units.

Continuing services during inclement weather conditions is a complex situation for our Control function to manage in partnership with Network Rail who operate the track, signals and wider infrastructure. As an industry, we have extensive safety procedures, built on robust risk assessments, which help inform decision making about when we can continue to run trains and when we cannot.

However, even if a decision is taken to suspend a route due to worsening conditions, we will usually already have trains on the move which we need to get back to stations safely. In stormy conditions, such as those which led to the damaged units pictured here, where falling trees (and low flying garden furniture) can block the track, we slow our trains right down to reduce the chance of any issues. Before reopening a route, we also run “checker” trains at low speeds and without passengers to assess if the route is clear. Safety is our top priority, and while the storm damage to our fleet was significant, we are pleased to say that no customers or colleagues were injured due to our robust safety management systems.

In addition to our battle-scarred class 170 units, we also have seven of their sister class 172 units currently stopped in our depots awaiting midlife wheel and axle overhauls. Unfortunately, again due to maintenance depot capacity constraints and engineering supply chain issues currently being felt across rail and road transport industries, this is taking longer than expected to resolve. This is compounded further by the fact that traditionally during the autumn season, more train wheels become damaged due to poor wheel to track adhesion during the leafall season which means demand for associated parts is high across the country. We have been working with the company that designed and built the class 172 trains to find a solution to issues in sourcing suitable stock. Subject to the now scheduled delivery of the required parts arriving at Tyseley before Christmas, our engineering colleagues plan to have the vast majority of the affected trains returned to service by January.

The roundup

Thank you again for taking the time to read this far. Hopefully, these blogs will continue to communicate progress as we move into the new year. We want you to know that we are working really hard to put things right. We’d like to again acknowledge and apologise for the recent issues affecting the Snow Hill lines.

Check back next month when hopefully we will have a clearer view of how recent changes to public health guidance relating to the Omicron Covid-19 variant may impact the railway and how a look at a closer look at some of the supporting workstreams underway as part of the route recovery plan.

Find out more

If you’d like to speak to a member of the management team in person, we run a series of Whistle Stop Tour ‘meet the manager’ events throughout the year.

We run an online passenger panel to give you the chance to feedback your experiences and shape the future of your local rail service. To apply to be on our Customer Panel , you’ll need to fill out a short questionnaire.

You can claim Delay Repay compensation for any journey where you are delayed by 15 minutes or more. It’s easy to apply online . Or you can pick up a Freepost Delay Repay form at the station.