Northern: Rail firm brought under government control
 

Northern's failure is in large part down to ancient infrastructure which struggles to cope with the high volume of trains and passengers at peak times.

Put simply, there is no silver bullet for improving our railways.

Full article.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-51298820

Bit unfair to blame Northern for the mess up with the new timetable in May 2018 as they didn't write the new tables, but there is/was a lot they could have been doing to sort out all the other problems.

They have a monopoly operation on my local railway and we were one of the last areas operating pacers ...

From what I've read, it seems like they've been very short of rolling stock. This issue is controlled by the Government, in the form of the DfT. One of the many insane aspects of privatisation is that TOCs have to HIRE their trains from ROSCOs, which are owned by banks. Bad for the TOCs, crippling for the taxpayer.

If the worst comes to the worst, BR, you have always got comedy to fall back on.

Yup, laugh in the face of adversity.