Merseyrail train defect (19 July)

[joke2711]

Merseyrail suffered a train defect this evening on the Hoylake _ Liverpool Service just after the golf had finished, causing substantial delay. After arriving in Liverpool Lime Street to catch the 1935 to Hoylake all services were terminated in Hamilton Square and then ran empty back to Hoylake until 2045.

Understand the reason for doing this but as Hoylake was my destination (and a number of others) it seems a strange decision to make and a total disregard for their bread and butter customers!

 

[andymcl74]

As they've coped relatively well for the rest of the golf, I think they felt they had a duty to prioritise the golf visitors over regulars, as it was like falling at the final hurdle and wanted to leave a good lasting impression of Merseyrail on visitors (well, as good as they could after the disruption!). The fact that it's a Sunday and others' travel tends to be less 'urgent' probably didn't help you!

I agree with your comments though, I too am slightly bemused as to why there was less consideration for regular passengers than there should have been. I (along with many others) had a shocker on Thursday morning when I found out that the E Port / Chester timetables had changed too! I'd heard plenty about West Kirby line changes, but nothing about the others! Coupled with the fact that it was the other end of the network and I wasn't expecting any changes, it led to quite a stressful commute! Partly my fault though for not putting the effort/common sense in to check the website etc.

I do applaud Merseyrail to some extent though for how they coped with The Open - the extra trains and effort put into ensuring smooth travel to and from the golf would have made a big difference. Hoylake station seems to have been positively temporarily transformed too, and it gives West Kirby a chance for a refurb. But I do think a lot more consideration should have been put into catering for regulars in amongst all this, especially during disruption such as this (couldn't have happened at a worse time, could it?)

Maybe it's time to invest more? More EMUs (if possible) and bringing the stock procurement forward would be a good decision in my view, especially reflecting on the disruption caused tonight! Over the past few months disruption due to train failures seems to have become more and more common - it seems as if they're almost being held together with sticky tape (I'd love to know individual EMUs' maintenance logs and see if it's the same ones each time). I'd say scrap the internal refresh and focus on the procurement - a decision that should have really been made before the livery change - I'm not sure our beloved 507s/508s can last much longer!

</rant>

 

[pablo]

Merseyrail, in general does a good job, but they pulled this trick one Monday morning back in May on the Chester/E Port line.
Seems to me that Control over-reacts to the perturbation, rushes to get the stock back to the end of the line and sod the customers left standing. They need a re-think of this policy, if that's what's causing it, or it'll be turkeys voting for Christmas.