Manchester Victoria - Blackpool North
 

This is Northerns new hourly service which starts on 14th December. It will certainly be a new experience as services last ran this way in May 1989. Once again Victoria will be directly accessible to Chorley, Preston & Blackpool and certainly represents something of a turn-around in Victoria's fortunes aswell as the obvious connectional opportunities.

Maybe its also exposes the Oxford Road corridors biggest flaw - congestion and capacity constraints. Mind you, even with the Windsor Link in place both 4-track approaches from East & West still favour Victoria in terms of capacity (remember its only 2-track from Ordsall lane to Deansgate)and the expansion of Salford Central from 2 to 4 platforms next year will only enhance this further.

Sounds like a great move considering the congestion on the Deansgate line, remember being stuck around there for a qhile when I was on a Voyager that was meant to be express from Bolton to Piccadilly. Also the paltforms at Piccadilly for those services are not good for terminating trains since they ahve to get passengers off as quick as possible to make way for up coming traffic.

Theres been strong rumours that Northern might be getting Class 180 DMUs to operate on Victoria - Blackpools. If true it would certainly give TPX a run for their money as the 180's are of a good Intercity standard. I suspect it would probably be used on one of the busy peak hour runs.

I think one of the reasons Victoria's won the Blackpool trains is due to the Piccadilly - Euston Pendolinos going 3 trains p/h from December and they can't have Sprinters clogging up Piccadilly's throat even further. Mind you if it means more reliable services for Buxton & Blackpool passengers then the change will be worthwhile.

To add to this point, this might be a strategy to get Northern units off the Wigan stetch of the line. Possibly if this is a new service to Blackpool it could mean the end of another, and possibly the Blackpool to Liverpool one, so that the 390s will not get caught up in traffic.

According to the recent TPX Timetable, on Sundays only from 9th November TPX services (Liverpool-Newcastle-Scarborough) will be running over the Chat Moss route calling at Newton-Le-Willows and Manchester Victoria. Manchester Airport-Newcastle will also reverse at Salford Cresent before proceeding via Victoria. So Sundays between Nov 9th & Dec 14th you'll be seeing half-hourly TPX at Victoria on Sundays. It'll be interesting:)

Yes I remember they make their way to Victoria for engineering works during the Winter Sundays, managed to ride two 185s in 06 when they were through via Victoria, interesting experience with the Salford Crescent reversal. Also, will the Hull services be using Vic? Not seen a 170 at that station before.

Not sure about Hull, they were using it last year - I think Victoria had a 2-hourly service, think it's just Liverpool-Newcastle-Middlesborough-Scarborough & Manchester Airport-Newcastle. Looking at the timetable it looks like half-hourly 185's through Victoria all day, mind you I suppose the new Victoria-Blackpool service will be running on Sundays aswell which will make it an interesting place to be on a Sunday this November/December.

But there will be an hourly Hazel Grove to Preston service from December. So the number of trains going through Deansgate will remain the same.

However, maybe the reason for it being a Hazel Grove to Preston service over a Buxton to Preston service is that Northern are scared of a train missing it's path in between Stockport and Piccadilly.

The main losers from the extra London services to Manchester will be the stations between Chelford and Sandbach, which will lose two peak trains in and out of Manchester and stations between Mouldsworth and Navigation Rd which will see peak trains starting and terminating at Stockport, rather than Manchester.

On doing a google search the only pages that can be found related to the above is a few posts on a rail forum from people claiming to be Northern Rail staff. They are also saying Huddersfield crews would learn the 180s, even though in the Dec 08 timetables all Blackpool services will terminate at Manchester Victoria.

If there could be any truth in the rumours you would have thought local media would have publicised the story. After all the Welsh media publicised that Arriva Trains Wales may use 180s on Holyhead to Cardiff services, even though Arriva said 180s were one of a number of options that they were looking at and later dismissed them for cost reasons.

They may do at a later date, or simply may not have found it newsworthy? I mean it's down to the editor's choice, etc. really - plus they'd only really report it if there was a press release?