Staff sickness means that Island Line will be operating a revised timetable this weekend and again on Monday (25th July).
As the summer holidays get underway and tourists flock to the Isle of Wight, trains will be running less frequently between Ryde Pier Head and Shanklin.
Throughout 2022 the train service has been disrupted on a regular basis, much to the disgruntlement of passengers – especially after a £26million investment in the railway in 2021.
South Western Railway are yet to update their website with the revised timetable.
More information can be found at https://www.southwesternrailway.com/plan-my-journey.
As it is all the same network SWR, why can’t they redeploy staff from the mainland.
Never had this trouble with the old trains. So what’s changed ?
The rules are that safety critical staff must be licenced on the specific route, traction and rule book. Mainland staff won’t be qualified on island routes or traction. Going forward – mainland staff in theory could be trained and licenced on island routes and traction, but then would need to maintain their competency by regularly driving over the route. easy concept on paper; but in reality it’s a pain as it would take Fratton staff away form their home depot productivity, then have to sort out ferry tickets etc…Mainland staff also operate to different T&C’s than IslandLine so I imagine the Unions may be unhappy as well.
Surely there is some merit in the idea of tar mac the entire route, then run battery shuttle busses upon it?
No skilled driver, no dangerous high voltage lines to kill wild beasts or people, little maintenance and the buses could be added or withdrawn easily as to demand both seasonal and hourly, thus cutting waste.
No need to ensure the entire line was so securely fenced, no signal staff etc etc.
Cheap reliable transport is what we need, not some ‘quaint’ but inefficient transport ‘just because it is a train’.
Convenient they all go off sick when the strikes are soon due to start
Agree, 100% SCABS, Fact.
Typical IW.
Then why did they vote not to strike?
Because then they won’t get there weekly sick pay.
Do you actually know what a scab is
Hand the line over to Isle of Wight steam Railway, I’m sure they could make better use of it.
Island are a joke , haven’t they heard of offering the people who are healthy overtime ,as useful as a chocolate teapot comes to mind !!!!
Rip up the tracks and run private bus service, cheaper and easy to find drivers.
Christ,lovely weather sickness again,about time this was sorted,i know people say you canf help sickness,they dont go on strike here because there off more than the strikers.
Perhaps the disgruntlement is due to passengers NOT wearing a mask to protect the staff from COVID?
Suck it up! We all know COVID is rife on the island. I don’t suppose the Government care. They should make it law again that masks must be worn on all public transport and in shops including supermarkets to reduce the spread of COVID. It’s not a lot to ask. No more lockdowns as yes we have got to learn to live with it but certain precautions should be taken.
if staff or ANYONE chooses too don a useless cloth face nappie then those wearing are protected right! others that dont are not risking the mask wearers lol
plus very rare anyone will die of it with jabbed and thats main point.
someone…somewhere will always get ill from a virus.own risk assesment is all thats needed too live with covid.i mean how the hell has society managed with flue fgs! its part of life .no disappearing
You can wear a face covering if you want. I certainly won’t be! I work in public transport and I honestly don’t know anyone (staff or customers) who are worried about Covid or the lack of face coverings. Passenger numbers in some areas are now exceeding those from pre-Covid times on leisure routes. There are virtually no face coverings and no social distancing yet Covid case numbers amongst staff have dropped to virtually zero in the South Central / South West regions.
There are far more concerning things to worry about rather than worrying about if someone decides to wear a piece of soiled tissue paper over their nose and mouth.
At least they won’t have to strike convenient that.
Indeed, at least this way they get sick pay, whereas if they strike they do not get paid, Strangely convenient?
Sadly it seems Island Line has been infected with a severe dose of incurable Floatybridgeitis.
You’d think they would invest in a snazzy sign, like the floating bridge sign wouldn’t you?
I asked the guy on the train and he said no one was off sick, it was because the manager on the mainland had made a mistake again.
The Island Line crews are rostered in exactly the same way as mainland TOC’s – using a rotational base roster. All rostering is done by roster staff in agreement with trade Unions – certainly not by line managers. Island Line’s problems are due to only having a small pool of suitably qualified staff. Safety Critical staff have to be qualified on the route, stations and tractions. In somewhere like Waterloo – there are hundreds of staff to cover work so it is easy to cover trains, in Ryde – there is about 30. As soon as people start going on annual leave, sickness or training etc, roster staff start running out of coverage.
Wasn’t a problem before covid though was it – trains ran all the time, 99% reliability if I recall
now, it is just workshy layabouts getting sunny day syndrome.
The reliability was atrocious with the old trains; although this was mainly due to technical failures within the 80 year old fleet.
It could be anything from staff retiring, sickness, training on the new trains, lack of Instructors or annual leave.
To brand everyone as workshy layabouts is very rude. Just out of interest; what roles are you referring to? Signallers, engineers, S&T staff, P-way staff, cleaners, drivers, guards, controllers? All are needed to run a safe railway.
Thanks for your feed back , interesting.
But why are there not enough trained people/staff to start with, especially in peak season ? It sounds to me that it is all down to bad management.
Correct me if i am wrong, is it not fact, that network rail are planning to save 2b pounds in the next year and are planning to CLOSE every single ticket office in the entire country ? And this is the main reason that your mainland colleagues are striking ? And lastly do you guys not feel guilty for ignoring your own union ?
In terms of staff coverage; I’m guessing the sheer cost of employing extra ‘spare’ staff (like any business), difficulty in recruiting, delays to training due to Covid (it takes in the region of 12 months to train to be a driver) and unexpected higher levels of short term staff unavailability could all be reasons why IslandLine don’t have extra staff. Across the industry, on average – the number of staff retiring early is 8% higher than pre-Covid.
I think you may be slightly confused about the role of Network Rail and the RMT dispute.
Network Rail do not employ any ticket office staff; so therefore don’t have any say in their proposed closure. On the mainland; NR employ the infrastructure staff (P-way, Signallers, S&T engineers etc…), but on Island Line (somewhat unusually) – all functions are controlled by Island Line directly, so they employ the staff who were traditionally employed by NR. In essence – NR do not have a presence on the island.
I can’t speak about staff feeling guilty as I don’t work for them, nor am I a RMT member.
let the French take over they a least know how to run a railway