craigybagel
Established Member
- Joined
- 25 Oct 2012
- Messages
- 5,077
My memory of the First North Western days on the North Wales coast was that pretty much anything could turn up. Lots of 175s, but I also had a 150 all the way from Manchester to Holyhead and various other things besides. Under the timetable change with Arriva it became a pretty stable half and half mixture of 158s on Birmingham's and 175s on Cardiff's.When the 175s arrived, ordered by First Group for FNW (with 180s for FGW), the promise was that all services in North Wales (ie via Chester to Crewe, Birmingham, Holyhead, Manchester and branches) would be operated by the 175s.
That never quite happened, as reliability was very low in the early days, and then the FNW, Central and W&W franchises got carved up into the present setup.
ATW quickly changed the plan so the 175s (including those returned from the FNW/TPE Airport services) worked the Marches route from Manchester to Cardiff, and into West Wales.
That put 2-car 158/150s back in North Wales while most of the 3-car 175s went east/south.
The North Wales service has not got back to a consistent mix since, and is probably worse now than at any time under ATW.
3-car 170s were also used by Central on Birmingham-Chester/Cambrian services (which often ran through to the East Midlands in the other direction).
Again that went down to 2-car 158s, along with the diversion of Birmingham services via Shrewsbury rather than Stafford, with longer journey times.
The main improvement in North Wales services since WG took control has actually been the more frequent West Coast services (6 a day from Holyhead, and hourly from Chester).
There is the new Liverpool direct service of course, thanks to the Liverpool City Region deal.
But overall, I wouldn't say WG control of services has been an unqualified success in North Wales.
You might get a different view from Wrexhamers, who doubled their frequency to hourly from 2004, and gained services to Holyhead and Cardiff (and now Liverpool).
I'll agree though, the diversion via Wrexham is pretty painful - but would it have been possible to give the Shrewsbury - Chester line the hourly service it desperately needed and have enough rolling stock to keep the Holyhead - Birmingham via Stafford services?
Whilst true, there never was going to be any quick fixes under TfW. They have a legacy of a 15 year zero growth franchise to deal with, and that will take time. And that terrible franchise agreement wasn't Cardiff's faultAgree for the most part concerning north Wales coast services, there haven’t been many improvements yet since TfW came into being.
The timetable and stopping patterns are all over the place, no attempt at clockface headway
Connections at Chester are erratic, with long waits at certain times and almost deliberate attempts to avoid decent connections
No late eastbound trains from Holyhead/Bangor
Awful Sunday service and only an hourly Saturday evening service along the coast
Lottery if trains run on Conwy Valley line (even when no flooding)
Clapped out 2 car 150s running Holyhead/Llandudno to Chester and beyond
To be balanced they have introduced the following
Small fare reductions on north Wales coast, but still no day returns to Chester from stations west of Prestatyn
All year round Sunday service Llandudno-Blaenau Ffestiniog
Gradual improvement and refurbishment of some stations
New signalling Chester to Llandudno Junction, not sure if it means trains can run closer together though?
Community rail initiatives