Extra trains for Christmas Saturdays

Northern Rail are laying on some extra services on Saturdays, and extra carriages on Sundays, in the run up to Christmas.

It took us a while to find the announcement but here are the details of 5 extra trains into Manchester on Saturday mornings, and 9 coming back in the afternoon and evening: Christmas Comes Early for Festive Travellers.

Meanwhile, Sunday trains appear to have been upgraded to 4 carriages: last Sunday all trains ran as 4 carriages, but even then some were “full and standing”.

This is undoubtedly extremely welcome news from Northern, and we applaud them for finding some extra carriages from their very stretched resources. However, such is the demand for train travel at this time of year we can only echo Northern’s warning that trains will be very busy and you may not be able to get on your preferred service – so make plans to travel a bit earlier if you can.

Passenger Numbers Hold Steady

This year’s FOWS passenger count on Nov 20th recorded almost identical passenger numbers using the station as last year: 707 instead of 711.

Around 50 extra passengers used the trains towards Manchester, counter balanced by 40 less in the Wigan direction – evidence perhaps of road users giving up on the congested East Lancs and A6 to try the train ? If so they would have found a good service in operation with some full trains (but all passengers able to board), good punctuality, and only one (off-peak) service cancelled.

The graph below shows the impressive rise in passenger numbers since FOWS’ first survey in 2007.

For full details of the survey results, check the Passenger Numbers page on the FOWS website.