LNW-GW Joint
Veteran Member
Passing through Piccadilly yesterday there were severe signalling problems with the airport service, including intermediate stations, with all services suspended roughly from 0945 to 1715.
On RTT the 0614 Edinburgh-Manchester Airport (1M91) was 5m late at Heald Green and 259m late arriving at the airport!
Passengers were being advised to use Metrolink where rail tickets were accepted, at the cost of 60 minutes delay.
However, it turned out that Liverpool-Airport-Crewe services were able to operate, but omitting the airport shunt and running directly from Heald Green to Styal.
Didn't seem to be working in the other direction though, as northbound services were diverted via Stockport and then killed time at Piccadilly waiting for their normal path.
A freight also got through southbound via Styal at one point.
TPE were badly hit, and were turning Ordsall Chord services at Victoria, others at Piccadilly.
Victoria at least has through trams to the airport, unlike Piccadilly.
Northern had many cancellations too, even on services not obviously affected by the suspension.
I didn't stay long enough to find out if replacement buses were running, but anybody airport bound would have been in a state of panic about making check-in times.
If I had been doing that I would have aimed for Wilmslow and got a taxi from there (something I've done successfully in the past).
At 1230, the NRE advice was that services would be disrupted until 1400, but that turned out to be overoptimistic, with services not resuming until around 1715, and then in a very hit and miss fashion.
Plenty of delay repay yesterday I think.
Surprised this high profile disruption wasn't mentioned before.
Does anybody know what the root cause was?
Reliability of the airport line does not seem of the best at the moment.
On RTT the 0614 Edinburgh-Manchester Airport (1M91) was 5m late at Heald Green and 259m late arriving at the airport!
Passengers were being advised to use Metrolink where rail tickets were accepted, at the cost of 60 minutes delay.
However, it turned out that Liverpool-Airport-Crewe services were able to operate, but omitting the airport shunt and running directly from Heald Green to Styal.
Didn't seem to be working in the other direction though, as northbound services were diverted via Stockport and then killed time at Piccadilly waiting for their normal path.
A freight also got through southbound via Styal at one point.
TPE were badly hit, and were turning Ordsall Chord services at Victoria, others at Piccadilly.
Victoria at least has through trams to the airport, unlike Piccadilly.
Northern had many cancellations too, even on services not obviously affected by the suspension.
I didn't stay long enough to find out if replacement buses were running, but anybody airport bound would have been in a state of panic about making check-in times.
If I had been doing that I would have aimed for Wilmslow and got a taxi from there (something I've done successfully in the past).
At 1230, the NRE advice was that services would be disrupted until 1400, but that turned out to be overoptimistic, with services not resuming until around 1715, and then in a very hit and miss fashion.
Plenty of delay repay yesterday I think.
Surprised this high profile disruption wasn't mentioned before.
Does anybody know what the root cause was?
Reliability of the airport line does not seem of the best at the moment.
