‘Battle-ready staff will do what it takes’

TFR’s national command centre lies at the heart of the scheduled rail initiative. “That’s where we generate an integrated command plan that is the anchor of all the activities,” says CEO Siyabonga Gama. “The plan will always stretch us and allow us to apply continuous improvement philosophies so that we can become more effective. We have many depots around the country with many people sitting hundreds of kilometres apart from each other. The plan is what unites our efforts. “And in spite of the many challenges that our railway faces – and we do face many – our people are battle-ready to do whatever it takes to stick to the scheduled railway so that when something goes wrong we can respond as quickly as possible.” The challenges have been well documented. The average age of the locomotives is 34 years – more than double the global average. “To address this issue we have resorted to ‘faulties’ where we put in artisans with the train drivers on some of our older fleets so that if something goes wrong they can fix it immediately. It’s part of the fighting spirit of our people.” Cable theft also remains a challenge. “But we are looking at various ways to detect unwanted people on our railway lines.” The infrastructure too is very old and the maintenance regime has not supported it. “We should be replacing track at 2000km a year – we are in fact only doing 400km, but that is changing. We’re upgrading our signalling systems and electrical support infrastructure and ensuring we have lightning-resistant equipment.” The commitment is there, the plans are in place – but now the industry will need to see delivery.