UK: A Somerset & Gloucestershire Local Railway team has been formed as the latest step in an initiative to provide single management teams for regional infrastructure and local train operations in defined areas of the west of England and Wales.
The SGLR joins a Devon & Cornwall Local Railway team first set up in 2023 with the aim of sharing decision-making and resources across operations and infrastructure as a prelude to the formal creation of Great British Railways. In total, Network Rail’s Wales & Western Region now has six Local Railway teams covering 60% of its route-km.
The philosophy behind Local Railways was outlined by Martyn Shaftoe, Regional Operations Manager for NR’s Western Route, at a Rail Innovation Group seminar on AI in rail which was hosted by technology company One Big Circle in Bristol on July 17.
‘Local Railways marks the beginning of starting to join everything up, which is what’s coming with Great British Railways’, he told the audience, adding that the initiative could offer a means to accelerate the use of revenue-earning trains to conduct inspection work.
‘Things that we are starting to look at in the Devon & Cornwall and Somerset teams is getting more cameras on trains, which could help not just with driver training for example, but also with things like understanding track geometry’, Shaftoe explained. He hoped that the Local Railways initiative could ease institutional barriers to deploying technology on revenue trains, such as OBC’s AIVR computer vision tool, which is being used to monitor vegetation encroachment, lineside waste and asset condition.
Shaftoe confirmed that the ‘one railway’ approach was already starting to lead to tangible benefits, by crossing previous institutional divides between the infrastructure manager, train operators and freight companies. He pointed to an example in Cornwall of NR staff being able to make use of a spare GWR DMU and traincrew to ease access to worksites at night. ‘Five years ago, a TOC would not have entertained that kind of request — they would understandably just see it as cost’, he said.
Network Rail subsequently explained to Rail Business UK that Local Railways could ‘galvanise the potential and positivity that exists within those united by their love of the railway and the communities it serves.
‘Our model of devolution in defined geographies puts value management into practice where it has most impact, harnessing our own values of empowerment and teamwork to create one local team able to align their decisions and actions with the priorities and vision of the Region.’
NR added that the local teams were ‘accountable for whole system outcomes, including customer satisfaction, service performance, and overall net subsidy.’
