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ECML closed PBO to KGX Aug Bank Holiday routing

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ashkeba

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Why are you so concerned about advertising in Metro?
It's just an example of misguided spend. Surely the vast majority of its readers are regular travellers who were reached by other messaging?

If you think commuters don't need to worry about the weekend because, despite paying three or four grand a year they never travel on weekends (especially holiday weekends), then what if these people have friends and family that they can warn?
Commuters will already see passenger/customer information systems and know to check the weekend alteration boards. They are easy to reach fairly cheaply and it seems misguided to spend so much on multiple routes which mostly reach existing workday travellers.

The Metro advertising budget didn't stop other advertising,
Unless the Metro adverts were free and made for free by someone else, that is clearly not true because the advertising budget was not infinite.

but as has been said many times already, there's no way to inform every single person without spending an absolute fortune - and how much would you like your fares to go up by to fund this?
Not at all but I think it should have been spent better, making better use of things like the stations. I wish I had taken pictures of the warning posters outside some stations I visited last weekend or actually the absence of them!
 
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30907

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With the weather forecast being excellent this weekend, there's plenty of scope for photos of sad little Johnny missing out on his day at the beach because the railway deliberately picked a hot Bank Holiday weekend to do work that nobody will think necessary because trains are always late anyway...
Unless a massive market has developed for GN-land to Brighton since the Canal Tunnels opened, I doubt there will be many seaside trips affected. More like weekends away. Or last minute trips to Headingley if the Test goes into a 5th day. But I take your point! :(
 

Skimble19

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It's just an example of misguided spend. Surely the vast majority of its readers are regular travellers who were reached by other messaging?


Commuters will already see passenger/customer information systems and know to check the weekend alteration boards. They are easy to reach fairly cheaply and it seems misguided to spend so much on multiple routes which mostly reach existing workday travellers.


Unless the Metro adverts were free and made for free by someone else, that is clearly not true because the advertising budget was not infinite.


Not at all but I think it should have been spent better, making better use of things like the stations. I wish I had taken pictures of the warning posters outside some stations I visited last weekend or actually the absence of them!
Which stations are you saying don't have any? Are they GN or GA stations?

For the record plenty of money has been spent on in-station advertising. Using the Metro has made no difference whatsoever to that....
 

philthetube

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Indeed, in a lot of industries it's quite common for there to be a requirement for annual leave to be taken at times of lower demand, or could freight drivers operate the 91s if there is less freight work over the summer? I doubt many sound or lighting techs in Edinburgh are on holiday at the moment, retail workers tend not to be allowed to take much leave around Christmas... There is also a general question (though I don't think GNER are badly affected as I guess as a 'glamour' TOC, they can poach drivers from other companies, of many TOCs operating below the appropriate number of drivers as overtime is cheaper than training more staff.

Most annual leave is allocated in blocks of 1 or 2 weeks, if you don't let people have bank holiday Mondays off and make them work what are you going to do with these staff for the rest of the fortnight.

There is not normally much difference in demand for more staff during the summer or winter.

Being required to work in the weeks up to Christmas in a shop, when the kids are a school is very different from being required to work in the summer when the kids are off.
 

2L70

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There is also a general question (though I don't think GNER are badly affected as I guess as a 'glamour' TOC, they can poach drivers from other companies, of many TOCs operating below the appropriate number of drivers as overtime is cheaper than training more staff.

Are GNER still going?
 

Class 170101

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Unless a massive market has developed for GN-land to Brighton since the Canal Tunnels opened, I doubt there will be many seaside trips affected. More like weekends away. Or last minute trips to Headingley if the Test goes into a 5th day. But I take your point! :(

Good luck getting a ticket to any match at the Ashes at this time. Almost certainly sold out for months.
 

ainsworth74

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Good luck getting a ticket to any match at the Ashes at this time. Almost certainly sold out for months.

Day 5 is still available and probably will be until its clear whether the Test is going to go to Day 5 or not which may well be until late on Saturday (Day 3) or partway thorough Sunday.

It usually goes that way with Test Matches. Day 5 goes on sale later (June 2019 in this case about eight months after the rest) and won't sell out until well into the game (if at all).

Therefore there's every reason to think that they could be people who decide to go to Day 5 on short notice. Because most of the attendees will have done that!
 

365 Networker

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Does anyone know if Peterborough PSB will remain or is control going to be handed over to the York ROC?
 

GRALISTAIR

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slightly OT I know - but if Peterborough to Ely got electrified as part of the F2N freight project - an electrified diversionary route for occasions such as this would be wonderful.
 

ashkeba

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slightly OT I know - but if Peterborough to Ely got electrified as part of the F2N freight project - an electrified diversionary route for occasions such as this would be wonderful.
It still might not work as a diversionary route to London. How big are ECML trains now? It appears that the West Anglia Main Line is W8 loading gauge but part (maybe all) of the ECML is W10. I didn't find what size the line through Royston is, but that would not help this weekend.
 

Stampy

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It still might not work as a diversionary route to London. How big are ECML trains now? It appears that the West Anglia Main Line is W8 loading gauge but part (maybe all) of the ECML is W10. I didn't find what size the line through Royston is, but that would not help this weekend.

Agreed, but since NOTHING could go south of Royston on the line from Cambridge, and South of Sandy on the ECML (due to King's Cross PSB being moved to York ROC)
it probably wouldn't work this time....


I'll let you know what things are like tomorrow at PBO..

I'm off to Colchester (out via Cambridge) for the football....
 

cuccir

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Been a bit of a mess today on the ECML, certainly north of York. Lots of cancellations and delays, affecting TPE, LNER and XC. Not ideal the day before these works start and things seemed busy heading south from Newcastle.
 

ainsworth74

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Been a bit of a mess today on the ECML, certainly north of York. Lots of cancellations and delays, affecting TPE, LNER and XC. Not ideal the day before these works start and things seemed busy heading south from Newcastle.

Yes if it wasn't for the railway being shut tomorrow in/out of London I think we'd have been into "do not travel today unless necessary your tickets will be valid tomorrow". But, er, they can't do that because the railway is now shut for people wanting London until Monday...
 

ashkeba

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Overhead line damage on the London end of the Midland Main Line too. Thameslink heavily altered but now looks to be recovering. EMR still not in a good way.
 

bramling

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Overhead line damage on the London end of the Midland Main Line too. Thameslink heavily altered but now looks to be recovering. EMR still not in a good way.

Nothing like a good Thameslink shambles to screw up the GN on a Friday evening. Once again the Thameslink towel appears to have been pretty much thrown in, as is fairly standard during disruption at this time of day. So much for it being so “simple” to divert 700s to King’s Cross. Where are they? Barely a FLU to be seen anywhere on the GN network at this moment.
 

philjo

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Day 5 is still available and probably will be until its clear whether the Test is going to go to Day 5 or not which may well be until late on Saturday (Day 3) or partway thorough Sunday.

It usually goes that way with Test Matches. Day 5 goes on sale later (June 2019 in this case about eight months after the rest) and won't sell out until well into the game (if at all).

Therefore there's every reason to think that they could be people who decide to go to Day 5 on short notice. Because most of the attendees will have done that!
After today’s performance it looks like the match may well finish tomorrow. So there could be a large number of people turning up at Leeds station on Saturday evening or Sunday morning looking for a train to London!
I have tickets for Headingley for Saturday and Sunday which were booked last September. (not sure how much play there will be on Sunday!). so travelled north this morning. The original plan was to travel early on Saturday which obviously is not possible.
 

Tetchytyke

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Been a bit of a mess today on the ECML, certainly north of York. Lots of cancellations and delays, affecting TPE, LNER and XC.

Shambolic is what it's been. Waverley was a disaster zone, but the 1740 Newcastle relief was allowed to scuttle away with barely a handful of people on it. I know, I was on it, having collared platform staff just before the doors shut. I dread to think what the 1830, which is what I was booked on, to Kings Cross was like.

Letting the Chathill out of Newcastle ahead of 3-4 northbound expresses probably wasn't great either. One of the XCs lost another 25 minutes just to Alnmouth. If it had been caped at Morpeth you'd have got the remaining passengers into a taxi...

I'd still love to meet the brainiac who decided to schedule major works at Macclesfield and Milton Keynes, dramatically cutting capacity, for the same weekend the ECML is shut.
 

Aictos

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Nothing like a good Thameslink shambles to screw up the GN on a Friday evening. Once again the Thameslink towel appears to have been pretty much thrown in, as is fairly standard during disruption at this time of day. So much for it being so “simple” to divert 700s to King’s Cross. Where are they? Barely a FLU to be seen anywhere on the GN network at this moment.

Good on you to come along on cue to rant about the disruption :)

You obviously forget that some diagrams interwork between GN and TL so in cases of tonight which Thameslink urged people not to travel if possible, some units and drivers would have been out of sync and you can't possibly blame Thameslink for the OHL issues.... Oh wait!!!

It's sods law that disruption has happened but people have been told for months now not to travel over this weekend due to the works migrating Kings Cross PSB to York ROC, it's just sheer bad luck that the entire TL network went into Code Black today.
 

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2 out of the last 3 Fridays have been code black on Shambleslink.
 

Ianno87

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Good on you to come along on cue to rant about the disruption :)

You obviously forget that some diagrams interwork between GN and TL so in cases of tonight which Thameslink urged people not to travel if possible, some units and drivers would have been out of sync and you can't possibly blame Thameslink for the OHL issues.... Oh wait!!!

It's sods law that disruption has happened but people have been told for months now not to travel over this weekend due to the works migrating Kings Cross PSB to York ROC, it's just sheer bad luck that the entire TL network went into Code Black today.

indeed. On most days, Thameslink is proving itself to be a highly reliable railway and timetable.
 

bramling

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indeed. On most days, Thameslink is proving itself to be a highly reliable railway and timetable.

Really? You must have a strange definition of highly reliable, as almost every time I use it the train is late, not to mention the all-too-frequent occasions when it’s completely up the wall for one reason or another (like yesterday). And when it does go up the wall the Thameslink service simply melts into thin air - thankfully we have the KX-Cambridge stopping service still. Yesterday’s RTTT for somewhere like Hitchin makes very depressing reading, pretty much every evening Horsham/Peterborough and Cambridge/Brighton service was simply cancelled. Highly reliable I think not!
 
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Mag_seven

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A quick glance at VT journey check for this morning reveals a lot of northbound services to Scotland "full and standing".
 

Mathew S

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A quick glance at VT journey check for this morning reveals a lot of northbound services to Scotland "full and standing".
Not surprised. On top of displaced ECML passengers as far as Manchester (for the North-East) and Scotland (for, well, Scotland) youve got major events in Manchester & Bolton, the last weekend of the Edinburgh Fringe, and really nice weather for a change, all pushing up demand, combined with a reduced timetable on the WCML already.
 

jon0844

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indeed. On most days, Thameslink is proving itself to be a highly reliable railway and timetable.

Just under 95% PPM recently I believe? When there aren't shortages of drivers or infrastructure issues the timetable does appear to work quite well. Arguably the padding that annoys us at stations like FPK and elsewhere plays a part, which does mean some journeys are slower than they once were.
 

bramling

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Just under 95% PPM recently I believe? When there aren't shortages of drivers or infrastructure issues the timetable does appear to work quite well. Arguably the padding that annoys us at stations like FPK and elsewhere plays a part, which does mean some journeys are slower than they once were.

It also helps that one of the main half-hourly services currently has a 31-minute turnaround at King’s Cross through most of the day.

It’s true the Finsbury Park stand time is frustrating. A journey from St Pancras to Hitchin on a Brighton/Cambridge service nowadays takes almost as long as a 317 on a King’s Cross stopping service in the 1990s calling at five extra stations.

Still, I can travel direct to Hassocks. How exciting! ;)
 

ainsworth74

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Okay wider Thameslink performance is definetly somewhat off-topic so let's leave it there please.
 

Ianno87

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Anyway, doing a cursory search of Twitter suggests very few "Nobody told us there were no trains!" type Tweets so far.

Almost as if the level of prior warning was spot-on.
 

bramling

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Anyway, doing a cursory search of Twitter suggests very few "Nobody told us there were no trains!" type Tweets so far.

Almost as if the level of prior warning was spot-on.

To be fair, there hasn't really been anything wrong with the warning - after all anyone checking any one of a number of official or unofficial sources would soon find there are no trains.

However, if people can walk past numerous posters and stand on a platform where the track is dug out, and still start looking at their watch when the train doesn't turn up, then anything is possible. Admittedly this was up north, but the point still stands...

Likewise, try utilising Boxing Day (or even Christmas Day) to take a few photos of station platform architecture, and it won't be long at all before a family appears and express sheer disgust when they find there's no trains.
 

Edders23

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so had 3 passengers on their way to headingley to drop off this morning at PB the staff directing traffic were allowing drop offs on the roundabout :smile: not sure if that would have continued later so full marks to them for being helpful.

Noticed the pick up/drop off area just barricaded off so don't think that's for buses might be for Railway vehicle parking
 
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