Sunday's TPE timetable is just - odd. There appears to be a single TPE train today at 0848 from Liverpool to Newcastle (via Piccadilly), and a single 2004 Newcastle to Liverpool (via Piccadilly), but then for the rest of the day Liverpool to Manchester is a bus - except for a 1417 Piccadilly to Lime Street (via Chat Moss) and a 1556 and a 1747 Victoria to Lime Street (also via Chat Moss), and three equally random Lime Street to Manchester services (two to Victoria, one to Oxford Road).
Both Chat Moss and CLC routes appear to be open (Northern are running services on both all day), so why are TPE running (mostly, but not entirely) buses?
It's an utter mess, I entirely agree.
Unfortunately this is the result of Rail North dictating that there are to be no additional traincrew turns, to minimise expenditure on overtime. Any additional turns must be individually authorised by them.
On Saturdays, the cancellation of the Manchester-Huddersfield stopper saves sufficient resources to allow for a split service to be run on a "cost neutral" basis, with trains diverted into Piccadilly main shed, plus an hourly Airport-Liverpool service.
On Sundays the stopper doesn't run, so there is no saving in traincrew. Therefore you can't run a split service within the normal number of turns.
The early and late Newcastle services purely serve to get a set on and off Edge Hill to form the first and last services. But it is a poor move in terms of punctuality, given you're crossing the Piccadilly throat. So you don't want to be doing that every hour throughout the day.
The "random" additional services are targeted to cater for the expected crowds with the City v Liverpool game. Note the arrival into Liverpool at 15:00 and departure at 20:00. Rail North had to sign off on that...
Everything else falls into place from that - no point having units sitting around at Liverpool for 5 hours when you can do 2 round trips in between. It's the same amount of overtime either way.
Running into Victoria allows for better paths for the 'between' trains, whilst the Piccadilly starter and Airport finisher (not sure where you got Oxford Rd from?) are down the available paths across the Piccadilly throat.
Another question is that why during this weekends engineering works were services altered with Newcastles terminating at Piccadilly and Lime Street services running to/from Manchester Airport instead? Seemed odd seeing 2X185s on most Lime Street services yesterday.
What alternative is there?
The full journeys via Manchester are stock moves to move 802s to/from Edge Hill for services on Monday
The TPE services to Victoria are additional ‘special’ trains to move to people to/from the Tory conference taking place today
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. There is no need to get sets on and off Edge Hill for its own sake. It is purely done because you'd need to get an extra set off Heaton, and cancel the first eastbound and last westbound, otherwise.
The additional trains have nothing to do with the Tory Party conference.
I hadn’t realised those journeys in RTT were Conference Liverpool-Manchester Victoria shuttles. Were they advertised/available to the public, given the whole service Liverpool-Mcr Victoria was suspended today?
I could see them on RTT (68 + 5 shuttle back and forward between Lime St and Victoria all afternoon) but not on Trainline, where the only public offering from Victoria-Lime St is a (double) 185 at 1556 and another in the early evening.
If they weren’t, it seems a bit rough that on yet another Sunday of disrupted travel in the area, the Tory faithful get a more frequent, faster and newer service than the public, using presumably the only remaining paths over Chat Moss during most of Sunday!
They were normal, advertised services but it was all a very last minute effort. If the authorisation had been given sufficiently ahead of time they would probably have seen better use.
The 68 between Manchester and Liverpool is a driver training run, so that was never going to be advertised. The
other services are showing just fine on RTT and on Trainline etc. AFAICT.