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Timeline for restoring various services withdrawn due to Covid

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61653 HTAFC

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With regards to Northern, is there any plan in place to restore the off-peak Huddersfield to Castleford services? I wouldn't expect it to be a priority of course, but I do hope they'll be back eventually.
 
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Llandudno

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One for TfW.
The first and last trains on the line to Blaenau Ffestiniog don't appear to have been reinstated from December. This means that there are only 4 trains per day instead of the pre-covid 6.
Yep, last train from Llandudno just after 4pm!
 

ChrisC

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With regards to Northern, is there any plan in place to restore the off-peak Huddersfield to Castleford services? I wouldn't expect it to be a priority of course, but I do hope they'll be back eventually.
Exactly the same question can be asked about the off-peak Sheffield to Gainsborough Central services. They are perhaps not a priority but they do allow the Lincoln trains to be speeded up by running non stop between Sheffield and Worksop. Also they help to provide better connections at Worksop for passengers from the Mansfield area on the Robin Hood Line to Sheffield and the North.

It doesn’t look like the Sheffield to Gainsborough Central services are to return in December and with EMR running their totally inadequate reduced timetable until at least December Mansfield is getting a very poor service. The current hourly Worksop-Mansfield-Nottingham train arrives in Nottingham just after the trains to Norwich, Liverpool, Derby, Skegness and Lincoln have departed. With many of these services only running 2 hourly until at least December I am having to get the bus into Nottingham if I want to travel anywhere further afield by train to avoid long waits for connections at Nottingham or Worksop. Last week it took me 3 and a half hours to travel from just south of Mansfield to Bradford.
 

RH Liner

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Exactly the same question can be asked about the off-peak Sheffield to Gainsborough Central services. They are perhaps not a priority but they do allow the Lincoln trains to be speeded up by running non stop between Sheffield and Worksop. Also they help to provide better connections at Worksop for passengers from the Mansfield area on the Robin Hood Line to Sheffield and the North.

It doesn’t look like the Sheffield to Gainsborough Central services are to return in December and with EMR running their totally inadequate reduced timetable until at least December Mansfield is getting a very poor service. The current hourly Worksop-Mansfield-Nottingham train arrives in Nottingham just after the trains to Norwich, Liverpool, Derby, Skegness and Lincoln have departed. With many of these services only running 2 hourly until at least December I am having to get the bus into Nottingham if I want to travel anywhere further afield by train to avoid long waits for connections at Nottingham or Worksop. Last week it took me 3 and a half hours to travel from just south of Mansfield to Bradford.
Not only is the half-hourly service between Mansfield and Nottingham cut to hourly, but for the last few days the number of carriages has been cut from three to two, so it’s effectively two coaches per hour instead of six. It looks as if the three-car 170s might have been taken away from this line and the Sprinters are back according to that, although I’ve not actually seen this. There is always a lot of red type on RTT for trains on this line too.
Discounting the stations at either end, Nottingham and Worksop, the remaining stations serve a population of around 250,000 and the people who live along the route deserve better.
 

tommy2215

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From December London Euston - Manchester Pic will be at 3tph again and so will WMT's Euston - Northampton. On GWR Paddington - Cardiff will go back to 2tph and so will the Paddington - Didcot Parkway stoppers.
 

johntea

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With regards to Northern, is there any plan in place to restore the off-peak Huddersfield to Castleford services? I wouldn't expect it to be a priority of course, but I do hope they'll be back eventually.

They're only operating 3 services per day as you say, makes me think why bother! Is it due to drivers needing to keep knowledge of the route or the rights to use the route or similar?

I also wonder if the extra 'express' Leeds to Harrogate services are ever going to make a comeback
 

Bevan Price

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Which from Wigan is a bit rubbish as from memory the stopper departs a few minutes behind the unit from Blackpool so effectively is 1tph. Likewise for St Helens where the gap between trains is under 10 minutes
Yes. some of the stoppers are booked to leave Wigan for Liverpool just 3 minutes after the Blackpool service - and that is rather tight, remembering that you have to cross from Platform 3 to Platform 6 if you want a connection onto the stopping train.
 

61653 HTAFC

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They're only operating 3 services per day as you say, makes me think why bother! Is it due to drivers needing to keep knowledge of the route or the rights to use the route or similar?

I also wonder if the extra 'express' Leeds to Harrogate services are ever going to make a comeback
The peak services will be getting more use from next week, as the schools and colleges will have started up again. I assume they continued to run through the summer primarily for route knowledge retention as you suggest, but they still had a handful of users on each service.
 

Jpr463

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The additional Manchester Victoria - Blackburn via Darwen service (sorry, I can't recall if it began elsewhere) still hasn't been restored and there's no mention of it happening.
The hourly Rochdale - Man Victoria - Clitheroe services are getting pretty busy at times now. Is this a staffing issue or lack of suitable rolling stock?
 

Parallel

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I wonder when XC will call at the stations they decided to cut out during COVID.

To be honest, I find it pretty ridiculous when leisure travel is currently driving the market and they haven’t stopped at places like Par, Hayle, Brockenhurst and Leuchars (for St Andrews) all summer! Only limited services to Paignton and none to Newquay too!
 

Kite159

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I wonder when XC will call at the stations they decided to cut out during COVID.

To be honest, I find it pretty ridiculous when leisure travel is currently driving the market and they haven’t stopped at places like Par, Hayle, Brockenhurst and Leuchars (for St Andrews) all summer! Only limited services to Paignton and none to Newquay too!

But then continued to call at all the usual stations between Coventry & Wolverhampton which is where most of the overcrowding occurs
 

30907

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But then continued to call at all the usual stations between Coventry & Wolverhampton which is where most of the overcrowding occurs
I like the idea of omitting New Street :)
Seriously, I suspect there is enough slack in XC schedules there to allow for station overtime caused by Covid measures.
 

WessexRails

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Any plans for XC to increase the frequency on the Bournemouth route? SWR trains have been noticeable busy
 

Watershed

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Any plans for XC to increase the frequency on the Bournemouth route? SWR trains have been noticeable busy
December's timetable doesn't contain any uplift in XC services. So it's unlikely that anything will change in this regard before May next year - at the earliest.

In all honesty, I'd wager that the current timetable will persist until Avanti release their 221s to XC...
 

johntea

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Here's a question...whatever happened to the (roughly around 10pm previously) Leeds - Knottingley via Castleford service? I can't quite remember when it vanished but it is a bit of a pain if you miss the 21:32 Sheffield stopper, yet you're spoilt for choice afterwards with 22:32, 23:02 and 23:18 services to Castleford!
 

Halish Railway

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Here's a question...whatever happened to the (roughly around 10pm previously) Leeds - Knottingley via Castleford service? I can't quite remember when it vanished but it is a bit of a pain if you miss the 21:32 Sheffield stopper, yet you're spoilt for choice afterwards with 22:32, 23:02 and 23:18 services to Castleford!
There is still the 17:40 Leeds to Skipton service missing as well. This creates a half-hour gap between the 17:26 Morecambe service and the 17:55 Skipton service, bare in mind as well that the Morecambe service doesn’t stop at Saltaire, Crossflatts & Cononley.
 

30907

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There is still the 17:40 Leeds to Skipton service missing as well. This creates a half-hour gap between the 17:26 Morecambe service and the 17:55 Skipton service, bare in mind as well that the Morecambe service doesn’t stop at Saltaire, Crossflatts & Cononley.
...whose commuters have a 37-minute gap, or can change at Shipley.
Is this currently leading to serious overcrowding :)
 

geoffk

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The additional Manchester Victoria - Blackburn via Darwen service (sorry, I can't recall if it began elsewhere) still hasn't been restored and there's no mention of it happening.
The hourly Rochdale - Man Victoria - Clitheroe services are getting pretty busy at times now. Is this a staffing issue or lack of suitable rolling stock?
The additional service started from Rochdale to provide Castleton, Mills Hill and Moston with a half-hourly service. Now two of these just have an hourly service off-peak but Mills Hill has kept its two per hour (not evenly spaced) with the addition of a call by the Blackburn ("Todmorden curve") service, which, as a result, has lost its Smithy Bridge stop, giving this station just an hourly off-peak service. My home area until recently but I still get the local news!
 

Simon11

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I still can’t see any signs of the hourly Chester-Euston reappearing
This!

I was thinking of a nice weekend trip to Chester from London travelling by train in October with my partner. We could work around the limited direct services and or extra interchange/ traveling time but then saw the price £200 for us to travel for that (as no advance fares being offered)!

Driving it is then….
 

Watershed

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This!

I was thinking of a nice weekend trip to Chester from London travelling by train in October with my partner. We could work around the limited direct services and or extra interchange/ traveling time but then saw the price £200 for us to travel for that (as no advance fares being offered)!

Driving it is then….
Possible to do it much more cheaply with a Chiltern & TfW only ticket (£55.50 Super Off-Peak, all weekend). Admittedly that takes quite a while, and involves walking between Moor Street and New Street unless you travel on one of the Stourbridge/Kidderminster trains and change at Smethwick Galton Bridge. Probably not worth doing unless you're on a very tight budget and have to take the train.

A more realistic alternative is taking TfW/Avanti to Crewe and then the WMT semifast. £18.20 for the Off-Peak Return to Crewe (ouch) but then only £34.60 or £45 for the WMT-only Super Off-Peak/Off-Peak Return to London, so a total of £52.80/£63.20.

Given that length of journey, a Two Together Railcard will pay for itself in one trip. So even if you buy that for the £30 "list price", your total cost is £113.40 with the above WMT option (assuming Off-Peak, as the WMT-only Super Off-Peak is quite restrictive even on weekends).

Still not very competitive with driving, but it's just over half of the £200 you were seeing.
 

james60059

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Ah that’s interesting. So we can assume it’ll be back in December?

Heard on Free Radio C&W at work that a number of extra services will commence between Nuneaton and Leamington Spa from 27th September, there will still be a bus at some times however
 

XC victim

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December's timetable doesn't contain any uplift in XC services. So it's unlikely that anything will change in this regard before May next year - at the earliest.

In all honesty, I'd wager that the current timetable will persist until Avanti release their 221s to XC...
There again XC could just keep the current timetable and then they wouldn’t need the Avanti 221s.

considering the conflicts between XC and other TOCs all over the network I do seriously worry that many XC services may never be restored.
 

HamworthyGoods

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There again XC could just keep the current timetable and then they wouldn’t need the Avanti 221s.

considering the conflicts between XC and other TOCs all over the network I do seriously worry that many XC services may never be restored.

Or just use a number of the Avanti 221s to replace the life expired XC HSTs which are becoming increasingly unreliable, another failure yesterday with the morning departure from Leeds getting no further than Wakefield before failing (and the train being cancelled)
 

hello

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There again XC could just keep the current timetable and then they wouldn’t need the Avanti 221s.

considering the conflicts between XC and other TOCs all over the network I do seriously worry that many XC services may never be restored.
Xc’s morning service from Cardiff to Bristol is gone from December, according to rtt, being replaced by gwr, that runs to/from stoke Gifford
 

cuccir

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The ECML York- Newcastle is down two trains per hour compared to before covid: the XC Newcastle-Reading service and the TPE Newcastle-Manchester Airport service. I would not be surprised if neither return before the delayed-May-2022 timetable update happens.
 

hello

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And the evening one in the reverse direction
Both were withdrawn last year, but the morning one returned at some point this year, currently forms a Paignton service on arrival at templemeads
 

td97

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The additional Manchester Victoria - Blackburn via Darwen service (sorry, I can't recall if it began elsewhere) still hasn't been restored and there's no mention of it happening.
The hourly Rochdale - Man Victoria - Clitheroe services are getting pretty busy at times now. Is this a staffing issue or lack of suitable rolling stock?
Previously the timetable was 2tph Rochdale to Blackburn via Manchester Victoria and Bolton with 1tph extended to Clitheroe.
Now there is just 1 tph Rochdale to Clitheroe apart from 1 peak extra for am and pm, which is the timetable from before the Darwen loop enabled 2tph all day.
 
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