What's going on at Northern Rail today?

[Bantamzen]

158758 spent last Thursday Friday and Saturday on the Airedale / Wharefedale lines after 321903 failed at Bradford on the Wednesday evening. Yesterday it was again 321903 which failed at Bradford. I think 5 of the 8 321/2s are required on a weekday so looks like they are going through an unreliable phase

Let's hope they are OK to run next weekend, with the additional services planned for the Tour de France along the Airedale & Wharfedale the last thing that will be needed is more fails along the routes. Especially heading towards Ilkley (and to a lesser extent Skipton) as the A65 will be closed on the Saturday from about 05:30, so pretty much the only way in is going to be by train as most bus routes will be on long diversions, doubtless through very heavy traffic.

 

[Tomnick]

Today the 142 that formed the 16:58 Stockport to Chester came ECS from Piccadilly instead of Newton Heath (maybe due to lack of a Victoria driver?) It departed Stockport only 3 minutes late at 17:01, still 2 minutes ahead of the scheduled arrival time of the following Virgin service to Euston.

This perhaps begs the question as to why this path could not be used to enable the service to start from Piccadilly instead of Stockport. Which would undoubtedly increase patronage.

It might have just about worked in practice yesterday, but that doesn't mean that there's a path that's compliant with the planning rules. Indeed, the empty stock - running to a VSTP path yesterday, wasn't booked to arrive at Stockport until 1700 - hence the late start on the 1658 Chester.

 

[northwichcat]

It might have just about worked in practice yesterday, but that doesn't mean that there's a path that's compliant with the planning rules. Indeed, the empty stock - running to a VSTP path yesterday, wasn't booked to arrive at Stockport until 1700 - hence the late start on the 1658 Chester.

Yes I think the number of paths can't equal the maximum number of services which can be run, otherwise it would mean if a train is late then it would have to be cancelled or every train running on the same track would have to run late.