Wednesday 31 December 2014

Victoria Blockade At Easter

In this morning's timetable updates came a load of changes for Good Friday (April 3rd), when Manchester Victoria seems to have lost most of its services.  For example, stopping services from Liverpool via Chat Moss are diverted to terminate at Oxford Road.

This is pure guesswork on my part but I wonder if this is the first batch of timetable changes for a four-day blockade.  Things will probably become clearer over the next few days.

Update 4 January:  The remaining trains on Good Friday have been removed from the timetable, but at the time of writing Saturday and Monday still have normal service, and Sunday has lots of trains, with buses to Stalybridge.  So either it's a one day closure, or there are a lot more timetable updates to come.  Your guess is as good as mine.

Update 9 January:  Saturday and Sunday and Monday have been updated,  removing most trains, so it looks like the major disruption will be all weekend.

Update 13 January:  A notice has now appeared on the National Rail web site, revealing that this will be a five day blockade running Friday 3 April until Tuesday 7 April.  Not all the timetable alterations have been loaded in the database yet.

Sunday 28 December 2014

Next Timetable

The next timetable (valid from 17th May 2015 until 12th December) is beginning to appear in my schedule database.   At this early stage all information must be considered provisional.

From a first glance at the times for Huyton, they appear to be exactly the same as the current timetable.  Except that the late evening services Sunday to Thursday are trains.

There have been rumours recently about the Liverpool to Warrington Bank Quay service being withdrawn in favour of another Liverpool/Manchester stopper.  Another rumour suggested combining these into a Liverpool - Bank Quay - Manchester all stations service.  Neither of these changes appears in the timetable so far.

I note with some amusement that the timetable planners still haven't been told about the new layout at Huyton, and are therefore still showing up trains on platform 2.  No doubt we'll get the same nonsense of the departure screens showing the wrong platforms as we did at the last timetable change, earlier this month.

I just want to emphasise once again that the information released this morning is liable to alteration and should not be relied upon.