Recent content by MikeWM

I assumed that I was reading the live departures board wrong, as I wouldn't have thought even GN would consider skip-stopping a large commuter station after such a gap in service in the middle of the evening peak. So, somewhat surprisingly, I guess my opinion of GN still has some room to fall...

Great Northern have - once again - managed to cancel both the 1800 and 1812 services at Cambridge North this evening, which - once again - leaves Cambridge North with (all together now!) a 53 minute gap in services in any direction in the middle of the evening peak. Wonderful.

Well, I'd certainly be willing to give it a go. It would be a nice alternative to have to my current 25-minute walk to the railway station at one end and 15 minutes at the other, which in the morning is mostly in direct sunlight - particularly unappealing when there is a heatwave like now...

Yes, agreed. You're either nervous about making the connection, or you go early and then spend ages handing around a P&R site in the middle of nowhere with nothing to do. Plus the P&R buses in Cambridge still finish too early - admittedly not as early as the 9, which nowadays isn't even useful...

Ignoring Littleport for the moment, I'd say the market for the 9 is, or ought to be, (a) people in Little Downham, Stretham, Landbeach, etc. who want to go to one or the other city centre, and (b) a city centre to city centre service. The fact is neither Cambridge or Ely railway stations are...

They've abandoned the Kings Lynn branch entirely for the rest of the day. Given the broken down freight seems to be north of Watlington, I'm not sure why they can't run to Downham Market and reverse there, but I guess that would involve GN actually having a plan for disruption, which is another...

Started from Cambridge it appears, so for once the 1710 KLN-KGX service is actually running tonight. (looks it up) - ouch! I don't envy you, that's a *lot* of money to shell out for such a continually poor service. -- Edited Friday : 1512 KGX KLN cancelled again, today throughout, so the...

At least I'm not paying £8536 (!) for the 'pleasure' of an annual Ely to London z1-6 season. I'm not quite sure how I'd manage to suppress my feelings about the 'service' I was 'receiving' if I was paying that much - I feel miserable enough most days having paid £4 for an off-peak day return...

Yes, and 1T51 has been either cancelled or started short (ie. not calling at CMB) on 9 of the 17 weekdays so far in June, ie. it runs less than 50% of the time.

I don't know, but given the number of people waiting to go south when I arrived, it clearly didn't happen. I'm getting a bit fed up with GA now too, the big holes in the timetable at CMB are due to their missing and off-pattern trains, and they don't seem to do anything to help when GN fall...

I am trying to head north as it happens, but they've now terminated the 1709 ex-KGX short at Cambridge so I'm stuck at North anyway. Many thanks GN for wasting yet more of my life, plus all the other people here at CMB where there hasn't been a single departure in any direction, yet again...

...and so the 1710 KLN-KGX is cancelled yet again, resulting once again in the (increasingly infamous) 53 minute gap in service south from Cambridge North, right in the middle of the evening peak.

You'd imagine some services would be disrupted for that reason, but the level of cancellations points to a serious lack of resilience. Certainly some crew would have been stuck in/around Manchester who ought to have been working some of these services, but there would be other crew due to take...

Somewhat understandable that the Blackpool-Manchester services were severely disrupted, but they appear to have almost abandoned Blackpool entirely, with most of the Liverpool and Leeds services cancelled as well. Looks like all of 2 trains left BPN after 1930 (out of 14 timetabled) and 2...

Were there infrastructure issues today (well, yesterday now...) - or was it just another typical Saturday for Great Northern? I got to Cambridge North around 1730 to find the next GN train in each direction cancelled. Except the southbound turned out to be running despite the screens saying it...