September’s blockade Rochdale-Manchester to replace a bridge over the M62 was not much fun for Calder Valley line users. Services north of Rochdale were cut to just two per hour: one to Blackburn and Manchester, one to Leeds via Halifax. Reliability was less than 100 per cent. The Leeds-Brighouse-Manchester service was cut back to Hebden Bridge, with less than perfect onward connections. Blackpool trains were largely unaffected. Replacement buses both fast(ish) and all-stations ran beyond Rochdale. More extensive diversions happened at weekends. Halifax station was deserted on one Saturday! So we asked Northern: Why did the CV line service have to be cut to the extent it was?
“Traincrew availability and what we can reliably cover. We had no West crews in the mix, so everything had to be crewed from East depots. We maintained a regular service between Halifax & Leeds by extending the Huddersfield to Bradford service through to Leeds. Diagram numbers were at maximum capacity so there was no more capacity to use to extend the other service to Rochdale.”
Hadrag further responded: “We understand the difficulty. We still feel more could have been done to give a better service. Was consideration given to running train empty stock or coupled to the McV-Blackburn- Rochdale trains that did run in order provide staff and crews to work more frequent trains to Halifax, Bradford or Leeds? Do your train planners need to think more creatively?” – jsw
We also mentioned and received answers on:
- people missing the bus connection: “… It was recognised that connections could be improved”;
- ticket acceptance via TPE (Huddersfield) – only for journeys from Bramley/Leeds; if you went that way via the Bradford-Hud trains it was (and is) a higher fare than via Hebden Bridge;
- lack of clarity where buses were going i.e. non-stop to Rochdale, all stations to Rochdale or sometimes at weekends to Hebden Bridge. There were staff on hand to help people, as indeed there were at Rochdale;
- inconvenient locations of screens at Manchester Vic. Main screen is near the barriers (not above them) and difficult to spot by passengers coming from station entrances and bus pick-up point.
Of course we saw no printed timetables. Worth adding staff at the bus stops were very helpful but had to scroll their phone screens to find times. It’s as though the railway does not want you to see a timetable.
Brighouse line idiocy?
This last bit we could hardly believe, having asked about future engineering work affecting Brighouse. When the line through Huddersfield is blocked Brighouse gets a good service with TransPennine Express trains stopping. But when the Dewsbury line is blocked the Wigan-Manchester-Leeds trains are diverted via Halifax running just a few minutes in front of the Manchester-Leeds fast. A bus runs from Halifax, all stations via Brighouse and Dewsbury. Brighouse to Leeds takes at least 65 minutes – significantly more at peak times. Obviously the direct line is blocked, but TPE run their trains via Healey Mills, Wakefield and Normanton. That diversion does not take too much longer than the direct train, and a lot less than the replacement bus, so could Northern’s Brighouse trains be diverted via Normanton instead of Bradford, maintaining a decent train service for Brighouse and Mirfield?
Reply: “There is limited traincrew route knowledge to run via Healey Mills as very few drivers at Leeds now sign it, and Manchester, Huddersfield, and York crews don’t sign it. This means that diverting via Bradford is the only option. We are not in the position to start a major route learning programme from our traincrew given all of the traincrew training demands we have on the network at the moment, with new rolling stock being introduced and new train services operated from the December timetable change.”
Our response: “We find this ridiculous, but maybe understandable in the present system. Northern used to operate an hourly service Hud-Mirfield-Wakefield-Castleford before the pandemic. (We are told this service used Northern’s Huddersfield crews, which seems sensible. After the pandemic that service was suspended so maybe route knowledge was lost although limited services were run by Northern Huddersfield- Wakefield-Castleford for a time.) We note that TPE regularly runs empty trains via diversionary routes such as the Calder Valley line. The obvious question is why has Northern not run similar trains to maintain route knowledge, for example over the line from Mirfield through Healey Mills to Wakefield? And why were these crews (for Manchester-Brighouse-Leeds route) not trained on this obvious diversionary route in the first place? It should be noted that the replacement bus services Bgh-Leeds take more than an hour, some significantly more.”
• Enough said?!
Halifax and District Rail Action Group 