Most unusual combination of trains running a service.
 

While waiting for a train a couple of weeks ago a train arriving in the other direction (more than 20 minutes late) was a 150 in North Western livery, followed by a 156 in Arriva Trains Northern livery, then a 142 in Mersey Travel livery.

This was on the 9:30 from Northwich (Cheshire) to Blackpool, having gone from St-Annes-on-Sea (Lancashire) to Greenbank (Cheshire) in the other direction.

I only found out this morning why this combination of trains was used. Apparently the horn was out of order on the 156 and couldn't easily be fixed. The only spare unit available was a 142. Northern decided that it would take too long to detach the 156, and that replacing it with a 142 would likely lead to more overcrowding than usual. So they attached the 142 to the front. Apparently what they forgot is that 142s shouldn't be hauling two sprinter trains full of passengers and caused the service to run slower than normal.

Why is it that most TOCs can't have a few locomotive engines to use in this sort of situation. If they did it would probably reduce the number of cancellations due to faults with trains as well?

The sad fact is that nowadays, running a railway is about generating money and not about providing a transport service. Just look at the phenomenal amounts that franchisees are paying into the treasury. Train passengers in the UK are really just paying another stealth tax, which is why we have some of the highest fares in Europe.

Thus it figures that it costs a TOC far less to cancel the odd service rather than permanently hire a 'Thunderbird' which is not often used (plus the incurred costs of driver training/traction refreshing).

There are exceptions to this but they tend to be the prestigiuos TOCs rather than the everyday ones; eg GNER keeps a 67 in readiness at KX.

I'm not sure why the 142 was "hauling" the 150/156 as they all have the same type of "multiple working" system. If it was only the horn that was faulty on the 156 it should still have been able to provide power for the combined train along with the 150.

Yea, if neither the high or low tone of the horn was working it's usual practice to remarshall the train to 'box in' the faulty unit with a good one in front of it. I don't know these particular traction types, but I would have thought that they could work in multiple.

I'm not sure if 'hauling' is the right word but I know someone who was travelling on the train when the 142 was at the front and he said the front train was accelerating and braking very slowly.

Yup have a coconut, hauling is exactly the right word, as defined in the good book. It's hauling if the traction is at the front with respect to movement, and propelling if it is anywhere else.

The expression 'drag' is slang and tends to grate on some railwaymen's nerves, myself included. Maybe I'm a bit oversensitive though because when I was a trainee we were made to stand in the corner if we used slang.

(No doubt there'll be a cacophony of grizzled drivers along soon who have driven every traction known to man and have always said drag. :rolleyes: )

I think we're getting side-tracked by trying to define the word "hauling".
It doesn't really matter if the correct term is hauled, pulled, towed, dragged or something else. What I can't understand, if the only problem was a faulty horn, why the engines of the 150 and 156 were not being used in multiple with the 142 in order to provide power for the whole train .:confused:
No wonder it was running late if the 142 was being asked to tow, sorry haul:), a trailing load of 146 tonnes + passengers.

Train companies are more likely to have to issue rail travel vouchers for a cancelled train than a delayed train, so that may be the reason that fines are lower.

It's annoying that companies like Virgin and GNER aren't allowed to timetable their trains to take longer to meet puncunality targets, yet other companies such as Northern Rail and Arriva Trains Wales are. Arriva Trains Wales provide the most obvious example of it in the Manchester to North Wales route, whereby trains are timetabled to take 3 minutes to get from Manchester Piccadilly to Manchester Oxford Road, but 9 minutes to get from Oxford Rd to Piccadilly.

Could it be that the generous ATW timings between Oxford Road and Piccadilly are to allow for the possibility of a prolonged stop at Oxford Road? If you are to believe the public timetable, the xx.41 TransPennine service from Blackpool North to Manchester Airport is scheduled to overtake the ATW service between Oxford Road and Piccadilly so this timing peculiarity is more likely to be for operational reasons rather than timetable "fiddling" on the part of ATW.
Because the section of track between Castlefields Junction and Manchester Piccadilly East Junction is so heavily used some degree of flexibilty needs to be built into the timetable to allow for trains running out of sequence and this is probably an example of it. Surely Network Rail wouldn't allow Arriva Trains Wales the luxury of such timings on this busy section of railway without good reason...........or would they?:rolleyes:

It was Northern's Customer Relations team who said the problem was a faulty horn, so it's possible that they got it mixed up with a delayed service elsewhere.

I'm not sure that is the reason. On the rare occasion when I've used that service it's not waited at Oxford Rd and arrived at Piccadilly a few minutes before it's timetabled arrival time. The Deansgate to Oxford Rd section is also one track in each direction so normally whichever train goes through Deansgate first arrives at Piccadilly first and vice versa.

The Manchester to Chester/North Wales service does not seem to be coordianted with the TP Express services from Manchester Airport to Preston and beyond. Two trains are timetabled to arrive at Piccadilly at 07:54: an Arriva Trains Wales service from Chester via Warrington and a TP Express service from Blackpool. As both would require the same platform at Piccadilly it is likely that the Arriva Trains Wales service would arrive at Piccadilly first, but if it's late at Oxford Rd then it may be made to wait as a consequence.

Also there is no apparant reason why the 07:27 train from Chester to Manchester via Warrington would take 9 minutes between Oxford Rd and Piccadilly, other than to meet puctunality targets.

The fact that this is the 07:27 train makes me guess that because it arrives into Manchester at just before 08:00 rush means that it is likely to be a busy service and needs extra time at Oxford Road to offload all of those commuters. Plus from what it seems it is allowing the 07:52 TPX to overtake at Oxford Road. What I have previously seen on these operations are that the TPX airport services use ther track opposite to the ATW one, so as this is on a service to the airport and needs to be on time, it overtakes the ATW on route to Piccadilly.

But that one is a bit of an anomaly anyway since the majority of TPX diagrams on that servce arrive just before xx:59. So Arriva passengers could leave the xx:54 and wait 5 mins on the same platform for an airport connection.