Tag: TransPennine Express

Patience needed!

Here’s the shot from 2022, last time we met in Brighouse. TransPennine Express wasn’t stopping, but now, whenever route upgrade works close the Huddersfield line, they do! So you can, at a TPE price, and when the engineers deem it, get from Brighouse on a train through to Newcastle, York, Liverpool or Manchester Airport. Buses provide a replacement link for Huddersfield, which will happen more when big work starts remodelling the centre-piece of the Pennine upgrade with four tracks to Dewsbury. Sometimes Brighouse does less well. When the Dewsbury route is blocked our Northern “valley bottom” trains Manchester-Brighouse-Leeds trains go via Halifax and Bradford; Brighouse gets a bus link. (Northern crews from the North West, we understand, do not know the route via Wakefield.)

Brighouse had been top-performing Calder Valley station on percentage footfall growth. So we just can’t wait for things to get back to normal – with potentially more trains. Had Elland been open that could have been the interchange for replacement buses. We still need to be patient on that one – but soon, we hope.

Note view at back. Station Café on Gooder Lane. And now there’s a new one, The Shrub just across Huddersfield Road, as well as the Commercial Inn on the corner.

Trans Pennine on the up, we hope

TransPennine Express brought in temporary service cuts in the 2023-4 timetable in an effort to improve performance. Early signs are that the tactic is working. Crew training issues have been eased with withdrawal of loco-hauled push-pull sets. Four trains/day run Manchester-Huddersfield-Wakefield-York, hopefully to become hourly in December. But for now the off-peak Leeds-Huddersfield service is just three trains per hour. Makes our line look good! TransPennine Route Upgade work affects our line of course. Swings and roundabouts. Brighouse is disrupted, but does see calls by diverted TPE services that avoid Huddersfield.

Recent TPE Diversions — no calls for Brighouse!

TransPennine Express trains were diverted via Brighouse and the Calder Valley line for a month before Easter. Work was being carried out remodelling junctions at Stalybridge, a track layout that had previously been upgraded not much more than a decade ago. The effect is higher speed limits on the route towards Victoria as well Piccadilly. Which is logical since trains that don’t stop at Stalybridge are the “fast” ones to Victoria! A year ago

when the Huddersfield route was closed for engineering work the diverted trains called at Brighouse, providing an additional useful service for the town on our line as well as an alternative railhead for Huddersfield passengers. Improvements to Brighouse station had been made with more space for larger crowds to wait. This time all the diverted trains have run through Brighouse without stopping. Brighouse was the Calder Valley line station with the biggest percentage growth over more than 10 years pre-pandemic. So why is it being side-tracked by TPE now? We shall ask!

Header Image: “Enterprising Nova (i)” flickr photo by JohnTurner1955 https://flickr.com/photos/johngreyturner/48583347201 shared under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-ND) license

Arriva for Northern and First hold on to TransPennine Express

Just when we thought it was safe to have a lie-in, a glance at the phone gave the alert. White smoke from the Department for Transport (DfT) revealed Arriva Rail North Ltd in line for the Northern train operating franchise. TransPennine Express will stay with First group.

It’s a year since we put our views to the Arriva team, who impressed us as good listeners. Campaigners had already demanded (against an originally disappointing DfT prospectus) train services comparable with what London and the home countries enjoy. The result was a reasonably expansionist specification (the “ITT”) that it’s clear Arriva now intend to deliver well beyond.

With the worrying proviso that Network Rail has to complete infrastructure enhancements on time, four years from now, our line will be part of the Northern Connect express network, with regular trains to Liverpool, Chester and Manchester Airport as well as Blackpool, Preston and York. Halifax should have 5 trains/hour to Leeds, plus an extra train each daytime hour Bradford-Manchester with journey times reduced by at least 10 per cent. Stations will have a new staff presence. Sunday services will be increased. And there will be significant additional rolling stock both new and refurbished to reduce commuter overcrowding.

Will it be enough? We are disappointed at how little is proposed for the Brighouse Line. We don’t blame Arriva for this but we want more to be done. And we say Sowerby Bridge should be served by all Blackpool-York trains and by the extra Manchesters to be introduced in 2019.

HADRAG’s work continues

Header image attribution: By Geof Sheppard (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons