On Trains & Buses

One thing that we’re never told about those magical white Christmases that we’re often sold is that there’s a darker side to them too. Just ask anyone trying to fly before Christmas this year and they may have a thing to say about the weather that we saw.

What visited Heathrow and Gatwick on the last Saturday before Christmas Day caused enough disruption but it was the repeated showerings of snow that caused havoc at Dublin’s airport. All that was needed was a single hefty shower and runaways were shut for several hours. The result was many panicky travellers with some booking ferry crossings as a backup plan.

Rail travel became tricky as points suffered in the cold weather with many needing defrosting. It didn’t matter whether it was Euston station or Heuston station in Dublin because delays and cancellations were made more likely; London saw more cancellations than Dublin, it has to be said. Then, London Midland train passengers were to discover how it felt to be crammed into a smaller than usual train because two couldn’t be joined together due to frozen couplers. Special timetables with lower service frequencies saw introduction in Wales, Merseyside and Scotland because of the conditions.

Buses in the south of England saw enough disruption to set Twitter alight with a multitude of status updates. That wasn’t all because the same comments applied to Lancashire, Yorkshire, Northumberland and Wales. Seeing the flurries of updates was enough to remind me of the action of snow blizzards.

All of the above information provision was heartening to see but not everyone was as good at keeping passengers up to date. For instance, I spent several hours in a plane, diverted from Dublin, sat on the tarmac in Shannon and the lack of speed in making anything happen was enough to try your patience. Decisiveness and responsiveness weren’t characteristics of the experience and it didn’t help that the I had to return to a snowy Dublin when my final destination wouldn’t have been far from Shannon anyway; it was nearer than Dublin anyway. If buses and trains did this type of thing, you could foresee uproar…

All in all, the whole experience makes me appreciate the service offered by bus and train operators all the more and neither Dublin Bus or Irish Rail left me down on the day in question anyway. My observations and experiences of what the snow did this year have me wondered why I have been pondering outings to savour the snowy hills of Scotland and Wales during a spell of cold weather. It’s no wonder that I have been sticking to enjoying what’s close at hand when snow visits.

This is our second really cold winter in a row and my only hope is that lessons are being learnt. One climate scientist has suggested we are in a run of a few of these so we all needed to be doing some learning, myself included. With regards to dreams of white Christmases, we need to live in the real world and that’s even when somewhat surreal weather comes our way like it has done this year. Let’s hope that everyone stays safe and that the stranded get to their intended destinations as soon as possible.

With all the snow and ice that’s about the place, Twitter sounds a good place to let passengers know how services are running and here are just a sample of the bus companies who have been using Twitter accounts to keep passengers informed. There is little something telling me that there might a follow post to this but here are the ones that I have found so that. Well, every time I go having a look, another one turns up. Hopefully, these will help for now.

Arriva North East

Bluestar

Bus Éireann

Cardiff Bus

Centrebus

First Cymru Buses

First Devon/Cornwall

First West & North Yorkshire

Go North East

Greyhound UK

Ipswich Buses

Lothian Buses

Metrobus

Newport Transport

National Express West Midlands

Reading Buses

Southern Vectis

Transdev Harrogate

Transdev Keighley

Transdev Lancashire

Transdev York & East Coast

Yellow Buses

With all the noise that there is about the closures of Heathrow and Gatwick due to the heavy snow that hit the south over the weekend, it is worth remembering that other parts are affected as well and that more snow hit the southwest and Wales today. For instance, Wales seems to be seeing disruption to its train services and MerseyRail is running a Sunday service tomorrow to ensure resilience (how’s that going to work with folk going to work and about their business?).

There may have been snow in the Manchester, Stockport and Macclesfield areas on Friday night but local buses and trains seem to be running well. The way in which we have been feeling the effects of what happened on Saturday are in the form of train cancellations and delays with Virgin faring worse than CrossCountry from what I could see. Macclesfield town bus services are being operated as are those to Crewe and Manchester. We may have to take care where we walk but that’s the extent of what the cold weather has done to us in the town.

A recent trip to Glossop confirms the same sort of conditions. Most buses seem to be running there too and trains seem not to be missing a beat. Good accumulations are there to be seen in the surrounding hills but any roads that I saw were clearer than the pavements by their side. Apart from greasy soft snow, the only real ice was to be found on a bridleway and that needed footwear with spikes for it to be crossed. Otherwise, busier routes could be negotiated though some needed care in order to do so.

Ireland hasn’t escaped the snow either with a heavy fall this evening having closed Dublin Airport to arrivals and departures until at least 23:00.The general Dublin area seems to have had quite a dump of the white stuff too, much as the southwest of the country did over the weekend. That has made road conditions tricky in usually mild parts such as the county of Limerick; the town of Newcastlewest is badly affected by ice due to the very low temperatures.

All in all, I could see folk in Britain and Ireland welcoming a wet Christmas if it took away the snow and ice that we currently have. With all the excitement of white Christmases in previous years, who’d have seen that coming about? After all, I suppose that it’s harder to enjoy a visual feast if you feel that your normal way of life is disrupted.

A change of job over the summer has brought me more in the way of business train travel with two trips south so far, one to Hitchin and the other to Oxford. The first of these involved journeys on trains full enough to feel cosy on the outbound and return legs. The outbound journey to Oxford was in a similar vein but the return trip  was one of extremes.

The cause was a power failure that interrupted signalling on the line between Reading, Swindon and Oxford. The result was that I was travelling on a very busy CrossCountry service that itself was around an hour late. That passengers wanting to travel from Oxford to London were told to board the service to get to Banbury only ensured that many (including me, as it happened) were cheek by jowl with one another. The last time that happened was when Operation Princess was in progress and overloaded the then freshly introduced Voyagers with folk attracted by overenthusiastic and overoptimistic advertising by Virgin. It looked as if many weren’t regular train users so I do wonder what the experience did for their impressions of rail travel.

Things changed markedly after those London passengers were disgorged at Banbury to pack a Chiltern service instead, not the most pleasant of thoughts really. After Banbury, seats were to be found and I made use of one for the rest of the journey while expecting a busy service all the way back to Macclesfield. However, there was a continuing trend of an emptying train as we continued further north and even Birmingham New Street didn’t affect that greatly. In fact, the seat beside me became vacant when someone got off at Stafford. From then on, I was reminded of how it is to travel on early morning services on Saturdays, not at all unpleasant.

All in all, it was a journey of remarkable contrasts and the weather was another of them. What were rain showers in Oxfordshire were snow flurries further north so a definite temperature drop could be noticed on going north with the train conductor warning us about slippery platform surfaces. Was that the cause of there being a less packed service?

The current round of snow is having quite an effect on the transport network in some places. Thankfully, Macclesfield doesn’t seem to be the worst hit though there must be a considerable snow covering on the hills not far from the town and Buxton cannot escape either. The A537/A54 are closed to traffic, so things cannot be good up on the heights. If it’s like what we got at the start of the year, they’ll need snowblowers to clear roads.

Bowers are unable to offer the full service that they usually do and the 27 Macclesfield-Knutsford route was only operated for part of the afternoon, and it looked as if the same applied to the 19 Macclesfield - Whirley - Prestbury service. They are based in Chapel-en-le-Frith so that cannot help them. It’s one thing to struggle to get buses out from a depot, but it’s another if drivers cannot get there in the first place.

From the bus tracker, Arriva seems to be able to keep the 130 Macclesfield-Manchester service going, though there are delays and thoughts of them persuaded me to work from home today. A look at their latest update conveys to me the impression that we are getting off more lightly than some other places. They have created a summary in PDF to stop people hammering the website like they did at the start of the year.

One look at an update for the north of England confirms that a number of places cannot be served by rail, even, and Northern Rail has details on its website too. Sheffield is but one badly hit area and a work colleague of mine has a foot of snow covering his garden! No wonder First cannot run buses around the city. Northumberland and parts of east Yorkshire are taking the brunt of the weather and the disruption by the appearances of things. All in all, it seems that the weather is getting the better of the railways in places.

Ireland may have a maritime climate, but it too is feeling the effects of the cold spell. Though most trains are running (only Docklands station in Dublin is not getting a service this evening), if subject to delays, the Irish Rail website is getting hammered. That may be due in part to the problems that Dublin Bus and Bus Éireann are having. The former’s services stopped around 20:00 this evening and the latter has been struggling to run services up and down the east coast of the country, to point that 19:30 was the end of operations for the day on many of them. The severe weather pages of the Irish Department of Transport are another calling point for general information, particularly about road conditions and any gritting.

Perhaps unsurprisingly given its reputation, Scotland has got a right blast of the arctic conditions with even Edinburgh’s Lothian Buses being unable to offer a full service. The mixture of hilly terrain and hefty snowfalls must be at the heart of the problem, but one only can imagine how much more challenging it is in the Highlands though train running problems are happening throughout Scotland.

Though numerous, what I have collected here is only a sample of what is happening out there. Maybe, it is too hard to keep on top of it all when you have a day job in another profession, but I’ll see if I can share what I can on here.