Someone at Northern planning went into the system on Friday 26 Feb 2021 and deleted five more weeks worth of late evening & night trains from the system, from 8 March 2021 through to 11 April 2021.
Their CS twitter then claimed those services, shown on National Rail Enquiries were "there in error". Several routes which should see trains at 1am now have services abandoned at 8.45pm - on many routes Northern being the sole operator.
It beggars belief one can catch a train to Wem at 1am and commit ungodly acts in farmers fields whilst cities with 2,3 or 4million people have zero service on some routes after 9pm.
I was going to mention that I had contacted Rail Minister Chris Heaton-Harris MP asking to protect key workers by insisting that first and last trains either run or supply a bus, but this discussion was swiftly ushered into speculative ideas. His reply, contained a load of cut-paste garb supplied by DOR's press lady that summarised reads
- this service reflects passenger demand
- lots of drivers are off sick
- new drivers aren't being minded, and
- traincrew won't get in taxis
...which is rather disingenuous given that this is the either one of few, or the only TOC to use these reasons to abandon trains 4-5 hours early. Other 'adult' TOCs seem to have interpreted the DfT's "please cut your services by 20%" as "thin the daytime services out but still run first and last trains" ...not "wooo go home early" a la half-a-job Northern.