My point is more that at the end of the day, especially when there's going to be significantly reduced loadings (especially on last trains with pretty much all nightlife closed) - slavishly "recovering the service" seems to suggest a railway that runs for it's own benefit and sees passengers as a nuisance. When it's that late in the day, I would have thought the approach would be along the lines of "make sure no staff go out of hours, the rolling stock gets to where it's supposed to go, and we'll try again tomorrow". Obviously that's a gross oversimplification and no doubt staff and rolling stock will have been what was driving decision making, especially in the context of the extended closure and handing it over for works to start on time, etc, but skipping stops to minimise delay into Euston, to try and get the last NB services out on time (for example - though again in the context of a weekend closure that's obviously more important) doesn't sit well.
It’s called looking at the bigger picture though, and whilst it’s not ideal sometimes, it plays a massive part.
Making sure traincrew are in the right place on the last services, an important one, this could impact tomorrow’s service depending on the amount of delay with 12 hour rest periods.
Making sure units are in the right place to end at the depot for exam? Even more important. Have I made decisions because of units, over passengers? Yes, unfortunately, I have.
Put it this way, if a unit ends up out of course and ends up “stopped” the next day, over the cancellation of a last service, guess which one the bosses above are going to come down on me like a ton of bricks over? I don’t agree that should be the case, but that’s where we are.
If you have a unit that runs out of exam miles or is stopped close of play, and you don’t get it to the depot/stabling location, and it ends up out of course, then you just move even more cancellations to the next day. Not ideal for anyone.