On Sun, 13 Dec 2015 09:03:14 +0000, Martin Coffee
wrote:

On 12/12/15 23:17, Clive Page wrote:
On 12/12/2015 09:45, Roland Perry wrote:
A temporary shortage of drivers means Great Northern services will be
disrupted on Sunday 13 December.

There has been a "temporary" shortage of drivers on the Thameslink
services since they took over the franchise over a year ago. Recently
the number of cancellations due to "staff shortage" seems to have been
rising. A good many services are also cancelled with reasons like "a
train fault which has now been fixed" and "safety inspection" and
"congestion". A cynical person might think that these excuses had been
made up. It's interesting that the shortage has now spread to the Great
Northern routes - could it be that drivers are leaving at a faster rate
than they can be recruited?


If a ToC has a long term shortage of drivers and is training new ones it
could be construed that is playing them below the market rate. Whilst
BR did allow drivers to transfer between depots they were not allowed to
leave a depot short so this is yet another disadvantage of privatisation.

There are many issues with the current privatized system. It was ill
thought thru to begin with. But, compared with the grim years of the
nationalized railway, it is whole new wonderful world. We have clean
hygienic trains, welcoming, well-staffed stations, and for the most
part well focused customer service. The Southern, Thameslink, GN
conglomerate clearly is not off to a good start.