This seems to be the plan from the December 2026 timetable change, which is why the 769 leases were recently extended until January 2027. At the same time the Leeds to Wigan Wallgate services will terminate/start from Salford Central.
We seem to have gone full circle and returned to something similar to the pre-May 2018 set up for services through Hindley.
Not forgetting 150226 went to form 150007/8 without replacement, and 150218 is still out of service.
Almost 2 years from the OLE energisation and platform extensions, until actually being used by EMUs? No wonder the Treasury is reluctant to invest in railways.
And 769s will use it to/from Ince!
Although that was the original thinking as of yet nothing has been agreed.
There was zero bodywork completed during the Flex conversion. 769431 is currently undergoing C6 and corrosion repairs, in some areas its like a colander.
An apt description for a number of the remaining steel-bodied passenger vehicles from that era.
Which proves my point. It's not even as though the 769s provide a much better passenger experience. They are basically four car 150s that break down more often.
Doesn’t stop them putting 158s on Wigan to Leeds, a route which suffers from this exact problem.
At the time the 150s could go anywhere on the entire TfW network except the Cambrian. The 769s were limited to the Valleys, and even then only to certain parts of them.
True but the requested TFW extension to the lease for the 769s was blocked by external forces.
Yes first of 2
Nope TFW requested them to be removed so they did not have to do the maintenance they were removed while at Pullmans
Slightly true the GWR and TFW ones had corrosion works done None of the NTL sets did as they were in service with NTL before the conversion
I believe Freightliner & GBRf were interested in trialing palletized flows using units. Porterbrook clearly have a desire to continue trials/find customers for its Flex units in one form or another.
It’s worse than that. Newton Heath lost 150137, 150139 and 150141 to the Marston Vale and then 150111, 150132 and 150226 to the 3 cars which are now at Neville Hill.
And yet they replaced by 4 car trains - in fact I think more 4 car trains, it was their unreliability that done for them. It's worth remembering at the start tfw had to bring in mk2s and 37s as well as extra 153s to cover for them, and keep a rescue loco at rhymney / canton.
I very strongly doubt that will happen.
Sorry. Maybe this should have been in Speculative Discussion!
I’m pretty annoyed that Northern are focused on putting 6 car trains on Airedale and Wharfedale (lines that do not need 6 car trains), when situations like this are common with their DMU fleet, to the point that services are being cancelled because of lack of functional units. Yet, no plan is currently in place to sort the situation out. Looks like this will be a regular thing for the next few years.
Westhoughton, Hindley and Ince are all being extended to fit 6 carriages, the overhead wires were turned on earlier this year, and hopefully we'll have 323s running 6 car services soon, freeing DMUs for other services.
Yorkshire always seems to get the better treatment post Northern merger from Fnw and Ans
Does anyone know where said parcels service might operate?Not sure if this is the right thread for it but two ex-GWR 769s are now at Leicester. Those being 769549 and 535. These are being utilised as part of a trial parcels service for GBRf. These will be maintained at Leicester. A picture from Facebook is posted below:
Seen absolutely no sign of testing, or of the sides to the Iron bridge to the West of Hindley being put back into service. An earlier thread suggested that they will run an electrified service from December 2026!
www.realtimetrains.co.uk
This is what I do not understand. They could theoretically have split the Southport service at Wigan from the May timetable change, with 3/4 car EMUs between Oxford Road/Stalybridge and Wigan North Western, and a DMU shuttle from the bay platform at Wallgate. And/or the Leeds to Wigan Wallgate service could be extended to Southport (they have over an hour turnaround in a siding at Wigan as things stand, which is hardly efficient diagramming). While this would result in a slight reduction in diagrammed coaches on some Wigan-Manchester trains, it would be far better than the current situation, where they are short formed more often than not.Seen absolutely no sign of testing, or of the sides to the Iron bridge to the West of Hindley being put back into service. An earlier thread suggested that they will run an electrified service from December 2026!
Why is this all taking so long?
Meanwhile, the 769s have had another day of failures, resulting on shortfalls in most trains on the line as 4 car trains are split to provide a shadow of a service that really is unacceptable.
Realtime Trains | Departures from Hindley all day on 05/03/2025
Train information at Hindley all day on 05/03/2025. From Realtime Trains, an independent source of train running info for Great Britain.
