Newtown to Manchester this Saturday - what’s NRE playing at?

[southernyoshi]

Hello again, I’m very confused by something I’ve found using NRE tonight. I want to go from Newtown (Powys) to Manchester Piccadilly this Saturday (23 March), & know that the route you’d normally use is Newtown-Shrewsbury-Manchester with one change. Why is NRE giving me a much longer & more expensive route - Newtown-Shrewsbury-Wolverhampton-Crewe-Manchester - when there’s clearly no engineering work on the Shrewsbury-Crewe or Crewe-Manchester lines? I’m baffled. Thank you in advance

 

[Bungle965]

No Transport for Wales services north of Shrewsbury from 0947 until 2057 in the evening. If you do want to do that route, there is the local stopper between Shrewsbury and Crewe where you can get either Virgin or Northern to Manchester from there.
Sam

 

[Starmill]

I think something has gone catastrophically wrong with Transport for Wales' planning team here.

They've cancelled the majority of the services between Cardiff and Manchester for the whole day, with no replacement. This may be what they intended to do, adding 'STP' services which start at Cardiff Central to take up the usual paths. There is engineering work between Swansea and Port Talbot Parkway.

The two services mentioned by Bungle965 plus a handful of others have been amended to avoid the closed section. Perhaps, for whatever reason, the replacement services failed to upload. Otherwise they are leaving 2 hour gaps in Cardiff to Hereford or Crewe to Shrewsbury services, which I'm sure isn't their intention. Also, given the Crewe - Shrewsbury services are usually just a single car class 153, if they are the only thing running then you are very unlikely to be able to actually board one!

I reccomend asking them directly.

 

[southernyoshi]

I did notice that there’s engineering work between Swansea & Port Talbot but I didn’t expect that that would stop the entire Shrewsbury-Manchester fast service - I thought they’d start those from somewhere east of Port Talbot instead of the usual Carmarthen.

 

[southernyoshi]

Ok, it gets stranger - it looks like all the return services (Manchester-Shrewsbury) are running hourly at xx:31 as they should be (except the 14:31 which isn’t listed for some reason), giving the expected 1-change journey, however the outward route is still as it was last night.
As a train can’t come back from Manchester without getting there in the first place, the service pattern out must surely equal the pattern back - I’m definitely gonna need to call them I think

 

[Starmill]

I suspect they've just made a mistake or suffered a technical difficulty with their data upload. They seem to have been having some real problems getting accurate information uploaded for weekend engineering works any earlier than the night before recently.

 

[southernyoshi]

So you think the trains will be running to time, they just haven’t told NRE (or even TFW’s own journey planner) yet, so it thinks there are no trains from South Wales. It also means that the cheapest return ticket is given as £40.55 even though it should be £23.75 via Crewe - will Newtown still be able to sell that ticket (assuming the usual trains are running) if the option isn’t displayed on NRE?

 

[PHILIPE]

People have complained to TFW Twitter and TFW stated that the trains will be running as normal but they were still waiting a validated Timetable from Network Rail. I suggest the OP might Tweet TFW direct themselves as the Forum can't really do anything about it. That;s the position so blame Network Rail and not TFW

 

[southernyoshi]

Well if TFW have said on Twitter that trains are running as usual then that’s good enough for me I thought it looked a bit silly, guess common sense > NRE’s algorithms - not a good look for the railway if its main ‘shop window’ is giving out bogus or incomplete information though Thank you.

 

[PHILIPE]

Have found a Tweet from TFW yesterday saying will be updated in the next couple of days

 

[Starmill]

Well if TFW have said on Twitter that trains are running as usual then that’s good enough for me I thought it looked a bit silly, guess common sense > NRE’s algorithms - not a good look for the railway if its main ‘shop window’ is giving out bogus or incomplete information though Thank you.

It will probably cause severe overcrowding on the few trains shown now.

 

[southernyoshi]

On the flip side, the 10:52 train I was planning to get from Shrewsbury to Manchester should be pretty empty

*if it runs...

Edit: what is an ‘STP’ service mentioned earlier in the thread? Only STP I know is a certain Eurostar station...

 

[PHILIPE]

On the flip side, the 10:52 train I was planning to get from Shrewsbury to Manchester should be pretty empty

*if it runs...

Edit: what is an ‘STP’ service mentioned earlier in the thread? Only STP I know is a certain Eurostar station...

STP stands for "Short Term Planning" which briefly means a deviation arrangement from the booked Timetable. Could be an additional train, train retimed or diverted, or train cancelled. A LTP is Long Term Planning which is the Permanent Timetabled working

 

[yorkie]

...common sense > NRE’s algorithms - not a good look for the railway if its main ‘shop window’ is giving out bogus or incomplete information though....

NRE is powered by SilverRail, whose journey planner software will use the data feed provided by the train companies. They are not allowed to override the data, even with "common sense" ma. It is the responsibility of TfW to get their data correct. It is not an issue with SilverRail's algorithms.

...they just haven’t told NRE (or even TFW’s own journey planner) yet...

Train companies do not need to tell journey planner providers of updates; they simply need to upload the correct data into the data feeds, and it will be picked up automatically by all journey planners.

 

[Bevan Price]

For Shrewsbury / Crewe, Real Time Trains shows a fairly normal saturday service on 23 March 2019, just with some trains marked VAR (Variation of normal timetable). And the alternative route, Shrewsbury / Wrexham / Chester / Manchester also seems to be pretty normal - and would presumably be an accepted route if Shrewsbury/Crewe did have any problems.

 

[southernyoshi]

Thank you - I never even thought of using RTT The 10:52 to Manchester is shown as running as usual, even arriving 5 minutes earlier than the printed timetable says! It is marked with a VAR, but I assume that refers to it starting at Port Talbot Parkway rather than whatever part of south-west Wales it usually comes from. Thanks again

 

[PHILIPE]

Now updated in Journey Planner

 

[southernyoshi]

I’ve literally just checked that - & the right fare is now showing. I now know to check NRE a bit closer to the time for the full truth - that or just use RTT. Thanks again everyone