Manic scenes at Newmarket last night (11.07) trying to get home

Gareth1990 · 12 Jul 2026

I was travelling home on the 6:17 Newmarket to Cambridge after the July Cup and frankly it was horrendous. Why on Earth don’t Greater Anglia put on extra services when there’s a race day? Or at the very least make sure there are drivers available for the ones that are scheduled? It is literally unsafe to take the train on Race days I would argue

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saismee · 12 Jul 2026

Gareth1990 said:
Why on Earth don’t Greater Anglia put on extra services when there’s a race day? Or at the very least make sure there are drivers available for the ones that are scheduled? It is literally unsafe to take the train on Race days I would argue

There are extra services. The Bury St Edmunds line has been really poor recently, with constant signalling problems at Dullingham, unit failures, and missing crew. There was quite a lot of disruption in East Anglia to begin with, so I would imagine that some crew may have been displaced. There are Land Sheriffs deployed to Newmarket for race days, but I agree that it isn't really enough.

mrcheek · 12 Jul 2026

I wonder if things were better in the past, when the service wasnt government run?

or is this always an issue?

saismee · 12 Jul 2026

mrcheek said:
I wonder if things were better in the past, when the service wasnt government run?

or is this always an issue?

They were the same. It's the same trains with the same (similar) timetable. It is actually better now as there is an extra Ipswich to Cambrige morning peak service, and a return in the evening.

mrcheek · 12 Jul 2026

saismee said:
They were the same. It's the same trains with the same (similar) timetable. It is actually better now as there is an extra Ipswich to Cambrige morning peak service, and a return in the evening.

pretty poor then, since for most people, Newmarket only exists for horse racing!

Gareth1990 · 12 Jul 2026

You have an event where thousands of boozed up and possibly coked up individuals are trying to get home and you pack them in like sardines to a three coach train? Madness, I witnessed three fights break out in the space of 20 minutes

dk1 · 12 Jul 2026

Gareth1990 said:
Why on Earth don’t Greater Anglia put on extra services when there’s a race day? Or at the very least make sure there are drivers available for the ones that are scheduled? It is literally unsafe to take the train on Race days I would argue

GA is very good at running additional services. Unfortunately they cannot be any longer than 4 carriages and the route is constantly hindered by single line sections and unreliable infrastructure.

Gareth1990 · 12 Jul 2026

dk1 said:
GA is very good at running additional services. Unfortunately they cannot be any longer than 4 carriages and the route is constantly hindered by single line sections and unreliable infrastructure.

Well they didn’t last night, in fact one service was cancelled due to a lack of drivers…

dk1 · 12 Jul 2026

Gareth1990 said:
Well they didn’t last night, in fact one service was cancelled due to a lack of drivers…

Four additional services ran yesterday 2W90, 91, 92 & 93 and almost all services on the branch were formed of 755/4s. There isn’t a lot more that can be done. Hopefully when EWR extends to Cambridge East the DfT might see sense and finally improve things at least as far as Newmarket itself.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 12 Jul 2026 ==

I can only assume a driver was caught up in disruption. It’s very rare that Ipswich depot cancels due to traincrew. I can see that is showing as a planning error.

AndrewE · 12 Jul 2026

Gareth1990 said:
You have an event where thousands of boozed up and possibly coked up individuals are trying to get home and you pack them in like sardines to a three coach train? Madness, I witnessed three fights break out in the space of 20 minutes

just like Uttoxeter races then... EMT were so bad I used to avoid commuting on those days.
Chester races and now other weekend "events" at the race course cause the same problems, the problem is that the railway is run on a shoe-string with no stock spare for strengthening. Contracted-out maintenance and rigid schedules means that schedules are inflexible meaning that otherwise-spare sets can't be used either.

dk1 · 12 Jul 2026

AndrewE said:
just like Uttoxeter races then... EMT were so bad I used to avoid commuting on those days.
Chester races and now other weekend "events" at the race course cause the same problems, the problem is that the railway is run on a shoe-string with no stock spare for strengthening. Contracted-out maintenance and rigid schedules means that schedules are inflexible meaning that otherwise-spare sets can't be used either.

Ironically EMR worked wonders at a recent packed meeting at Uttoxeter. Possibly helped by engineering on large parts of their network thus releasing units & crews to strengthen the normal service.

Royston Vasey · 12 Jul 2026

Gareth1990 said:
You have an event where thousands of boozed up and possibly coked up individuals are trying to get home and you pack them in like sardines to a three coach train? Madness, I witnessed three fights break out in the space of 20 minutes

Looks from RTT like service was solidly 4-car all day yesterday. I expect they're very careful to avoid diagramming a 3-car on race days at least. The cancelled diagram ("planning error") was 1620 to Cambridge (too early for racegoers) and the 1709 to Ipswich (not the bigger flow and also before even the penultimate race).

Newmarket races is mostly attended by car, and is set up accordingly. I attend at least annually and although I try to go to places by train if possible, I would never consider doing Newmarket by train!

You just can't move vast amounts of people emerging from an event on the railway equivalent of a minibus working a B road with passing places.

Stagecoach East should take more of the blame for this by withdrawing the weekend service on their Newmarket to Cambridge route 11 a few years ago. Those buses were always busy after meetings and much easier to bolster service. The replacement local authority subsidised Tiger service, M-F, is a poor substitute.

Gareth1990 · 12 Jul 2026

Royston Vasey said:
Looks from RTT like service was solidly 4-car all day yesterday. I expect they're very careful to avoid diagramming a 3-car on race days at least. The cancelled diagram ("planning error") was 1620 to Cambridge (too early for racegoers) and the 1709 to Ipswich (not the bigger flow and also before even the penultimate race).

Newmarket races is mostly attended by car, and is set up accordingly. I attend at least annually and although I try to go to places by train if possible, I would never consider doing Newmarket by train!

You just can't move vast amounts of people emerging from an event on the railway equivalent of a minibus working a B road with passing places.

Stagecoach East should take more of the blame for this by withdrawing the weekend service on their Newmarket to Cambridge route 11 a few years ago. Those buses were always busy after meetings and much easier to bolster service. The replacement local authority subsidised Tiger service, M-F, is a poor substitute.

We were going to travel on the (I think?) 7:20 but seeing the cancelled Ipswich service we thought better of it

Royston Vasey · 12 Jul 2026

Gareth1990 said:
We were going to travel on the (I think?) 7:20 but seeing the cancelled Ipswich service we thought better of it

Entirely reasonable to infer that, as the cancelled Ipswich would normally have come back as 2W26 18:20 IPS-CBG (dep NMK 1917).

In the event that train ran on time, the unit will have been sat in P1 at Ipswich all along and clearly had a driver correctly diagrammed for it this time, but you weren't to know.

saismee · 12 Jul 2026

dk1 said:
Four additional services ran yesterday 2W90, 91, 92 & 93 and almost all services on the branch were formed of 755/4s. There isn’t a lot more that can be done.

Some were even run as "fast" services, skipping Needham, Elmswell, and Thurston. I don't think any more could possibly be squeezed out of the infrastructure, even if units were available.

dk1 · 12 Jul 2026

saismee said:
Some were even run as "fast" services, skipping Needham, Elmswell, and Thurston. I don't think any more could possibly be squeezed out of the infrastructure, even if units were available.

Just like the olden days when the service was far less frequent with smaller trains some of which only stopped at the principal stations. Today passenger numbers at all the smaller stations bar Dullingham have sky rocketed. So good to see.

Magdalia · 12 Jul 2026

It is a very long time since rail had a significant part in getting racegoers to and from Newmarket.

The station is a long way from both the Rowley Mile and July courses.

Cambridge-Chippenham Junction is single track apart from a loop at Dullingham. In addition to the standard hourly service, it is possible to run one additional train in one direction only in each hour.

saismee said:
I don't think any more could possibly be squeezed out of the infrastructure, even if units were available.

Neither do I.

Manic scenes at Newmarket last night (11.07) trying to get home

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