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Northern Rail have also retimed some of their journeys from Monday 8th October until Saturday 8th December to take longer.
The services that will take longer include:
Blackpool to Manchester and beyond
Buxton to Manchester and beyond
Chester to Manchester via Altrincham
Southport to Manchester and beyond
The official reason for the journeys being retimed to take longer is the winter leaf fall pattern. However, it seems to be more a case of meeting punctuality figures.
The Northern Rail services between Blackpool and Manchester will take 2 minutes longer, while the Transpennine Express services won’t take any extra time. Does this mean that 185s aren’t affected by leaves, but 150s and 156s are?
Chester to Manchester via Altrincham trains are timetabled to take up to 8 minutes longer (4 in most cases) in the Manchester direction, but not more than 2 minutes in the Chester direction. Do they expect the leaves to only fall on one side of the track? Also, anyone who knows this line will know it goes through Delamere Forest, where I’d expect lots of leaves would fall on the track. However, between Cuddington and Mouldsworth (the stations either side of Delamere) the times remain unchanged.
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