Behind the scenes of Scotland's rail network

It’s fair to say that ScotRail and Abellio – the Dutch parent company which holds the franchise to run most of Scotland’s train services – have been in the headlines a bit in the last few months thanks to service cancellations, below-par punctuality figures, a much-publicised “recovery plan” and calls for the operation of Scotland’s railways to be taken back into public ownership.

That’s why the Helensburgh Advertiser has been invited to the ScotRail Alliance’s integrated control centre, at Cowlairs in the north of Glasgow, to see behind the scenes and find out what goes into the running of the nation’s rail network.

And with 59,000 ScotRail services running across the country every four weeks, and demand for the rail network from both passengers and freight companies constantly increasing, it’s not a straightforward job.

Among those working at the control centre, there are train delay attributors, maintenance controllers, resource controllers, train running controllers, incident controllers – even a rail replacement team, whose job it is to co-ordinate replacement road transport in the event of a major problem somewhere on the network.

In charge of getting everything to run as it should is Mark Ilderton, the head of integrated control for the ScotRail Alliance, the collective name given to an agreement by Abellio, the train operator, and Network Rail, the company responsible for the railway’s infrastructure, to run a more customer-focussed operation.

Mark’s chat with us, and with Alison McHarg from ScotRail’s communications team, is held up after a longer-than-expected conference call reviewing the daily performance of the rail network in Scotland. 

The call lasted longer than planned because of a discussion about delays caused in the Glasgow area last night, when overnight engineering works ran later than scheduled, and the train carrying out those works got in the way of the first passenger train services of the day.

That leads us nicely on to one of passengers’ biggest bugbears: trains running late. That can be caused by any number of factors – train breakdowns, passengers activating the emergency alarm on board, or the aforementioned over-running engineering works.

And so tight is capacity on the network that it often isn’t long before one late-running train has a knock-on effect on other services.

“Last night on the West Coast main line from London to Glasgow there was significant late running northbound, heading towards Glasgow,” Mark says.

“And when that happens it can have a knock-on effect on train services in lots of other ways. You can soon see how a problem hundreds of miles away in England might well have an impact on people trying to travel to Helensburgh.”

How so? Well, think of it this way. For example, a train travelling from London to Glasgow could be delayed at Wigan. But by the time it gets to Scotland, the late running of that train could cause a knock-on delay to ScotRail services at Motherwell, because the trains use the same tracks. 

And because that Motherwell train then uses the same tracks as lots of other ScotRail services as it runs through Glasgow – especially between Partick and Hyndland, the short stretch of track used by every service between the city and the west – it’s easy to see how it might then affect people travelling to Balloch, Helensburgh, Milngavie and all points in between.

But when trains run late, what do you do to fix the problem? Well, One solution ScotRail uses is “skip-stopping”, where a train misses out certain station stops along its route in order to reach its destination on time.

That tactic has earned the company much criticism from fed-up travellers in the local area.

Mark, who prefers to call the practice “running express”, says: “We make a differentiation between ‘peak’ and ‘contra-peak’ services, and may miss out stations on a contra-peak service in order to make sure the next service in the peak direction is on time.

“For example, in order to ensure a service towards Glasgow in the morning rush hour is on time, the carriages we’re going to use on that service may run express on the previous journey. 

“Because if that peak service isn’t on time, not only do we inconvenience the larger number of passengers who are on that service, we then risk running late on the busiest section of the route through Hyndland and Partick.

“And if that happens is risks having an effect on trains all over central Scotland and beyond.”

“We are working hard to reduce the amount of express running,” adds Alison McHarg, from the ScotRail communications team.

“As soon as we run a train ‘express’, it fails our public performance measure. It might look like we’re manipulating the figures, but service recovery measures like that are only ever applied to minimise the number of customers who are delayed.

“We recognise that’s no consolation if you’re, say, travelling away from Glasgow at a time of day when most people are travelling towards Glasgow.

“If you’re travelling on a ‘contra-peak’ train and it doesn’t stop where you want to get off, we know it’s infuriating.”

And passengers’ frustration isn’t limited to trains which run late or don’t run at all: many will have experience of a train which has operated with three carriages instead of the usual six, or two instead of four, something which, at peak times, can all-too-easily give rise to the old cliché about people being “packed in like sardines”.

That issue was particularly acute in the summer, when the trains which operate on many services through Dumbarton – known technically, and to train buffs, as the Class 334 fleet – were taken out of service one at a time for refurbishment work aimed at reducing the number of delays and cancellations caused by mechanical or electrical breakdowns.

Alison says: “The Class 334 trains receive scheduled maintenance examinations every three weeks at Shields depot, determined by the number of miles the set has run.

“This covers key systems that ensure the train is safe and reliable, checking key customer facilities are operational and serviced.

“Further functional checks are carried out daily at Yoker and Bathgate prior to start of work services.

“These trains also receive ‘heavy’ maintenance work such as bogie replacement, air tanks, coupling equipment, every four years or so. The 334 fleet is currently undergoing this programme at Polmadie depot in Glasgow.

“In response to reliability concerns, modifications are being carried out to modernise the CCTV system that the driver uses to monitor the door operation.

“This includes overhauling the train coupling gear to enable digital signal to pass between the vehicles. Likewise the electronic train management system has recently been upgraded.”

But breakdowns do happen. And as we are talking, one such incident flashes up on a screen in front of duty operations manager John O’Neill: a six-carriage train at Milngavie station has developed a fault and can’t get power from the overhead electrical wires, blocking one of the terminus station’s two platforms.

“The driver has spoken to the engineering team leader to try and get help,” John says,” but with his train not moving that’s a whole platform out of use.

“Milngavie now has a much more frequent service than it did in the past, and because it’s part of the route from Glasgow to Edinburgh via Bathgate, whenever there’s disruption it becomes a critical issue for us.”

Another potential problem is that the driver of that train at Milngavie is due to get off his train for a rest at Hyndland, where another driver will take over. 

But our Milngavie train driver is then due, after his rest, to drive another train from Hyndland out to Dumbarton Central – and if he can’t take his break on time, there’s a risk of a knock-on delay to lots of other trains.

Hours of work and rest periods are strictly enforced, too – after all, you wouldn’t want someone in charge of your train who had been working for so long without a break that their concentration begins to lapse.

There’s another simple answer to the capacity issue: provide more trains.

Or, at least, it seems a simple answer. But thanks to those ever-increasing demand pressures we mentioned earlier, there aren’t huge fleets of trains loitering around Scotland, or indeed anywhere in Britain, waiting to be rushed into use.

Still, that doesn’t mean ScotRail is sitting on its hands. “We’ve brought some more trains up from London to boost capacity in the Glasgow area,” Alison says, “and we’re looking at the possibility of even more of those coming in to help.

“We also have a fleet of new electric trains, the Class 385s, coming into service from September 2017.

“We only have one of those trains at the moment, and it’s only running as a test train at this stage, but when they are in passenger service, they will help with a cascade of older trains on to other lines.”

But while the ScotRail Alliance can do plenty to make the country’s train services more reliable and able to carry a greater number of people, there are occasions when something completely unforeseen happens which isn’t the fault of the railway but has a huge impact on the service.

“A few months ago,” Alison says, “someone was cutting trees near the track at Gartnavel Hospital, close to Hyndland station, and one of those trees came down right across the railway’s overhead wires. 

“That started a fire on the wires, tripped the power supply to the wires and blocked one of our busiest lines. 

“And there were two trains fairly nearby, carrying hundreds of people between them, and because they’re electric trains and the electricity supply had been tripped, they couldn’t move.”

Pictures of that particular incident were shared on ScotRail’s social media channels – and while the images didn’t do anything to speed up the resolution of the problem, they did at least help passengers understand why their train hadn’t turned up.

“People are a lot more understanding when they can see what it is that’s causing the problem,” Alison says. 

“That’s why we’re making much more use of social media channels, not just to tell people that their train is running late, but to show them why their train is running late.

“There’s so much demand for the rail network now – business passengers, leisure passengers and freight traffic – and the operation isn’t far off 24 hours a day.

“Before I came to work for ScotRail I didn’t realise just how complex it all was, But there are so many moving parts which all need to move in sync properly if the system is going to work the way it should.

“Most people, in my experience, are fairly indifferent towards their train service – as long as it gets them where they want to go, when they want to get there. 

“And when it doesn’t, we can all fully understand their frustrations.”