Northern Cancellations

[modernrail]

Another day of ridiculous cancellations on Northern Rail. I have been affected by a lack of Southport to Wigan service. A ridiculous exchange with the Northern Facebook team has led to the gibberish answer that these are planned cancellations because of things like engineering works but not engineering works on this line or in fact any other line today. Absolute gibberish. Several requests to clarify what on earth this means resulted in further gibberish.

What is the real reason that Northern has cancelled quite a large number of trains today... a lack of drivers and guards available? It really does remain an absolute shambles many many months after the botched timetable change. Very sad to see that DaFT is not on Northern's case with sufficient vigour.

 

[185143]

I believe it's a shortage of drivers unwilling to give up their rest day-as drivers on the West side are not contracted to work Sundays.

 

[modernrail]

Thanks. Do we know whether this is because Northern still don't have enough drivers to ensure there are sufficient takers for Sundays? Bearing in mind they were allowed to roll-back on some of the new services I would have thought the driver training programme would be producing a surplus of drivers by now.

The whole situation continues to be so, so unprofessional from all sides. I have been trying to get up to Southport from London every other weekend to help my sister with her new baby and 100 per cent of my services from Wigan to Southport have been cancelled due to either strike or planned cancellations or ad hoc cancellations.

 

[Greybeard33]

There is an existing thread on this topic, https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/northern-north-west-sunday-crew-shortages.175791/

 

[modernrail]

Thanks, I hadn't spotted as I dodnt think to look in that section of the forum.

 

[AntoniC]

Thanks. Do we know whether this is because Northern still don't have enough drivers to ensure there are sufficient takers for Sundays? Bearing in mind they were allowed to roll-back on some of the new services I would have thought the driver training programme would be producing a surplus of drivers by now.

The whole situation continues to be so, so unprofessional from all sides. I have been trying to get up to Southport from London every other weekend to help my sister with her new baby and 100 per cent of my services from Wigan to Southport have been cancelled due to either strike or planned cancellations or ad hoc cancellations.

I live in Southport also and when I choose to to travel to London I always choose to go via Lime St.
1) Because I have Merseyrail All Zones Trio and so only have to pay from Lime St and
2) The connections to and from Southport/Liverpool are a damned sight more reliable than Southport to Wigan ( I once got caught out when my train from Southport to Wigan was cancelled by Northern so my dad had to drive me to Wigan to make sure I got my VT to London).