Punctuality problems for rail operator East Coast (From York Press)

Train Operators have normally kept their concerns about Network Rail's performance out of the public domain, but last month Virgin broke ranks according to informed industry sources.
But even Network Rail can't cater for floods, tempest, cable theft and dodgy overhead electric wiring which it inherited from a cash-strapped British Rail.
Makes one wonder whether the Train Operator concept and its contractural relationship with NR needs a strategic review......? Likewise the Train Leasing companies now owned by big banks, who are making megabucks from leasing all the UK's trains to the Train Operators. Money that could be ploughed into the nuts and bolts of the railway. Instead a succession of Tory transport ministers bang on about "sweating the railway's assets" . Pathetic.

I get a bit fed up of these reports. I've been delayed on East Coast a few times recently and I can't see how East Coast could have avoided it. Track, signalling, line incidents all seem to be the responsibility of the track network. Even these...many will not be preventable by the track operator. Frankly I think East Coast provide a fine service.

My only gripe is the way some people (often bemused foreign tourists) are treated when they have clearly misunderstood the complex ticketing system. A bot of humanity wouldn't go amiss here.

But kicking our local rail company for factors outside their control just seems stupid frankly...one of the absurdities of the whole targets and league tables culture.

Not this story, but the previous one -
What exactly is a Vauxhall Transit van?

But even Network Rail can't cater for floods, tempest, cable theft and dodgy overhead electric wiring which it inherited from a cash-strapped British Rail.

British Rail's responsibility for maintaining track and infrastructure ended on 1 April 1994 (according to Wikipedia); and so if their failings are responsible for the current problems, why have they only materialised almost two decades later?

Apart from getting to airports when the alternative would be horrendously expensive parking charges (i.e. when I'm away for more than a week or so), I don't use trains anymore and haven't since 2004, when a succession of delays, cancellations and fare hikes convinced me that they were a fundamentally unsuitable option for anyone who needs to get from A to B reliably, at a reasonable price and who is not able to set their travel itinerary in stone months in advance. However, my memory of using trains when I was growing up in south London was that they were no less reliable under BR than they have been under the private operators since. They were bad under both public and private operation.

The railway is an obsolete, Victorian technology, like the horse and cart, and that is the long and the short of it. That's why California has just abandoned plans for a high speed line from Los Angeles to San Francisco, China is scaling down rail investment in favour of the COMAC aeroplane factory (i.e. investing in domestic airliner production), Brazil is building a new motorway network, etc. etc. What we need to do here is invest more in developing renewable fuels for cars and planes (as Lufthansa is doing with algal biofuel) and face the fact that railways are no longer a solution for medium and long-distance transport. They might still have a place for commuting into and out of large conurbations, but that's about it.

Guy Fawkes wrote:

But even Network Rail can't cater for floods, tempest, cable theft and dodgy overhead electric wiring which it inherited from a cash-strapped British Rail.

British Rail's responsibility for maintaining track and infrastructure ended on 1 April 1994 (according to Wikipedia); and so if their failings are responsible for the current problems, why have they only materialised almost two decades later?

Apart from getting to airports when the alternative would be horrendously expensive parking charges (i.e. when I'm away for more than a week or so), I don't use trains anymore and haven't since 2004, when a succession of delays, cancellations and fare hikes convinced me that they were a fundamentally unsuitable option for anyone who needs to get from A to B reliably, at a reasonable price and who is not able to set their travel itinerary in stone months in advance. However, my memory of using trains when I was growing up in south London was that they were no less reliable under BR than they have been under the private operators since. They were bad under both public and private operation.

The railway is an obsolete, Victorian technology, like the horse and cart, and that is the long and the short of it. That's why California has just abandoned plans for a high speed line from Los Angeles to San Francisco, China is scaling down rail investment in favour of the COMAC aeroplane factory (i.e. investing in domestic airliner production), Brazil is building a new motorway network, etc. etc. What we need to do here is invest more in developing renewable fuels for cars and planes (as Lufthansa is doing with algal biofuel) and face the fact that railways are no longer a solution for medium and long-distance transport. They might still have a place for commuting into and out of large conurbations, but that's about it.

Perhaps I should have elaborated. The ECML was electrified by British Rail. They used a cheaper form of construction for the overhead power cables, principally by using wire headspans rather than fixed girders above the track, for support.
That has come back to bite its successor companies including Network Rail, as evidenced by repeated delay reports caused by overhead line problems.

So, Paul, if the ECML suffered because of inadequate overhead line construction, how come Virgin, which uses the WCML and has better, more substantial overhead wiring, did even worse?

What the article fails to point out is that the measure of punctuality is flawed. How can you compare punctuality whilst ignoring that some routes are as long as Inverness-London and others are just 40 miles in length? And some have multiple operators and freight whilst others have a monopoly on the line. Of course East Coast and Virgin will always come out on the bottom by such a measure.

this is what happens when successive governments don't give the correct amount of funding to infrastructure projects.

Interestingly, both Virgin and East Coast came out at the top of a 'Which?' survey (April 2012 issue) in terms of customer satisfaction.