Rail replacement buses vs. longer train journeys - choices by passengers in engineering works

[edwin_m]

From experience, few to none. Midweek in the winter, you might get away with it, but even then First Class loadings alone north of Newcastle easily fill most of the accommodation available on a nine-car.

Additionally, you have to get these sets up to Inverness/Aberdeen the night before and have them away the day after (which will likely be a Friday night and Monday morning), so that's two "normal" days with a shortform.

Realistically speaking, it isn't going to happen.

How full are they north of Edinburgh? I was suggesting using a 10-car and splitting it there.

 

[Segedunum]

How full are they north of Edinburgh? I was suggesting using a 10-car and splitting it there.

Some of them still carry a good load north of Edinburgh - and you still have to think about what you do on the days before/after the block. Five cars on the Monday morning Southbound Chieftain from Inverness will not be popular.

You need to allow for ca. 20 minutes to split a set, so the timetable would also need to be rewritten to facilitate this. It isn't routinely done midway through a passenger working (the evening King's Cross to Skipton being an exception).

That's not to say you 'can't' make it work in some way so trains can run through to St Pancras, but adding in a load of operational complexities and reducing capacity north of Edinburgh so you can send perhaps 1tph there is highly unlikely to see the light of day.

 

[mmh]

Crewe is bad for this.

They really need a larger area out front of the main entrance where they can sufficiently hold both rail replacement buses and taxis. At the moment is holds a small number of taxis.

Not that much they can do there though as it's a bridge. The signage, and much else, at Crewe is appalling though. It also shouldn't have had ticket barriers installed.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 5 Feb 2026 ==

You need to allow for ca. 20 minutes to split a set, so the timetable would also need to be rewritten to facilitate this. It isn't routinely done midway through a passenger working (the evening King's Cross to Skipton being an exception).

Avanti split their 805s with a lot less station time than that. Southern manage to split trains in times you could measure in seconds, not minutes.

 

[Starmill]

It looks like EMR have deliberately allocated little or no quota for crowd control reasons to me. Trains on Sunday don't run from Corby to London at 2tph until 1339 and from London they don't run the 2tph until the 1444. Outwith these times there is either 1tph or the service only runs between Kettering and Corby, the latter being of no use for diverted West Coast or East Coast passengers.

@edwin_m has already noted that the EMR Intercity services are even more crowded than the Connect route on weekends of an ECML closure. The Connect route only offers eight cars, many Intercity services offer just five (and that's with declassified First).

One thing that could work would be additional services running non-stop London St Pancras - Corby and then coaches to Peterborough. This would offer lots of capacity but at the expense of journey times as it would be very slow. It would also require huge additional resources for both bus and train.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 5 Feb 2026 ==

Avanti split their 805s with a lot less station time than that. Southern manage to split trains in times you could measure in seconds, not minutes.

Southern can quite comfortably do an attach and boarding / alighting in four minutes, both in the planning and in the reality. Southern's rolling stock means they also have to correctly set up four sets of internal doors during that time to allow the corridor to be used on the next journey, which is essential. Presumably LNER have agreements with their train crew that mean they get up to 20 minutes though.

 

[Snow1964]

One thing that could work would be additional services running non-stop London St Pancras - Corby and then coaches to Peterborough. This would offer lots of capacity but at the expense of journey times as it would be very slow. It would also require huge additional resources for both bus and train.

If the service usually carries say 15,000 passengers on each day at the weekend, then presumably any bus or alternative train service should be planned with similar capacity.

The idea that it is acceptable to try and block regular number of passengers by inventing low quota alternatives in plainly wrong.

If it needs huge resources then so be it, if can't get the buses/coaches shorten the distance closed. Taking a former reversing crossover out of use and making the closed section too long to fully resource it with bus/coaches is creating more problems than it solves.

 

[JonathanH]

One thing that could work would be additional services running non-stop London St Pancras - Corby and then coaches to Peterborough.

If the reason for not having Corby services out of St Pancras on Sunday morning is two track railway, then that is unlikely to work because there isn't capacity to run them.

 

[Starmill]

If the service usually carries say 15,000 passengers on each day at the weekend, then presumably any bus or alternative train service should be planned with similar capacity.

The idea that it is acceptable to try and block regular number of passengers by inventing low quota alternatives in plainly wrong.

If it needs huge resources then so be it, if can't get the buses/coaches shorten the distance closed. Taking a former reversing crossover out of use and making the closed section too long to fully resource it with bus/coaches is creating more problems than it solves.

I guess the problem is that by definition the alternative involving an EMR service and a bus is going to be quite poor on time by comparison with using the West Coast for many journeys. If you give it more capacity to try and push lots of people to it, that will cause it to be very slow. The roads in question are often secondary routes too.

Back in the day EMR ran London St Pancras - Grantham services with some HSTs which was a clever idea, albeit not quite enough capacity-wise at the London end. It also doesn't serve Peterborough and it's really tricky to get good connections at Grantham onto services for Leeds or Newcastle. Grantham has a poor layout and very little circulating space on the platforms, and fairly narrow entrances and footbridge. With enough additional rolling stock it is doable though.

 

[London Trains]

If the reason for not having Corby services out of St Pancras on Sunday morning is two track railway, then that is unlikely to work because there isn't capacity to run them.

Surely the solution there is to not run a two-track railway when the ECML is closed.

 

[Starmill]

If the reason for not having Corby services out of St Pancras on Sunday morning is two track railway, then that is unlikely to work because there isn't capacity to run them.

This is regularly eased for a very small number of days per year when other lines are under full closures.

 

[JonathanH]

This is regularly eased for a very small number of days per year when other lines are under full closures.

Yes, is the lack of Corby services actually something else, like perceived low demand?

 

[Starmill]

Yes, is the lack of Corby services actually something else, like perceived low demand?

It could be anything from the easements weren't asked for for last Sunday (I have no idea) to EMR having insufficient crew to operate additional services. Either way what I was suggesting was that unless some enhancements were planned (and the cost covered) it wouldn't be a sensible thing to offer large numbers of Advance tickets on the few Corby services which can run through to London.

 

[Bevan Price]

If/when GBR finally starts, would it be sensible to forget current TOC boundaries and improve route knowledge by running, or example, St. Pancras to Doncaster & York, Lings Cross - Sheffield, St. Pancras - Manchester. Normally maybe only one or two per week, but several daily services during engineering work, to remove much of the need for rail replacemnt buses.

 

[londonbridge]

My lasting memory of a rail replacement bus journey was when the driver got lost and a passenger had to direct him to Peterborough station.

 

[Bevan Price]

My lasting memory of a rail replacement bus journey was when the driver got lost and a passenger had to direct him to Peterborough station.

Before GPS, I have had to guide coach drivers in suburbs of Liverpool and elsewhere.

 

[Bletchleyite]

It looks like EMR have deliberately allocated little or no quota for crowd control reasons to me. Trains on Sunday don't run from Corby to London at 2tph until 1339 and from London they don't run the 2tph until the 1444. Outwith these times there is either 1tph or the service only runs between Kettering and Corby, the latter being of no use for diverted West Coast or East Coast passengers.

It indeed appears so. I think the intention is to push people onto Thameslink, whose 12 car sets have tons of capacity. But because Thameslink and EMR don't have something like Northampton you can stick in as a via point to make sure you get the local service, and neither Trainline's app (the website might, I forget) nor any TOC sites let you do "must call at" (if that option is there Flitwick would do it), what's happening is an awful lot of Anytime Single prices being quoted for journeys on Sundays when the RRB is operating. Yet if you put in Peterborough to Edinburgh you are getting penny prices (in so much as LNER ever does) because hardly anyone is actually booking!

Of course if the Super Off Peak Single was still there none of this would be a problem as that would be a not unreasonable fare in itself.

Meanwhile the only trains being quoted at reasonable prices are the two hourly Avantis because these come up as they are similarly timed to the RRB connection. They are as a result quite busy, which I'm sure FirstGroup doesn't mind (given that they're not getting the Lumo money) but it really is rather sub-optimal.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 5 Feb 2026 ==

Before GPS, I have had to guide coach drivers in suburbs of Liverpool and elsewhere.

Same, I've had to do it loads of times. I even had to direct a Stagecoach service bus driver round Manchester Airport once!

 

[TUC]

Before GPS, I have had to guide coach drivers in suburbs of Liverpool and elsewhere.

A surprising number of coaches even now seem to lack GPS and have drivers clueless about the route they are driving.

 

[Starmill]

A surprising number of coaches even now seem to lack GPS and have drivers clueless about the route they are driving.

Unfortunately the bus world does have its fair share of cowboys. And for emergency rail replacement it's pretty common that the driver won't know precisely where to go and will need to pull over to make calls for guidance. Sometimes they're not so much as given a piece of paper that says which stops they're making. It's worse in tall vehicles because taking detours in unfamiliar areas of the country is exactly what causes many collisions with low bridges. Of course the truly professional operators do have GPS and do pay for a live database of low bridges on tall vehicles.

 

[The Planner]

Surely the solution there is to not run a two-track railway when the ECML is closed.

That is fine if you can recover the engineering access the MML loses, but often the route will say no to that.

 

[Starmill]

That is fine if you can recover the engineering access the MML loses, but often the route will say no to that.

I guess this is the problem. If it were once or twice a year, they'd probably agree to it, with an extension to Sunday morning on other weekends instead. But unfortunately now we've now got a fuller calendar of Kings Cross - Peterborough and Euston - Rugby works it wouldn't be feasible every weekend.

 

[mangyiscute]

Some of us too are old enough to remember when possessions were a good deal shorter in distance blocked and, in the SR at least, timed to allow a train service to be resumed for Sunday evening. Sadly the convenience of the passenger is at the very bottom of the list these days.

Safety has become a lot more important since those days, which means possessions last longer, plus the more intensive use of most lines means that more maintenance work needs to be done. The passenger is certainly still the top priority in the eyes of the TOC, but there are plenty of other limitations.

Also, most major possessions are due to network upgrades, not just maintenance. If you are curious, there are usually plenty of social media posts around any big possession showing what work is being done.

 

[Snow1964]

I guess this is the problem. If it were once or twice a year, they'd probably agree to it, with an extension to Sunday morning on other weekends instead. But unfortunately now we've now got a fuller calendar of Kings Cross - Peterborough and Euston - Rugby works it wouldn't be feasible every weekend.

Really this should be a central decision, not a route, something like can have 2 track railway 40 weekends per year, but not weekends another nearby line is closed. Shouldn't be routes decision when alternative is fully closed.

Some things are clearly centrally planned and coordinated, never get big works on approaches to Waterloo over same Christmas as approached to Paddington etc

Really the East coast operators should be chartering 12 car trains from Thameslink to operate to Kettering, Corby, or Market Harborough, and providing road shuttles to connect with them. Or use some of their own trains (even if piloted). And they need to get away from idea has to get to St Pancras, they don't, West Hampstead, St Albans or somewhere with onward connections is better than nothing.

 

[35B]

I guess this is the problem. If it were once or twice a year, they'd probably agree to it, with an extension to Sunday morning on other weekends instead. But unfortunately now we've now got a fuller calendar of Kings Cross - Peterborough and Euston - Rugby works it wouldn't be feasible every weekend.

Possibly. But it is Network Rail that is choosing to block main lines, so it is Network Rail that should deal with the consequences. Saying “but it’s the route” is a cop out, which denies the reality than NR is a single organisation, with duties to the network as a whole.

One of my few hopes for GBR is that giving one organisation responsibility for both selling to the public and managing infrastructure is that this join will be a little less alien.

 

[pitdiver]

A few years ago I had to get a RRB from Bletchley to London Euston. It eventually turned in the form of a Double Decker Bus. It had a couple of stops but no problem. However when we eventually arrived I think in North London the driver stopped and asked if anybody knew the way to Euston. As I had a reasonable knowledge I guided him to Euston.

 

[TUC]

Unfortunately the bus world does have its fair share of cowboys. And for emergency rail replacement it's pretty common that the driver won't know precisely where to go and will need to pull over to make calls for guidance. Sometimes they're not so much as given a piece of paper that says which stops they're making. It's worse in tall vehicles because taking detours in unfamiliar areas of the country is exactly what causes many collisions with low bridges. Of course the truly professional operators do have GPS and do pay for a live database of low bridges on tall vehicles.

Do TOC do any kind of quality control checks on their RRBs and cease to offer contracts to operators who aren't up to the mark?

 

[The Planner]

Really this should be a central decision, not a route, something like can have 2 track railway 40 weekends per year, but not weekends another nearby line is closed. Shouldn't be routes decision when alternative is fully closed.

Some things are clearly centrally planned and coordinated, never get big works on approaches to Waterloo over same Christmas as approached to Paddington etc

Really the East coast operators should be chartering 12 car trains from Thameslink to operate to Kettering, Corby, or Market Harborough, and providing road shuttles to connect with them. Or use some of their own trains (even if piloted). And they need to get away from idea has to get to St Pancras, they don't, West Hampstead, St Albans or somewhere with onward connections is better than nothing.

Access planning is coordinated between the regions and TOC/FOCs.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 6 Feb 2026 ==

One of my few hopes for GBR is that giving one organisation responsibility for both selling to the public and managing infrastructure is that this join will be a little less alien.

I doubt there will be much difference, you will still be dealing with routes and regions. It should remove most arguments with operators, but the passenger impacts won't alter so the argument just becomes an internal one.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 6 Feb 2026 ==

Do TOC do any kind of quality control checks on their RRBs and cease to offer contracts to operators who aren't up to the mark?

Yes.

 

[stephen rp]

Some benefits from RR.... When Piccadilly is closed in February, it will be quicker from Warrington to Manchester Airport by the replacement bus than on the usual train.

 

[Ian Hardy]

Do TOC do any kind of quality control checks on their RRBs and cease to offer contracts to operators who aren't up to the mark?

Most bus drivers (not coach drivers) only have a detailed knowledge of the routes that they drive on a daily basis, but once they go out of that area, they will have as much knowledge of the area as would an LNER driver would have of the lines going out of Waterloo, i.e. none.

Coach drivers should have a more detailed knowledge of a wider geographic area, but they might not know where the railway stations are and where actual the pick-up points are. For instance, at Hassocks there are two entrances the UP side and the DOWN side, the RRBs are meant to serve the UP side, but an RRB I was on the coach driver missed the turn to the UP side and only went to the DOWN side, so anyone waiting at the correct location wasn't picked up.

Another issue is that, unlike the railways where train drivers cannot just drive a train along any bit of track without having learnt the route, there are not the same restrictions on roads.

You wouldn't get any rail replacement services, if you forced the bus operators to have their drivers route learn the rail replacement routes because there is no time to do it, as bus companies unlike the rail companies do not have enough staff to enable ad hoc route training for RRBs to occur. They do for changes to proper bus routes but not for RRBs.

So, in most cases the driver is just given a photocopied map and told to get on with it.

TfL for its RRBs, puts signage up which helps bus drivers based in East London to be able to drive RRBs in West London (e.g. between Hammersmith and Heathrow with less of a chance of getting lost but it still occurs. That is possible because TfL puts up signage for normal bus diversions, so they have a team who drives around London putting up signs. As TfL is part of the Greater London Authority it has approval to put signs up from the local authorities.

For the TOCs, to put signs up, that would be a minefield and would put the RRB costs up even more.

 

[Starmill]

Do TOC do any kind of quality control checks on their RRBs and cease to offer contracts to operators who aren't up to the mark?

They certainly can and certainly do - sometimes. The question is does it happen consistently and is there enough resource in terms of admin time? I think we all know the answer to that.

 

[Kite159]

..

Some benefits from RR.... When Piccadilly is closed in February, it will be quicker from Warrington to Manchester Airport by the replacement bus than on the usual train.

Maybe worth of a separate trivia thread in when replacement buses are faster than the trains they replace?

Although I would guess the RRB from Warrington towards the Airport is running direct to the Airport picking up the M56

 

[RT4038]

They certainly can and certainly do - sometimes. The question is does it happen consistently and is there enough resource in terms of admin time? I think we all know the answer to that.

I would suggest that with RRBs sometimes being quite difficult to obtain (particularly when lots of vehicles are required, and certainly for emergency work) they probably can't be all that choosy......