Island Line services will be replaced by buses all of this week as the railway is closed whilst staff complete refresher training in preparation for the reopening of the Ryde Pier rail line next week.
During the closure, between now and Friday, 2 rail replacement bus services per hour will run in both directions, between Ryde Esplanade and Shanklin.
The railway line between Ryde Esplanade and Ryde Pier Head has been closed since October last year to allow engineers to strengthen the 686-metre-long Victorian pier to give it another 60 years of operational life. It was hoped that the line would re-open in early Spring, but this was then pushed back to ‘late Spring’.
As the summer drew nearer, it was then hoped that access to Ryde Pier Head would be open and operational back in early June – in time for the 2023 Isle of Wight Festival. However, this never materialised.
The track will finally be reopened next Monday (10th July).
At the same time as the closure this week, strike action will be encountered all across the South Western Railway Network as workers continue to battle with their employer over pay.
A South Western Railway spokesperson has said:
“We’re looking forward to seeing trains running on Ryde Pier again, but to do so we must carry out refresher training with our colleagues, meaning we can’t run trains between Monday 3rd and Friday 7th July.
Article continues below this advertisement “We’re sorry for the inconvenience that this planned closure will cause and would like to thank our customers for their continued patience
I like the choo choo trains
They’re closing the whole line so that drivers can be reminded how to drive a train up the pier?
Better to be safe than sorry!
How do you know what training is involved
It’s the same pier my god. whats that the stopping distance might be one fot extra how can they call themselves train opps my dad would of laughed his head off at them.
It might be the same pier, but there are other things to consider like;
– line speeds in normal and bi-di
– operating restrictions in adverse weather
– low adhesion instructions
– new safety systems, such as AWS and TPWS (and their set speeds)
– location of new signals
– degraded working procedures
– rule book dispensations (I’m guessing they won’t be putting detonators on the track)
An entire week to do refresher training? Really?
How much is actual training and how much is an excuse for not having enough staff in the first place?
Well I guess its ‘yet another’ reason to close the lines? What with the weather, maintenance, ongoing pier repairs, animals on the line or another strike, it seems the rails don’t seem to be open very much these days?
Bull crap. I know there are drivers off ‘sick’ . Yet again no staff.
The trains run so infrequently anyway, the ‘Refresher Training’ is probably to help the staff remember how to do their jobs. I mean, if you don’t do a job for a while, of course you’ll need ‘Refresher Training’!
I suppose it’s safer for them to learn the route !!!!!!
Don’t want them getting lost !!!!
Been a long time since they have been down the pier ……
Makes a change to Brexit or Covid….
Wot a joke had so much sick leave … they need job retraining !!
It’s the same on the mainland. Just they have got more staff to move around to cover the jobs, most of the time.
They need to do this for some car drivers and van drivers…. a van followed us from Brading to Sandown the other day, I looked out both wing mirrors and he was so close and that was when we were driving. We were doing the speed limit. If we had stopped he would have hit us as no way had enough room between us.
The RSSB guidance is that if a driver or guard hasn’t operated a route for more than 6 months, then they need to refresh before working it unsupervised, whether that be in London, Fort William or Ryde.
I’m guessing IslandLine will use the time to also catch up on all the other outstanding training. With such a small depot and with inevitably people off sick, trying to strike a balance between having sufficient operational staff and maintaining staff training can get quite tricky.
How can this possibly be justified?
Obviously operating a safe service is vital but this goes way beyond that and is yet another kick in the teeth for their long suffering passengers.
Presumably they have more than one driver and have known what would be required for a very long time so why take the whole service out for a week?
They could have scheduled individual drivers at separate times but clearly chose to save money by doing them all at once.
I would like to hear how deliberately planning a totally avoidable 5 day shutdown reconciles the their legal public service obligations?
Not surprised they need refresher training, been on strike for so long they have forgotten how to steer the things
This is completely ridiculous and unacceptable.
If the entire network has to be suspended when staff are trained, there obviously aren’t enough staff.
How about employing more that the bare minimum numbers of staff, and training existing staff in cohorts?
All this story reveals is that the management/ owners of the network are running an absolute skeleton body of staff, so that the second there is any sickness / training, there is no slack in the system.
The operators deserve to lose the tender or contract to run this line.