On Trains & Buses

The last weekend in May usually hosts what is known as the Spring Bank Holiday in the U.K. Due to the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth’s reign, this didn’t happen this year and two days were added to the first weekend in June instead. My travel on the Jubilee weekend is another tale so I’ll relate experiences from the weekend before.

As it happened, we got scorching sunny weather at the end of May and it seemed to have tempted everyone out on the evidence of my travels to and from Northumberland on the Saturday of the weekend. York was hosting horse-racing too and that ensured that the Transpennine Express service on which I was travelling was crammed with folk.

That left me wondering if a bit of forward planning would have involved booking in longer trains for the extra traffic. However, when I asked them about this on Twitter, I got no answer. That was after my asking about having longer trains on the route for those races. That was answered by saying that they only have sixty trains and they all were in use. There are new trains coming with the planned electrification of the Manchester-Bolton-Preston and Manchester-Leeds-York routes. Let’s hope that they are longer and that the overall number operated by the franchise is enlarged at the same time.

The CrossCountry train that got me from York to Alnmouth too was well used though thankfully not as busy as the one taking me from Manchester to York. The Edinburgh Marathon was the cause this time and prospective runners were chatting to one another with even complete strangers conversing. Their having a common interest must have helped.

The return journey was less frenetic, especially between Alnmouth and York. Some late racegoers still were on the way home from York with some being “well oiled” by their constant refreshment throughout the day. The chatter emanating from some had me wishing that a portable music player was in my possession but it still wasn’t overly unpleasant.

The leg between Manchester and my home town of Macclesfield was the quietest of the lot though having two Northern Rail trains timed to leave at the same time from the same platform seemed a little incompetent. The Hadfield service went first and the Macclesfield train doors were locked until that departed. Though a little inconvenient, one only need imagine the mess caused by inebriated folk catching wrong trains to realise the sense in what was done. Around Congleton, someone was struck by a train earlier on the same evening so that may explain the sub-optimal platform arrangements.

Like many, I had been out and about when so many were doing the same. That so many were using public transport was encouraging and that was at the cost of a quiet getaway. Maybe a weekend first class upgrade should have been considered even with it adding to a fare that already was not inexpensive. Travelling a little earlier in the day might have been cheaper than any upgrade.

During the Jubilee bank holiday weekend, I popped up to Scotland for a few days and, in so doing, learned more about some extra train and coach services that are laid on for the summer up there. Of course, that wasn’t my real reason for going. The chance of getting some dry weather while sampling more of the country’s scenery was the actual motivation.

A copy of ScotRail’s Insight on-train magazine alerted me to the return of a direct Sunday return train service between Edinburgh and Oban. It leaves the former at 08:10 and arrives at 12:06 having called at Haymarket, Linlithgow, Polmont and Falkirk along the way. It then leaves Oban at 17:11 and arrives back in Edinburgh at 21:09. It hasn’t started yet though and you’ll need to wait until the 24th of this month for the first running. It then continues until August 26th and the return fare is a not that unreasonable £36.

Scottish Citylink offer extra services for the summer season and, unlike ScotRail’s Edinburgh-Oban service, most of these are available now. Ones that stand out for me are service 913 from Edinburgh to Fort William, service 978 from Edinburgh to Oban and service 973 from Dundee to Oban. The 913 and 973 add useful travel connections around Loch Tay as well as adding to the service level west of Crianlarich.

While on the subject of Scottish Citylink, year round services also see their service level increased. For instance, there is a 978 service via Tyndrum between Glasgow and Oban and a 975 shuttle between the latter and Tyndrum where coaches between Glasgow and Fort William are met. Speaking of the the latter, they are expanded for the summer too as are their continuations to the Isle of Skye. While speaking about West Highland coach services, it is worth mentioning that the Glasgow-Campbeltown 926 service is operating as five services each way daily; three was all we got not so long ago.

Though these are the summertime service increases that stand out for me. For instance, there are extra ones running between the Scotland’s Central Belt and Inverness as I discovered on Monday morning. Also, Edinburgh’s festival season in August sees extra late night services between Glasgow and Edinburgh and there are events like T in the Park too. Well, it’s worth spending some time on Citylink’s website to see what’s available because I only may be scratching the surface here.

Apart from the above, there may be other summer only services on offer of which I have no knowledge and Caber Coaches’ service 93 around Loch Tay on Saturdays is one such find. If any come my way, I’ll get them noted because summer passes so quickly. With some of the ones that we have seen, there are those who may see that as a good thing but I’ll reserve my judgement.

A timetable change last Sunday (2012-04-29) should have been the end of the story for a few months but Arriva have another timetable change for service 130 between Macclesfield and Manchester next Sunday (2012-05-06), On inspection of the new timetable, it would be to extend the Monday to Friday 18:04 departure from Manchester as far as Wilmslow to arrive at 19:10 before returning to the depot again. That certainly makes more sense than terminating at Cheadle Hulme as is the case for this week and having an 18:18 continuing as far as Wilmslow on Saturdays. The new arrangements look more consistent even if Saturday timings differ from the rest of the week; buses run hourly than when they are half-hourly on other weekdays.

Otherwise, the changes introduced in the current timetable remain. These include the termination of the 17:40 evening journey from Macclesfield at Parr’s Wood on Mondays to Fridays and the retiming of the xx:15 journeys from Macclesfield to depart at xx:35 when the inbound buses are arriving into the town at the same time as before. That change gives an 18:35 for Manchester on Saturday before the D&G Monday to Saturday evening service commences at the times that have been in place for a few years now.

The main Monday to Saturday remains unaltered even with these tweaks and it looks as if depot changes in the Greater Manchester area have been the cause. That hasn’t changed the Sunday timetable at all though you have to wonder what cuts to the Bus Service Operators Grant could do yet. Have they contributed to the closure of Arriva’s depot near Piccadilly railway station in Manchester, for instance?

Update 2012-05-05: Noticed that driver rosters have changed with morning drivers appearing to work evening services and vice versa. The depot changes must have had some bearing on this.

After yesterday’s snow, public transport seems to be returning to normal though there may be changes from the usual timetable in the morning. For one thing, the Bletchley disruption on the WCML is continuing and some train and bus operators in the south-east are still experiencing some difficulties. Of these, Southern Trains is just one with their website’s front page being a summary of service running information; their website must have run into bother earlier.

Other websites felt the strain too and the new Greater Anglia (formerly National Express East Anglia) website got a baptism of fire. Like Southern, it too has a front-page giving a service overview but there’s their JourneyCheck page and Twitter feed too and that has been very active throughout today. The rest of the website doesn’t seem to have been put into place though.

Yet another website that went down on everybody was that for Arriva Buses. Nevertheless, bus users in Yorkshire and the Northeast of England were well served with Twitter feeds. One wonders why we don’t get the same in the English Northwest too. After all, there is a Twitter account but it never seems to get used.

Though the BBC did sterling work when it came to overviews, Twitter seemed to come into its own (Facebook may have done the same but I am keeping out of there given Mark Zuckerberg’s approach to privacy and the IPO that has happened) during the weekend, especially with everything developing so quickly. In fact, you could tell where the snow was by the number of disruption information tweets. Some operators ran into the 1000 tweets (includes retweets and replies too) per day limit though waiting until after 00 or 30 minutes past the hour was enough to get going again, albeit with a 20 tweet per 30 minute quota as I found out last night. Some operators have backup accounts for dealing with this situation so you have to ask what the 1000 tweet limit achieves.

Along the way, I got to learn of some new operators: Marshalls of Sutton-on-Trent and Premiere Buses (of Nottingham, it seems). Links to both have been added to the bus companies page on here and it’s always good to grow more comprehensive.

Around Cheshire, most major roads are now clear though Bowers weren’t too trusting of the A537 for their 58 service between Macclesfield and Buxton. Buses were serving Bollington and the 130 to Manchester seemed to be going too though the live bus tracker seemed to be playing its usual non-availability games as it has been for the last few weeks. Both today and yesterday would have made good days for having it going given the weather that we got.

Continuing with road conditions, there is a lot of slush about the place and I don’t fancy the outcomes if either that or any standing water froze tonight. So far, temperatures seem to be held at 2° C so there’s hope that any frost will not be so severe and there was a lot of melt-water around when I was last out and about. Cheshire East Council don’t seem to be taking chances though and there are gritters out and about again tonight although there’s no sign that pavements are being gritted by the council; maybe that’s being left to householders (before Christmas 2010, there was a statement to that effect from the then Transport Secretary, Philip Hammond) and I was out clearing that next to mine today. With all the lying snow and the threat of ice, we’ll have to see what the morning brings when it comes.

Snow arrived today as promised and travel disruption ensued. At the time of writing, Arriva Yorkshire and Nottingham City Transport are operating no bus services at all rail and disruption is hitting both the East Coast Mainline along with services around Bolton and Blackburn. More generally, bus services are experiencing difficulties across the north of England and into the English midlands so it’s best to check with your operator to make sure that your service is operating.

Twitter has been a good place to see what’s happening and those of us who are on there need to watch our daily limit of 1000 updates (20 per half hour, it seems) too. Even transport operators such as Virgin Trains and London Midland have been known to hit these limits on days like yesterday when severe disruption was caused by a derailment near Bletchley. For these eventualities, they have been known to open more accounts so you wonder what the limit achieves.

More roads than those used by buses get affected too and the A537 between Macclesfield and Buxton and the A54 between the latter and Buxton are closed tonight. It is an open question as to whether Bowers’ service 58 between Macclesfield and Buxton will operate tomorrow given that it was off the road last Saturday. Today, it kept going until at least 15:00 since I spotted one on the Cat and Fiddle Inn’s webcam.

Whatever you do tonight, I hope that you stay safe. Tomorrow could be interesting as well though we are promised milder weather as the new week wears on. It seems that Ireland has been unaffected by wintry weather apart from disruption to U.K. flights. That really drives home how regional how weather can be.