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Alstom won't allow Pendo drags for anything except emergencies. Therefore S&C, Chester, and G&SW drags are out of the question. The latter isn't really used now that an electrified route via Chat Moss is available and route knowledge via the S&C has been lost so even Voyagers can't divert that way.
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Yes, run the Sheffield and Nottingham services combined, but of course doing so restricts each to 5-coaches, and needs time at Leicester to combine the trains. Then you need to work out what Avanti stock you could even bring into St Pancras, and how.
If the will was there, the timetable would have been rewritten to suit. Without electrification though, not to mention crews who sign both traction and route it's a non-starter. With HSTs we had a standard form of intercity traction, whereas despite a medley of companies having adopted Hitachi 80x nothing is standardised.
West Coast Mk3s (complete with DVT) used to be seen heading through Bristol on Saturdays.
Alstom won't allow Pendo drags for anything except emergencies. Therefore S&C, Chester, and G&SW drags are out of the question. The latter isn't really used now that an electrified route via Chat Moss is available and route knowledge via the S&C has been lost so even Voyagers can't divert that way.
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Could Avanti run services using class 221 units from St Pancras to Manchester. If there is not enough platform capacity at St Pancras, perhaps they could terminate at Luton or Bedford where passengers can connect onto Thameslink.
You may have a point. Pen y Pass car park has been oversubscribed for decades. Parking on the road, obstructing traffic, seems to be a recent development.
Looks like they might have cured that on Friday. NWP closed the road and removed 40 cars to a storage compound.
Seems they didn't think that double yellow lines didn't apply to them and ignored the Park & Ride and courtesy bus.
Boils down to that it seems ok for TOCs/NR to advise customers simply not to travel during major works, which allows them to abdicate from providing any useful alternative.
No diversions or reasonable replacement bus? Simple. We told you not to travel.
Of course this ignores the fact that some people have to travel. Just because it’s a public holiday doesn’t mean that everyone stops working.
Looks like they might have cured that on Friday. NWP closed the road and removed 40 cars to a storage compound.
Seems they didn't think that double yellow lines didn't apply to them and ignored the Park & Ride and courtesy bus.
Great stuff. Some of these ignorant types need teaching a good lesson. I know there have always been issues with uninitiated types at beauty spots, but it’s got a damn sight worse since 2020.
Could Avanti run services using class 221 units from St Pancras to Manchester. If there is not enough platform capacity at St Pancras, perhaps they could terminate at Luton or Bedford where passengers can connect onto Thameslink.
I was one of those, travel in the peakiest (autocorrect offered the equally appropriate “peskiest“) times passengers on Saturday. 10:20 or so off Brighton, 12 car Thameslink which was busy before Gatwick airport and very busy after Gatwick (helped by my coach being just by the platform stairs). It wasn’t the end of the world, and it certainly wasn’t rammed, plenty standing, but room for more if that had been vital.
Can’t claim to have been upset, indeed I’d have been more upset if the train had been next to empty, because empty trains have much more chance of being withdrawn than extra-full ones.
I’m often wary of averages. Even with an extra three platforms at St Pancras the average load of the trains there may only have been just above half full: while trains will have been full leaving they would have been virtually empty arriving. What do you judge on; the empty arrivals or the full departures?
You may have a point. Pen y Pass car park has been oversubscribed for decades. Parking on the road, obstructing traffic, seems to be a recent development.
I concur. Snowdonia was overwhelmed, North Wales Police were forced to close the A5 while they towed away 40 (that's not a typo) dangerously-parked cars. Shame the Conwy Valley didn't reopen until Saturday, if it ran more frequently and connected with a properly-integrated bus service it would really take the pressure off of the roads.
It certainly isn’t, but I think the attitude of people going to countryside beaches / beauty spots that have decent road or rail access has changed somewhat with an air of entitlement. Maybe this has always been a thing but my experience is it has gotten worse since everyone was cooped up indoors.
Hence the articles about overcrowding despite one of the quotes stating they didn’t know about various closures.
I think one problem is some elements of the operators know it will be busy but don’t (or can’t) plan anything around it, leaving it to the teams on the day to muddle through. It’s broadly predictable where and when will be busy or a BH weekend and I imagine most planners or control staff (let alone crew!) would be able to tell you for an individual TOC, regardless of engineering works on other TOCs.
And in Avanti's case also buses from Rugby to Kettering to connect with EMR.
LNW also had buses going from Milton Keynes all stops to Watford and onto Potters Bar as well. And before anyone say's "Why didn't they send them to Stanmore?" - Jubilee and part of Met were also closed for engineering.
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Ah yes - in the days before Chiltern served Oxford.
Good luck with finding paths up the Chiltern line to do that now though, unless you're going to kill a number of the Chiltern services and basically tell the passengers at those stations they're going to be on a bus because you don't want to disrupt some Manchester travellers - and a few rivet counters who want the novelty of Voyagers running off route.
Could Avanti run services using class 221 units from St Pancras to Manchester. If there is not enough platform capacity at St Pancras, perhaps they could terminate at Luton or Bedford where passengers can connect onto Thameslink.
Two issues - are there any spare 221s? The Euston Blockade probably freed up a few sets which could be shuffled to release Voyagers but there are still two 221s dumped at Central Rivers because the DfT doesn't want to pay for them. The second issue is crew route knowledge. Wasn't an issue in the days of Project Rio where HSTs were going spare and MML crews already signed both route and traction. The solution these days should probably have been FOC route conductors.
12 car Thameslink which was busy before Gatwick airport and very busy after Gatwick (helped by my coach being just by the platform stairs). It wasn’t the end of the world, and it certainly wasn’t rammed
12 coach train with room to spare, while elsewhere 2 coach trains were rammed. See what I said earlier about fleet capacity being in all of the wrong places.
It's long been a problem, but it has definitely got much worse. NWP having to tow dozens of cars from the Ogwen Pass is a phenomenon that was virtually unheard of pre-2020. Away from the roads, staff working the North Wales Coast have noted how crowding got worse year-on-year over the last 15 years - that line was practically at the full pre-pandemic service level last year (until Avanti fell apart) and was still wedged.
Could Avanti run services using class 221 units from St Pancras to Manchester. If there is not enough platform capacity at St Pancras, perhaps they could terminate at Luton or Bedford where passengers can connect onto Thameslink.
No platform capacity at St Pancras, no spare rolling stock, no drivers/guards with route knowledge. Terminating southbound services at Bedford/Luton, otherwise than during a block, would also completely knacker capacity on the MML for both Thameslink and EMR’s services.
Ah yes - in the days before Chiltern served Oxford.
Good luck with finding paths up the Chiltern line to do that now though, unless you're going to kill a number of the Chiltern services and basically tell the passengers at those stations they're going to be on a bus because you don't want to disrupt some Manchester travellers - and a few rivet counters who want the novelty of Voyagers running off route.
Oxford services are served by three car turbos. I'd sooner prioritise the much larger number of people travelling between London, Birmingham and Liverpool. I don't know the signalling well enough but it may be possible to terminate the Oxford at High Wycombe or even Princes Risborough to provide a path on the main line. Before anyone mentions that Oxford could really do with an alternative service to London at the moment, I'll remind you that you are talking with the benefit of hindsight and that if you were rewriting the timetable for an upcoming engineering blockade you wouldn't be thinking "what if a bridge chooses this moment to sink?"
However I've got another target in my sights: Banbury and Aylesbury (via Princes Risborough) services used two car turbos. So ditch the Banbury, and just run the Aylesburys as a shuttle. Additional calls on other services if there are any stops left unserved. Then you should have a path for a crowdbuster to/from Birmingham. Probably a few spare turbos knocking around too which can be used for strengthening.
As has been mentioned up thread, Project Rio sacrificed a through Nottingham-London train in order to prioritise the Manchester traffic.
ISTR that’s nothing new in your case, though (likewise for me).
What does seem to have mushroomed is the influx of townies who now seem to turn up and treat the countryside as some kind of playground, dumping rubbish everywhere, starting fires, being harmful to wildlife, and generally behaving like grade A tools. This is another thing to add to the list of negative side-effects arising from the Covid response. In that sense it’s probably just as well that weekend rail capacity to places like Edale is finite.
That seems to be very much a generalisation of town- and city-dwellers.
I've had plenty of examples of bad behaviour from certain countryside residents that I could recount. In particularly, an arrogant attitude that because they own the land, they have the right to do what they want, including illegally blocking public footpaths with electric fences, keeping dangerous animals on rights of way, and even (in one case, in the late 90s) downright threatening behaviour (when I attempted to take a farmer to task for blocking a public footpath with an electric fence).
Or, uncontrolled dogs, or bad driving (as in "we know the country lanes, so we can hurtle along them at whatever speed we like"). And of course threats of violence to anti-hunt protestors, even when the hunt is illegal.
Sorry for the rant but I do feel that any criticism of "townies" (a term I dislike and, as a city-dweller for most of my life, actually find rather insulting, if I am honest) has to be met with equal criticism of certain countryside dwellers. In particular, the "this is our land, you townies keep out, even if it's a right of way" mentality.
The MML is no longer geared up to accepting WCML or ECML diversions. At least with the HSTs you could amend the diagrams to kick as many long sets out as possible. Now most trains are 5 cars and that's that..
It is fed back time after time that the trains can't cope.
"But we've put buses on and told people to use them."
"Their tickets are valid on the train as they're any permitted even if it is a different route. The journey planner tells them to use the train as it's faster than the buses."
"But we've said to use the buses".
Repeat ad infinitum. It's happened for years. It never changes.
I've lost count of the amount of times I've turned up at Grantham when the MML is closed with an already full 2 car train from the east and just had to shrug at the 200 people left on the platform.
It can't really change, because if I've bought a ticket I have a contract for certain validity and the railway can't change that just because it feels like. The only way to really fix it is to stop cutting staff route knowledge etc so diversions can be used rather than buses, so the alternatives aren't quicker and more desirable.
You couldn't even fix it by restricting validities, as if I want to go to Manchester via Sheffield if that wasn't valid I could just split.
Basically, the cause is typical corporate/Government bad customer service.
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You can run it professionally and cost effectively, in which case it WILL carry an appropriate level of slack, or you can run it on the cheap. It is the latter you are proposing.
Could Avanti run services using class 221 units from St Pancras to Manchester. If there is not enough platform capacity at St Pancras, perhaps they could terminate at Luton or Bedford where passengers can connect onto Thameslink.
In an ideal world you would be able to do something like this in the manner of project Rio. Ensuring that every train leaving St Pancras is 10 car - even if it meant just some spare avanti voyagers running MML services allowing EMR to double up the rest (coupled with strengthening on connecting services to wcml). Of course, impossible in privatisation due to the variety of rolling stock.
Very true. I never have & never will drive trains on Christmas or Boxing Day. It’s a bit early in the year for the annual Yuletide farce to start on this forum isn’t it?
I don't want to work on those days either as things stand, we tend to do family stuff. But there are enough people who will, particularly if the price is right. My Mum used to work Boxing Day in a bank call centre as she got quadruple time and time off in lieu. Some people e.g. Muslims might just consider it a normal day. But once my parents have passed away if my sister decides they want to do it differently and meet up a different day instead, then I'd be up for working, it's not like you can do much else bar watch telly with everything shut.
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In an ideal world you would be able to do something like this in the manner of project Rio. Ensuring that every train leaving St Pancras is 10 car - even if it meant just some spare avanti voyagers running MML services allowing EMR to double up the rest (coupled with strengthening on connecting services to wcml). Of course, impossible in privatisation due to the variety of rolling stock.
This is the kind of professionalism and integration we need to be looking at.
For one, wire the Marston Vale and run as long EMUs as possible non stop from St Pancras to Bedford and a nonstop EMU shuttle on the Marston Vale with taxi substitution for the local stops.
You can run it professionally and cost effectively, in which case it WILL carry an appropriate level of slack, or you can run it on the cheap. It is the latter you are proposing.
Quite. As I tried to say I'm not expecting there to be excess stock for extreme events like the bridge between Didcot and Oxford. But there should be slack in the system to cope with seasonal or diurnal peaks.
Sadly, for some, the concept of units hanging around in the sidings, to only be used during traditional commuter peaks or seasonal weekends, seems to be deeply troubling, even though it's what BR and the early privatised railway did as a matter of course.
I don't want to work on those days either as things stand, we tend to do family stuff. But there are enough people who will, particularly if the price is right.
This is the problem, this notion that there are countless people queuing up to work the likes of Christmas is a bit of a misnomer.
You’re right that you will get people if the price is right, however for many people that price is going to be *extremely* high, especially in industries where people are otherwise well paid - such as the railway.
In my experience this applies just as equally to other religions too.
Sadly, for some, the concept of units hanging around in the sidings, to only be used during traditional commuter peaks or seasonal weekends, seems to be deeply troubling, even though it's what BR and the early privatised railway did as a matter of course.
It isn't what BR and the early privatised railway did as a matter of course though, at least not after the late 1980s.
There are still some commuter railways in the South East that have perhaps a third of the fleet parked up at the weekend, but that stock is of very little use elsewhere. The regional railway and intercity railway hasn't been in that position for 40 years.
Sadly, for some, the concept of units hanging around in the sidings, to only be used during traditional commuter peaks or seasonal weekends, seems to be deeply troubling, even though it's what BR and the early privatised railway did
Whilst this may be what BR did, the stock that was sitting around was almost entirely ageing and otherwise redundant Mark 1 coaching stock, with no complex electrical systems and steam heating that wouldn't be required in summer, that was then hauled by freight locos that were not needed at weekends and holidays and using the crews from freight depots on overtime. We no longer have that flexibility because the railway has been split up and because expensive modern rolling stock can't be left sitting around for weeks and months on end on the off chance of being needed as systems and reliability suffer badly from that - before we get to why anyone would consider buying such stock for the purpose of it being surplus to requirements for much of the time.
South East TOCs carry huge amounts of stock that traditionally wasn't used much during the day, to be fair. The railway was always happy to do this for London commuters despite them typically paying about the cost of an off peak return per day if that on their annual seasons.
South East TOCs carry huge amounts of stock that traditionally wasn't used much during the day, to be fair. The railway was always happy to do this for London commuters despite them typically paying about the cost of an off peak return per day if that on their annual seasons.
I'm not sure the railway was 'happy' to do this. The demand necessitated it and where possible capacity was squeezed. The 12-car railway on Southeastern metro envisaged in the early 1990s when Networkers were being procured has still never materialised beyond a handful of services.
However, we have never found a way to make that stock suitable as crowd busters for the intercity routes.
Whilst this may be what BR did, the stock that was sitting around was almost entirely ageing and otherwise redundant Mark 1 coaching stock, with no complex electrical systems and steam heating that wouldn't be required in summer, that was then hauled by freight locos that were not needed at weekends and holidays and using the crews from freight depots on overtime. We no longer have that flexibility because the railway has been split up and because expensive modern rolling stock can't be left sitting around for weeks and months on end on the off chance of being needed as systems and reliability suffer badly from that - before we get to why anyone would consider buying such stock for the purpose of it being surplus to requirements for much of the time.
Maybe one for a different thread, but we have a number 156s that are about to go off lease, but I understand some of them are only any use for cutting up (156 407 I am thinking of you). But I suspect maintaining them and crew knowledge isn’t cheap so even with units that old, so it can’t be make to work financially. The problem now as I see it is that nothing is standard, so it isn’t as if LNER can hire an train from TPE and just us it, in the same way as they did with the HSTs from MML.
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just looking back at history, when the chips were down BR used 317 / 321 to York an Leeds. It assumes the route was cleared. I suspect now they can’t use 700s as the route isn’t. Did BR clear things quicker back then or just have more routes available? The incidents I am thinking of that had the 317 / 321s operating so far out their region where extreme, the mk4 emergency withdrawals, But I am not sure if we can react to this any more. Granted now, GTR can’t really use the 387s that spend the weekend parked up to help crowdbust LNER as the paths don’t exist anyway. But with the fragmentation it seems to be a non starter now. I understand that even a 158 is slightly different depending on who is operating it now so EMR can’t just spot hire 158s from Northern for example to strengthen services for the Grand national weekend.
just looking back at history, when the chips were down BR used 317 / 321 to York an Leeds. It assumes the route was cleared. I suspect now they can’t use 700s as the route isn’t. Did BR clear things quicker back then or just have more routes available? The incidents I am thinking of that had the 317 / 321s operating so far out their region where extreme, the mk4 emergency withdrawals, But I am not sure if we can react to this any more. Granted now, GTR can’t really use the 387s that spend the weekend parked up to help crowdbust LNER as the paths don’t exist anyway. But with the fragmentation it seems to be a non starter now. I understand that even a 158 is slightly different depending on who is operating it now so EMR can’t just spot hire 158s from Northern for example to strengthen services for the Grand national weekend.
Also remember the expectations of passengers now are different, air conditioning in the summer for example.
The issue as I see it is that the length of trains match normal demand more closely than ever, there aren't 10 coach trains going around half full all the time, that's now become a 5 coach train.
Is this definitely correct? OK it's of little use on some of the IC lines under discussion here, but the ex-Southern Region lines definitely seemed to only press units into service during the peaks. Many off-peak services well into privatisation (I'd give the 1997/98 timetable on SWT as an example) were only 4-car off peak, when they were often 12 during the peak. Or, the 442 services to Weymouth were frequently 5-car off-peak, but would be 10-car during Summer Saturdays. The extra stock was sometimes employed on "seaside specials" from the London area during the summer season, particularly Summer Saturdays.
Even though a "Southern" EMU would be little use on the MML or WCML (!), the point I'm trying to make is that there are historical examples of multiple units only being used at peak times, not just loco-hauled MkI stock, so there seems to me to no reason why you can't have MUs being pressed into service at peak times just because they are MUs and not hauled stock.
As for not wishing MUs to sit around idle for months, this would not happen as the peak-only units would be needed for the Mon-Fri commuter peak, and then could be re-used for weekend peak periods.
I will agree that the fragmented railway has made such things more difficult. Re-unifying the railway in some shape or form, whether it be private or public, and simplifying the structure (goodbye ROSCOs, for one) would help, I feel.
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That's a very good example of the kind of thing I'm talking about: "just because it's an MU, it doesn't mean it can't [in theory] be re-used for an atypical working when needed".
It assumes the route was cleared. I suspect now they can’t use 700s as the route isn’t. Did BR clear things quicker back then or just have more routes available? The incidents I am thinking of that had the 317 / 321s operating so far out their region where extreme, the mk4 emergency withdrawals, But I am not sure if we can react to this any more. Granted now, GTR can’t really use the 387s that spend the weekend parked up to help crowdbust LNER as the paths don’t exist anyway. But with the fragmentation it seems to be a non starter now. I understand that even a 158 is slightly different depending on who is operating it now so EMR can’t just spot hire 158s from Northern for example to strengthen services for the Grand national weekend.
Due to power supply capacity, one couldn't run 10-car 442s down to Weymouth. They were only ever 5-car sets, though 10-cars could (and were booked) to run to Poole on some services.
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