John Oates, as Chair of the Mid Cheshire Community Rail Partnership, attended a meeting at Northern’s offices last week in relation to the May 2018 Timetable change.
He heard this timetable is to run until December 2018 when there will be a further change.
These further delays are due to Network Rail’s inability to electrify between Manchester and Bolton on time, meaning the planned cascade of diesel trains onto other lines such as ours cannot happen as diesel trains will need to continue running between Manchester and Bolton.
Some of you may already have received the update from Northern stating there will be no change for the Mid Cheshire Line from May.
It’s actually going to be better than that.
They are not able to give us the timetables at this stage as they are not going to be confirmed by Network Rail until 7 April (latest estimate) which is very late based on normal railway planning.
However, Northern had been told they could talk to us about the timetables, they know we made notes and have said we can circulate these details, though on the basis they are very likely to be confirmed by 7 April, but it is just conceivable there may be some variations.
Monday-Friday
In the Chester direction the standard departure from Piccadilly will be xx41 and with peak hour extras, most from Piccadilly, and one morning one as a Stockport starter, such that the morning peak service in the Chester direction will be approximately half-hourly.
A vast improvement.
In the Manchester direction, trains approximately half hourly, leaving Chester at 0558, 0621 (only to Stockport, forms a service back to Chester), 0651 arr Piccadilly 0818, 0715 Saturdays Excepted to Stockport only arr 0839 (much better for those for Stockport College), 0758 arr 0931.
In the evening the services are more evenly spread than at present with the last being the 2246.
The 1459 equivalent is diagrammed for a 142.
John let them know this would not work with the scholar loadings from Greenbank.
Northern said they will do their best to swap it for a 15x which he thinks would not leave anyone behind.
Saturdays
As above, though without the Saturdays Excepted services. These to be all 2 cars, which John pointed out wouldn’t be sufficient on special event days. They will do their best to strengthen trains for these events.
Sundays
Similar to as present with 4 cars diagrammed.
Summary
Rather better than we had expected as the rumour machine had suggested no real change.
