Rolling stock are leased. At the govts request, 2 main types were scrapped in 2021 so as to reduce the cost of maintenance.
A lack of Will is incorrect, there is a lack of Will to look for these solutions, but a wall of bureaucracy. This might all sound like a bit of train speak nonsense, so apologies. Stock is owned by ROSCOs, so therefore TOCs have to agree a lease with ROSCOs and the funding for these leases comes from the government. The government can fund this but there has to be a business case to do so, but the ROSCOs have a monopoly on the carriages. There is still a massive under supply to match demand of rolling stock in the country however. There is for example class 379s going on lease to GTR to run on the great northern route at King’s Cross, which would allow some class 387 units to operate on southern, which will be a slight uplift. These rolling stock cascades do take a long time annoyingly. I agree about using old stock, however issue number one is disability legislation means trains are either non compliant, or would require serious overhaul, and number two is maintenance costs mean that it is cheaper for the ROSCO to scrap the trains. A lot of the old stock as well is also not suitable for the route (DC voltage, AC Voltage, Diesel). Personally I would have kept 4 313s to operate the Lewes shuttles on Matchday, which would, even though they were falling to pieces. Sadly with the end of the contract for them the ROSCO no longer supported the Supply of spare parts. Germany for all their failures at the euros, do keep old stock for use on football trains, but ultimately that’s because the operators own the stock. So yes the stock exists, but it is probably a lack of will from all parties to fund their use, due to the railways being run solely for profit.
Lime Street last week as a scouser would say was “bleedin last”
I agree with your points completely, I’m hoping the MPs intervention will bring the rolling stock conundrum even more to the front for the DfT. Hopefully with a more proactive government on railways, not one that says “we are a nation of car drivers” they can look to invest. I think the railways are symptomatic of a lot of problems in the country which have been enforced and entrenched by 13 year of austerity, and more of profiteering, we can look across Europe and the world, to see there are much better ways of handling our railways, while still using our very unique infrastructure effectively.
Not in my experience. Time taken to get away from the ground doesn't vary much anywhere in the PL (can't comment on Ipswich as haven't been there).
Was the club and whoever gave the thumbs up for Falmer built on condition of rail transport aware of all this train 'language'? What contingency and risk analysis was undertaken? Im beginning to wonder if any was done. Someone at the club and railway signed the agreement around 'free' travel. Surely each negotiated minimum standards/requirements. What were these?.Have these been met if not I presume a back-up plan comes into play and penalties imposed.
Yes, the minimum standard is still maintained. They obviously did contingency and risk analysis, they are a professional football club, they aren’t doing stuff on the back of a fag packet. To suggest they’ve done none is ludicrous. To basically say the stadium (which a lot of us fought and campaigned for) is a complete failure, is quite frankly bizarre, we had one VERY BAD game last week. Quite a lot of us attend, but don’t find it that annoying that it bothers us that much, so it can’t be a complete failure. This is all a bit strange in all honesty for a game this weekend, where most people have said the service was fine. You obviously have much higher standards, there is not a football stadium in the country, where people aren’t loaded onto the train to full capacity. You seem to be worrying about something in regards to a clicker which ultimately was under control the entire time, and nobody (except for possibly a missing child?) was injured. Saturdays you have to wait a little bit for a train, midweeks are bad, I feel like we’re just going round and round in circles on this subject, I’ve explained it enough. You probably should consider whether if it’s worth it for you attending if it annoys you so much, or just get seagulls travel, or drive. If it annoyed me this much, I’d just go on the park and ride, but I tailor my day so I can get a few pints in town, get up to the stadium for kick off and have a few pints and a good chat after. I only ever spend at most 20 minutes at Brighton pre match queuing, and then generally have about 30-40 mins on the concourse pre match, and similar post match, and stroll on a train most of the time, maybe having to stand back to the Brighton in a 60% full train. That’s not the ideal plan, but ultimately in life everything is not perfect, I cannot always do what I want to do. Midweeks are dreadful and everyone wants that improved. Everyone got back pretty efficiently on Saturday, and to my knowledge there wasn’t too many delays, except for a small signalling issue. Yesterday we won 2-1 and I was very happy to celebrate, I didn’t really care about the queue, but like @Professor Plum said, some people aren’t young and don’t want to get pissed up, which is completely valid, but I’m you might have to put up with some slight annoyances. I think your gripe with the club and the train company, while it’s annoying is one which is personal to you, I know for a fact that I have told you all the reasons for the problem, or similar threads at least double digit number of times.
A freedom of information act request will get you that. I do get what you want to know, but I just don’t know what you want to get out of it. There are penalties in place, I don’t know what they are, a lot is going on at events that people won’t see. I think there just has to be a gauge of expectation, that’s all, I don’t think it’s ever going to be a walk up service post game, ever, there’s always going to be a slight queue, that is all I’m trying to say.
Still a 15/20 mins walk to the station though...... half the issue with the Amex is perception. You leave your seat and are straight into a queue rather than walking any distance so it always feels worse.
I think the Bluebell Railway might have a couple of carriages in a 'shed'. When rolling stock goes out of service that's generally it. You can't go back to them and say, 'oh yeah, you know those carriages that we said aren't fit for purpose & we don't want to leases anymore, can we borrow them again if you're just leaving them in a shed'.
The last time we went to Wolves by car it took over an our to get out of the city, the traffic was horrendous.
www.express.co.uk
Well yes, but given what a nightmare the occasional midweek game can be, like last time, people’s choice is to either not go or leave very early, which also gets some stick on here.
Not from me. People are free to do as they please and I do not blame people for leaving early midweek.
