Accrington Railways - Robert Kenyon

Central, missing out Brierfield, Nelson and Colne in order to get back on time. The 10:59 to Southport having been late heading for Blackburn, was still 11 minutes down when returning east. The explanation given over the Tannoy was “congestion”. On Friday the explanation was “animals on the line”, which meant the 10:36 Preston to Colne train was 18 minutes late, and once again terminating in Burnley. Notices at the station indicated that the strikes on Saturdays would continue on the 27 th and the 3 rd and 10 th of November, the weekend when Blackpool’s Illuminations are switched off. Since this information had been imparted I was told that these Saturday strikes would continue up until Christmas. On Monday the 29 th , 70:802 was again in charge of the VTG tanks. It would be the locomotive in charge throughout the week, whilst the 10:26 to Colne was 8 minutes down, but at least on this occasion going all the way and not terminating short of the end of the line. A minibus was again substituting for the Colne to Blackburn leg. The trains on the Blackburn to Southport service seemed to be double-manned, which suggested that there was some driver familiarisation taking place on this service. November There was to be no end as yet to the misery of weekend train travel on the East Lancs Line, as coaches and buses were replacing trains in the now ‘normal’ manner on Saturday the 10 th , due to industrial action, and on Sunday the 11 th , due to engineering work. The usual operators were on the services with Cranberry Coaches well to the fore on Sunday. On Wednesday the 14 th , the locomotive in charge of the VTG tanker train was 70:805, which replaced 70:802 the engine in charge on Monday the 12 th . MP Graham Jones was campaigning for better facilities at both Accrington and Church & Oswaldtwistle Railway Stations for disabled people. These would include a lift transfer across the lines between the platforms, which were modifications which are quite achievable and had been done at stations such as Radyr. However, I doubt whether there is sufficient patronage at even Accrington’s Station to justify this extra expense let alone at Church. He also wants a connection off trains from Lancashire to Leeds-Bradford Airport and is of course giving his full backing to the reinstatement of the Skipton - Colne link. Monday the 19 th , proved to be the worst day in the operations of Arriva Northern Rail, with over 50% of services either cancelled or running late. To compound their woes leaves on the line had caused operational problems in that an unusual number of units were out of service due to wheel flats which rendered them non-operational. The Ormskirk-Preston line had no trains at all, whilst even the Trans Pennine services were also affected. Over the course of the past few weeks more Class 150 DMUs have been given the Arriva Northern Rail livery and these include 147, 206, 214, 275 all from Northern’s colours, plus 101 and 123 out of First Group blue along with 156:423. This latter set was refurbished at the Knorr-Bremse works in Wolverton at the end of October. It will be followed by others of this class owned by Porterbrook Leasing to be operated by Arriva Northern Rail. More 156s will be cascaded down from ScotRail to strengthen the operators stock and these are numbers 447, 449, 465, 485 and 496. What does this mean for the East Lancs Line? Probably that the best we could hope for are refurbished units rather than the new CAF-built Class 195s, currently being delivered to the company’s depot at Edge Hill in Liverpool, on acceptance tests in the region and on the test track in the Czech Republic in Velim. Three of these ‘ Civity ’ units were due to be in service by the end of 2018. It wasn’t good news for Trans-Pennine Express either, as the Mk5 loco-hauled carriages have experienced over-responsive braking at slow speeds when being topped-and-tailed by Class 68 engines on the Velim Test Track. So they will now not be appearing until 2019, instead as before the end of this year. The RMT has announced that the one day strikes on Saturdays will now go on to the end of 2018, and problems for travellers on the East Lancs Line at weekends are being compounded by Sunday engineering works. There are several rumours on the street about the fate of Arriva Northern Rail. First I had been told that they were not pleased with the standard of workmanship of the CAF-built Class 195s, and had no plans to meet with the RMT in order to resolve the issue of Driver Only Operated (DOO) trains. This meant that there would be no Saturday services on the East Lancs Line, to name just one, up until 2019 at the earliest. I was informed that they were on the verge of throwing in the towel on their franchise, even before the new trains had come into service.

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