To think there's something really broken about west coast/northern trains?

[MossyPillows]

I don't hear much about it online, but wonder if anyone has noticed this steady but thorough decline in services?
I travel by rail for work between Lancashire and South Cumbria, most Avanti trains are cancelled, very delayed or overly full. This is every day of the week, although much worse on Sundays.
Also issues with Northern Rail, which seemed to be functioning ok until this year. A rail worker at Windermere told us today that 'no one wanted to work Sundays' so the trains were all cancelled for today.
Apparently this had nothing to do with the coming strikes.

Does anyone know what the heck is happening or if there is any awareness countrywide of this issue? It is forcing people into car use even if they choose not to, and god help those who rely on the system to take children to school between towns, or getting to work on time.

It feels like a managed decline, but of course that makes no sense.

I live in this route generally Avanti to London is ok although I never rely on the last one of the day.

Northern and trans Pennine are utterly shit and far worse. The stop train Carnforth to Leeds is fairly reliable for Northern but beyond that...

Avanti is shit. I've only limited experience of LNER, but those limited experiences were much better. But I don't want to have to add (and pay for) the extra journey to then get me from the east coast to the west.

Virgin West Coast was pretty dire too - anyone remember those awful toilets that talked?

It’s not great down south either - GWR have been regularly cancelling trains on Sundays for weeks and telling people not to travel.
I live in Wales and Transport for Wales don’t seem to have the same issues, maybe because they are owned by Welsh government?

We're in Cumbria and the train service is horrendously bad. Northern are an absolute joke.

They cancelled trains a couple of weeks ago and didn't provide any kind of replacement service, leaving people stranded miles away from home. A friend of mine gets the train to work and had to get lift back with a total stranger - a taxi would have cost him about £60!

He's had to buy a car now as the service is just so unreliable.

Does anyone know if there are any plans to address it?

If you look at Avanti's website now, you see it says '6 out of 6 routes affected' 😓Not surprising, alas.

Has the Sunday issue got significantly worse since the pay agreement then? Seems rather shortsighted of whomever was involved in the negotiations!

West Mids Railway are equally as shit as Avanti. Early morning and late night trains are frequently cancelled. Again, lack of drivers. I suspect it won't improve the closer they get to the end of their franchise if they know it's going to be nationalised.

TfW's main crime is running two-carriage trains at peak demand times, like rugby internationals. After one weekend when three dangerously overcrowded trains went straight through our station without letting anyone on, meaning we missed the match, we don't even consider it.

With Manchester at one end of the line and Cardiff at the other, it can be hellish.

No Sunday working is a historic railway thing as far as I'm aware it has always been a thing across every part of the network, drivers signallers everything.
The unions are also pushing for a 4 day week, fatigue is a huge health and safety risk on the railways where human error is the leading cause of accidents. So huge investment needed to recruit and increase the work force to accommodate shorter working hours.

Happens in the south West too

Oh I totally agree about the capacity issue - we had to board a rammed one carriage wonder to Cardiff once - the conductor got off the train, looked at us all standing on the platform, shrugged and said ‘good luck!’

I regularly travel Glasgow to London for work. I did it this week and the Glasgow train was so late arriving into Preston that they cancelled it whilst I was on it and made it the 4pm service from Preston. It was really fun when people turned up trying to claim their seat reservations. After some 15 minutes of discussions (thankfully my seat was fine) the train manager made an announcement saying seat reservations from Preston were no longer valid. I didn't arrive at my hotel in London until gone 8pm .

Work had asked us, for environmental reasons, to avoid flying but all the warnings on the booking portal have disappeared because so many meetings and events have been missed due to train delays/cancellations. I'm down twice in January and I've just booked flights to Heathrow which were about £70 cheaper than the train.

Totally agree. I’m travelling the route for Christmas (no alternative) and felt disproportionately upset about the strikes, but it’s affecting my life.

Usually travel with a breast fed baby and if there are no seats due to cancellations and even worse a delay I can’t feed her which is just terribly stressful.

South Western trains are totally awful . Never run on time and either guards are late to the train or they're broken and diverting for repairs . Cannot remember having a service like I've paid for .

I regularly drive into cities like Liverpool, Manchester and Birmingham now where previously I would never have considered it and used the train. Rail travel in this country is dreadful; expensive, unreliable, overcrowded and designed to stress passengers to the max. 'Managed Decline' makes sense when you understand it in terms of profit extraction, of which there is never any ceiling, irrespective of the impact on human beings.

I started a new job in Manchester in August. There has been 2 days where there were no cancellations on the journeys I do. 2!

And if they aren't cancelled they WILL be late.

The amount I am spending on Ubers is disgraceful. I can get delay repay as I get a county card because the trains are inexplicably expensive.

I started a new job in Manchester in August. There has been 2 days where there were no cancellations on the journeys I do. 2!

Is your surprise at the fact there were any?😁

I used to commute into Manchester 25 years ago, swapping between car and train depending on how fed up I was with one or the other option. It was dire either way. Trains regularly cancelled, delayed, not stopping at stations due to overcrowding. Thankfully I WFH now but last week travelled into Manchester for a meeting. 8am train delayed by about 20 mins due to staff being late 'due to train delays' (ironic?) and 6pm train home, Oxford Rd station was so packed I couldn't easily get down the stairs to the platform, utter chaos, late trains, staff had no idea which train was at the platform, finally got on one I was told was 'going north', standing room only. I can't believe nothing's changed in a quarter of a century.

That must be very hard. I’m shocked if no-one offers you a seat when you have a baby.

I agree that life in general is becoming more and more stressful due to a lack of motivation and organisation from those who manage our essential services. No one is even trying to hide the decline any more. Bit by bit, over time, as each essential service crumbles away, those niggles all begin to add up.
It creates stress, cynicism, anxiety and just a general sense of hopelessness.

We should not feel forced to have to increase car use when we have the train stock and the railways intact. It's not only stressful, it's embarrassing.

If we can't trust booking an important journey, what has happened? Why are so many things suddenly left to disintegrate? I also think a lot of companies used covid to stop even trying anymore. I could sense this early on, for some reason.

I honestly can't wait for nationalisation. Some of my older relatives wring their hands and say 'oh it was terrible before they were privatised' but surely they can't have been as bad as they are now?! Either way a change is needed, letting businesses run things into the ground because of no accountability has to stop.

It wasn't marvellous before privatisation but it was nowhere near as bad as it is now.