Our booking engine at tickets.railforums.co.uk (powered by TrainSplit) helps support the running of the forum with every ticket purchase! Find out more and ask any questions/give us feedback in this thread!
So long as the proving runs don't flag any issues. No need for extra crew training or anything like that. Obviously if they do have problems, that might take time to rectify, plus as others have said you also need to take into account the availability of units
True, but in theory that should be only temporary. TfW haven't given up on the 230s yet. And one of those units is cancelled out already by the Crewe - Shrewsbury local staying as 153s instead of a 197.
And the first bit of speed increases have already gone live. The Proposed timetable sees a more regular stopping pattern for the MKIV services (Crewe - Shrewsbury - Ludlow then all stops except Pontypool) for most services, which hopefully when combined with the other planned speed increases...
Assuming you're referring to my points in that thread, I've clarified several times that I never said there was "no market" - just that it's an awful lot smaller than the market to & from Cardiff, and that providing extra services to cater for it provides less benefits than turning round the...
Thank you. I am indeed coming into this conversation from years of working services in and out of Cardiff Central from both ends of the train.
I do suspect we're getting off topic so I'll just say this - TfW has always been a TOC of compromises. The network is too vast, varied, and until...
I never said there was no market for it - just that there isn't a terribly large one. And that market is still getting served with a 2 hourly direct service if they can't cope with the same platform change at Cardiff. Given the benefits the MKIVs bring to Manchester services, that again seems...
Fair point.
The train was fine, the crew who work the service south from there were delayed on their previous working.
As I've pointed out to you before, the market for through travel across Cardiff is really not that big. The MKIVs make much more sense on Manchester services than Holyhead...
A large part of the demand on the route, to Nantwich especially, is from Manchester and not just Crewe - and unfortunately, due to the legacy of the appalling resignalling of the line, you can't give very quick connections between a local and a fast service to get around it that way. To be fair...
Nantwich & Whitchurch get a more consistent service though the day in the proposed timetable, with the 2 hourly Manchester 197 operated services calling, plus some rush hour calls on the MKIVs. That serves about 90% of the people who would benefit from an hourly local service - the current 2...
If the politicians are involved, you would expect the old 3 daily Holyhead service to come back. And to be fair operationally it would be the simplest option.
At the moment the unit for the first Shrewsbury - Aberystwyth actually stables in Crewe overnight. It forms the 0519 Crewe - Shrewsbury local before going down the Cambrian, so some degree of shuffling would be required there.
Using a Mach based set running ECS to Welshpool would save on the...
Probably not. More likely they'll wait till the big timetable change in December. Plus there isn't that much space to tighten the times - the existing times are very tight and a struggle to meet with the current limits
No news or signs of work, but that isn't too concerning. It was the same...