Total disruption today as follows: 193 full cencellations, 131 part cancellations and 48 reduced carriages/short formations.
Due to a person being hit by a train this morning at Rainhill, trains are cancelled between Huyton and Earlestown. Disruption is expected to continue until 1030.
Hope everybody’s ok.
While waiting for the 08.29 to London this morning overheard two seperate conversations regarding confusion caused by the Crewe-Liverpool service. I have suggested they ought to be advertised to either Wavertree or Edge Hill.
Simple answer to use via points. Was mentioned on another forum that it was noted at Crewe this morning the service was showing a Liverpool via Manchester Airport. Reminds me of when there used to be a few Manchester Victoria - Liverpool via Wigan North Western journeys and the displays were shown as Liverpool via Wigan. Certainly I think a better approach than at Lime Street which just displayed Salford Central.
(22/05/2018 13:47)mikestone Wrote: [ -> ]While waiting for the 08.29 to London this morning overheard two seperate conversations regarding confusion caused by the Crewe-Liverpool service. I have suggested they ought to be advertised to either Wavertree or Edge Hill.
I'd recommend strongly against doing that. Northern do that on the east side of the Pennines and it causes a lot of confusion when non-local visitors turn up at Leeds station looking on the departure displays for the York stopper for the purpose of getting to either Headlingley or Harrogate, only to find there isn't one but there's one to some place called Poppleton instead.
But Liverpool via Manchester Airport obviously meant nothing to either of the people I heard, and I suspect that is true of a large proportion of casual passengers.
At Crewe how many Liverpool services go north directly from platforms 1 and 5 , normally Northbound services using these platforms are turning right on departure from the station , otherwise valuable paths are used up crossing back and forth across the north end of the station , coupled with the fact that the Liverpool main services arent even operated by Northern.
(23/05/2018 18:21)mikestone Wrote: [ -> ]But Liverpool via Manchester Airport obviously meant nothing to either of the people I heard, and I suspect that is true of a large proportion of casual passengers.
And why would Wavertree or Edge Hill mean something, other than to the people travelling to those two stations?
I still think clearly displaying via points should solve most of these problems. The problems with the Liverpool - Crewe are mostly logistical in terms of there being too many bottlenecks on route which if there is a delay, the knock on effects are felt far further afield than if the 2 joined routes were separate. Perhaps would have been better to have kept Manchester - Crewe services self contained and extended the Chat Moss stopper to either Hazel Grove or Alderley Edge which are of much shorter distance and thus more easily recoverable in times of disruption. Added bonus of both these routes is that they give an extra connectional point at Stockport.