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Northern Rail timetables from the 14th of September 2020 until the 12th of December 2020

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northernchris

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I’m not sure if this has been mentioned before, however, the oddball Skipton to Leeds express train has made its way back into the timetable. Given the withdrawal of the withdrawal of the 321s and 322s this service will most likely be operated by a 331.


At present that path is taken by the 1049 Carlisle - Leeds, which from the 14th will terminate at Skipton. Looking at RTT the express won't connect though
 
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Leyther

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Having a peek at several routes.
No Sunday Darlington to Hartlepool services with no one a week tees-side airport stop on the return back from Hartlepool.

More Saturday services are running on the Sheffield to cleethorpes route though.
 

yorksrob

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No sign of the Castleford - Huddersfield directs being reinstated unfortunately.
 

Adam0984

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No sign of the Castleford - Huddersfield directs being reinstated unfortunately.
Surprising as it seems a popular route. Even if it was trimmed back to a Hudds to Wakefield K with connections to the Sheffield to Leeds stopper and back
 

yorksrob

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Surprising as it seems a popular route. Even if it was trimmed back to a Hudds to Wakefield K with connections to the Sheffield to Leeds stopper and back

Yes, the core section certainly got a reasonable number of passengers, even if the extension to Castleford was still building up in popularity.
 

Adam0984

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Yes, the core section certainly got a reasonable number of passengers, even if the extension to Castleford was still building up in popularity.
It was popular with the fare dodgers between Castleford and Wakefield. 1 stop Castleford to Normanton on the Sheffield get thrown off then get the Huddersfield 5 mins behind 1 stop and get thrown off at Wakefield where they wanted to go
 

yorksrob

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It currently runs peak time only on a 2 hourly frequency, I thought this was being retained

It is, but not at times that are much use to me unfortunately

It was popular with the fare dodgers between Castleford and Wakefield. 1 stop Castleford to Normanton on the Sheffield get thrown off then get the Huddersfield 5 mins behind 1 stop and get thrown off at Wakefield where they wanted to go

That would only work one way though !
 

Mathew S

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Maybe the Wigan crew are needed elsewhere
769 training perhaps?

A number of the Cumbria - Manchester Airport services are disappearing from the timetable on 14th September as well, terminating at Lancaster or Preston and running back north from there. I don't know this, but I wouldn't be surprised if that is also down to Wigan crew being needed for 769 training.

Hopefully, if that is the reason, it will be a short term inconvenience rather than a timetabling arrrangement that hangs around for the longer term.
 

northernchris

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769 training perhaps?

A number of the Cumbria - Manchester Airport services are disappearing from the timetable on 14th September as well, terminating at Lancaster or Preston and running back north from there. I don't know this, but I wouldn't be surprised if that is also down to Wigan crew being needed for 769 training.

Hopefully, if that is the reason, it will be a short term inconvenience rather than a timetabling arrrangement that hangs around for the longer term.

My concern is that many services won't reappear, and a cutback service of some sort will be around until the December 2021 timetable change.
 

Adam0984

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My concern is that many services won't reappear, and a cutback service of some sort will be around until the December 2021 timetable change.
Longer term I think some services wont return in their current (pre covid) form. 1 thing the reduced timetable has proved is that less trains equals a much more punctual railway. I think northern are going to look at how this can be used to its advantage
 

SeanG

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Darlington to Saltburn still appears to be hourly, rather than half hourly
 

northernchris

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Longer term I think some services wont return in their current (pre covid) form. 1 thing the reduced timetable has proved is that less trains equals a much more punctual railway. I think northern are going to look at how this can be used to its advantage

Which wouldn't be a bad thing if Northern could redistribute the spare units to match demand, but so far the OLR have shown themselves to be more inept than Arriva ever were
 

Mathew S

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My concern is that many services won't reappear, and a cutback service of some sort will be around until the December 2021 timetable change.
I agree.
Longer term I think some services wont return in their current (pre covid) form. 1 thing the reduced timetable has proved is that less trains equals a much more punctual railway. I think northern are going to look at how this can be used to its advantage
Which would make sense if the services being removed were the ones that were causing issues / suffering delays. Pretty much top of the list for the chop (using the criteria of improving reliability and punctuality) should have been the through Wigan - Alderley Edge services, which have been woefully unreliable since May 2018. Yet, far from being removed, those are being brought back in full from the 14th.
 

yorksrob

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I agree.

Which would make sense if the services being removed were the ones that were causing issues / suffering delays. Pretty much top of the list for the chop (using the criteria of improving reliability and punctuality) should have been the through Wigan - Alderley Edge services, which have been woefully unreliable since May 2018. Yet, far from being removed, those are being brought back in full from the 14th.

Indeed. The missing services don't tend to be the ones that cause the issues.

How many pathing problems does the Bentham line cause, for example.
 

Bletchleyite

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Indeed. The missing services don't tend to be the ones that cause the issues.

How many pathing problems does the Bentham line cause, for example.

Services through Castlefield have been lopped, haven't they? Certainly the local calls at Adlington/Blackrod are down to 0.5tph when they are normally 1tph, and I'm fairly sure the Preston-Manchester service has been halved.
 

peters

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I agree.

Which would make sense if the services being removed were the ones that were causing issues / suffering delays. Pretty much top of the list for the chop (using the criteria of improving reliability and punctuality) should have been the through Wigan - Alderley Edge services, which have been woefully unreliable since May 2018. Yet, far from being removed, those are being brought back in full from the 14th.

Given the reasons for a lack of full service on many routes has been cited as a combination of driver shortages and more trains running around in pairs on the services which are running, I really don't think Northern should be running diesel trains to Alderley Edge, especially considering very few people use the services which terminate at Alderley Edge south of Stockport. Although, maybe Southport can justify having it's full service back?
 

Mathew S

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Given the reasons for a lack of full service on many routes has been cited as a combination of driver shortages and more trains running around in pairs on the services which are running, I really don't think Northern should be running diesel trains to Alderley Edge, especially considering very few people use the services which terminate at Alderley Edge south of Stockport. Although, maybe Southport can justify having it's full service back?
I don't know what loadings are like on the Southport line, to be honest. I imagine higher this week now the kids are back at school, but it's not a line I ever travel on. Maybe someone who does can give some insight.

Completely agree about not through-running the Alderley Edge services. To me, the obvious thing would have been to reverse those services at Oxford Road (as was happening with the diverted Stalybridge services during lockdown).
 

yorksrob

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Services through Castlefield have been lopped, haven't they? Certainly the local calls at Adlington/Blackrod are down to 0.5tph when they are normally 1tph, and I'm fairly sure the Preston-Manchester service has been halved.

Maybe some of them are. A lot of them are nowhere near the bottlenecks though.
 

D Almond

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Services through Castlefield have been lopped, haven't they? Certainly the local calls at Adlington/Blackrod are down to 0.5tph when they are normally 1tph, and I'm fairly sure the Preston-Manchester service has been halved.
Yes the Preston- Manchester Vic service has gone down to 0.5 tph - which means more loading onto the Preston - Hazel Grove service. Trains out from Blackpool North in a morning linking to Preston also down also directing people towards Hazel Grove service. Looks like old problems are going to come back, even if the services that are left are more reliable.
 

matt_world2004

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No, it very much will be a graduate sat at a desk counting trains for an hour or so from an Excel export of the timetable train list.

There are far more valuable uses of the skills of people coding then some unnecessarily granular statistics.
An simple Excel macro is not coding that would be typically done by the coding teams usually. It could probably done with Excel formulas too without a macro
 

janb

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0856 from Skipton goes back as the 1046 from Lancaster (will this train actually go to/from Morecambe as it currently does? We'll find out)

2Y60 has now been restored to the data, running as 1033 from Morecambe.
 

notlob.divad

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You'd have to write a Macro first, starting from a PIF or a CIF (in CSV format) which lists every train and stopping pattern and working down from that. Couple of days work to write such a macro from scratch at least, and half a day to de-bug.

All for some stats only a few people actually care about.


Alternatively, just spend an hour counting trains to give a headline figure for a press release. Better use of taxpayers' money.

It entirely depends if you are going to be asked to do the same thing next week or even every week.
 
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Scarborough - Hull goes back to hourly but two trains are timetabled to be on the single line section north of Bridlington at the same time.
 

Twingo37175

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Scarborough - Hull goes back to hourly but two trains are timetabled to be on the single line section north of Bridlington at the same time.
They would normally pass at Hunmanby previously, end of a track section (from Filey I beleive). I think they were :00 through the day from Scarbados and wonder if there will be "final tweaks" to adjust the 3 minute difference needed
 

Old Yard Dog

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The Ellesmere Port - Helsby service was reduced to just one very early Liverpool - Earlestown - Ellesmere Port - Manchester Victoria - Bradford - Leeds diagram from July (SuX).

It would now appear that from September 14th, this will be replaced by a single evening Leeds - Bradford - Manchester Victoria - Ellesmere Port - Earlestown - Liverpool (SSuX) diagram.

Northern would appear to be using Covid-19 to reduce the service to an unusable level. The fear is that they may never reinstate workings in both the morning and evening peaks meaning passengers cannot make return journeys.
 
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