Iain Burnett

Said the following about Greater Anglia Autumn Readiness:

“Greater Anglia Autumn Readiness

Autumn 2015 resulted in some of the worse train performance and cancelations witnessed on the Greater Anglia route. Around the middle of autumn around 50% of the rural fleet were unavailable for service due to wheel damage and the company was running a permanent bus service on branch lines such as Sudbury and Felixstowe and cancelling most of the Ipswich / Cambridge services. The lowest point was reducing the Norwich / Lowestoft frequency and replacing with a bus service as well.

While stakeholders and customers empathised initially, the longer the situation continued the more frustration grew and reputational damage got worse.

Faced with such adversity and reputational damage a multi-functional team was formed with the sole remit to run the railway our customers expect in 2016. This was an interesting dynamic given the franchise change-over was mid October 2016 and the competition was still ongoing but the overall good of the railway for customers was the driving force.

A joint Greater Anglia and Network Rail autumn review was carried out by an industry expert which focused on ensuring vegetation management plans were in place and delivered but also recommended improvements to the resilience and availability of tyre turning facilities.

Ultimately a plan 30 point plan was produced and below is some of the highlights:

• Use of a converted Land Rover to run on the Sudbury branch as a rail head treatment train (RHTT.) The Network Rail RHTT never covers the Sudbury branch. This was branded the Sand Rover.

• Network Rails mobile wheel lathe was leased for Norwich depot to turn more wheel on site thus reducing the mean time to repair of the 153 fleet from 6.25 days in 2015 to 1.3 days in 2016.

• Purchase of a dedicated float of wheels for the 15X fleet.

• Formal agreements for wheel lathe access at Hornsey, Ilford and Bound Green resulting in a capacity increase from 12 vehicles per week to 26 vehicles per week.

• Dedicated train diagrams to wheel lathe sites that were resourced with drivers combined with the additional capacity gave a mean time to repair reduction of typically 50% on the 156 fleet.

• Use of remote monitoring and accelerometer to monitor slide conditions and wheel impact forces to allow more real-time management of trains and deployment of the hand sanding team at Network Rail.

All in all, autumn 2016 resulted on zero branch line closures and bus use thus allowing the new franchise to set off on the best possible customer experience footing. The good work has now been hard coded into the way the business operates and 2017 is mobilising in the same way as 2016 but with improvements planned based on lessons learn last year.“