Great Western Coffee Shop

Not quite sure where else to post this so thought I'd put it here as it's as good a place as any..

My daughter was travelling Chiltern railways from Birmingham Moor Street to Marylebone and back today.. I checked.. There was no engineering works or alterations so all good..

Except.. there was.. but nothing I was alerted to as it was on the Birmingham New Street to Euston line.. However this, as you might imagine, caused a lot of overcrowding and delay on the Moor Street to Marylebone line.. I can't see that Chiltern were running any extra trains from Birmingham but I'm also not an expert on their timetable so may be wrong...

The information would have been good though if there was a way of alerting me to it (I used NR planner for my info).. The first I knew of why it was so bad was whilst I was at Marylebone waiting her "getting ever later" train!

Looking at realtimetrains. the only service from Brum that appeared delayed was the 1244 arrival which was 12 minutes late. Most others appeared on time, although I can imagine they were rather overcrowded.

It does appear odd that Virgin haven't run services into Euston via the Chiltern line this time, which has been the norm for recent blocks on the mainline, and which is consistent with recent policy to provide rail services where possible, even if they take somewhat longer that usual.

Chiltern didn't run extra, but ran their service all day with trains at peak strength, so they did what they could on the trains that ran.

I suspect Virgin were either saving money or some part of the route round to Euston wasn't available? However, they were obly ever 1tph and severely overcrowded when they did rin, so maybe they chose not to to spread everyone out zcross Chiltern - something that didn't happen when they ran their 1tph as most aimed to catch that

From the Virgin website its to renew all signalling between Kings Langley and Bushey

Know that, but trying to work out why the diverted trains via High Wycombe route didn't run....

When I took them a couple of years ago they weren't that overcrowded. Busy, but there were odd seats available. And that was with 10-car Voyagers each way, some services run as 15-car Voyagers. As there are no services at all serving Euston this weekend, apart from the sleepers this morning which used 1 platform only I'd be surprised if the opportunity isn't being taken to do some work in the area.

She was unlucky enough to be on that train.. Two hours standing up with little space to move for most of it is not ideal.. That is why I'd like to have known about it in advance and then we'd have made other plans.

I read elsewhere that the Virgin Voyager fleet was dealing with a diversion up north somewhere, and that Euston station approaches were not available.  Somewhere else it was mentioned that the GWML was partially closed somewhere in the Acton area.  It sounds as of there was a mixture of a lack of trains, lack of route, and lack of terminus...

Paul

There is a lot of Crossrail work in the Acton and Stockley Park areas.   

The WCML  anglo Scottish sleeper service is diverted along the ECML it joins / leaves the ECML in the London area via the North London Incline at Belle Isle (Belle Isle is between Gasworks Tunnels and Copenhagen Tunnels) The North London Line into Euston from the North London Line is different from the Chiltern, the  anglo Scottish sleeper service may have even work KX and not gone to Euston.   

Work at Belle Isle over Easter for the Thameslinks Canal Tunnels project lost its Easter Monday possessions to allow the anglo Scottish sleeper access to the North London Line

The Voyagers were being used on a token service from Glasgow-Carlisle via Kilmarnock. It really was a token service though, there was only one diagram and two trains in each direction. Voyagers were also being used for Crewe-Oxenholme via Manchester services. For some reason they ran via Bolton rather than the newly electrified Chat Moss route so Pendolinos couldn't be used.