Northern's Problems in the North West

[Bletchleyite]

I know what Bury was before. But it was no use for any freight as it's a dead end branch line.

 

[northwichcat]

I know what Bury was before. But it was no use for any freight as it's a dead end branch line.

You implied you thought both Bury and Rochdale saw DMUs prior to Metrolink in your earlier post. There was a Bury-Heywood-Castleton line at the time of Metrolink conversion, with the Bury-Heywood section becoming part of the East Lancs Railway since Metrolink conversion of Bury-Radcliffe.

 

[Bantamzen]

https://www.networkrailmediacentre....orthern-apologises-for-may-timetable-troubles

So very generic and very light on details

To be fair it does say they are still working on the plans so they might not know the final shape of any just yet.

 

[Bletchleyite]

You implied you thought both Bury and Rochdale saw DMUs prior to Metrolink in your earlier post. There was a Bury-Heywood-Castleton line at the time of Metrolink conversion, with the Bury-Heywood section becoming part of the East Lancs Railway since Metrolink conversion of Bury-Radcliffe.

That route was closed to regular use long before Metrolink.

 

[Bletchleyite]

To be fair it does say they are still working on the plans so they might not know the final shape of any just yet.

This:

What are we going to do to put it right?

Network Rail, Northern and GTR are urgently working on comprehensive plans to reduce disruption and give passengers the greatest possible certainty of train services, so they can better plan ahead. Unfortunately, it will take some time to deliver significant improvements to services, but we will keep passengers up to date on all changes we make.

does sound like an emergency timetable, which is good, but I do think they need to publish a timescale for delivery.

 

[Howardh]

I know what Bury was before. But it was no use for any freight as it's a dead end branch line.

What happened to the suggestion that the Rawtenstall line could go back under British rail and link to the Manchester line beyond Haywood, so Bury gets back on the national rail network?
Also note that the Wareham - Swanage private railway now has - if I have interpreted facebook properly - what I would call "proper" trains (ie British Rail commuter trains for want of a better phrase) running on it.

 

[Bovverboy]

I know what Bury was before. But it was no use for any freight as it's a dead end branch line.

I believe occasional freights ran as late as 1980. At that time the line continued from Bury Bolton Street to Rawtenstall, as the East Lancs Railway now does, of course. Passenger services ran from Bury to Rawtenstall until 1972 and to Bacup until 1966. At that time (1966) the line then continued through Whitworth to Rochdale. So there would be plenty of scope for freight workings.

 

[northwichcat]

That route was closed to regular use long before Metrolink.

Without Metrolink conversion it would have been available when freight demand increased, if needed. The Middlewich branch hasn't been used regularly since the 1960s but it's still open and still useful for occasional freight and diverted North Wales to London trains, no reason why Castleton to Bury would be any different.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

Trafford Park was built in CLC territory in the 1890s to exploit the Manchester Ship Canal access nearby.
It is therefore dependent on CLC routes today for its rail access.
It always had good connections east-west but poor links north-south, thanks to the way the CLC developed independently of the LNWR system.
BR's closure of the route south via Chorlton (now part of Metrolink), made access a lot worse, forcing everything to come via Castlefield.
There are vague plans to move some Trafford Park freight services to the new Port Salford, which would have better links in all directions via Parkside.
However, it's gone very quiet on building the necessary short link to the Chat Moss route.
Another option is to build a new link to the WCML using the old MS&L alignment from Glazebrook to Haydock, and was mooted as part of the HS2 development.
Until then, we are stuck with heavy freight along the South Junction line.

On the problematic Drax biomass flow, the great economic problem here is that the long-term future of Drax is unclear.
Nobody is going to invest large sums in rail facilities which might become redundant in a decade.

 

[B&I]

To be fair, more trams would remove more trains from the overused infrastructure and thus improve reliability.

So would more heavy rail infrastructure, to cope with the unavoidable (to everyone except TfGM) reality that large numbers of regional trains run through the city

 

[Robertj21a]

So would more heavy rail infrastructure, to cope with the unavoidable (to everyone except TfGM) reality that large numbers of regional trains run through the city

Isn't that a far more expensive option ?

 

[B&I]

Why is is that when some major issue comes up on the railway that loads post with what should have been done prior.

Because sometimes the naysayers are correct, and should have been listened to before the wheels came off and proved them correct ?

 

[tbtc]

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

Things have never been perfect, but at the moment *any* delays/ disruption is going to be blamed on the changes (even those that were fairly typical before).

Even within a 5% tolerance, some things will go wrong daily, which will beg questions about "so you think its okay that MY train was cancelled" but the reality is that such things happened in the past, happen now and will continue to happen in the future.

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 not suggesting we ban all cross-Manchester services (the infrastructure at Victoria would never cope with it!), but I do think that trying to arrange crew changes at Oxford Road etc seems dangerous.

But, even if we do have the same number of cross-Manchester services, we could do something about the knot of them. The new Northern franchise, with its "everywhere must have a direct link to Manchester Airport, and Bradford must have a direct link to everywhere" approach means that it'll be much harder to deal with disruption.

For example, the Calder Valley line will get an hourly Southport service, an hourly Liverpool service, an hourly Chester service and an hourly Manchester Airport service? Great for people who like direct services (and, I appreciate, some people will use a direct train who would be put off by having to change), but a nightmare to try to fit around everything else.

If you ran all Calder Valley services through to Wigan (with some continuing to Southport) then it'd be much easier to cope when things went wrong - if every Calder Valley train is fifteen minutes late then it'd matter less if they all ran through to Wigan than if they went through to four western destinations.

Similarly, you could run four CLC services per hour through to Manchester Airport (on top of four Ordsall Chord service to the Airport), at the expense of Cleethorpes/ Barrow, which would make a more resilient timetable in the event of any delays. But the tail wags the dog and the handful of people wanting to go from Cleethorpes/ Barrow to the Airport trump the idea of a simple timetable for most passengers.

That kind of thing. Maybe a regular service from the Stockport corridor (pick some from a list of Buxton, Hazel Grove, Stoke, Crewe, Alderley Edge, Greenford) to the Chorley corridor (Preston, Blackpool, Barrow, Windermere etc). I'm not asking for more trains, I'm not asking for more paths through Manchester, just to try to keep timetables simpler so that there are common "turn up and go" corridors that can deal with disruption better. Giving everywhere a direct hourly link to everywhere else isn't working.

(this said, I agree with your point that, until we get the staffing sorted out, its too early to fully condemn the new timetable)

To be fair, more trams would remove more trains from the overused infrastructure and thus improve reliability.

The recent problems have been a great advert for simple light rail networks - trams in Sheffield/ Manchester seem to cope without disruptive crew changes at bottleneck stops or arguments about Rest Day Working. Similarly, the trams are run with simple routes, rather that trying to give every station a direct service to Media City/ Meadowhall etc. People seem to like simple frequent routes instead of providing a direct service between every pair of termini. Trams can also get back into regular service after disruption without the delays that trains are experiencing.

Light rail is looking more flexible than heavy, at the moment, rightly or wrongly.

I'd go further - as I said, if only one of the two projects was affordable, they picked the wrong one. P15/16[1] would have solved a problem that's been a problem for years. The Ordsall Chord made it worse - much worse - by adding more trains to a line that was already full

It's impressive that removing the Scarborough - Liverpool service from the Piccadilly throat has freed up three paths per hour (in each direction), but the Chord seems a very expensive solution to that problem.

 

[B&I]

Trafford Park was built in CLC territory in the 1890s to exploit the Manchester Ship Canal access nearby.
It is therefore dependent on CLC routes today for its rail access.
It always had good connections east-west but poor links north-south, thanks to the way the CLC developed independently of the LNWR system.
BR's closure of the route south via Chorlton (now part of Metrolink), made access a lot worse, forcing everything to come via Castlefield.
There are vague plans to move some Trafford Park freight services to the new Port Salford, which would have better links in all directions via Parkside.
However, it's gone very quiet on building the necessary short link to the Chat Moss route.
Another option is to build a new link to the WCML using the old MS&L alignment from Glazebrook to Haydock, and was mooted as part of the HS2 development.
Until then, we are stuck with heavy freight along the South Junction line.

How difficult would a link to the WCML at Warrington be ?

All this said, I suspect eliminaying a few freights is nibbling round the edges of the bigger problem - too many passenger trains for the track available

 

[B&I]

Isn't that a far more expensive option ?

Sometimes, when dealing with an urban area of nearly 3 million people and a major nationwide rail hub, you need to grasp the spending nettle. In any case, there are few lines left which could feasibly be Metrolinked, and even fewer of them currenty feature cross-Manchester services.

 

[Moonshot]

Because sometimes the naysayers are correct, and should have been listened to before the wheels came off and proved them correct ?

And nobody foresaw the issues this week!!. Always easy in hindsight

 

[B&I]

And nobody foresaw the issues this week!!. Always easy in hindsight

Actually, some people did. Though not, it seems, whoever is actually meant to exercise a bit of foresight as part of their job

 

[Bovverboy]

Things have never been perfect, but at the moment *any* delays/ disruption is going to be blamed on the changes (even those that were fairly typical before).

Even within a 5% tolerance, some things will go wrong daily, which will beg questions about "so you think its okay that MY train was cancelled" but the reality is that such things happened in the past, happen now and will continue to happen in the future.

I've never known things to be anywhere near as bad as they've been recently.

It's impressive that removing the Scarborough - Liverpool service from the Piccadilly throat has freed up three paths per hour (in each direction), but the Chord seems a very expensive solution to that problem.

How has removing a service which runs once per hour each way managed to free three paths per hour each way?

 

[Bletchleyite]

How has removing a service which runs once per hour each way managed to free three paths per hour each way?

By not crossing the whole station throat. But that didn't need the Chord, it could have just been moved back to running via Chat Moss and Victoria without any of that.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

How difficult would a link to the WCML at Warrington be ?
All this said, I suspect eliminaying a few freights is nibbling round the edges of the bigger problem - too many passenger trains for the track available

There used to be a slow-speed spur from Warrington Central northwards to the WCML at Dallam, but it closed long ago and has been built on.
A freight junction really needs to be the other way, towards Bank Quay, but the levels and alignment are all wrong for that.
It's similar at Allerton where the only link is towards Lime St not towards Runcorn.
HS2b cuts across all this, maybe some solution might fall out of that (eg the suggested new link towards Liverpool as part of NPR).

 

[B&I]

By not crossing the whole station throat. But that didn't need the Chord, it could have just been moved back to running via Chat Moss and Victoria without any of that.

And comes with its own advantages, by allowing more and faster TPE services to Liverpool, albeit Warrington and South Parkway are stuffed for (fast) transpennine trains.

I had understood the main purpose of the Chord was to remove reversing airport-bound trains from Piccadilly platforms 1-12. Perhaps the easier solution would have been to concentrate Transpennine services at Victoria, use stations west of there (Blackpool, Liverpool, Chester and beyond) as termini, and make alternative arrangements for airport connections eg change at Salford Crescent for a high-frequency airport-bound train from the Bolton corridor, which would not have been much slower than trundling round the Chord. However, instead the tail of Mancairport has been allowed to wag the dog of the entire north of England rail network.

 

[B&I]

There used to be a slow-speed spur from Warrington Central northwards to the WCML at Dallam, but it closed long ago and has been built on.
A freight junction really needs to be the other way, towards Bank Quay, but the levels and alignment are all wrong for that.
It's similar at Allerton where the only link is towards Lime St not towards Runcorn.
HS2b cuts across all this, maybe some solution might fall out of that (eg the suggested new link towards Liverpool as part of NPR).

Only a load of industrial guff and the A49 would prevent building a link along the path of the CLC fast line, though I don't know whether this would put freight trains on the correct side of the WCML

 

[Bletchleyite]

I had understood the main purpose of the Chord was to remove reversing airport-bound trains from Piccadilly platforms 1-12.

It was, and I propose the much simpler and cheaper alternative of removing those through trains to the Airport and operating a dedicated Class 319 service from platform 11 instead. (Those using it as a terminus of convenience from the west into 13/14 could continue to do so). This would have the benefit of releasing a Class 185 as well.

It was also intended to connect Picc and Vic, but Metrolink does that perfectly well.

But many people in here seem to think that airport passengers will be unwilling to pull their trolley cases the width of Picc on the flat, when they seem to cope just fine with pulling them about 4 times that distance from the Airport station to the check-in desk.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

Andy Burnham was on Radio 4 at lunch/dinner time, as the angry, frustrated politician representing the people versus the railway.
Apparently the key people had a conference call this morning (including Chris Grayling), but nothing emerged by way of a plan.
In fact he said there is disagreement as to what went wrong and who is responsible.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-44317542

Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham said rail operator Northern is in "freefall" after cancellations increased to almost 300 in one day.
Mr Burnham said at least 147 trains were cancelled or part-cancelled on 22 May and this had almost doubled to at least 281 on 29 May.
He said services are "actually getting worse" and "Northern's freefall shown no signs of slowing down"

Both Network Rail and Northern (David Brown) have apologised, but have not been able to say when things will improve.

Mark Carne, Network Rail’s chief executive said: “There is no doubt that the May timetable was finalised significantly later than normal for reasons that were both within and without our control. The consequences of that have been particularly hard for both Northern and GTR to absorb.
"But we are all firmly focussed on fixing this issue as quickly as possible to give passengers the reliable service they need and deserve. At the moment, in some parts of the country, that simply isn’t happening and for that I’d like to wholeheartedly apologise.”

Charles Horton, CEO, GTR, said: “We always said that delivering the biggest timetable change in generations would be challenging – but we are sorry that we have not been able to deliver the service that passengers expect. Delayed approval of the timetable led to an unexpected need to substantially adjust our plans and resources. We fully understand that passengers want more certainty and are working very hard to bring greater consistency to the timetable as soon as possible. We will also be working with industry colleagues to establish a timetable that will progressively deliver improvement.”

David Brown, Managing Director, Northern said: “We are doing everything we can to minimise cancellations and keep customers informed. It has been extremely difficult for many of our customers, in particular on a number of routes around north Manchester, Liverpool, and Blackpool extending up to Cumbria, and we are truly sorry for this.
“We‘ve agreed a number of actions with the Department for Transport and are urgently working with them on a comprehensive plan to stabilise our services. Such a plan is likely to take a number of weeks to deliver lasting improvements, but we recognise our customers deserve better and that’s what we’re focused on.”

One thing that does surprise me is why the Rail North Partnership people are so absent from the debate.
Grayling says in his letter that they are supposed to be managing the franchise on behalf of DfT and TfN.
You'd therefore expect them to be all over the media with a plan.

The regular railway journos are also seemingly absent from the debate.
They all went to the Network Rail bash celebrating the successful completion of ATO on Thameslink, but not a word on the meltdowns on Northern and GTR.

 

[Moonshot]

It was, and I propose the much simpler and cheaper alternative of removing those through trains to the Airport and operating a dedicated Class 319 service from platform 11 instead. (Those using it as a terminus of convenience from the west into 13/14 could continue to do so). This would have the benefit of releasing a Class 185 as well.

But many people in here seem to think that airport passengers will be unwilling to pull their trolley cases the width of Picc on the flat, when they seem to cope just fine with pulling them about 4 times that distance from the Airport station to the check-in desk.

Not going to happen, especially when you consider there was a whole TSC inquiry into airport connections by rail. A shuttle service would just decimate passenger numbers travelling to the airport by train.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Not going to happen, especially when you consider there was a whole TSC inquiry into airport connections by rail. A shuttle service would just decimate passenger numbers travelling to the airport by train.

It might reduce them by a tenth, yes. That would not be a massive problem. I doubt it would be much more than that - Heathrow Express/Connect do well enough.

Oh, you didn't mean that, did you?

 

[Moonshot]

It might reduce them by a tenth, yes. That would not be a massive problem. I doubt it would be much more than that - Heathrow Express/Connect do well enough.

Oh, you didn't mean that, did you?

I dont do cryptic, I just do facts. I can safely tell you there are no plans to just have a shuttle service , whether you like it or not. I myself would use the train from my local station if it had a direct service. But it doesnt...so I drive.

 

[yorksrob]

Why is is that when some major issue comes up on the railway that loads post with what should have been done prior.

I seem to recall posting that they would be on a hiding to nowhere trying to fit a load more trains between Deansgate and Piccadilly before they'd started building it. I think I was exprassing a preference for a flyover East of Piccadilly at the time.

 

[The_Engineer]

What has TPEs services via Piccadilly to do with Northern's problems in Lancashire - let's get back on subject!

 

[notlob.divad]

What has TPEs services via Piccadilly to do with Northern's problems in Lancashire - let's get back on subject!

It is all, linked, disruption on one leads to disruption on the other, and the lack of recovery capacity through Castlefield means the problems snow ball.