Heart of Wales - mostly closed until end of August 2020

[whole diary]

[grahame]

Several Welsh stations are to lose train services for a "short time" because their platforms have raised social distancing concerns.

They are either too short or too curved to allow the opening of two train doors, Transport for Wales (TfW) said.
Services will no longer stop at Llanfairpwll and Valley on Anglesey, Conwy, Gilfach Fargoed in Caerphilly county or Sugar Loaf in Powys.

"A Short time" in Welsh Railway terms is, it seems, over a year!

From North Wales live

Rail passengers' journeys are still being disrupted because trains aren't stopping at stations due to COVID-19 restrictions.

Some 16 months after the first lockdown on March 23 last year, the pandemic means that some stations on Anglesey, the Conwy Valley and the Cambrian line remain closed.

A taxi service to help them reach stations which are open is available on Anglesey but one Senedd Member is "astonished" that no solution has been found.

two stations which travellers haven't been able to use for months are Llanfairpwll and Valley on Anglesey.

Rhun ap Iorwerth MS has now met the Transport for Wales chief executive to discuss the two stations' continued closure and also train overcrowding.

He told the MS that they are still working on a solution, including for improved PPE and training for guards.

Mr ap Iorwerth said: “I am astounded that in more than a year, no solution could be found that kept staff safe but that also allowed the service to do what it’s there to do, which is to pick passengers up and drop them off at stations!”

[froome]

I know both Llanfairpwll and Valley stations, and cannot understand on what basis either has had to close. Both platforms are I think pretty straight, so no bends to cause problems, and both should easily be long enough to open at least two carriage doors, and I would have thought more than that. As they are also the most used of the intermediate Anglesey stations, this decision seems to be utterly bizarre.

[Rhydgaled]

I know both Llanfairpwll and Valley stations, and cannot understand on what basis either has had to close. Both platforms are I think pretty straight, so no bends to cause problems, and both should easily be long enough to open at least two carriage doors, and I would have thought more than that. As they are also the most used of the intermediate Anglesey stations, this decision seems to be utterly bizarre.

By two carriage doors, do you mean "all the doors on two carriages" or "both doors on a single carriage". If the latter, then perhaps the problem is the rolling stock - I'm not sure if any of the TfW fleet have Selective Door Openning (SDO^▸ (Selective Door Opening)) systems (except perhaps the INTERCITY mark 4 carriages which I think I read were having it fitted). If there is no SDO, that means the guard has a choice of unlocking ALL the doors on that side the train (which in most cases will be longer than 1 carraige, although TfW do seem to have a large number of class 153s at the moment) or just one single door, that single door being the door that the guard is standing at and therefore unable to socially distance.

I don't know if TfW's fleet has SDO or not, but if it doesn't and the platforms are only 1 carriage long then TfW would only be able to serve those stations by running single-car class 153s on all services that call.

[froome]

The platforms, as far as I can recall, are long enough for two carriages to fully open.