Northern Trains Ltd

[knutstransport]

RE: Northern Trains Ltd

(17/07/2020 19:49)wirralbus Wrote:  As far as i can gather no one on the railway got furloughed , unlike TfL , what has happened is that there may have been drivers that have been on the shielded list , who may have lost there route competency and will have to have route and traction refresh.

Something similar caused chaos when the Blackpool North - Preston line reopened after overrunning electrification work , remember that , it caused Northern untold reputational damage which they never recoverd from.

I think the problem with the current 'temporary timetable' on many routes is Northern haven't really thought outside the box. They should be looking at part services on routes where demand is higher on one section than an other and asking other operators if they can make calls at certain stations (like they did when the RMT strikes were on.)

For instance, with a slight timetabling tweak they could terminate some Manchester-Stoke services at Macclesfield to free up crews, while retaining an hourly service on the busiest section and ask XC to call at Congleton.

They could also terminate some Manchester-Altrincham-Chester services at Greenbank as a way of trying to reinstate an hourly service for the busiest stations.

Perhaps some Buxton services could run to/from Hazel Grove only using EMUs freed up by not running as many services to Stoke, which would free up some DMUs for other routes as well as requiring fewer crews?

They could look in to using an excursion operator to provide some peak time crowd busters on routes where pathing and platform lengths wouldn't be an issue.

They could look at using more replacement buses on Sundays so that crews who are working Sunday services are instead available at weekday peak times.