In my view EWS and the Canadian trapper was the worst thing that could have taken place for any company.
Total destruction from day one, carrying out genocide of certain groups of workers.
This company made going to work terrible, using bully boy tactics to scare employees, Human resources that were the same.
If anyone says EWS are leaner and fitter for the job, they have been on holiday to LALA land for too long.

Yes mate, I have heard talk from current railway people that I know.

48111

Hey wait a minute you have forgotten the "other" Freight TOC ! namely Railfreight Distribution (RfD) which was the last of the BR sectors to survive under the British Rail banner,they were the company chosen to work the Channel Tunnel traffic,Freightliner and Car carrying trains along with all the MOD traffic,from1994 till 1998 when Freightliner "Broke " away,then they had the misfortune to be "given" to EWS and formed EWS International(the for runner of Euro Cargo) in 1998.
In 1994 they had 72 class 47 locomotive,the only 47's fitted for multiple working, all maintained (above"B" exams) at Tinsley.Rfd traincrew depots were at Saltley(where I worked from 1963 to 2006),Dollands Moor,Wembley,Crewe and Ipswich and Mossend.

You are obviously the "Someone with a better memory of the facts", 21Aman! :eek:Thanks for that.:D

Regards, 62440.

Hello, first post on here.

It was Wisconsin Central RR that was the parent Co to EWS

Load Haul happened one Monday morning when a new area manager rolled upto Healey Mills with a load of new management faces. The person who was i/c Load Haul was an ex signal man, who got a medal for moving coal in Coalville during the miners strike. This man smoked a pipe and stunk the place out.
At this time we got a new traincrew manager, he seemed a nice man .
He saw a senior driver tending a flower bed outside the HM messroom at 1300hrs one day. He was the afternoon shed man.
This manager asked the driver what he was doing and what turn he was on. The driver told him he was afternoon shedman. The driver thought nothing of this, the manager seemed a nice man.
The next day the afternoon shed turn was cancelled.
This set the tone of things to come.
I went to various meetings with Load Haul Management regarding thier bid for the full freight franchise.
These meetings were held at the Danum Hotel in Donny.
Off Course Load Haul lost thier bid, and we were lumbered with EWS.
Under Burkhart things were fine, we got bonuses at the end of the year.
At this time DRI was coming in for Drivers, this was about 1997 ish.
Soon after that we got a Canadian CEO. This man caused massive loss of traffic sheds and yards were closed .
Guard/ trainmen were included in DRI, and we all got a nice motorola brick mobile phone, which to me was a novelty. With this phone you could call any company mobile, send SMS and contact all the internal BR number nationwide, all for nowt.
As a trainman my wage went from £8500 with overtime to £16500 without overtime, and annualised hours. This was good as at the end of the year I owed them around 150 hours. If you were not required to work, you were booked off with pay.
Then in 2000 all the groundstaff were restructured and my wage went up again, but we lost the annualised hours but kept our mobile phones.
One Director of EWS told us that Freightliner would not be a problem to EWS, and that Great Central would not take off. On that I rest my case.
EWS gave away jobs to all and sundry.
Then the Canadian came with his macho management style and then things hit the dust along with the morale of all the company.

The Mainline livery was a very tastefull shade of blue with white lettering,37,s looked good in it.Transrail was horrible I reckon they lost the Dulux paint card when they dreamed it up:):)

The reason "Transrail" locos looked such a mess was they were never painted they were already in BR Railfreight sector livery,"two tone grey" and all they did was replace the commodity logo"Coal.petroleum,etc.with a new "sticker" a "square" with a large "T" motif,also if I recall the lettering on "Mainline" locos was silver not white.

very interesting stuff!! had nice read,cheers.....

Is there stil any transrail loco in use on the network any where??:)