Snow Hill route recovery plan – Final Update.

Autumn 2022 – Let’s talk new trains and the future.

The first brand new train to be built for West Midlands Railway was officially launched into service on our Shrewsbury route last month. It was the first of our 80-carriage strong, new Class 196 fleet and was officially named “Charles Darwin” by the High Sherriff of Shropshire ahead of it officially joining the fleet.

The new fleet was ordered as part of the West Midlands Railway launch back in late 2017, with the Class 196 units to take over services on both the New St – Shrewsbury and New St – Worcester – Hereford lines, as well as a separate new Class 730 fleet for the Cross City electric services.

So, what does all this mean for the Snow Hill lines we hear you ask? Firstly, it is a significant milestone for our major investment programme and is good to see this back on track after the pandemic. It also means our fleet is growing again which buys us more capacity and flexibility for the timetable. Specifically, this means we can look to increase the number of carriages on Snow Hill lines services using the Class 172 units which will be freed up from use on the Hereford route.

In this (final) blog update, we’ll look in more detail at what the fleet development and cascade plan looks like over the next year and catch up with Grace Thompson, Area Driver Manager, to check up on our driver establishment following a challenging year. We’ll also look at the upcoming timetable changes due in December 2022 and May 2023.

New trains, new faces.

As mentioned above, our state-of-the-art Class 196 fleet was ordered to replace a mix of legacy Class 150, Class 153 and Class 170 diesel trains and complement the modern Class 172 units which are the mainstay of the Snow Hill lines fleet. As travel habits have shifted and adapted to the post-pandemic world and while our new trains were being built, we have reviewed and revised our fleet deployment plan to match. We have also considered our driver training backlog and associated temporarily reduced establishment (discussed over the last year in these blogs) to help inform decisions.

In practice, this has meant that we have taken on additional Class 172 trains from Chiltern Railways to help bolster the Snow Hill lines fleet in the short term. In time, these units should be refurbished to match our existing purple and orange fleet. It also means we chose to introduce our brand-new trains on the Shrewsbury route as there was more capacity within the driver numbers across our Shrewsbury, Wolverhampton, and New Street teams in order to accommodate the conversion training without significantly compromising the availability of crews needed to operate day-to-day services.

Looking ahead, we will now look to start training our Worcester-based traincrew on the new fleet, with the aim of bringing the first units into passenger service on the New St – Worcester – Hereford route in the first half of 2023. While this will feel like a long time since 2017 when they were first announced, we are focused on only beginning the local training when it won’t severely impact on the day-to-day timetable by taking crews off their booked jobs.

As the Class 196 fleet eventually take over our Hereford services, the Class 172 trains currently used there can be brought into a more dedicated pool for the Snow Hill route, allowing us to design a timetable around standard five-carriage long trains on the route from the middle of next year. This is about simplifying our operation and being more consistent for passengers, where we focus on getting the basics right instead of being overly ambitious but vulnerable to external factors.

To find out more about what the last year has been like for our hard-pressed driver teams on the route, and how we are now moving forward towards training for Class 196 fleet at Worcester depot, we caught up with Area Driver Manager for the Snow Hill lines, Grace Thompson. Grace took up the role in early 2021 and leads the teams based at Leamington Spa, Snow Hill and Worcester Shrub Hill.

To kick off tell us a little about your role, what does an Area Driver Manager do?

My role involves leading a team of Driver Managers to deliver safe, efficient and reliable services for our customers. In reality no two days are the same and my role involves everything from working with colleagues to help deliver large infrastructure projects which affect train drivers, developing strategies to improve the safety and performance and overseeing our challenging local training plan. Finally, and key for me, is everything ‘people management’ related and acting as the voice for my team across the business and industry.

What is the best part of the job?

Simply put, the people! My drivers are so passionate about what they do and it’s brilliant to see so many new drivers coming through who are equally as passionate about the role. The experience we have in the team is vast with some drivers having over 30 years driving under their belts. Seeing the professionalism of my entire team fills me with pride and I know their commitment is delivering results for customers in terms of rebuilding strong foundations.

What are some of the more challenging parts of the job?

In any operational function there’s always going to be a degree of reactive management. Whether that’s sickness & absence, poor weather (or a global pandemic!) there’s always going to be an element of needing to adapt, improvise and overcome. As you’ll have read in our previous blogs, we have unfortunately felt more than our fair share of the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, and we are working hard to keep our training pipeline moving as it should. From time to time our efforts are hit by unplanned events but I have a very committed team who frequently show flexibility in changing the plans to keep us moving in the right direction.

What do the next six months look like for the driver team on the route?

I’m so proud of everything we have delivered since I started working with this team in March 2021. Our driver numbers have improved dramatically, and the recent October half term saw an improvement of near 50% cumulative reduction in the number of cancellations we saw comapred to October half term last year. However, I’m all too aware that we still have much to focus on and can’t take our collective foot off the gas pedals just yet, particularly with getting even more of our new trainee drivers through the academy as quickly as we can to keep pace with those who are retiring. As well as training new drivers, we will be training our near 80-strong Worcester-based team to drive the new Class 196 fleet. Basically, my forward training plan is huge and following the pandemic represents an unprecedented volume of work for our teams to catch up on.

What have you and your team have been focusing on over the last year?

Training! (can you tell I have to think/talk/plan/eat/sleep training a lot?) We have recruited and trained more driver instructors, giving us more trainers to deliver the various competing programmes we need to undertake. It’s not just new drivers that we are training. We are also upskilling our existing drivers by expanding the routes they currently drive. This means we will have more drivers available to drive more of the routes that we offer on the Snow Hill lines, as well as diversionary and relief tracks, for extra flexibility during disruption. As well as this we have been helping to consult on, and deliver, big infrastructure projects like new depot sidings, which will enable the new Class 196 trains to be introduced.

Are you looking forward to the introduction of the Class 196 to the Worcester area?

Absolutely, you can really feel the excitement on the depot for the introduction of the new trains. They are far more modern, not just for the customer, but in the driver’s cab as well. The Class 196 offers the driver a better, more ergonomic working environment. The unit and cab are designed to allow drivers to be able to access and manage all train systems from the driving seat using “smart” technology. As for passenger comfort, all seats have USB points and plug sockets, see-through overheard racks to help keep luggage safe, improved information screens throughout the carriage, faster Wi-Fi and smart air conditioning systems that will better adjust to outside temperatures. The introduction of the Class 196 fleet is an exciting project and a welcome addition for both staff and public.

What’s the timetable, for our new timetables?

Over the coming months, you may see adverts from both ourselves at West Midlands Railway as well as other train operators telling you about a big timetable change planned for December this year. However, for the Snow Hill lines the next big change is planned for May 2023 instead. The pandemic has changed lots of people’s travel habits and as such we are working to adapt our operations to better reflect the “new normal” – with a keen focus on operational resilience as a core principle.

We are carrying around three quarters of our pre-covid passenger numbers, but with a greater proportion of weekend and leisure customers in that mix than before the pandemic and a fall in the scale of weekday commuting. With this in mind we are keen to ensure that we can provide the right capacity, at the right time as well as efficiently deploy our fleet and traincrew, particularly given the continuing enhanced public subsidies to support rail recovery.

We have discussed in these blogs before how our train services are knitted together with those of other operators across the network and how this can complicate timetable planning. For instance, our own local calling patterns can be influenced by the availability of paths for CrossCountry trains as far away as Edinburgh, Chiltern Railways trains where they share tracks with tube trains in north London or even a freight train being loaded at a south coast seaport.

The interwoven nature of the timetable means that the process for making changes is highly regulated and involves lots of collaboration across the industry. As the de facto “air traffic controllers” of the railway, Network Rail check and calibrate the plans of the various operators and make sure there are no conflicts. This is also why changes are scheduled on a set six-month basis to make sure that all operators are working to the same timescales. Depending on the scale of the intended changes on any given route and how many interdependencies there are with other areas of the network, it can take two years or more to plan, work through the detail, verify and eventually introduce a new timetable.

On the Snow Hill lines, we have been working with stakeholders to design a timetable which focuses on “sound operations” rather than being overly ambitious to squeeze every last drop of capacity out of our resources but leave ourselves vulnerable to effects of disruption. The central facets of our panned timetable are based on a 4 trains per hour service in each direction, through the route’s core (Stourbridge to Dorridge / Whitlocks End & vice versa). Today’s timetable is based on pathing for 6 trains per hour (10-minute frequency through Birmingham), but with two services not operating due to shortages of traincrew over the last year and the depressed post-pandemic demand.

So, what is the difference between today’s 4 train per hour timetable, and what we are planning for the future? Essentially, where services are pathed for 6 trains per hour, but only 4 are actually operated, gaps between trains can be either 10 or 20 minutes at different points in the hour. Our recast will see a switch to a more consistent 15-minute pattern.

This unlocks other benefits such as slightly longer turnaround times at the end of the lines, meaning slight delays on an inbound train are less likely to knock on into the next service back in the other direction. This has been a particular issue for us at Kidderminster where our trains need to shunt between platforms before heading back towards Birmingham. It also means delays are less likely in peak times as crowds are better spread out rather than focused more heavily onto specific trains. Crowding on certain key trains during peak hours means it naturally takes longer for people to get on and off, which in turn means the train has to stop for longer and loses time against its allotted path.

Our planners have also calculated that with the 15-minute pathing, the total number of “formed up trains” (when two individual units are attached to make one longer train) required mean we could allocate a consistent five-carriage set to all services (subject to our new Class 196 trains entering service).

This would mean a standard base capacity of 20 carriages per hour in each direction through Snow Hill and Moor Street during the peak, as opposed to the current mix of train lengths. We are still working on the final plans for this and exploring if we can flex the number of carriages between peak and off-peak times to be more efficient and eco-friendly, without compromising the robustness of the timetable. Options to add further additional “peak time” services through route core have also been protected as part of the design process, should future demand require, and available resources allow it.

While it is built around the principles of simplicity and resilience, the scale and complexity of the change we are proposing means it cannot be introduced without significant due diligence. There is also a considerable amount of work being done by our colleagues at Chiltern Railways to ensure that paths for their own services are maintained, whilst they are also reviewing their timetables to better reflect changing travel habits. This is why the new timetable for the Snow Hill lines will come later in May next year when we, other operators, and Network Rail can be certain there are no hidden surprises.

Signing off the route recovery plan …

Over the course of the last year we have worked tirelessly to rebuild our traincrew teams, be open and honest about the challenges we face and hopefully restore some of your lost trust. With our driver teams back on an even keel, maintenance backlogs clear and new trains and timetables firmly on the agenda we remain committed to the future of the Snow Hill lines as a key transport artery for the region.

1 year on:

• 21% increase in the number of train drivers available every day.
• 69% of the training backlog for existing drivers delivered.
• 88% of all Snow Hill routes & train types can now be operated by all crews on the line.
• 53 projects delivered under the route recovery plan.
• 16% decrease in the number of cancelations
• 75% of all services on time, at every scheduled station call.

As we move forward from recovery to resilience, we are now signing off from the route action plan and from this blog for the last time too. We’d like to sincerely thank everyone for your patience over the last year and for taking the time to read this series. Being transparent with our customers was key to the project, but we were aware that launching a blog about train delays was a bit leftfield and had not been tested with an issue like the one we faced before. We keenly monitored early engagement statistics to see how many people were reading it. It was from these statistics though that we saw hundreds of you were actually reading it every month and seemingly interested in the “behind the scenes” content and detail. This has been a useful lesson for us in itself and will help inform our communications across our organisation in the future.

Thankyou.

Cam Bliss, Service Delivery Manager, Snow Hill lines.

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