Northern's Problems in the North West

[fulmar]

So now we can be doubly sure that what you're saying is correct.

Yes you can.

But just in case you didn't understand it before. DRS drivers are fully competent to work class 68 loco hauled passenger trains by themselves. There are no requirements for a Northern driver to be present.

 

[Bovverboy]

So now we can be doubly sure that what you're saying is correct.

Origin: Edward Heath taking Harold Wilson to task.

 

[fulmar]

DRS drivers are fully competent to work class 68 loco hauled passenger trains by themselves. There are no requirements for a Northern driver to be present.

Origin: a Northern driver who works passenger services on the Cumbrian Coast line.

 

[Bovverboy]

But just in case you didn't understand it before. DRS drivers are fully competent to work class 68 loco hauled passenger trains by themselves. There are no requirements for a Northern driver to be present.

That's now three times you've told us the same thing.

 

[fulmar]

That's now three times you've told us the same thing.

Well done.

 

[js1000]

Interesting that Network Rail are in the DfT firing line more than Northern or GTR.
The Northern/TPE timetable planning of course goes back to the 2015 ITT and the various TSR schedules defined there.
It was also supposed to be introduced in December last, so NR can hardly complain about lack of planning time.
The sudden change due to the delay in Manchester-Preston wiring is also down to NR's IP (Infrastructure Projects) division not being able to forecast completion properly, even after repeated previous delays.
I'm sure Northern have contributed their own planning failures to the situation, but I can see why the NR System Operator function is seen as the primary culprit.
The problems also call into question the planning and business case for Northern Hub (eg Ordsall Curve) and the Picc/Oxford Road non-improvements.
As to wielding the axe, Mr Paonessa (head of IP) is still there despite the repeated failures of electrification projects.

It's a toxic cocktail of Network Rail missing key infrastructure work targets, Northern Rail being stingy (lack of drivers) and not planning ahead (clumsy changeover locations such as at Oxford Road), the DfT for encouraging longer distance cross-city routes which increase cancellations and delays and the government for building the Ordsall Chord but not realising without extra through capacity at Piccadilly the gains of this £100m link are minimal due to the bottleneck down the line.

I hold all parties equally culpable and no party is blameless - which is concerning because there is no one I can trust to solve timetable problems. A brewery springs to mind....

Personally, I strongly believe the Crewe to Liverpool via Manchester route would be best as two separate services as it was prior to the new timetable. I reckon the Lime Street blockade next week will prove this and punctuality will improve greatly and cancellations reduced.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Personally, I strongly believe the Crewe to Liverpool via Manchester route would be best as two separate services as it was prior to the new timetable. I reckon the Lime Street blockade next week will prove this and punctuality will improve greatly and cancellations reduced.

I'd agree with that generally. I don't mind little self-contained circuits like the Ormskirk-Preston-Blackpool S-Colne-Preston-Ormskirk one, but when it ends up all over the place I do debate the worth of it. Particularly given the lack of demand for a through service that way.

 

[Robertj21a]

I don't know why some posters seem to think that because Northern are doing OK over most of their network, that it's acceptable for them to be cancelling between 10 and 50% of trains a day on other parts of it.

Here's the PPM for Lancashire/Cumbria Inter-Urban: http://trains.im/ppmhistorical/NT/66

In May on this sector they managed just 2 days with fewer than 10% of trains over 30 mins late/cancelled, and none since the timetable transfer. The worst day has 47% in the red.

And for Lancashire and Cumbria Local: http://trains.im/ppmhistorical/NT/67, it's not much better.

For people on those lines that is a disaterously bad service.

Who has said it's acceptable ?

All I've read has suggested that it's a patchy service - terrible in places, but not so bad elsewhere. There's little point in trying to suggest that the world is about to end when many people are coping reasonably ok.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Who has said it's acceptable ?

All I've read has suggested that it's a patchy service - terrible in places, but not so bad elsewhere. There's little point in trying to suggest that the world is about to end when many people are coping reasonably ok.

People should not have to be "coping" with this kind of service breakdown for days on end. It is disgraceful. And it was predicted on here well in advance, too, just as the Virgin XC "Operation Pumpkin" debacle was predicted on uk.railway.

I'm not going to call for blood or cancelled franchises because any TOC could have made this mistake. But Arriva now need to get their corporate wallet out and solve it - and communicate as they do so, too - a public apology and an outline of actions to be taken and timescales for them to be taken would be a good start.

 

[notlob.divad]

Forgive my ignorance on this, but given guards and drivers are both human and thus need similar breaks etc, why can a driver and a guard not be 'buddied up' for the day, operating all the same services together. Admittedly they cannot just be given a train for the day, trains don't need the same breaks, but they could at least operate the service to a sensible termination point, rather than the changing drivers and or guards on the busy central manchester corridor.

Many people have commented that the chat moss stoppers to crewe seem to be being operated as 2 separate services with a change of driver at O-road or Piccadilly. To me that seems the craziest thing in the world. The through service has been known about for 2 years, and there are no excuses of electrification delays along this. All it would have taken is for the drivers that had been working the Liverpool-Airport services to route learn Airport to Crewe.

There was a thread on here for Liverpool's drivers learning 323s, daily paths where put in for this for about 2 months, but they where only used on 2-3 days.

The RDW agreement may have lapsed, but Lime Street has had 2 blockades and Blackpool had a long block, between them enough drivers should have been able to learn the Airport-Crewe section to run this service without the need to change drivers in the constricted platforms.

Throwing all of the blame at Network Rail which is obviously what northern and Failing are doing, is incorrect as the lack of training stinks of really really bad resource management on the operating companies side.

That said, the timetable along Castlefield post chord was always going to be insanely tight and require everything to run perfectly in order to function, the results are what we see.

 

[Bletchleyite]

That said, the timetable along Castlefield post chord was always going to be insanely tight and require everything to run perfectly in order to function, the results are what we see.

One of the many reasons I believe the Chord should not even have been considered until quad-tracking and Picc P15/16 had been built first. That was done all completely the wrong way round, cramming yet more trains onto the overcrowded Castlefield line. It's like Thameslink all over again, but instead of having brand new EMUs with wide doors at thirds and ATO to maximise the capacity it's knackered old DMUs and 1980s EMUs in all sorts of formations with all sorts of door layouts and severe overcrowding.

It was utter madness to even think it *might* work.

 

[Sankey Wire]

I’ve been travelling along the Warrington Central to Manchester line most days for the past 6 years. Today was one of the worst experiences of getting home in all that time, given that there weren’t any train faults or signal failures. Just a mass of seething commuters and bewildered staff. Automatic apologies everywhere. It just appeared like Northern had completely lost control.

4 of 5 trains to Lime Street cancelled over the peak time with everyone squeezing onto the East Midlands. The cancellations seem to have begun a couple of weeks before the timetable change but that has made things worse.

We even had a guard from one of the cancelled trains who found out about the cancellation from the automatic announcement. He was blaming management for not being able to organise staff movements properly.

It really has been dreadful, I have never known it half this bad during my time as a commuter on the same stretch. I am fortunate now in that.

I can get a lift, more often than not. However, I’m on the train tomorrow and dreading it already. Depending on cancellations I could ask to leave early; but, I really don’t want to have to, when I have had to do so several times already recently due to the strike and I’ll also be asking for special dispensation next month, what with the Lime Street blockade.

It’s the lack of available information, particularly in the form of announcements during the journey, which hurts.

 

[Mathew S]

People should not have to be "coping" with this kind of service breakdown for days on end.

The thing is, the service we've got now in my area is little different in terms of reliability and punctuality than that which we've had for years. In fact, because their are more trains timetabled, the effect of the cancellations is less because you've not got to wait as long for the next train.

What I suppose I'm saying is that, yes, passengers shouldn't have to put up with a dodgy service but that in fact we have been for years, through at least the last franchise and back into the one before that, so we're mostly kind of used to it.

 

[Mathew S]

I'd agree with that generally. I don't mind little self-contained circuits like the Ormskirk-Preston-Blackpool S-Colne-Preston-Ormskirk one, but when it ends up all over the place I do debate the worth of it. Particularly given the lack of demand for a through service that way.

Wigan - Alderley Edge - Wigan - Stalybridge - Wigan seems (now) to be working well as a self-contained circuit for much of the day.

 

[chorleyjeff]

Once, in almost two weeks now, I've been more than 30 mins late. That's no worse than it's ever been. Other days I've been 2 mins later here, or 5 there, or 20 once; but again, that's normal. In fact it's a lot better than trains from Wigan to Manchester used to be.
I don't think either @Moonshot or I are defending anyone, rather just pointing out that for most people, this isn't the apocolyptic catastrophe that some are making it out to be.

Just look at NR's twitter feed for the wider picture.
Most ? Most of who ? Certainly not most on my local line.
If you are doing OK then that's fine or you.

 

[muz379]

I'd agree with that generally. I don't mind little self-contained circuits like the Ormskirk-Preston-Blackpool S-Colne-Preston-Ormskirk one, but when it ends up all over the place I do debate the worth of it. Particularly given the lack of demand for a through service that way.

Agreed , anything that has to go through the castlefield -picadilly coridoor is going to struggle to keep to time .

Forgive my ignorance on this, but given guards and drivers are both human and thus need similar breaks etc, why can a driver and a guard not be 'buddied up' for the day, operating all the same services together. Admittedly they cannot just be given a train for the day, trains don't need the same breaks, but they could at least operate the service to a sensible termination point, rather than the changing drivers and or guards on the busy central manchester corridor.

Drivers and guards have slightly different parameters for breaks It might mean more inefficient use of guards because with some turn lengths drivers get more "breaks" .

what about the many empty stock moves drivers might do during their job as well ? some guards at some depots dont sign sidings , TMD's or LMD's so could not go with the driver anyway .

Besides this would be hard to just introduce on the fly . It would have to involve a link change with all job times being changed which generally takes months to plan for and weeks to look at the implementation of with union reps and company getting together to agree on links .

 

[northernchris]

Northern have already cancelled the 1725 Leeds-Hebden Bridge for tomorrow due to a shortage of drivers, and the service terminated at Halifax tonight, this is the service crewed by Grand Central

 

[47802]

Is that the reason? If so that is ludicrous.

Yes you can.

But just in case you didn't understand it before. DRS drivers are fully competent to work class 68 loco hauled passenger trains by themselves. There are no requirements for a Northern driver to be present.

My understanding of it was that the Northern Drivers are there in case the 68s are substituted with a unit which of course a DRS driver couldn't drive, but I'm guessing there is also an element of not being seen to be taking work from a Northern Driver so if there is no Northern Driver the train gets cancelled.

In any case the situation while of interest to enthusiasts like myself it' fairly minor in overall Northern situation at present.

 

[tbtc]

The problem with an Emergency Timetable is that the knot of services make it hard to untangle individual routes.

A bus company can remove one journey per hour from all of its services (e.g. many do that on higher frequency routes during the summer school holidays), but it's easy to arrange that. With the exception of a handful of services (e.g. Piccadilly - Rose Hill Marple) there aren't many Northern services west of the Pennines that run better than hourly. Several corridors where the combined service is better than hourly, but it becomes harder to unpick such routes (e.g. you could argue that Manchester Airport - Manchester could drop one or two services per hour but that's not as simple as reducing a ten minute route to a fifteen minute frequency as the services have various routes/ termini beyond Piccadilly).

In the Bad Old Days, Arriva Trains Northern cancelled the Leeds - Castleford - Pontefract services long term to deal with staff/unit shortages - but that was a self contained route - would it be better to cancel some "Lancashire" services entirely than reduce a handful of hourly services to bi-hourly? And then, as more drivers are trained, do you slowly change the "Emergency" timetable a few times before getting back to 100%?

Once, in almost two weeks now, I've been more than 30 mins late. That's no worse than it's ever been. Other days I've been 2 mins later here, or 5 there, or 20 once; but again, that's normal. In fact it's a lot better than trains from Wigan to Manchester used to be.
I don't think either @Moonshot or I are defending anyone, rather just pointing out that for most people, this isn't the apocolyptic catastrophe that some are making it out to be.

Fair points - it's hard for me to asses it objectively as South Yorkshire hasn't been affected by many of the changes/ improvements/ electrification... though that does make me wonder why we've escaped from the effect of Rest Day Working east of the Pennines - was this only an agreement with ex-FNW staff?

But we've got a situation where various problems are getting muddled together and bad situations become worse. I don't think things are as bad as a lot of the posters on here, but then there seems little to be gained from trying to tell someone that things are 2% better than last week or that most services are running okay if they are only focussing on their local line.

I don't know why some posters seem to think that because Northern are doing OK over most of their network, that it's acceptable for them to be cancelling between 10 and 50% of trains a day on other parts of it

This is the problem with these threads. The fact that 99% of services are running (and running on time) is going to be of precious little consolation to you if your local line is the 1% canceled or significantly delayed.

There's no point trying to tell some people on here that there's a "bigger picture" or that the overall trend is improving (compared to this time last week) or whatever.

We used to accept a certain level of disruption daily, nobody ever expected 100% of services to be operated (and operated bang on time), but now every cancellation is being highlighted - just like a couple of years ago when every failed 319 was being seized upon (or, after a train crash, the tabloids get hysterical about every SPAD incident).

 

[B&I]

I’ve been travelling along the Warrington Central to Manchester line most days for the past 6 years. Today was one of the worst experiences of getting home in all that time, given that there weren’t any train faults or signal failures. Just a mass of seething commuters and bewildered staff. Automatic apologies everywhere. It just appeared like Northern had completely lost control.

4 of 5 trains to Lime Street cancelled over the peak time with everyone squeezing onto the East Midlands. The cancellations seem to have begun a couple of weeks before the timetable change but that has made things worse.

We even had a guard from one of the cancelled trains who found out about the cancellation from the automatic announcement. He was blaming management for not being able to organise staff movements properly.

The more I hear, the more I think this is absolutely key. Why is it considered such a good idea to have staff spend so much time shuttling back and forth on trains they're not crewing ? It is an obvious recipe for trouble

 

[B&I]

I didn't. I said that I thought they probably were, there's a world of difference between me saying that's what I think (an opinion) and the way you phrased it (a statement of fact). Can you give me any reason to suggest that the experience of most passengers is particularly worse than mine, however?

So there is no basis for your sunny optimism, beyond the fact that your own usual line hasn't been affected too badly. Glad we have that clear.

As for evidence about most people's experiences, have you been reading this thread before posting ? It is clear that, on a substantial number of lines in the north west, if not all, Northern services are falling apart on a daily basis. On a rough survey of what's been posted on here, it seems that the Barrow, Windermere, Ormskirk, Blackpool, Manchester-Preston, Calder Valley, Buxton, Manchester-Airport-Crewe, Liverpool-Preston, Chat Moss and CLC lines are particularly badly affected. That strikes me as a substantial proportion, if not a majority, of lines west of the Penines.

 

[roversfan2001]

There was a 2.5 hour gap between services between Buckshaw and Leyland this evening, lots of trains going towards Manchester yet none towards Preston. I ended up finding alternative means to get home when the train was showing as "Delayed". I would be getting the train to Blackburn tomorrow, after this debacle and with no sign of things improving, I'll be getting the bus instead. It's considerably slower, but at least I know I've a good chance of getting home.

 

[Bovverboy]

cuccir said: ↑
I don't know why some posters seem to think that because Northern are doing OK over most of their network, that it's acceptable for them to be cancelling between 10 and 50% of trains a day on other parts of it

This is the problem with these threads. The fact that 99% of services are running (and running on time) is going to be of precious little consolation to you if your local line is the 1% canceled or significantly delayed.

Recently, on a good day, around 95% of scheduled services have operated - but nowhere near that number have operated anywhere near to time.

 

[CHAPS2034]

Wigan - Alderley Edge - Wigan - Stalybridge - Wigan seems (now) to be working well as a self-contained circuit for much of the day.

Disagree. Depends where you are. Towards the southern end of the route, here are the Wigan - Alderley services at Cheadle Hulme today. Most left Wigan RT or a couple of minutes down.
0700 - 4 late
0756 - 8 late
0856 - 8 late
0956 - 3 late
1056 - 26 late - dropped 17 minutes between the Crescent and Deansgate
1156 - 11 late
1256 - 13 late - left Wigan 7 late
1356 - 29 late - dropped 20 minutes between the Crescent and Deansgate
1456 - cancelled by the TOC
1556 -19 late - dropped 15 minutes between the Crescent and Deansgate
1656 - 10 late
1756 -11 late
1854 - 49 late - only ran from Oxford Rd where it dep 40 late rather than Wigan
1956 - 4 late
2056 - 2 late

It has around 40 minutes fester at Alderley before coming back, so the northbound is generally only a couple of minutes or so adrift at CHU and sometimes this is because the preceding ATW is a bit late.

When the Alderley service was just a shuttle from Piccadilly it was rarely more than a couple of minutes late. Now it's completely unreliable in the southbound direction. This used to be a good way of connecting into Wilmslow and Crewe and beyond for me, but not any more!

This was entirely predictable even before the change as there have been delays for years caused by congestion in the Deansgate corridor. How many times have I stood on the platform at Stockport awaiting the EMT Norwich service which has been RT away from Liverpool and Warrington but delayed through Manchester? Attempting this again tomorrow..

Maybe all this chaos will result in the boiled egg realising that the improvements he desires to preside over need P15/16 at Piccadilly. But I'm not holding my breath

 

[Shaw S Hunter]

It's a toxic cocktail of Network Rail missing key infrastructure work targets, Northern Rail being stingy (lack of drivers) and not planning ahead (clumsy changeover locations such as at Oxford Road), the DfT for encouraging longer distance cross-city routes which increase cancellations and delays and the government for building the Ordsall Chord but not realising without extra through capacity at Piccadilly the gains of this £100m link are minimal due to the bottleneck down the line.

Not so much the DfT as local politicians representing, you know, local people. Such links are designed to improve the mobility of labour (try Bolton to Stockport without a through service) which helps with economic growth.

I hold all parties equally culpable and no party is blameless - which is concerning because there is no one I can trust to solve timetable problems. A brewery springs to mind....

Personally, I strongly believe the Crewe to Liverpool via Manchester route would be best as two separate services as it was prior to the new timetable. I reckon the Lime Street blockade next week will prove this and punctuality will improve greatly and cancellations reduced.

I understand why you have such a bee in your bonnet about this service but the trouble with this line of thinking is that the logical conclusion is to either ban all cross-Manchester services (which will never fly with our elected representatives and with good reason) or to ban any reliefs from taking place on cross-Manchester services in Manchester. This would be very expensive to achieve! I'm sure some are getting sick of reading this but until such time as staffing is returned to an appropriate level it is too soon to say that the timetable is of itself unworkable. What is missing is an understanding among many of just how important proper levels of staffing really are to providing reliable services in and around our urban transport nodes.

 

[daodao]

It's a toxic cocktail of Network Rail missing key infrastructure work targets, Northern Rail being stingy (lack of drivers) and not planning ahead (clumsy changeover locations such as at Oxford Road), the DfT for encouraging longer distance cross-city routes which increase cancellations and delays and the government for building the Ordsall Chord but not realising without extra through capacity at Piccadilly the gains of this £100m link are minimal due to the bottleneck down the line.

I hold all parties equally culpable and no party is blameless - which is concerning because there is no one I can trust to solve timetable problems. A brewery springs to mind....

Personally, I strongly believe the Crewe to Liverpool via Manchester route would be best as two separate services as it was prior to the new timetable. I reckon the Lime Street blockade next week will prove this and punctuality will improve greatly and cancellations reduced.

Well put. The line from M/c Piccadilly to Knott Mill & Deansgate is incapable of coping with the traffic that is now timetabled to use it. The timetable needs to be restructured and simplified, with trains routed away from this section where they don't need to use it.

Priority for use of this section has to be given to trains that exit M/c on the CLC route to Liverpool, namely 2 express passenger trains per hour, 2 stopping passenger trains per hour (which should terminate at Oxford Rd) and 2 freight paths per hour. No more than 6 other paths should be planned per hour, and they should be concentrated on the Bolton, Wigan (via Chat Moss) and Rochdale routes (2 each per hour) to maximise the benefit of this cross city connection, as follows:

• Blackpool via Bolton (2 per hour).
• Scotland and Barrow-in-Furness via Wigan NW and Chat Moss (each 1 per hour)
• Leeds via Bradford and Rochdale (2 per hour)

The TPE services on the Standedge route that have just been re-routed via the new Ordsall chord (2 fast per hour) should be diverted back via Guide Bridge and terminate at M/c Piccadilly; this would free up 2 paths at Victoria. All trains via Newton-le-Willows and points west should go to Victoria - there are alternative routes from Liverpool, Warrington and Chester to M/c Piccadilly. Diesel trains from Buxton should be cut back to 1 per hour and all should terminate in the main platforms at Piccadilly, as should all trains from the CLC route to Chester.

As Victoria station has been downsized post Beeching, the number of trains terminating there needs to be minimised, so I suggest that as many trains as possible should be through ones:

• Liverpool-York and beyond (TPE fast, 2 per hour)
• Wigan NW-Bolton-Stalybridge (stopping, 2 per hour)
• Wigan Wallgate-Atherton-Rochdale (stopping, 2 per hour) - 1 per hour starting at Kirby
• Southport-Wigan-Atherton-Rochdale-Leeds (via Brighouse)/Blackburn (semi-fast, 2 per hour)
• Airport-Rochdale-Leeds (semi-fast, 2 per hour)

The Llandudno service should terminate at Victoria (1 per hour), as should the Blackburn/Clitheroe (via Darwen) services (2/hour) and the Chester/Liverpool (via Newton-le-Willows) services (2 per hour, stopping).

 

[Bletchleyite]

Not so much the DfT as local politicians representing, you know, local people. Such links are designed to improve the mobility of labour (try Bolton to Stockport without a through service) which helps with economic growth.

What's difficult about Bolton to Stockport without a through service? One change to a very frequent service at Picc. Even easier than a train to London then a switch to the Tube.

 

[B&I]

Not so much the DfT as local politicians representing, you know, local people. Such links are designed to improve the mobility of labour (try Bolton to Stockport without a through service) which helps with economic growth.



I understand why you have such a bee in your bonnet about this service but the trouble with this line of thinking is that the logical conclusion is to either ban all cross-Manchester services (which will never fly with our elected representatives and with good reason) or to ban any reliefs from taking place on cross-Manchester services in Manchester. This would be very expensive to achieve! I'm sure some are getting sick of reading this but until such time as staffing is returned to an appropriate level it is too soon to say that the timetable is of itself unworkable. What is missing is an understanding among many of just how important proper levels of staffing really are to providing reliable services in and around our urban transport nodes.

This is all very well, but if the cross-Manchester infrastructure is nothing to do with this, why are so many of the affected services cross-Manchester ones, and why have services which did not previously cross Manchester get so much worse once they began to cross it ?

Cross-Manchester services are handy. However, they are not vital. I regularly cross the city by making a straightforward change at Piccadilly. And if the infrastructure is not there to enable these services, and services across the north-west are suffering due to the knock-on effects, this is a luxury we cannot afford. What exactly is the benefit of my stopping service from Lime Street crossing Manchester when, partly it seems as a result of trying to cross Manchester, it is persistently cancelled, meaning I can neither use it to cross Manchester, nor indeed to reach my home in the Liverpool suburbs ?

Also, if the pressure has come from local, presumably Manchester, politicians, perhaps it would help if they had paid any attention to local heavy rail development for the past 30 years, rather than pretending that the entire region's transport needs can be met with trams.

 

[TrW]

I didn't. I said that I thought they probably were, there's a world of difference between me saying that's what I think (an opinion) and the way you phrased it (a statement of fact). Can you give me any reason to suggest that the experience of most passengers is particularly worse than mine, however?

I think when you have have Northern's MD launching an independent review saying there is urgent work to be done and Grayling using the narrative of the failed Rail Industry, we can assume the average customer isn't having a great experience at the moment. Or would you expect that level of narrative for minor issues?

I applaud you for your professional loyalty though. I'm not sure I could display such misplaced commitment to an employer or industry that is in disarray.

 

[Bantamzen]

I understand why you have such a bee in your bonnet about this service but the trouble with this line of thinking is that the logical conclusion is to either ban all cross-Manchester services (which will never fly with our elected representatives and with good reason) or to ban any reliefs from taking place on cross-Manchester services in Manchester. This would be very expensive to achieve! I'm sure some are getting sick of reading this but until such time as staffing is returned to an appropriate level it is too soon to say that the timetable is of itself unworkable. What is missing is an understanding among many of just how important proper levels of staffing really are to providing reliable services in and around our urban transport nodes.

I don't doubt that the staffing issues are adding to the problem, but they are far from the only factor here. The fact that you have two TOCs with major recasts of timetables, one (TPE) where there is a significant learning curve with drivers having to learn new stopping points in units & services that have very rarely (if ever) stopped there causing other faster services to trip over them, leading to a TPE procession through the Manchester stations. So what on the face of it might be described as a rotation problem, might actually be because crews are stuck waiting for the TPEs to get by before they can reach the changing point. Whilst perhaps they should have planned for this, Northern's planners probably didn't anticipate such delays as have been seen across the North TP.

However had the Piccadilly expansion for P15-16 been allowed to go ahead at the same time as the Ordsall Chord, there would have been spare platform capacity there to soak up at least some of these problems meaning not as many Northern units would be sat at Oxford Road waiting for the crews. There was a similar problem years ago at Leeds when capacity ran out & a very limited set of pathing options were available through the Leeds West junctions. The result? Exactly what we are seeing in Manchester today, crews unable to reach services due to depart, which then meant that platforms were not available to services waiting outside and chaos regularly ensued. Only when the station was re-designed & the junctions improved to increase capacity did the problem die down, although if the truth be know Leeds is once again getting close to the same situation again.

So what I am trying to say is that although the staffing should have allowed for more flexibility, and/or allow crews to work through Manchester, what is really needed is all the promised infrastructural improvements that DfT have been waiving in front of passengers. But instead, in typical UK public sector fashion they've gone for the cheap 'n' cheerful solution, add a cross-Manchester route, allow more paths & hope it doesn't fall apart. Northern have not covered themselves in glory, that's for sure. But the DfT are at the heart of all this chaos, and incapable and unwilling to commit to what all of the North of England needs.