I have just got back from a meeting in Manchester. Until I got back to Leicester this afternoon all the trains turned up on time, and even then there was only a 30-minute wait.The evening news will be full of "Britain in snow chaos" stories, for which read "London is snow chaos". The real position was more mixed than that and I was impressed with how well the railways coped.
True, the train to Manchester this morning was diverted because of "a fatality at Stockport", but that just mean we took the more picturesque route via New Mills and Marple - the way Sheffield to Manchester trains went when I was a lad.
you are not the only one I am currently in Leeds having come across from Rhayader via the M6 toll. bit dicey on the M54 near Wolves but otherwise a fairly clear run.
ReplyDeleteI've just made a 5 hour journey from Slough to Cheadle Hulme. I travelled north on a train running 90 minutes late, most of that delay caused by weather problems south of Reading, and lost further time because it had missed it's path and kept getting stuck behind local stopping trains.
ReplyDeleteWhen I reached Stockport, all the local trains were running on time.
I went to Leeds from Lancaster, coming back by a different route. So I crossed the Pennines by two different routes, Skipton and Standedge and both performed perfectly. On the other hand a reduced service from Leeds to London showed the ECML was having problems, and when I changed at Manchester coming back all arrivals from Euston were and hour late, so the WCML was suffering too. But the point, always, is that trains get through in times when driving would be dicey.
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