It's a tricky one (despite some of the predictably simplistic comments on here)
Firstly, the Heaton area operations don't have many peak extras on weekdays so there's not a lot of spare DMUs sat idle at weekends (even accounting for the fact that some units are scheduled to have maintenance/ exams at weekends)
Secondly, the demand can fluctuate a lot. Weekday rush hours are generally busy but at least fairly dependable - whereas demand for a football game can be significantly affected by things like the previous results. A win in midweek might mean more supporters, but that's not guaranteed, and not a lot of time for a TOC to respond dynamically to predicted flows.
And not just the home team's result, but the away team too (were Brentford/ Ipswich/ Milwall buoyed by a win the previous week? Will that affect the numbers heading north?). Demand from home fans might be easy/simple (since they'll generally do the same for each home game), but where are the away fans coming from/via? Would Milwall fans heading to the Riverside change at York onto a Middlesbrough service or at Darlington onto the Saltburn stopper? If they are unfamiliar with the local train services it might be hard to second guess them.
Thirdly, which service(s) do you strengthen? For example, on the Durham Coast, you have hourly services, e.g.
12:31 - Middlesbrurgh
13:01 - Hartlepool
13:30 - Sunderland
13:53 - Newcastle
...is that the service that you'd strengthen? Or would that be too late for people heading to Newcastle, so you strengthen the one an hour earlier? But that might be too early for Sunderland-bound passengers? Whilst a lot of passengers might be taking the first train home after the match, some of the people heading to Sunderland/ Newcastle are going to be going for a few drinks first, some will be wanting to get to the ground in plenty of time, so there's not always one obvious service to strengthen.
Forgive me, I don't know if one game was lunchtime or half past five or whatever in this instance, but that causes other problems (e.g. do you focus on a Durham Coast service for the Newcastle match or the Sunderland match, since one extra unit can't do both
Will a match be on TV, which would dampen demand for fans?
Then, there's the problem that, the one service you strengthened to get people
to the match might be out at Nunthorpe/ Hexham (etc) when people are heading home from the match (unless you want the complication of shunting moves to leave a unit somewhere that it can be picked up to strengthen the post-match service, which means more complication than just doubling up one diagram)
Given the extra revenue at stake, is it worth scheduling some DMUs to come up from Neville Hill early on a Saturday morning to strengthen services in the north east? Or will the cost of arranging that path and staffing it etc dwarf the ticket revenue, given it's just one journey you are providing the additional capacity on?
And then you've got to consider doing this on several weekends, when the factors will have changed and changed again (you might have hundreds of fans on the 13:01 one week but a few bad results or a new signing could significantly affect that next month)
Speaking as a Sheffield Wednesday fan
I think the Football League's fixtures computer is having a bit of a meltdown as both Sheffield teams are at home next weekend which is very unusual for league games. Perhaps wisely the United match has been switched to the Sunday.
I don't know why both Sheffield teams are at home
next weekend, but I do know that the recent FA Cup tie between Wednesday and Plymouth had to take place on the Sunday lunchtime as United were already playing at home that weekend (so there weren't two games in Sheffield on the same day) - this meant Plymouth fans having to set off for Yorkshire before seven o'clock on a Sunday morning, which won't have gone down well (but obviously the luck of the draw in the FA Cup means you can't predict who'll be at home on a given weekend)
I think the outstanding 18 two car units are being covered by the EMR 156s. They were never specified as new units and were expected to be more 170s but that hasn't happened.
Well, if ScotRail are going to make those big cuts to services then maybe some more 170s will head south
(hurrah for the Green Party in coalition, eh?)
It started before privatisation. Sprinterisation replaced every 2 heritage DMU or LHCS vehicles with 1 Sprinter vehicle (or something along those lines)
True - Sprinterisation slashed the number of "spares" - with the subsequent chopping of most 155s into single coach 153s stretching things further - so there was precious little slack in the system even before the era of ROSCOs and privatisation
It's been a long time since we had
the railway is expected to "do more with less" to paraphrase season 5 of The Wire.
And to continue the talk of "The Wire" and football, I saw on Twitter this week that Isiah Whitlock seems to be a Stenhousemuir fan
I must remind myself that 'the modern railway' isn't there to cater for the needs of passengers.
I appreciate that glib comments would always do well if we ever did have a "like" button, but it's a much more complicated than that - which services do you strengthen? What spare stock to you run it with, given that the DMUs needed to meet Saturday diagrams are a fairly similar number to the DMUs needed to meet weekday peak services? How many spare DMUs do you propose to keep at Heaton, for the rare occasions that all the main teams are playing on the same day?
