I think passengers from Liverpool have waited far long enough for a direct service. TFW promised it years ago, its only just come to fruition. As far as I know the LCR contributed for the Halton Curve to be fully functional . So it should definitely be running. Liverpool is the largest big city to North Wales, its a logical and historic link that needed to be restored.
Absolutely.
Toilets are rarely out of action on Stadler 755 fleet here in the wonderful world of GA. The UAT on these units are the most reliable I have ever known.
If only TfW had ordered a full fleet of them instead of just dipping their toe into the water.
Do you know why it is so slow ? Signalling or track ? I think the overcrowding issue on TFW is because they just seem short of rolling stock. Although sometimes the Llandudno - Liverpool is 3 cars.
Wait until you get on a 2 car from Chester to Cardiff!!
I have done that, well as far as Newport anyway.
They are platform 4 at South Parkway to avoid interacting with the EMR arriving from Hunts Cross. Usually that's late so just gives a little bit of flexibility to avoid them blocking each other. On this occasion looks like 2F97 (Northern stopper) was 13 mins late to South Parkway and you were stuck behind it. Both that stopper and your train got stopped at Edge Hill because of some class 5 movement around there. Because of the line up of trains I don't think TfW can gain much without a full retime as they basically just follow a load of other paths.
I don't think so. It's a poor design, and a lot of the issues seem to be down to software.
The Castlefield Taskforce really shafted the TfW service. It's a dreadfully slow path compared with the original, and Lime Street is badly congested.
2 coaches was always the plan for Llandudno-Liverpool. Inevitably dropping Llandudno down from the three coaches it used to get, to two coaches now (at a time when the station has seen traffic growing) means that trains remain rammed all the way in during the summer.
Are the doors any less temperamental yet?
I remember one which would start to slide open (hopefully only if unlocked) if there was some cant, and go "thump, thump, thump" as it repeatedly closed and slid back open before the breaker tripped.
They just need to provide the required capacity !!
Now that we're out of summer and into the colder months, could this possibly provide some respite from the capacity issues if a lot of the passengers were off to the coast for day trips? Obviously not a solution to the problem, but could make travelling on the North Wales route more bearable, if so, for the next few months.
We will have to wait and see. I don't think all the traffic is going Liverpool to North Wales.
It isn't. It's a bit of a common myth on here that the only people going to/from Llandudno are from Liverpool. Llandudno's the main town in North Wales, the trains will be busy regardless of whether they go to Manchester or Liverpool.
I was heading to Liverpool city centre so the demand is to the coast and to the city for shopping, entertainment etc. Also airport passengers alighting at LSP.
Everyone familiar with the line could see what was coming. Trains were already rammed, adding capacity by improving frequency rather than lengthening trains just resulted in three rammed trains per hour rather than two.
Weekends will still be bad, especially in the run-up to Christmas. Sundays are still running with little more than the service inherited from FNW. I can't spot any improvements in the Dec 26 Sunday timetable either.
I'm not sure how many were put off by that. I know however that for years the fares policy deliberately suppressed demand by removing the Off Peak Day Return, the Anytime Day Return, and the Small Group Day tickets between anywhere west of Abergele and Chester. This produced a few artefacts: you can buy a SGD from Llandudno Junction to Wrexham (which will probably involve passing through Chester) but not one to Chester any more. For a few years a Llandudno to Liverpool Off Peak Day Return remained in the system even though no form of Day Return remained to Chester.
Llandudno to Liverpool was always intended to be two coaches between Llandudno and Chester. It would have combined there with the Cardiff-Liverpool service that was subsequently abandoned.