Chase Line... Shambles..??

Idon'tKnow said:

1647 and 1723 from new street terminated at hednesford, during rush hour this is quite bad.

Click to expand...

dangie said:

According to the Rugeley Facebook page the BBC were at Rugeley Trent Valley this morning. For 3 hours over the morning peak no trains reached Rugeley on the Chase Line. Realtimetrains says due to Traction Equipment Failure. Bit embarrassing all round.

Click to expand...

londonmidland said:

Absolutely crazy. It almost reminds me of the shambles that Northern had when they introduced their new timetable.

Click to expand...

james60059 said:

They would have been off keeping it as a confined shuttle service between RTV and BHM as before when it was DMU operated, just my opinion of course

Click to expand...

londonmidland said:

So according to RTT, there was no direct services from Rugeley Trent Valley to Birmingham New Street from 07:44 to 11:19?! This is for Wednesday (yesterday)

Absolutely crazy. It almost reminds me of the shambles that Northern had when they introduced their new timetable.

On a separate note, I’ve noticed services at Birmingham New Street have had significant delays and cancellations over the past few days. I dread to think what the service will be like once the temperature starts rising, with there already being an amended service.

Click to expand...

londonmidland said:

So according to RTT, there was no direct services from Rugeley Trent Valley to Birmingham New Street from 07:44 to 11:19?! This is for Wednesday (yesterday)

Absolutely crazy. It almost reminds me of the shambles that Northern had when they introduced their new timetable.

On a separate note, I’ve noticed services at Birmingham New Street have had significant delays and cancellations over the past few days. I dread to think what the service will be like once the temperature starts rising, with there already being an amended service.

Click to expand...

causton said:

As for the bloody stupid claim that trains shouldn't terminate somewhere as people might get robbed or sexually assaulted, what a stupid thing to say. I don't even think I can say what I want to in reply for that!!!

Click to expand...

bramling said:

....There are plenty of stations where one wouldn’t want to be dumped at, especially at night. Sure there may be occasions when it can’t be helped, but it’s not really on for it to be happening routinely. I can well imagine Bescot Stadium isn’t a particularly welcoming place at times.

Click to expand...

LowLevel said:

Still rolling on with more than 10 train pairs (20 plus individual services) being cancelled short of Rugeley today leaving huge gaps in service, for problems miles away. Everything that was said to be likely to go wrong with this service has. It's a very poor joke.

Click to expand...

MarkWiles said:

If the Express and Star are to be believed (and they seem to think electrification was just to stick on a London service, draw your own conclusions on that) it looks like WMT are admitting defeat and going back to a Rugeley-Birmingham self contained diagram from May 2020

https://www.expressandstar.com/news...-chase-line-service-scrapped-over-complaints/

Truly dreadful reporting from the newspaper however. There again the E&S used to have a reputation as the Crime and Death Daily when I lived in the Midlands, due to it's obsession with death and disaster.

Click to expand...

Express & Star said:

A £200 million scheme to build a direct route from Staffordshire railway stations to London has been dubbed a "waste of money" as rail bosses scrap the route after complaints over delays and cancellations.
Subscribe to our daily newsletter
Rail bosses meet with councillors and campaigners at Cannock railway station

The project, which saw an electrification of the Chase Line route from Rugeley Trent Valley to London Euston, began in May but has been plagued with issues ever since.

Disruptions to the line further south have caused knock-on effects to the service, which was often running late.

If the service was delayed by more than 10 minutes by the time it reached Hednesford, it would terminate and leave passengers heading for Rugeley stranded.

Despite efforts from rail bosses to improve the route and offer bus replacements for stranded commuters, they have now opted to scrap the route.

From May 2020, the Chase Line route will serve Staffordshire only, while a separate service will still connect Walsall and Euston.

The news was announced at a public meeting at Cannock railway station on Monday where rail bosses were on hand to answer the public's questions over the route.

Francis Thomas, head of corporate affairs at West Midlands Railway, said: "We tried something different this may, to run a route from Rugeley to London, but it has proved more difficult than we anticipated.

"Feedback we've had from the customers is, they want a reliable, local Chase Line service, more than they want a through service to London, so we respect that.

"The earliest opportunity to make all the changes is next May, so what we will do is go back to a chase line service that terminates either at Birmingham New Street or International, so people will still have access to the airport.

"We'll also have the Walsall to London service, so they will still be that direct service, as well as the local Chase Line service that will be more reliable and more resilient.

"In many ways it takes it back to what we had before May.

"We've worked hard to take out as many delays, in put in better contingency plans, so we are turning fewer trains around art Hednesford than we were, and that's good, but it's not as good as we'd like.

"The plan is for May, but if we can get the opportunity to do something sooner then we will.

"It could have been that people regularly travelled from Cannock to the capital, but it hasn't been reliable enough, so we have to be honest and gracious enough to say to the passengers that if you want a more reliable, local service, that's what we'll deliver.

"We do apologies to the customers, people have been inconvenienced."

Leader of Cannock Chase District Council, George Adamson, has described the scheme as a "waste of money".

He said: "The whole exercise has been a waste of money, they shouldn't have done this in the first place.

"They should have checked their planning and realised what was likely to happen, it's just not good enough.

"At least there is an end in sight, the situation has improved, it's better than it was, but it's still not good enough

"People from Rugeley are being dumped in Hednesford, after working all day they don't want that, they want to get home and relax.

"The bus service has also not been good enough and has been hit and miss.

"I'd like to see this sooner than May, I'm hoping we can get a solution before then, May is a long way off and this cannot go on through the winter."

Keith Flint, chairman of Cannock Chase Rail Promotion Group, added: "People feel abandoned, they were dumped at Hednesford with no-one to help them.

"We want to see some immediate improvement."

Another pubic meeting is being held in Rugeley on September 13, the time and venue yet to be confirmed.

Click to expand...

FelixtheCat said:

Text from the article to comply with the forum rules:


I agree that the reporting is dreadful. At its most basic, it has decided that the electrification is the problem, not the combination of Birmingham to London and Birmingham to Rugeley services. This is clearly wrong to anyone with a passing knowledge of this bit of the railway.

Click to expand...

duffield said:

I'm not local to Birmingham but I'm somewhat familiar with the area and its services, and this seemed like a really bizarre idea to me, surely the the primary flow on this line is commuting to/from Birmingham and it's the sort of line where you really would expect to change at New Street (or maybe International if appropriate) for London? I'd assumed until recently that the electrification was all about providing a faster commuter service to BHM, then saw that they were trying to combine it with a London service and thought 'how could that be a good/reliable service?'

Click to expand...

gordonthemoron said:

surely the electrification was prior to WMT taking over the francise?

Click to expand...

gordonthemoron said:

surely the electrification was prior to WMT taking over the francise?

Click to expand...