Transport for Wales Rail

[knutstransport]

RE: Transport for Wales Rail

(06/07/2020 18:51)iMarkeh Wrote:  I'm not too fussed what trains get used as long as the service is ran properly by a company who actually wants the service. Since TFW, there has been more overcrowding on the line (as a result of less carriages), fares have gone up quite a bit. I think for all Northerns faults, I don't think they would mess up the Chester to Manchester route similar to some of their other key routes since Chester to Manchester is a decent money maker.

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.

Quote:IF they interworked it, I would expect it to be with the Leeds run so the delays are kept to the routes.

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.