You’re welcome.
I understand, however what the vast majority of passengers see is a train, they don’t count coaches like people on here do and when the train isn’t full they won’t notice at all.
Now if we look at the rare occasions where a 3 car will need to replace 4 car on a peak service to prevent the train being cancelled this will may be a 331 (there will still be spare 333’s so no guarantee it will be a 331 but nobody will notice that). Now, the 331’s will have a lower seating capacity than a 333 but as you know each coach has a much larger standing capacity than a 333 with door stand backs and wider aisles that people will be more likely to stand in than on the narrow 333. You would think that everyone will still get on despite the coach less and if the worst comes to the worst they will have to catch a following service, not ideal but common even with a 333 pre March 2020, not now of course.
This shouldn’t happen regularly and whilst perception will be bad on the day it is something that doesn’t dwell too long in my experience. Tomorrow everything is back to normal and it’s all forgotten about. It’s not like every single train will be short formed for a year on the triangle. It will end up being small digit percentages of trains which affects peak capacity by even smaller across an entire year digits.
If you are one of those people who makes around 460 commuter trips a year (2 journeys 5 days a week over 47 weeks minus bank holidays etc…) you may be affected 10 times by shortforms. So that’s 450 normal trips (usual seat etc…). It’s life sadly that commutes get disrupted, go by road and it may be disrupted by road works for more days than shortforms happen.
The trouble is the anger is aimed at the industry and those of us inside it are making the best of what dwindling resources we have. It’s ok aiming anger at the companies and by default their employees but it’s not us who keep pulling the funding. Like most jobs in most industries it’s a case of ‘they say, we do’. We are making the best of what we have and are minimising the impact as much as is humanly possible. It’s just that it isn’t appreciated.
Perhaps but they weren’t. A lot of projects deferred due to the lockdown over that 1 year period were now out under review as whether they were value for money hence the delays. Feel lucky that despite the massive downturn in commuters they are still pressing ahead with the Aire/wharfe valley capacity enhancements because there are now very few if any services where 6 cars are truly required (even the 1718 ex Leeds, a once horrifically crowded service, is nowhere near as bad as it used to be).
Full restrictions ended in March 2022, indeed we weren’t allowed back into the office until September 2021 and then on a low capacity basis. We lost our fixed desks as only every other desk could be booked and we still had to social distance. We certainly weren’t exclusive in this. Again these things are forgotten as people seemed happy to squash into pubs but forgot about other aspects of what actually happened once restrictions were loosened a little bit in July 2020.
It couldn’t. The 4 car units are required in the west as the WMR 323’s are running late due to their new train delay and the 319’s are going off lease. As I have said a few times now, the 3 car units have been diagrammed to avoid the busy services which will be booked as 333’s. The 331’s will be working in and out of Bradford alongside 333’s which only requires 3 car max for 95% of the day.
Last edited:
. Probably something best kept to these forums, local social media groups would have a field day with that!
I usually manage to claw back 30 seconds between select stations in the 333s - but you're right, the 331s are incredibly rapid.
