Indeed. Some detective work is required. From another thread, we see Fuming's commute is Mossley to Manchester Victoria (MCV). The only delayed train on this route today was 0815 from Huddersfield, which was held at Marsden for 16 minutes (booked 0828, actual 0844), and consequently arrived 11 minutes late into MCV.
It looks like no trains went through the tunnel between 0800 and 0831, which is a very long time! I can see why they held the 0828, because if they hadn't, all the TPE services would have been delayed behind it, making the congestion even worse.
The first train to be delayed was 0637 ex-Hull, which was delayed between Brough and Gilberdyke and picked up further delay, totalling 28 mins passing Marsden. The 0603 ex-Newcastle was behind this train, it appears to have been delayed by 14 minutes at York and also was further delayed. The 0630 ex-Scarborough was 11 late leaving Scarborough and was also further delayed, and this concludes the trio of trains for which the 0828 from Marsden was held for.
Does anyone know the root cause for why those 3 trains were late? It looks like 3 separate delays that just happen to have occurred at the same time.
It would appear that the main culprit here is 1P15 06.30 Scarborough-Liverpool, which, on 4 of the past 5 weekdays, has lost time each day between York and Garforth. Consequently, it leaves Huddersfield some 4-5 minutes late rather than its booked time of 08.11, which results in 2F89 08.15 Huddersfield-Wigan departing late. It also seems 2F89 normally loses a further 3-4 minutes between Huddersfield and Marsden, presumably due to either signalling or leaf fall.
Just had a quick look at this one ... all of the delays to 1P15 have been reactionary to other incidents in the wider area, some FTPE, some NT, some unexplained. When you start digging it's often a massive spiders-web of delays (I've had a train delayed between Peterborough and Huntingdon today due to issues at Drax - such instances aren't uncommon!)
^^ Excellent detective work ^^
This Forum's knowledge and ability to decipher things is brilliant
The infrastructure seems massively flawed, to the point where I am seriously considering driving further from where I live, to Oldham Mumps, and jumping on a tram, never to return
This will go against the Forum mantra that "trams are bad and anyone would rather have a train over a tram" (especially when the train station is closer to home than the tram stop)!
Being that I work over that route pretty frequently I do feel for people that commute between the Greenfield/Mosley and Manchester , given that as I said a lot of trains that run over that route now run through to the likes of Southport and Wigan the train does not get reported as late until it arrives at Wigan or Southport late , so given that it stands for 5-10 minutes at Victoria and the padding between Ashton and Vic the service does not actually arrive in Wigan late as many times as it leaves Huddersfield late . But this is obviously no use to Greenfield/Moseley/Staly or Ashton Commuters into Manchester for whom the train will be a late service
Good point
even if Management at Northern did care about the service leaving Huddersfield late there is not a lot they can do .
I think management do care about services being late because it affects their punctuality stats, which can result in season ticket holders being compensated
I don't know - it depends if Northern are being compensated (due to their service being delayed by NR signal staff) by more than the cost of compensating their own passengers.
Remember when GNER's business plan went wrong when Railtrack/ Network Rail (can't remember which) improved the infrastructure on the ECML so that the compensation payments to the TOC went down (compensation that GNER had been banking on!)...
The slowest TransPennine 'Express' route is between Doncaster and Grimsby. The train has a max speed of 55mph for the South Humberside Mainline and it's a long line. This is because of very heavy freight usage.
100mph 185s are wasted on the Cleethorpes route!
(not sure about the "South Humberside Main Line" though!)
I have, for some time, believed that the railway, and particularly the Trans-Pennine route, is far too clogged up. We constantly hear about capacity problems, but the simple answer in the case of the Trans-Pennine line is to run longer but less frequent trains. Do we really need 5 TPE services an hour on this line? Surely 3 trains of double the length would be better, providing some leeway for delays and therefore a more reliable service. Am I the only person who thinks the UK's railways are obsessed with frequency at the expense of reliability?
True.
But with the obsession about giving Manchester Airport a direct service to as many places as possible, and the various different eastern branches to the current TPE map (not including Sunderland which was chopped off a few years ago)... it's going to be very hard to rip the timetable up and give us a :"longer but less frequent" Transpennine service.
Look at the complaints that we have on here about the proposed reduction in service between X and Y - even when there are precious few people travelling between them!
Another point is that the timetables in northern England have generally been a form of Buckaroo/ Jenga - adding more and more bits on to the top of the structure (rather than starting with a blank sheet of paper and coming up with a more organised timetable).
The way TPE is run at the moment they might as well tear up the timetable and run it as a tramway
Since the people of Herdings Park and Leighton Road in Sheffield have to make do with only a half hourly (Purple Route) service on their tram route, they'd be very envious of the kind of "turn up and go" frequencies on the railways!
(I don't know if there are any other tram routes in the UK less frequent than the "every twelve minute" benchmark in Manchester?)
They could have used the 185s released by electric working of the MIA-Scotland trains by providing 6-car formations between Liverpool and York
Normally I'll defend multiple units against the nostalgic "loco hauled was better" mantra...
...but I've got to accept that one major advantage over loco hauled is that three "spare" Mk3 coaches could be split between three other rakes so that they all saw an increase in capacity...
...whereas one "spare" three coach 185 can't be divided, so has to be used in an "all or nothing" way. IF we are going to use some of the spare 185s for a "fast" Liverpool - Manchester service then I don't know how we could have easily used the remaining spare 185s.
Six coaches on the Liverpool - York corridor sounds good, but would portion working be suitable at the busy York station? Six coaches certainly aren't needed at Middlesbrough/ Manchester Airport (and not at Scarborough for most of the year). Sending six coaches all the way to Newcastle means them being a long way from the "core" for a couple of hours (and, really, the East Coast/ Cross Country franchises should be dealing with any additional capacity from York to Newcastle). Meanwhile, on South TPE, we are just grateful to see the previous two-coach 170 services replaced by three coach 185s - we are a humble lot
The fifth service per hour is a messy compromise, but I think that any "solution" would have been one (unless we have the guts to take the "rip it up and start again" approach to the timetable).
