Lack of foresight by Northern for this weekend

[Max]

This weekend was one of Hull's biggest for many years - a 3 day music festival with major headline acts, the start of the round the world clipper race, a huge firework display, heritage open weekend for many historic buildings and the final weekend of the jazz festival. It was predicted that 100,000 people would visit the city. It is pretty clear therefore that there would be an exceptional extra demand for rail and bus travel over the weekend.

The bus companies certainly got it right, putting on extra park and ride services and running 2 additional park and ride sites for the weekend. However, the response by the train companies, in particular Northern, was pretty poor on the whole in my opinion.

Key services on the Yorkshire Coast Line were not strengthened in any respect, making services that would have been busy anyway completely wedged. I travelled on the 1141 Cottingham-Hull (1109 ex Bridlington to Sheffield) on the Saturday and the 1227 Cottingham-Hull (1114 ex Scarborough to Sheffield) today and both were ridiculously overcrowded, Northern providing only 2 coaches. Frankly, I'm amazed that rolling stock couldn't have been repositioned and rotated on Friday to provide Hull services with either 3 car 158s (which aren't as required on Blackpool services on Saturdays) or at least additional 153s or even pacers, especially for the Sunday when there are spare units.

To make matters worse, TPE decided to barrier the station on Saturday, but only 2 ticket sellers were placed on the barrier. This meant significant delays for many people, and a kick in the teeth having stood for the whole journey. Obviously if extra cars had been provided this wouldn't have been such an issue as many people could have been sold tickets on the train. On the flip side, on Sunday, no barriers where in place, which I'm sure meant a significant loss of revenue for Northern. Again, extra cars would have helped this to an extent.

Obviously some thought had gone into the event, because the 2300 ex Hull to Beverley ran as 5 cars on Saturday night, and was still full and standing - but at least Northern made an effort in this case. Why though were capacity enhancements so disjointed? Are there people employed in TOCs to look at what special events are on and the potential upsurge in demand? If so, they totally failed this weekend.

 

[Solent&Wessex]

I'm pretty sure similar questions have been raised many times before in respect of Southport Flower Show, Cricket at Headingley, York Races, Liverpool Regatta and a no doubt extremely long list of events at major cities across the North, indeed even the Country.

In short, yes there are people who look at events and attempt to do something if they can.

However, in nearly all cases there simply is no spare stock, as what is often seen as 'spare' on Saturday or Sunday may have particular maintenance regimes etc going on etc. Even if there is spare stock, somewhere on a particular day, it is not like a big trainset, there may be spare stock in Manchester, but you can't just pick it and transfer it to Hull for one day! Also, with the raft of legislation relating to stopping long trains at short platforms nowadays, in many cases you wouldn't be able to run a longer train even if you wanted to.

Having said that, as I work on trains when these events are going on I DO believe all train companies can and should do more for these events - however I also understand it is not also as easy or as possible as it first seems.

 

[OMGitsDAVE]

I do believe it will be the same next year here in Hartlepool, expected 500,000 people over 3 days for the Tall Ships Races, Northern haven't disclosed anything yet. I'm sure they'll only add an extra train here and there.

 

[fgwrich]

To be honest ive noticed this with all the TOC's...Im a big supporter of London Irish & London Wasps, yet no one bothers to provide rugby trains anymore..unless its a very major match at twickenham or wembley...

Take the London Irish St Patricks day match on March 23 this year...FGW Knew that its one of the biggest london irish matches of the season...Provide any extra trains...

No

Yet this was on a sunday, so readings full of plenty a spare units, a 2 Car 165 was not enough...i fortunatly did manage to get on but was standing all the way from Basingstoke to reading-we even had to leave people behind at basingstoke & bramley...and being a sunday, it is an hourly service!

Then, when going up to High Wycombe for London Wasps matches...Again, mostly full and standing trains to High Wycombe from Chiltern...Yet what could they do? Well, Wrexham could make a few stops there on match days, plus they could bother to re-inforce trains on sundays and Stop the stupid 1st stop Princess Risbourgh services! When more people want to get to High Wycombe, Why cant they stop there aswell!

As usal, theres a thing called railway logic...unfortunatly joined up thinking isnt included in that...

 

[Pumbaa]

LM do do a decent job here; any match day at Wembley, and all trains going Up stop for the 4 hours prior to the event, and all Down trains call for the 2 hours after the event as well. There's also a mixture of calls from trains going the opposite direction, but LM encourages them to take LO or the LU.

Mind you, thats about all they can do... Running a service is alien to them!

 

[daccer]

I seem to remember that one of the Premiership games last year was at Twickenham and features Leicester. because the MML was not working/restricted on the day they ended up reducing the capacity at Twickenham to 50,000 as a direct result of the trains not running. seems to me that sporting events are a great opportunity for TOC's to make extra cash at normally quiet times of the week - also they must have some spare stock at weekends so why not encourage usage by fans - how many TOC's actively encourage football fans nowdays to travel on their trains?

 

[monkey]

encourage football fans nowdays to travel on their trains?

...why should they encourage balthering drunken disorderly hooligans to ruin their trains and make all the other passengers journeys a misery?

 

[JustinStacey.x]

...why should they encourage balthering drunken disorderly hooligans to ruin their trains and make all the other passengers journeys a misery?

stereotypical, compassion... etc. :roll:

 

[monkey]

...well I'm sorry but whenever theres a big gathering of football supporters - there's trouble, its why we have to have such a large police presence at grounds. and I'll tell you they do make other peoples journeys misery, sunderland fans returning from hearts friendly into newcastle was a case in point - delaying other passengers, for an hour or so, and meaning the whole station had to be shut and surrounded by police with dogs to herd them off the train...

 

[northwichcat]

Since Dec 2008 Northern have had a severly reduced number of free units at any time. However, Northern have rarely strengthened services for special events unless they have had extra funding from a PTE or council for doing so.

When Arriva Trains Wales had Saturday engineering works on Chester-Warrington-Manchester a few years ago Northern didn't strengthen any services on Chester-Altrincham-Manchester and left them mostly as single 142s (and some single 150s) which left passengers behind. When people complained to Northern about this Northern actually said other services are worse! Considering some people were being left to wait at an unstaffed station for an hour because the train was too full, I can't see how it could be any worse! Then last year when the same thing happened they did slightly better- a 150+142 combination appeared, as well as a couple of 156s, although some single 142s remained.

Also, during the recent closure of the Altrincham-Manchester metrolink line, no Northern services were scheduled for strengthening on the Chester-Altrincham-Manchester line due to no spare units being available.

Regarding ticket checks on entry/exit to the station. One Northern service drops off 150 passengers (including many school kids) off at Knutsford every morning. When ticket checks are in operation there are two G4S people with one ticket machine between them where there are two exits, so some people who need to get a ticket can't leave via their preferred exit.

 

[fgwrich]

...why should they encourage balthering drunken disorderly hooligans to ruin their trains and make all the other passengers journeys a misery?

Not like us good old rugby fans...if we lose we take it as a chance to be better than them next time round!...though dont look at quins...

Afterall, how many Rugby specials or matches has there been trouble at...then look at the othersport...think youll notice the differenace...

Thing is though, is Why cant the TOC's come up with more sporting specials...FGW could make so much more out of the Ripcurl Boardmasters every july at Newquay, FGW & Chiltern with Guinness Premiership Rugby at both London Wasps(Chiltern) and Bath,Gloucester,Worcester & London Irish for FGW, London Midland - Northampton & Saracens, Virgin (Sale Sharks) Nat Ex & Northern (Leeds, Newcastle & Sale Sharks) EMT (Leicester Tigers) and South West Trains (Quins & Twickenham!) International Matches and European cup matches at Cardiff (FGW) Twickers ( FGW&SWT) and Murryfield, Edinburgh - First Scotrail, Virgin, Nat Ex...

So if the trains are spare, why not make use of them and bring in the extra money!

rich

 

[87015]

...well I'm sorry but whenever theres a big gathering of football supporters - there's trouble, its why we have to have such a large police presence at grounds. and I'll tell you they do make other peoples journeys misery, sunderland fans returning from hearts friendly into newcastle was a case in point - delaying other passengers, for an hour or so, and meaning the whole station had to be shut and surrounded by police with dogs to heard them off the train...

Run special trains for football fans only then...

 

[monkey]

^^no! no! and no! lol - I'm sorry but I don't want my public money spent on game I don't care for and for a bunch of unruly nuts. give them a chartered coach or something, at the teams expense. I'm sure the guards/conductors don't to deal with them either...

 

[87015]

^^no! no! and no! lol - I'm sorry but I don't want my public money spent on game I don't care for and for a bunch of unruly nuts. give them a chartered coach or something, at the teams expense. I'm sure the guards/conductors don't to deal with them either...

But your public money is all good to go into the shareholders of First (etc) pockets? As said, 500 people on one charter train = profit.

 

[monkey]

^^well even if it wasn't subsidised, I say no. normal people need to use those trains, often for long distance as was the case I mentioned withe nx and sunderland supporters - I think its unfair to remove stock that is preciously needed to charter a train for bunch of nutters who can't control themselves. especially as the train would most likely be trashed if the game didn't go there way, like baby throwing trantrum - meaing inconvenience for the rest of us cos toc can't keep to its timetable cos of lack of rolling stock. plus I'd like to see you be train guard on train full of football hooligans...

 

[Royston Vasey]

...well I'm sorry but whenever theres a big gathering of football supporters - there's trouble, its why we have to have such a large police presence at grounds. and I'll tell you they do make other peoples journeys misery, sunderland fans returning from hearts friendly into newcastle was a case in point - delaying other passengers, for an hour or so, and meaning the whole station had to be shut and surrounded by police with dogs to heard them off the train...

Monkey, firstly that is an extremely sweeping generalisation which simply isn't true.

Secondly you don't know anything about these particular events and I'd encourage you not to make that sort of comment. That incident was aggravated by a disproportionate police response which escalated/caused a great deal of unnecessary trouble. To prove this point, there was NO trouble on the trains themselves, this occurred only when the supporters alighted and were met by jumpy, paranoid and baton-happy officers, and the release of their dogs made the overall panic worse. It was entirely UNnecessary to have police to "herd them" off the trains. This is the subject of an ongoing complaints procedure against Northumbria Police and eye-witness reports do not paint the police actions in a good light.

Sunderland fans and other football fans travel the country in their thousands every week or so, I have travelled many times with Sunderland and other fans on trains and other public transport and the proportion who cause trouble is extremely small. I have never, ever seen an incident on trains out of Finsbury Park on Arsenal matchdays. Very few incidents occur these days around football, even directly outside grounds. Rowdy, maybe. But violent? Very rarely. This isn't the 1980s any more.

The injection of thousands of additional fares, many of which long distance, should be welcomed rather than dismissed out of hand without any real appreciation of the facts. The number of journeys made by football supporters must be enormous, and rarely do we hear of any arrests or disorder. Sensible policing such as you'd find at any event for simple crowd control reasons, plus implementation of railway byelaws such as "dry trains", a common thing on the ECML, can be used. Treat supporters like adults and they will behave like adults.

 

[fgwrich]

^^well even if it wasn't subsidised, I say no. normal people need to use those trains, often for long distance as was the case I mentioned withe nx and sunderland supporters - I think its unfair to remove stock that is preciously needed to charter a train for bunch of nutters who can't control themselves. especially as the train would most likely be trashed if the game didn't go there way, like baby throwing trantrum - meaing inconvenience for the rest of us cos toc can't keep to its timetable cos of lack of rolling stock. plus I'd like to see you be train guard on train full of football hooligans...

To be fair...its not always,but sometimes footbal fans - but its those who choose to not just get drunk, but to go far far over the top! some football fans can be ok - thats coming from a Rugby fan btw - but its those who go far over the top and levels of being normall, and behave worse than animals...

Last summer i was on my way round london after attending the Guinness Premmiership Final at Twickenham...train into waterloo was good, few semi drunk rugby fans but they can still controll themselves, everyone was in a good mood, and then i got on the underground...

Unfortunatly for me, this was also the night of the last Drinking aloud on TFL before the ban came in...and that night was hell!...i think it led to 7 C Stock units being taken out of service due to damage/vandilism...baker street was closed and the platforms were full of BTP, with some drunken idiots beeing arrested on the plaform at the time, damage on alot of other lines too and even beeing on the underground that night was hell!

Funny thing is though, these same idiot careless idiots who chose to get beyound drunk that night then have to go to work on monday...yet there arnt as many trains in service and theres severe delays on the Hammersmith and City & Circle Lines...Then they complain to TFL about it...

Wonder Why :roll:

 

[Lampshade]

I don't think Northern have any spare stock at the moment.

 

[monkey]

Monkey, firstly that is an extremely sweeping generalisation which simply isn't true.

Secondly you don't know anything about these particular events and I'd encourage you not to make that sort of comment. That incident was aggravated by a disproportionate police response which escalated/caused a great deal of unnecessary trouble. To prove this point, there was NO trouble on the trains themselves, this occurred only when the supporters alighted and were met by jumpy, paranoid and baton-happy officers, and the release of their dogs made the overall panic worse. It was entirely UNnecessary to have police to "herd them" off the trains. This is the subject of an ongoing complaints procedure against Northumbria Police and eye-witness reports do not paint the police actions in a good light.

Sunderland fans and other football fans travel the country in their thousands every week or so, I have travelled many times with Sunderland and other fans on trains and other public transport and the proportion who cause trouble is extremely small. I have never, ever seen an incident on trains out of Finsbury Park on Arsenal matchdays. Very few incidents occur these days around football, even directly outside grounds. Rowdy, maybe. But violent? Very rarely. This isn't the 1980s any more.

The injection of thousands of additional fares, many of which long distance, should be welcomed rather than dismissed out of hand without any real appreciation of the facts. The number of journeys made by football supporters must be enormous, and rarely do we hear of any arrests or disorder. Sensible policing such as you'd find at any event for simple crowd control reasons, plus implementation of railway byelaws such as "dry trains", a common thing on the ECML, can be used. Treat supporters like adults and they will behave like adults.

...ok I admit I may be, being a bit hysterical lol. but I dunno I have to say I do find it uncomfortable if there are a bunch of footy fans on board, so a train full would be horrifying.

as for the sunderland thing, I was there! lol, I'd just got off my xc train from leeds - I don't think the police were wrong to be there. the few that got off initially look aggresive, and were obviously sparring for trouble. I felt a lot safer them being there, and I don't think they would have been there unncecessarily. but it did cause a lot of disruption, station was closed - had ot leave by back exit, train had to have clearance to come into platform 2 and was there for a long time...

 

[bluenoxid]

I don't think Northern have any spare stock at the moment.

They don't full stop.

Stock sitting around at weekends is not a simple thing. A lot of it is getting maintained. Also many don't take into account the costs of running services. Extra staff are not cheap. The shake up in diagrams are not cheap and neither are the paths. On a lot of lines, the longer trains that are wanted have no where close by to go.

 

[Royston Vasey]

As evidenced by Virgin, FGW and WSMR football specials in recent months (didn't hear any trouble emerging from them?) then IMHO it is worth hiring in loco and stock, or any units that can be scraped from any other operator. Because at the end of the day, if one, two, maybe even more fully loaded trains can be laid on for supporters, all paying a full fare, the train pays for itself and segregation of fans from other teams' fans, or the public, is achieved. Whatever you say about football fans, they rarely fight their own team. It also makes the cost of policing lower because the fans are in one place that can be managed by only a few officers. So not the drain on the public purse you'd think (unlike most of Northern's services given the subsidies they get!!)

 

[OMGitsDAVE]

Since Dec 2008 Northern have had a severly reduced number of free units at any time. However, Northern have rarely strengthened services for special events unless they have had extra funding from a PTE or council for doing so.

Well, they are running the Cumbrian Coast Services some time this month, 4 trains from Carlisle - Barrow Return isn't bad for a Sunday!

 

[daccer]

The old footex's do seem to be making a bit of a comeback - i know last season there were many additionals run - and i do think the old stereotypical football hooligan has largely left the scene - obviously not 100% but enough to make running a dedicated train a decent enough proposition.

Surely the issue is about risk and reward - Northern are knackered for stock full stop so probably arent a good example to use but other TOC's arent as stretched and can maybe do more to tap in. How about advertising in football club programmes for special trains and fares etc.

Rugby is I think a good opportunity for extra passengers/revenue. Northampton were at Wembley this weekend and there were 45,000 there to see them play Sarries. This for a normal club game. With some clever marketing and through ticketing who knows how many extra journeys could have been generated.

Railways are the no.1 transport system for moving large volumes of people at a fixed time to a fixed location. Large events present the perfect scenario to use the railway's inbuilt capacity advantage and as such to disregard them as being too difficult is simply not acceptable.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---
Oh and I left London at 6pm on a saturday last year and the train had a lot of Gunners fans on it. Most were in first class and were older than my dad - i dont think having a scrap and getting drunk were top of their list of priorities !

 

[monkey]

...hey guys. just something, I didn't mean to upset anyone, and like I admitted probs being a bit hysterical. I guess I associate a lot of bad things with football - and it is probs a bit narrominded of me to tar everyone with the same brush - I don't have many friends that like football, probs can only name one really... but he is quite a big man city fan, and he's ok.

It has to be said thought the way a lot of football fans can act, even if sometimes if they're not meaning to be, they can be rather intimidating...

 

[yorkie]

Funny thing is though, these same idiot careless idiots who chose to get beyound drunk that night then have to go to work on monday...yet there arnt as many trains in service and theres severe delays on the Hammersmith and City & Circle Lines...Then they complain to TFL about it...

Blimey, you've actually recognised commuters complaining on a H&C/Circle train that you saw drunk the night before? The chances of that, given how many millions of people use LU daily, must be very small. Much smaller than me bumping into Death on the same platform while doing the Tube Challenge, and the chances of that was fairly remote.

 

[fgwrich]

Blimey, you've actually recognised commuters complaining on a H&C/Circle train that you saw drunk the night before? The chances of that, given how many millions of people use LU daily, must be very small. Much smaller than me bumping into Death on the same platform while doing the Tube Challenge, and the chances of that was fairly remote.

I dont know of any complaints myself, as being a student here in basingstoke i dont commute to london much...but a freind of mines a driver on the underground and not just did i remeber what he said about that evening, but im sure it also ended up on the BBC last year...

Still - Get my point though, The same people who went on the drinking rampage that night, were the same people who casued damage to the underground, who then have to use it to get towork the next week, but then encounter a hefty load of service disruption...all becuase, they went on there drinking rampage...

rich