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First TransPennine Express rolling stock complaints

I have little sympathy with TPE. Instead of using the 185s displaced by the 350/4s to strengthen the pre-existing cross-pennine services, they introduced the new service linking Liverpool and Newcastle via Manchester Victoria.

This action has had a number of consequences:

1. Performance has significantly slipped as capacity has been squeezed in a number of places 2. Service intervals have deteriorated in some places (e.g. York-Northallerton)
2. The choice of trains to strengthen often seems wrong (overcrowding on three-car 08.20 Dewsbury-Huddersfield is gross whereas 08.46 is a six-car and is rarely half-full)
3. Heroic coupling of units planned in the height of peak (17.27 from Piccadilly)
4. Northern was forced to make many timetable changes to allow TPE changes, which have caused both performance deterioration and poorer planned services

Seems to me that TPE have (perhaps in the dying days of their franchise) opted for a performance risky ‘ORCATS raid’ rather than providing more capacity on the then-existing services. One wonders what performance modelling NR undertook before accepting the timetable change, and what involvement DfT had in the process.

Re: TPE overcrowding caused by ‘chronic’ train shortage