Railways

[SteveH]

Video of locomotive thundering through North Wales harks back to age of steam
The Great Britain XV service is touring the country

https://www.dailypost.co.uk/news/north-wales-news/video-locomotive-thundering-through-north-26726291

[SteveH]

Snowdon Mountain Railway locomotive found ablaze in late night fire
Firefighters were called to the heritage railway's depot and a steam engine's cab suffered 70% damage

https://www.dailypost.co.uk/news/north-wales-news/snowdon-mountain-railway-locomotive-found-27000626

[SteveH]

1960s Midland Pullman service stops at Llandudno station!

https://www.northwalespioneer.co.uk/news/23565060.1960s-midland-pullman-service-stops-llandudno-station/?ref=rss&IYA-reg=49560bcd-5a9c-47f0-8fc5-ba2e71710589

[SteveH]

Avanti is set to cut trains from the North Wales to London route over the peak summer weeks. The operator was already under pressure over its services between the region and the UK capital - with the frequency below pre-pandemic levels.

Now the firm will temporarily make a further cut to services. There will be four fewer trains per day during the week.

https://www.dailypost.co.uk/news/north-wales-news/avanti-slammed-over-plans-remove-27120868

[Cambrian]

Surely high time the DfT or ORR took the franchise away from Avanti.
TfW don't seem to be much better running only 67% of pre-Covid level of service.
And people thought British Railways was bad!

[Ian]

Surely high time the DfT or ORR took the franchise away from Avanti.
TfW don't seem to be much better running only 67% of pre-Covid level of service.
And people thought British Railways was bad!

Virgin didn't even bother renewing their franchise, so poor were the projected returns.

[mull]

The idiots in power have just given Avanti a 6 month extension. Talk about rewarding failure you could not make it up.

[Helig]

Renationalisation of the railways in the UK is long overdue. Along with many of the other public service bodies in the UK, privatisation has been a disaster and not in the public interest. British Rail had its faults but it was far superior to this shower. The next proposal from the UK government is to abolish return tickets and it will only be possible to buy a single ticket. A return journey will require two single tickets. no prizes for guessing that this will be more expensive and passengers will be restricted to the train for which the ticket is booked. They couldn't run the proverbial in a brewery.

[Ian]

Renationalisation of the railways in the UK is long overdue. Along with many of the other public service bodies in the UK, privatisation has been a disaster and not in the public interest.

But it was in the interest of the Tories, as they managed to get people buying back things which they already owned. Perhaps we get the governments we deserve?

[Cambrian]

Anyone recall the "Welsh Dragon" shuttle between Rhyl and Llandudno ?

When introduced - as a local initiative - in 1950, the then District Traffic Superintendent at Chester, F H Fisher, said: "I feel that it is a contribution by British Railways to the enterprise of these resorts and it will no doubt bring in new visitors".

It's hard to imagine any of today's TfW functionaries ensconced in Pontypridd:

a) Mentioning the word "enterprise"
b) Mentioning "visitors"
c) Thinking outside the box to introduce a new service.

At least Fisher had an understandable job title, was well known in his District and introduced many initiatives including the Cambrian Radio Cruise and Welsh Chieftain rail tours.  Oh, when things were managed by railway people in Chester and computers didn't say "no"!

[mull]

My father worked in Chester Control from 1946 to 1949 and used to talk about Mr Fisher and how well he ran the area.
It was another world then and being based close to the area he understood what the public wanted and how to provide it.

Remember the Land Cruises from when I was a little boy. If I remember rightly one started Llandudno and the other from Rhyl. They ran via Ruthin ,Corwen , Barmouth and Portmadoc. With a stop in Barmouth so passengers could stretch their legs for an hour or so.
Some of the carriages were part of the pre war Coronation Scot train. They knew how to look after passengers in those days.

There was also a train ran from Rhyl to Llanberis, calling at stations on the coast with an Observation Coach on the rear.
Each train had a courier giving a commentary of things to see.

[Cambrian]

Thanks for that mull. Yes, you are quite correct about the Land Cruise and Llanberis seasonal trains.  There was also a Western Region one from Pwllheli following the same route which allowed time at Rhyl.  The Oswestry DTS had thought Mr Fisher's idea was so good he soon managed to introduce the same concept.  However, the Pwllheli one did not have such prestigious stock as the LMR ones.  Mr Fisher also introduced the Clwyd Ranger which was a diesel multiple unit which made and afternoon excursion from Llandudno to Corwen. There were also diesel evening excursions to Bala as well as Rhyl to Llangollen ones.

Many years ago, a neighbour's brother was one of the Deputy Chief Controllers at Chester and managed to get me a visit to the sanctum of the Control Room - sadly no longer there as everything is now done from an anonymous unit in Cardiff. At Chester, the wall in front of the section controllers comprised a long, fascinating panel showingall the track and sidings from Worleston (just this side of Crewe) through to Holyhead including the branches.  By then most of the branches were closed and no longer had track.

I was surprised - and delighted - on a visit to the railway museum at York a few years ago to see that the panel with all this information had survived and safely lodged at the museum. I had often wondered what had happened to the panel as so many historical features in the 60s and 70s was scrapped or burnt so was glad this item had survived through someone's good sense.

[SteveH]

PLANS to introduce more services to Manchester Airport from North Wales have been ditched by Transport for Wales (TfW).

TfW said their new planned service, to link Bangor to Manchester Airport, is not being introduced. It was set to run every hour.

There is currently a direct TfW train to and from Llandudno to Manchester Airport. This was set to change to a 'one train per hour' service from Manchester to Bangor (instead of Llandudno).

The new service would have meant a "slight increase" in frequency and extra stops to Bangor.

cont https://www.northwalespioneer.co.uk/news/23669190.extra-trains-linking-manchester-airport-llandudno-scrapped/

[Cambrian]

You would have thought any infrastructure changes would have been programmed at the time the 197s were ordered.

At the moment, Bangor benefits from a weekday roughly hourly service from TfW of 18 trains towards Chester, 7 to Cardiff, 6 to Birmingham via Salop, 2 to Manchester Airport, 1 Crewe, 1 Junction and 1 Salop.  It can be assumed the last three are really stock movements. This pattern is augmented by 6 Avanti services - 5 Euston, 1 Birmingham via Crewe.

From what the TfW spin has been, Llandudno loses the roughly hourly service to Manchester and benefits from an hourly Lime Street service which is actually the Chester/Lime Street extended.  So Bangor gets one extra through service per hour towards Chester.

So no real benefit for Llandudno unless you want to go to Lime Street instead!

[SteveH]

THE latest model of Avanti West Coast train visited the North Wales coastline for the first time last week as it made a journey to Llandudno Junction.

Avanti?s new class 805 bi-mode units made a Crewe to Llandudno Junction return trip on Wednesday, July 26.

The trains - capable of running on both electric and diesel power - also made stops at Chester, Rhyl and Prestatyn enroute.

cont https://www.northwalespioneer.co.uk/news/23689303.new-avanti-train-visits-north-wales-llandudno-junction-journey/?ref=rss&IYA-reg=49560bcd-5a9c-47f0-8fc5-ba2e71710589

Units 805001 and 805003 at Llandudno Junction railway station (Image: Garry Stroud)