Transport for Wales Rail

[iMarkeh]

RE: Transport for Wales Rail

(07/07/2020 10:19)knutstransport Wrote:  I'm not sure usual revenue comes in to it. The 07:40 Manchester-Altrincham-Chester is usually rammed on arrival at Knutsford, the same with the 08:00 Chester-Altrincham-Manchester but Northern don't think they need to operate either of those two services at the moment and when people have told Northern they need those services to run for getting to work Northern's response is earlier/later services are being operated with 4 carriages so you can just use one of them instead.

Given that Buxton line services are normally quite busy at peak times and are usually very quiet at off-peak times and everywhere on the Buxton line has alternative public transport options you'd think perhaps Northern would try to run half-hourly at peak times and 2 hourly at off-peak times but no they're running hourly all day with some extra services at peak times. The only logical explanation for that is that Northern are short of train crews and a higher proportion of train crews sign the Buxton line, meaning the risk of a cancellation due to staffing shortages would be higher on the Mid-Cheshire if they were running an hourly service, than it is on the Buxton line.


Interworking it with Leeds services would mean more 195s are needed or some Chester-Leeds services would get Sprinters instead of 195s (unless another route got 15xs instead of 195s.)

The morning service which runs Victoria-Chester only is booked as a 150 and does a Mid-Cheshire working afterwards, before going on to the Buxton line.

Few points.
The amount of carriages available is finite and it might just be that they can't manage to make the 2 trains you mention into 4 cars. There is a lot more network than just the Mid Cheshire Line and everyone wants more capacity. A lot of services are ran as per the contract with the Department for Transport. It is not as easy as just cutting a service back, they have to run at a minimum what the DFT want them to.


As for Northern running CTR - MIA, the 195s could be done by downgrading another route or just looking at the overall allocations. It's not going to happen anytime soon so there is no point needlessly speculating on what could happen.
The 150 Vic-Ctr morning service essentially replaces what was a morning ECS movement. Just because 1 train does a service (which could be done for many reasons including get more money from ORCATS or be done due to the train service requirements contract), you can't base a whole trains service off that.