Merseyrail semi-fast running antics.

[bramling]

I feel that half the issue is having a timetabled 30 second set-down time in the loop at all stations. Especially during peak, services would stand for at least 45 seconds at all the loop stations which often means trains leave the loop 3 mins late, and with little to no recovery time heading outbound it's no wonder there's so many services running fast. I'm not sure how it can be resolved though, especially with trains arriving every 2/3 mins around the loop often and a single track.

Take this service for example, 2C14. On time up until the loop, reaches 4 mins late at Chester, return service (2C20) runs fast from HOO - BKC. Even with allowances it's struggling to keep to time.

View attachment 190137

This is all symptomatic of the root cause problem, which is that the Merseyrail train service runs on a shoestring. Bare minimum trains, diagrams, timings, crews - and has been the case for some years now.

Unfortunately there does probably need to be a serious conversation about whether it’s good value spending money on things like guards and quite lavishly staffed stations, versus actually running trains. That said, Merseyrail is a pretty respectable urban system, just that it lets itself down with a few niggling issues like this.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 11 Oct 2025 ==

Yep. Also gives the possibility of a much shorter delay for passengers travelling to stations between Hooton and Birkenhead Central, since in some cases there could be a conveniently timed train from Ellesmere Port people can change to at Hooton.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 11 Oct 2025 ==

Out of interest, do other Merseyrail branches have the same issue? Do you - say - have trains from West Kirby or from Southport running fast most of the way to Liverpool because the inbound service was 5 minutes late?

Hunts Cross certainly does. The rest less so I think.

 

[Krokodil]

Most of the other lines have more generous turnarounds than Chester

 

[Djgr]

Yep. Also gives the possibility of a much shorter delay for passengers travelling to stations between Hooton and Birkenhead Central, since in some cases there could be a conveniently timed train from Ellesmere Port people can change to at Hooton.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 11 Oct 2025 ==

Out of interest, do other Merseyrail branches have the same issue? Do you - say - have trains from West Kirby or from Southport running fast most of the way to Liverpool because the inbound service was 5 minutes late?

I've not known it on the other Wirral line.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 11 Oct 2025 ==

This is all symptomatic of the root cause problem, which is that the Merseyrail train service runs on a shoestring. Bare minimum trains, diagrams, timings, crews - and has been the case for some years now.

Unfortunately there does probably need to be a serious conversation about whether it’s good value spending money on things like guards and quite lavishly staffed stations, versus actually running trains. That said, Merseyrail is a pretty respectable urban system, just that it lets itself down with a few niggling issues

Of course Merseyrail can get away with a lot because of its generally high frequency. In terms of these fast running incidents, most passengers would have only been delayed by 5 or 10 minutes.

Compared to other TOCs that enter the Liverpool City Region area (esp. Northern), the niggles of Merseyrail are like having a swollen toe versus being on crutches.

 

[jamesst]

This is all symptomatic of the root cause problem, which is that the Merseyrail train service runs on a shoestring. Bare minimum trains, diagrams, timings, crews - and has been the case for some years now.

Unfortunately there does probably need to be a serious conversation about whether it’s good value spending money on things like guards and quite lavishly staffed stations, versus actually running trains. That said, Merseyrail is a pretty respectable urban system, just that it lets itself down with a few niggling issues like this.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 11 Oct 2025 ==



Hunts Cross certainly does. The rest less so I think.

This!
Run a line between 2 major main line stations with a minimal unit, minimal turnaround, no recovery time service and semi fast services will always be a part of it whether you like it or not.
For proof of that keep an eye on the autumn timetable starting on Monday with an extra unit and extended turnaround time at Chester, the semi fast runs will near enough disappear whilst it's in place.

 

[Falcon1200]

It's really not that difficult to have a set of standard scenarios in a manual.

- Inbound service is running x minutes late, therefore run fast from Hooton to Rock Ferry
- Inbound service y minutes late, therefore run fast from Hooton to Birkenhead
- Inbound service z minutes late, therefore turn back short at Hooton
etc.

Which would depend on several things; The outbound train departing with the same lateness as the inbound arrival - Not necessarily always the case, and the Controller having time to identify the late running, assess accurately the likely late start, consult the manual for the agreed action and communicate this to all concerned.

I don't know whether you have ever worked in a railway Control Office, but the time required to achieve all the above is not always available!

 

[Pacef8]

Some of you may have seen the leaf drop new timetable for winter and an extra 3 mins added to the schedule each way for Ellesmere Port, Chester and Southport.

Autumn Timetable Change

www.merseyrail.org

To help maintain a reliable service during autumn, minor timetable changes will be introduced on the Southport, Chester, and Ellesmere Port lines.

• Trains from stations between Southport and Sandhills will depart up to 3 minutes earlier than currently scheduled...
• Trains from stations between Chester/Ellesmere Port and Birkenhead Central will depart up to 3 minutes earlier than currently scheduled...

 

[Polarbear]

Travelling on the West Kirby line earlier. Train from Moorfields was 9 minutes late, so I half expected some skip-stopping to make up time.

However, the service “terminated” at Bidston, then ran empty to West Kirby to resume its normal return service.

What I can’t understand is why those travelling to West Kirby couldn’t have stayed on? Yes, there was another service behind (though similarly delayed due to signalling issues), but Bidston isn’t the nicest place to wait.

Edit: Having moved to the Chester/Ellesmere Port line, there’s a lot of delays due to police attending an earlier service at Hooton. Not a skip stop in sight & the timetable is all over the shop!

 

[Statto]

Some of you may have seen the leaf drop new timetable for winter and an extra 3 mins added to the schedule each way for Ellesmere Port, Chester and Southport.

Autumn Timetable Change

www.merseyrail.org

I whish that timetable was adopted all year round, it makes Chester trains in particular more reliable that they don't have a 4 minute turnaround.

 

[Horizon22]

Travelling on the West Kirby line earlier. Train from Moorfields was 9 minutes late, so I half expected some skip-stopping to make up time.

However, the service “terminated” at Bidston, then ran empty to West Kirby to resume its normal return service.

What I can’t understand is why those travelling to West Kirby couldn’t have stayed on? Yes, there was another service behind (though similarly delayed due to signalling issues), but Bidston isn’t the nicest place to wait.

Seems odd, rather than running it fast.

Edit: Having moved to the Chester/Ellesmere Port line, there’s a lot of delays due to police attending an earlier service at Hooton. Not a skip stop in sight & the timetable is all over the shop!

Well when you don’t make service interventions, this is what happens.

 

[jamesst]

Travelling on the West Kirby line earlier. Train from Moorfields was 9 minutes late, so I half expected some skip-stopping to make up time.

However, the service “terminated” at Bidston, then ran empty to West Kirby to resume its normal return service.

What I can’t understand is why those travelling to West Kirby couldn’t have stayed on? Yes, there was another service behind (though similarly delayed due to signalling issues), but Bidston isn’t the nicest place to wait.

Edit: Having moved to the Chester/Ellesmere Port line, there’s a lot of delays due to police attending an earlier service at Hooton. Not a skip stop in sight & the timetable is all over the shop!

Thats what happens when a number of issues occur in a short time and control becomes snowed under.

 

[greeny11]

My own experience of the West Kirby line, even when it was 507/508s on the line, is if a train is running late enough - it's (usually) terminated at Birkenhead North then it will run empty to West Kirby. I don't recall many trains running fast to West Kirby with passengers.

 

[Old Yard Dog]

Some interesting changes to Merseyrail services late last night.

The 2300 Chester - Liverpool was cancelled, the incoming service having apparently been terminated at Birkenhead Central.

The 2330 Chester - Hooton short working was then extended to Liverpool Central.

The Realtimetrains website was unaware of the cancellation of the 2300 at the time. Luckily I found out using the Merseyrail app so stayed for an extra half pint at the pub instead of having a long wait in the cold at Chester station.

This raises an interesting question re Delay Repay. I was genuinely delayed by 30 mins but didn't buy my ticket until 2320 when I finally got to Chester station. So would I have been entitled? Whatever the answer, I'm hardly going to bother as the amount I'd get back would be tiny.

 

[Birkonian]

Some interesting changes to Merseyrail services late last night.

The 2300 Chester - Liverpool was cancelled, the incoming service having apparently been terminated at Birkenhead Central.

The 2330 Chester - Hooton short working was then extended to Liverpool Central.

The Realtimetrains website was unaware of the cancellation of the 2300 at the time. Luckily I found out using the Merseyrail app so stayed for an extra half pint at the pub instead of having a long wait in the cold at Chester station.

This raises an interesting question re Delay Repay. I was genuinely delayed by 30 mins but didn't buy my ticket until 2320 when I finally got to Chester station. So would I have been entitled? Whatever the answer, I'm hardly going to bother as the amount I'd get back would be tiny.

The 23:30 used to run to Liverpool. 23:00 is too early for the final train.If youare in a pub or restaurant in the city centre you have to leave by 22:40 at the latest.

 

[WillC]

If you have a situation where interventions are having to be made when a service is only running a few minutes late, then the timetable and/or train/crew diagrams just aren’t robust enough.

Are Merseyrail trying to run their service with insufficient resources, or do changes need to be made to the infrastructure?

Exactly this. It's a terrible service for passengers who see their stop whizz by, simply because the timetable is overcooked. Why is this sort of thing tolerated? Would it be in any other business?

 

[Old Yard Dog]

The 23:30 used to run to Liverpool. 23:00 is too early for the final train.If youare in a pub or restaurant in the city centre you have to leave by 22:40 at the latest.

I don't remember the 2330 ever running to Liverpool.

I was a member of the old Ellesmere Port & Neston public transport liaison committee some 20-30 years ago before the 2009 local government reorganisation. One of our small successes was persuading Merseyrail to run the 2330 in service, instead of ECS, as far as Hooton to connect with the last Liverpool - Ellesmere Port train at 2357.

One of the reasons given for not running the 2330 beyond Hooton was the need to keep stations open for longer. But I agree, it should run further.

 

[Northerngirl]

I had the rare experience of a fast to Ormskirk the other day, as it was 12 late out of Liverpool, it certainly makes more sense than the usual reversing at magull stupidity, but we had made up the time by town green, obviously stopping at that point is far too hard for them, I know theres 'safety regulations', but its just maddening seeing us wizz past irritated passengers who should be on board

 

[U-Bahnfreund]

But a lot can change en route, it's also impossible to get in touch with the driver once its started except via the signaller, who won't pass on semi fast information.

Why can't control reach drivers on the route?

 

[jamesst]

Why can't control reach drivers on the route?

They couldnt when I wrote that! They can send a message now via the gsmr to contact control but can't ring the driver direct.

 

[Parham Wood]

I had the rare experience of a fast to Ormskirk the other day, as it was 12 late out of Liverpool, it certainly makes more sense than the usual reversing at magull stupidity, but we had made up the time by town green, obviously stopping at that point is far too hard for them, I know theres 'safety regulations', but its just maddening seeing us wizz past irritated passengers who should be on board

You would think drivers could be given the instruction that once they have caught up time to recommence stopping at intermediate stations provided they are on the correct line of course.

 

[Haywain]

You would think drivers could be given the instruction that once they have caught up time to recommence stopping at intermediate stations provided they are on the correct line of course.

That would make it really easy to convey information to intending passengers, wouldn't it?

 

[Bikeman78]

That would make it really easy to convey information to intending passengers, wouldn't it?

Chances are they will already be waiting, or at least on the way to the station, by the time the skip stopping info reaches the website. So there's no down side to the train resuming booked stopping pattern. Waiting passengers will just get on if the train stops.

 

[Haywain]

Chances are they will already be waiting, or at least on the way to the station, by the time the skip stopping info reaches the website. So there's no down side to the train resuming booked stopping pattern. Waiting passengers will just get on if the train stops.

So they should just turn up at the station on the off chance?

 

[Falcon1200]

You would think drivers could be given the instruction that once they have caught up time to recommence stopping at intermediate stations

Understand the point being made, however last minute changes to the timetable have already caused confusion, changing those alterations again midway through a journey can cause additional issues.

 

[Northerngirl]

So they should just turn up at the station on the off chance?

Yes. There will almost certainly be people there waiting for somthing to show up

 

[Fawkes Cat]

Yes. There will almost certainly be people there waiting for somthing to show up

Really? The example given in your post #196 was being back on time towards Ormskirk at Town Green. I'll admit to not being a regular user of the Ormskirk branch, but I wouldn't expect there to be many passengers wanting to ride 2 stops to Ormskirk. And much the same would apply at the end of other branches - how many people will be going a few stations out to Southport or Chester (etc.) rather than in to Liverpool?

So would there be any real benefit to this added complexity?

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Well clearly it would be far better in the first place to just make a realistic estimate of how many stops the train needs to skip to get sufficiently on time that it won't disrupt other services and the return journey can be on time - and then order the train to skip only that number of stops. For a train heading out to Ormskirk that should be particularly easy to do because it's a regular schedule and there generally are no other services that can cause pathing conflicts (Ditto any Northern or City line service heading away from Liverpool).

But if control has already instructed the train to skip too many stops and it's ended up on time with more to skip, then there is surely no significant direct disbenefit to putting the remaining stops back in, and the potential to avoid disrupting at least some people's journeys. If the train does actually stop, after announcing that it wouldn't, that causes precisely zero additional disruption to anyone's journey, compared to if the train doesn't stop.

There's a small issue that some people may feel frustrated if they avoided going to a station/got off the train thinking that train was cancelled (ie. not stopping) at a certain station, and they later discover the train did stop there, but those people haven't actually lost anything compared to if the train didn't stop.

 

[Falcon1200]

Well clearly it would be far better in the first place to just make a realistic estimate of how many stops the train needs to skip to get sufficiently on time that it won't disrupt other services and the return journey can be on time

That rather assumes that Control has the time to make that assessment, that it is accurate, and that nothing unforeseen happens to render it incorrect! Not always the case...

But if control has already instructed the train to skip too many stops and it's ended up on time with more to skip, then there is surely no significant direct disbenefit to putting the remaining stops back in

And the same issues as above! Something I learnt very early in my Control career was to keep service alterations as simple and clear as possible to reduce the chance of everything going (even more) pear-shaped.

 

[Class83]

That rather assumes that Control has the time to make that assessment, that it is accurate, and that nothing unforeseen happens to render it incorrect! Not always the case...



And the same issues as above! Something I learnt very early in my Control career was to keep service alterations as simple and clear as possible to reduce the chance of everything going (even more) pear-shaped.

Surely a driver has a schedule with departure times from stations and a clock in the cab, when they reach a station at the stated time, they can resume the normal stopping pattern from the next station.

Control having a chart with which stations to skip for a given number of minutes recovery would mean this should effectively be able to happen pre-emptively, rather than a standard Hooton-Birkenhead Central block. Also a bit of awareness about peak times to ensure that Bache (Countess of Chester Hospital), Capenhurst (Industrial Estate) and Port Sunlight (Unilever) who have a lot of people travelling to work aren't skipped when workers will be travelling. As often half the passengers will alight the train at these stops say at 0830.

But switching to the leaf fall timetable year round would be best, until Chester station can be reconfigured to allow 2 trains to be there and a more resilient timetable implemented.

 

[WirralLine]

Surely a driver has a schedule with departure times from stations and a clock in the cab, when they reach a station at the stated time, they can resume the normal stopping pattern from the next station.

Merseyrail train crew diagrams dont have all the stations listed on them (the guards certainly don't but im pretty sure the drivers dont either - sure someone could confirm, or advise if its changed recently). They just list main stations/relief points/terminus (see attached photo). Im assuming this is because of the large number of stops, theyd need 3 sheets for a diagram if it listed everywhere!

Other than that the crew have to go off platform CIS screens. Unsure if 777s have any way of showing the schedule in cab.

As said above, keep it simple to avoid things going even more pearshaped.

Image attachment shows a Merseyrail Guards Diagram from a few years ago.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 23 Feb 2026 ==

But switching to the leaf fall timetable year round would be best, until Chester station can be reconfigured to allow 2 trains to be there and a more resilient timetable implemented.

In my mind it would have made sense to electrify platform 4 aswell as 7 in Chester but of course the electrification was done on the cheap! That would have given more options, although given capacity restraints at Chester it probably wouldnt help much these days. I cant see any additional platforms being built any time soon.

 

[yorkie]

I've created a new thread, in the appropriate forum section:

Merseyrail disruption - what could be done to increase resilience, and how should the service be recovered?

From another thread: In my mind it would have made sense to electrify platform 4 aswell as 7 in Chester but of course the electrification was done on the cheap! That would have given more options, although given capacity restraints at Chester it probably wouldnt help much these days. I cant see...

www.railforums.co.uk

This is for any thoughts/suggestions/ideas on either:

• what changes could be made to the infrastructure to increase resilience, and/or
• any procedural/policy changes that could be made to recover from disruption

Thanks