Got caught up in the EMR mayhem this morning.
0920 from Chesterfield to Liverpool, 2 car 158 full and standing arriving at Chesterfield where 50+ where waiting to board some managed to board at Chesterfield but many left behind.
On arrival at Sheffield chaos, a handful wanted to alight but circa 100 wanted to board. Tempers frayed on the platform, people demanding to be let on. After much argy bargy a handful of the Sheffield passengers boarded the train and left Sheffield 10 minutes late, crush loaded with poor air conditioning all the way to Manchester.
Mix of passengers on board:
Usual Saturday daytime drinking/party crowd to Manchester and Liverpool
Manchester United ‘home’ fans going to Old Trafford
Park Life Festival goers
My journey was for none of those reasons!
perhaps it was as well the cricket test match at Old Trafford was cancelled after all!
Anyone wanting to travel between Sheffield and Manchester at present should be very strongly advised to use TPE or Northern services. Which is what they are encouraged to do by ticket pricing! But occasional users and those joining earlier may not realise what they're letting themselves in for.
I've witnessed the EMR mayhem at Sheffield on a Saturday morning. It happens too regularly for it not to have been noticed by the station managers who are - EMR!
EMR have a page on their website giving a heat map of services. On the section between the two cities it shows all trains on Saturday with 276 seats. The 9.37 shows as orange, busy. None are rated red, crowded. OK, how many Class 158 carriages add up to 276 seats? If 100 wanted to board at Chesterfield it isn't 2!
Management can't be so blind as not to be able to at least update their heat map! These trains would be busy with 4 coaches. TPEs 6 will be well loaded at these times. Northern had 2 car Pacers 3 years ago. On Saturdays their 3 car 195s or 4 car 150s are now busy.
The leisure market is doing very well.