NEWS ON: 'The Lakes and Borders Explorer' charter on 17th August

Pathfinder Tours has told Railway Herald that at 16:00 on Friday 16th August, the company was advised by DB Schenker that it did not have crew available to operate 'The Lakes and Borders Explorer' charter on 17th August.
This train was due to work from Newport to Carlisle to tie in with the DRS Open Day at Kingmoor. A cancellation for this reason at such short notice simply beggars belief and is likely to pose serious questions as to the future of DB Schenker in the charter market.
Pathfinder Tours, in the meantime, seem left to pick up the pieces of a problem not of their making.

 

Sue DBS for big bucks. Take 'em for everything.
How come they agree to crew the train, maybe months in advance. Then decide they can't less than 24 hours beforehand.
Totally & utterly unprofessional.

 

For a tour like that, it's probably a minimum of 4 drivers and 2 guards, just for the passenger sections. How many train crew were unfavorable? It could be something as simple as one driver calling in sick, and DBS not having another spare driver with correct route and traction knowledge at such short notice. Be nice to know all the facts before flying off the handle and suggesting suing them. DBS aren't going to have crew sitting around spare waiting for every eventuality.

 

Whatever the circumstances, something obviously isn't right at DBS as cancellations due to crew shortages, especially this close to the tour date, are a relatively new phenomenon.

If DBS do pay a penalty for failiure like this it cannot be high enough in my opinion.

 

You sure ? DBS have been playing silly buggers with crewing for well over a year now.

 

They agreed to something, then backed out at the last minute. In my book breach of contract, end of. If they run so close to the wire that if one driver calls in sick & causes so much disruption, then they are not fit to call themselves a proper company.
What would this country be like if all companies went to pot every time someone phoned in sick.

 

I did say "relatively". Just seeking to make the point this didn't seem to be a major issue pre 2011 or so. Happy to be corrected however.

 

I couldn't agree more. Shocking way to do business. For me, this has echoes of the "Is this acceptable ?" thread when we discussed the conflict of interest between shareholders and customers !

 

You seem to be saying that if it was because 1 driver called in sick this somehow makes it OK? Surely if DBS are a professionally run outfit(??) then having spare crew on call is part of being in the charter market. And its not just Pathfinder who suffer, their caterers must presumably have purchased supplies which will now have to be binned. Who pays for that?

 

I'm not saying it's ok, I'm saying people should wait for the facts before jumping to conclusions. All that's been said is the tour was cancelled because DBS couldn't resource it. It could be one member of staff unavailable, it could be all of them. They could have been transferred to other workings. I'm not defending DBS, I'd be pretty annoyed if I got a phone call at 4pm the previous day to say a tour I was booed on had been cancelled. But there could be extenuating circumstances that we don't know about yet.

A spare crew on call? What, for the whole trip? Shunters at Eastleigh, half a dozen drivers, at least 2, but possibly 4, guards. That could be another dozen staff sitting around that probably won't be needed. Another dozen day's wages to pay. What business would be willing to do that? Would charter operators be willing to pay an extra, say, £2000 to keep a full set of crew for the tour and ECS moves on standby just in case? I doubt it.

 

The trouble is we probably won't get to hear the facts behind this so have no choice but to speculate.

Re your second paragraph, I'd be surprised if DBS didn't maintain spare capacity in resourcing their operations in the event of late changes. Possible however there are some customers they feel more able to let down than others ?

 

I would have thought that DRS would have been the TOC for this tour as one of the destinations was the DRS open day!

 

No clearly that would be absurd, but surely you are not suggesting an organisation the size of DBS has absolutely no slack built in to cope with last minute sickness or other circumstances? Is there no concept in the rail industry of staff being paid a retainer to be "on call" and available to work within a certain number of hours should they be required as is commonly practised in many businesses? You will have to excuse me,but not working on the railways,it seems unbelievable that the absence of just one member of staff out of the 12 you list,could as you suggest,lead to the complete cancellation of a charter working, which from a customer service viewpoint is a disaster.

 

Aye, you can have all the extenuating circumstances you like but whether that cuts any ice with the paying public is another matter entirely. With most businesses the customer can go and shop elsewhere but that's nigh on impossible where railtours are concerned.

 

And in my book as well. DBS agreed to do the job = contract, I wouldn't be interested in the problems DBS have in running THEIR company, they contracted to do the job and failed to fulfill that contract. That's no way to run a business.

 

So, hypothetical situation.........18:00 departure from KX to Edinburgh, Friday evenings. Train is full and the announcement:- "sorry folks, no crew, the train is cancelled"
And I don't think anybody is talking about "another dozen staff". As has been stated, we don't know the details of this but if a one man business contracted to do a job and failed, he'd be out of business in a very short time. An operation like DBS is huge, massive resources, what they've done is well out of order. Who knows, maybe they don't want this type of business but if that's the case they should have said at the outset "sorry, no can do".

 

Don't be silly, the modern privatised railway can't afford luxuries like that - that's an old-fashioned concept from the steam-age.

 

I do believe that DBS isn't interested long term, but they need to be upfront to people with their intentions and either commit to contracts they said yes to or so no can do, all the current situation is doing is dragging others down in the vortex of the sinking DBS ship.