On Nov 17, 9:44*pm, trainmanUK wrote:

Any company that has to cancel half its service because drivers will
not work rest days and overtime is clearly not employing enough
drivers.

Correct.

The numbers that FCC have been putting out just don't add up.

Quoting the letter to stakeholders ''We have already recruited 38
additional drivers to facilitate the new
Thameslink route timetable introduced earlier this year and we will
have 20
more completing their training during spring next year. ''

The first 38 are a red herring to this issue. Those were for KO0, and
ought to have bee in place by March. If they were not then that
INCREASES the current problem not mitigates it.

If FCC have to cut 50% of the service but need only to recruit 20 more
drivers make up for this, then some simple arithmetic based on that
statement suggests they only have 40 drivers in total.

In other words [a] they are not telling the truth [b] are still not
recruiting enough [c] have not been recruioting over a long period
that allowed the numbers to fall so low.

I would suggest 20 drivers per year is somewhere around their natural
wastage value ... and suggest hese 20 are the bare minimum they can
get away with at maintianing an alereayd below par headcount ... and
are not any attempt to resolve the issue at all.

--
Nick