They don't have the staff to run a full service. It's been impossible to keep to with the usual amount of training owing to Covid, plus what staff are available are also having to undertake training on new stock and/or routes
They had staff before... If they are so short, why don't they recruit? They have recruited drivers and conductors within the past year or so
They had to remove the MKIIIs from service, they were not compliant with PRM regulations. They didn't have anything else to replace them with
Ok, that's fair but why replace them with trains less than 1/2 the size?
Have a look at the Valleys Timetables. There have been major cut backs. 50% reduction in many cases. Similarly the Cardiff - Swansea local service hasn't run all year and most Cheltenhams have been turned back short at Gloucester.
Fewer people traveling back then. Passenger numbers (until Covid) have been riding constantly but the fleet hasn't. Come back in s few years when there will be both a dramatic increase in the number of carriages and services those carriages operate.
See above, not enough staff because Covid
They have been recruiting since the start of Covid. Some of these people must be getting close to being trained now. (empesis on being 'close to being trained' as I know it takes a while to train up new staff). Also, if there is a staff shortage, do you want to know the best way to solve it, not introducing extra jobs for them like making almost all Chester - Manchester services shunt in Chester into the depot before coming back out again later for another trip. Overall 40 minutes shunting each hour at Chester. That was never done before. That's a good few drivers being taken up right there for a job which isn't needed and was never needed before. So many empty movements going on. I'm not surprised there is a staff shortage, half the drivers are shunting trains in and out of the depot all day.
Until a few months ago the TfW franchise was being run by a joint venture of Keolis and Amey, and whilst both these multinationals have their fingers in many pies neither have, to the best of my knowledge, staff members elected to the Senedd.
Yes and no. IT was being ran by Keolis and Amey but it was being ran like Merseytravel where these companies are simply there to take the blame if things go wrong. It was ran basically in full by the Welsh Govt as the puppetmaster.
All distance services are becoming very busy, but it's important to note that just because Manchester - Milford Haven trains may not be busy throughout, it doesn't mean other parts of of that route aren't. Manchester-Crewe, Hereford-Cardiff, Cardiff-Swansea to name a few are very busy routes at peak times, so a 3 car is required.
The key difference though is Manchester - Crewe (and Stockport & Wilmslow) have alternative trains on this section and so if something happens, you can quickly push people to use other operators. Cardiff - Swansea similarly has other services.
The North Wales Coast doesn't really have other trains. Avanti run a few trains per day so you can't really use them as capacity. 90% of the time, you don't even have another service from Chester - Manchester via the intermediate stops as Northern generally only seems to call at Warrington. This means that the majority of passengers have no alternative. In some of the cases which you mention, alternatives exist. Yes it may mean waiting for a larger train but if you have an hourly 9-11 car train and a hourly 2 car train, that is significantly more capacity than an hourly 2-4 car train (the North Wales - Shrewsbury and beyond service) and the hourly 2 car Manchester - North Wales service.
I travel.mid afternoon last Saturday from Lime Street to Frodsham, there were many people getting off the inbound service, I can only imagine this will just increase with more things opening up as of today.
The Halton Curve was really busy I found pre Lockdown. Not standing busy but considering it has just been set up, the numbers were very good from Helsby/Frodsham over to Liverpool. Certainly not numbers to be overlooked anyway. In comparison to some other lines which a
I'd suggest they can free some up by changing the service temporarily. For instance, Liverpool to Chester has only just started and can be suspended, plenty of room on Merseyrail. Bustitute the Conwy Valley, that frees up a 15x and barely degrades the service at all as running times are near identical by road and rail. There will be other places where it will be possible to bustitute to free up a unit, so the busiest, mainline services can be as long as possible.
Liverpool to Chester you can't just throw people onto Merseyrail. The route goes a completely different way. Helsby and Frodsham have a decent number of people who relied upon the service and numbers were quite decent. It also acted as a bit of a quieter train for passengers into Chester. Runcorn means passengers trekking to the other side of the town to get the train and for Helsby/Frodsham, this Liverpool train was the quieter one which wasn't overcrowded.
I'm still curious to know where people think TfW are hiding their trains.
If they were there, they would be in use.
It takes time to get new rolling stock & TFW are trying very hard to strengthen their fleet, but they can't magic up extra trains.
I've seen trains full and standing already a few times this year, people choose to get on them & unfortunately this will be a common sight this summer for the travelling public.
Everybody wants to travel at peak times, a more measured approach could be used if people used more off peak trains for leisure journeys when possible. TFW just don't have any spare rolling stock.
This isn't about hiding trains or magicing up some new ones that said, I would love to know how they have so few trains in North Wales. So few that they have to 1/2 the coast service and 1/2 on Liverpools (down 3 units). Plus 158s are running more singles than they were before (bit harder to work out numbers). Otherwise, it's about making proper use of the resources available, not having them sat around for an hour between trips.
How can a company which is introducing more trains as we speak, managing to lose trains. Is someone putting them on a hot wash by mistake, are they in the washing machine with all the socks people lose? It's nonsense. Bringing in more trains while not losing many (certainly bringing in more than they are losing) and yet capacity goes down? It doesn't add up at all.
Whatever is supposedly happening (I think some people here work for TFW and are trying to defend them), I have full faith that a proper franchisee would have sorted it in a very different way. However that may have been, I think they would have done it better. Northern managed it and they had a royal unit shortage and even they managed it thousands of times better than TFW are doing so.
(Purely as a disclaimer, this is no reflection on the station staff, drivers or guards at TFW. This is purely aimed at the people in TFW Head office)