Today it actually ran. I don't know if photos are welcome but on a rare positive note, let me present to you the lesser-spotted Brigg line train.
I'd say the eastbound one had 20 passengers by Brigg - most seemingly using it to reach Grimsby/Cleethorpes as an alternative to TPE. Given yesterday's inauspicious start and the inconconvenient time it runs that's a not a bad load.
While planning my next journey on Brigg's one-train-per-day service I've noticed an oddity (mods, you may want to split this off into a new thread). Northern is still selling various Day Returns for westbound journeys. Given the first service of the day travels east, then returns west, a west-then-returning-east journey cannot be made.
This means Northern is selling tickets (e.g. Off-Peak Day Return Brigg-Sheffield @ £17.90) for a journey that's physically impossible by train.
What would happen if I bought one of these and used it? Presumably by selling it, Northern is forming a contract to get me from Brigg to Sheffield and back within a day. Would I be within my rights to go to Sheffield then, as Northern has no train to get me home on, insist on a hotel for the night or conveyance by other means under the
Passenger Rights & Obligations law?
The following is what happened. It was meant to be a separate post but the forum has automerged them.
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In the spirit of scientific investigation your intrepid Lincolnshire correspondent set out yesterday to answer the question "what happens when you buy a Day Return from a station that only sees one train a day".
Brigg - Penistone off peak, £14.10, leaving on the 11:07 changing at Barnetby & Meadowhall. As for returning - well, leaving Penistone at 19:43 would get me back as far as Barnetby. After that heaven knows. Maybe a long walk. Surely as Northern had listed the ticket for sale it'd have a plan? I wondered if it'd seen the insanity of running a service that's practically useless for return journeys and quietly put on a minibus from Barnetby in the evening to improve things.
The first four miles with Northern, to Barnetby, went well. Despite the unreliability if the service and impossibility for many of returning, 30ish passengers on (where on earth are they all going? Do they carry on into the sea at Cleethorpes and swim away?) Perhaps the nice weather and coverage in the railway press have drawn them out.
Arrived at Barnetby to find... the next two TPE trains in a row to Sheffield were cancelled. Such very TPE. Naturally its "not in service" route learner was fine, the beefy 68 rumbling away in the platform for a while then rocketing off to Cleethorpes to taunt delayed passengers by collecting five more carriages of fresh sea air.
I'll give TPE this: unlike Northern's initial refusal to provide alternative transport for stranded passengers when it canceled the inaugural service on Monday, the nice lady on their help point (which kept cutting out) didn't quibble and immediately set about getting a taxi. It took a while to come so she kindly arranged for it to go all the way to Penistone. I suppose if you work for TPE you'll have a lot of practice at ordering taxis but still, seeing a TOC in the Midlands do the right thing without having to be made to was a breath of fresh air.
On the way to Penistone I tweeted Northern to enquire how my Day Return journey from Brigg was to be achieved. As most conversations with Northern seem to involve reminding it of the industry's rules I pointed out early on what the NRCoT says about its sale of a ticket forming a contract it now had to honour.
What ensued was four hours of head-scratching, "we need to refer that to someone else", "we'll get back to you" and at one point, disbelief that such a fare existed on the system and a request for a picture of the ticket.
Enlivened by these interactions the afternoon was passed on a hike down the old Woodhead route, now turned into the Trans-Pennine Trail (thankfully no relation to TPE). It's gorgeous at this time of year and so long as you have good boots, it's actually easier to travel on closed railway lines up here than open ones.
Here are some pictures. Probably better enjoyed when you're not checking your phone every five minutes to find out whether you're going to be stranded, though.
By 5pm I was getting tired of Northern, who now seemed to be trying to ignore me. "Sort it out" I told them. Then came incomprehension as they appeared to believe I was complaining about my ticket being a spent Advance,
even though I'd already sent them a picture of it clearly showing the words "Off-Peak Day Return". After several more terse tweets Northern finally seemed to realise something was wrong. "Phone us up" it said. Why it couldn't have said this six hours earlier, I don't know.
So I did, and after 15 minutes on hold I got through to someone who knew what he was doing and seemed interested. Initially astonished at the existence of an Impossible Day Return (who wouldn't be), he acknowledged the reality of the situation and went away to investigate what should happen. He might reasonably have said "use TPE to get as far as Barnetby" but by this point, hilariously, TPE had cancelled the train back from Sheffield as well.
"You might do better to call us up than contact the twitter team when you need help" he opined. While true (he was undeniably much better at his job) I feel this overlooks the fact that an increasing number of people want to contact Northern through digital means and it should provide good service however they reached it. Also, any conversation with Northern needs to be kept in writing as evidence for the inevitable complaint.
After more calls the plan Northern eventually arrived at was the 20:43 PNS-SHF (which is a beautiful journey on a summer evening) then a Northern-funded taxi all the way back to Brigg. Minicab drivers along the North Lincolnshire routes are having an absolute bonanza this year. "Be sure to tell everyone you know that train companies will buy them taxi rides" one recently said.
So, what have we learned:
- Northern has messed up the fare structure for the Brigg line so monumentally badly that it'll sell you a ticket then tell you it doesn't think it exists
- The simple, low-cost measure of a minibus to meet an evening TPE service and go BTB-KTL-GNB would do a great deal to improve our options and render the Impossible Day Return possible. Naturally Northern has not done this.
- Getting Northern to honour its obligations is really, really hard but can be done
- Its social media "assistance" team (the same one who promised me in March no changes were planned for the line) are diabolically bad at their job, often seemingly trying to ignore you so you'll give up. I don't know why but it needs to be fixed. Most passengers are going to be contacting them like this nowadays and with the closure of ticket offices it'll only increase
- It's a huge challenge to get anywhere by train from north Lincolnshire, requiring determination, persistence, stout walking boots, basic legal skills and extreme masochism.
- But when you succeed it brings a massive sense of achievement. They should hand out badges. "I completed trains on insane difficulty" they would say.
- It actually was possible to make a return journey from Brigg, though I fear Northern is now scrambling to remove the fare from the system
Since TPE's evening cancellation delayed the journey home by an hour, for my next odyssey through the railway's deranged bureaucracy I need to figure out how much delay repay is due for an impossible journey on a train that doesn't exist that had to be replaced with the second sixty-mile taxi ride of the day, and convince someone to pay me it. Fun times.
PS. As I write this Northern has just announced it's once again cancelled all trains due to shortage of traincrew. That's two days out of the first four - so much for an "improved" service!
