Northern services with FTPE guards

[paulravuslante]

I've been doing a few trips around the north-eastern side of the country and noticed that some Northern services seem to be crewed by First Transpennine Express staff.

Is this a regular occurrence or just down to a shortage of staff at Northern. My train today (1327 Scarborough to Hull) has a FTPE guard.

When I was doing the Barton to Cleethorpes service previously I noticed FTPE staff on board but obviously that is down to that service being isolated from the rest of the Northern network generally.

 

[IanXC]

As you say Barton us totally TPE crewed from their Cleethorpes depot (see Northern and TPE consultation thread for proposals to change this).

On the Yorkshire Coast Line, Northern only have a depot at the Hull end, so as a long standing contractual arrangement TPE's Scarborough depot crew a small number of services. My understanding is that its the first southbound, followed by a Hull-Beverley and return, then a late morning northbound for their diagram to end at Scarborough. Then the same in reverse to crew the last Northbound train of the day.

I've not heard that extra diagrams are hired in to cover crew shortages, although NT Hull are very short of drivers today... (Something about 2 broken feet - the guard who said that was at pains to point out they belonged to 2 different drivers and happened in separate circumstances!)

 

[paulravuslante]

Very informative. Many thanks.