Timetable shake-up due in December

Long time users of the train service from Walkden will have grown used to patterns of trains that barely change from year to year … summer sees an additional train a day running through to Blackpool and back, and in the autumn many departure times slide forwards a few minutes to keep the trains on time during the “leaf fall” period.

But this December we will see one of the largest shake-ups of timetables in the Manchester area for 20 years or more as local services are moved around to slot in between more frequent trains on the Piccadilly to London route and “semi-fast” trains being introduced on the Victoria to Leeds line.

The Walkden line is less dramatically affected than many others in the area, but nevertheless the new timetable ushers in the most radical changes seen at Walkden for many years.

To see the new train times, you can query the National Rail Online Journey Planner and enter a travel date later than Dec 14th.

The main changes affecting Monday to Friday services appear to be:

1) increased number of trains during the morning peak with 7 inbound services to Manchester before 9am (compared to 5 at present)

2) decreased number of trains during the afternoon peak with 4 outbound services between 4.30pm and 6.30pm (compared to 5 at present)

3) more consistent departure times throughout the day (at xx20 and xx50 to Manchester and xx04 and xx29 to Wigan, from 10am to 4pm)

4) Overall number of departures per day is unchanged: 31 towards Manchester and 30 towards Wigan.

Whether the new timetable will represent a net improvement or deterioration remains to be seen – for some travellers that will no doubt depend on how their connecting services are affected too. The extra morning train (actually one of the two Atherton expresses that are not currently scheduled to stop at Walkden) will hopefully offer some relief to passengers on the dreadfully overcrowded 0734 and 0801 departures, but the thinning out of afternoon peak services must be a worrying development as these trains are often packed full already.

Disclaimer: Information about new train times has been obtained from the National Rail Journey Planner. Every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of the data but FOWS cannot be held responsible for any errors made during our editing process. Please check your train times with National Rail or locally before travelling.

Northern fears for south Manchester services in December timetable

Northern Rail, together with GMPTE, are reported in the railway press as being so concerned about the impact of Virgin’s December timetable changes as to have written to the Office of Rail Regulation.

From December Virgin will be running 3 trains per hour to London instead of the current 2 which means they will take up more platform spaces at Piccadilly and – crucially – make the Stockport to Piccadilly section even busier.

Northern Rail’s mid-Cheshire services are among the victims of the changes – some services which run from Cheshire through to Piccadilly or Blackpool will terminate at Stockport with travellers having to change there to complete their journey into Manchester.

There are also though to be knock-on effects for services all over Manchester. Walkden trains will be slightly re-timed, but other routes will suffer loss of some cross-city services and, because fewer Northern trains will be able to cross the city, the timetable will require Northern to use more trains and crews.

Few Changes in Summer Timetable

The summer timetable – valid from May 19th until October 5th – contains just one major change from its predecessor, the addition of the traditional summer-only daily return service to Blackpool North.

The Blackpool train leaves Walkden at 1028 (Mon-Sat) and gets back at 2020 (Mon-Fri) or 2029 (Sat). This service only runs from now until September 13th.

Other changes in the new timetable are less significant:

a) the 2039 to Manchester is partially retimed: from September 20th and on Saturday’s only, this will run 6 minutes later departing Walkden at 2045.

b) the 2237 to Huddersfield now terminates at Manchester Victoria Mon-Fri. It continues to serves Huddersfield on Saturdays until September 6th but then only runs as far as Greenfield on Saturdays from September 13th on.

Unfortunately there are no improvements to the difficult connections at Salford Crescent, nor extra rush-hour services yet. We are hopefully that these may be achieved by Northern in the next timetable but one: December 2008.

Of course there are still, regrettably, no Sunday services whatsoever.

Northern Rail reply to AGM questions

Our friends at Northern Rail have come back with answers to some questions raised at our recent AGM. We would like to thank Northern for the answers below:

1) Desirable though it may be, we can’t aim to provide perfect connections to facilitate every potential journey opportunity. Generally the timings of trains on each route are determined by the key locations such as Salford Crescent and Victoria. Paths at Salford Crescent will be dictated by the TPE services and our Airport – Southports, and their paths are determined by paths approaching Piccadilly, (determined by Virgin, Cross Country etc) and getting through the busy Piccadilly-Ordsall Lane corridor. This,of course applies in both directions and another challenge is to allocate the available paths in each direction to particular routes so that you get sensible turn round times at each end. Where possible we do try to get reasonable connections between linked routes (eg between Victoria and Piccadilly lines at Salford Crescent), but as I hope you can see, the flexibility to tweak timings to optimise connections is fairly limited.

3) Planning for Sunday services from December is still at an early stage. We are working through business cases for a number of possible enhancements to Sunday services on a number of routes, and are also discussing priorities with Gmpte. It is therefore too soon to say what will emerge for December, or subsequent timetable changes.