Here is the letter that Lindsay Endell wrote.

Short Trains

The 17:17 from MCV to Leeds on Thursday 14 July was a 2 carriage train. The service is heavily used, especially from Victoria, and there is a limit to how many people can be crammed onto two carriages. It is not unusual for passengers to be left on the platform because the train is full. Please make three carriages the norm rather than a pleasant surprise.

Northern Customer Relations have been in touch to say they've had the enquiry.

Here's hoping they act onit!

Unfortunately, Northern Rail are limited on this rail route as they are elsewhere. The issue comes down to money and a lack of stock. In 2004, when the franchise was awarded, it was let on a no growth basis. Northern have done their best but they have struggled to find more stock as they, National Express East Anglia, East Midlands Trains and First Great Western fight for a diminishing amount of rolling stock that is being cascaded as result of new orders. The good news is that stock is coming to Northern Rail. They are due additional diesel trains from First Great Western and London Midland, so this should improve the situation in the coming months.

A fine response, Mr Dixon, but it doesn't explain why the majority of the trains running during the day are three carriages long and half empty but the rush hour trains two carriages and heaving.

When the Oldham Loop was closed, we were told that the units from that service would be used to expand the trains on affected routes. This does not appear to have occurred.

No, it doesn't. The explanation appears to be that the trains that operate on that service are part of a long diagram (set of services) that they must follow that take over 6 hours to complete. The three car trains are used on peak services in and out of Leeds during the morning and evening peak but spend the day trundling to Manchester.

Yes, there are possible improvements for you that could be made with a timetable recast. Now is certainly the best time to push as they will be finalising the timetable for December at the moment but Northern are limited by what they can put on and where demand is strongest. It is also influenced by subsidy. West Yorkshire puts in a lot of money into rail services compared to Greater Manchester.

Northern are undertaking a lot of reliability improvements which will hopefully mean that train reliability and capacity should improve. It is frustrating but running trains is certainly not as easy as running a bus service can be.

Hello Lindsay - Myf from mySociety here.

Good luck with your efforts to get Northern Rail to lengthen their trains!
This is just to let you know that FixMyTransport.com has now quietly turned from a beta site into a public one, so you can link to the page and gather support among friends and family if you'd like to.

Our social media buttons are now fully functional, so why not give them a go and see if you can spread the word a bit?

We'd love to know any further thoughts you have about the site, too - we're still actively making changes based on user suggestions. Just use the 'feedback' button at the top of each page.

Thanks again for being one of FixMyTransport's first users - hope it turns out to be a useful tool for you.

Peter, I'm afraid I have very little faith in Northern on this front. Last time they had a timetable shuffle, my line was "improved" by cutting the number of services that stop at my station. The times of the stopping services shifted, and a number of passengers had to change their working hours because they could no longer get to their workplace at the required time. At one point we were due to have one train per hour at my station - we managed to get two concessions: at rush hour, there would be an additional stop on the MCV-LDS service, and if any service to my station was cancelled, the next train on that route would have a stop put on. Of course, nobody told the station staff that so we had to fight for it to be implemented.

This was a problem even ten years ago, when I was commuting on the other end of the line (the Leeds -> Bradford end).

Hi Lindsay - why don't you try snapping some photos that show the consequences of this problem? You can upload them to your supporters page, and everything will seem a bit more real - you might even get more supporters...

In all honesty Tom, whilst pictures are good, it is hard figures and a consistent record that helps more. One way of doing it would be to create a journey log. Note the service, delays, any external factors (previous train cancelled) and number of passengers standing/spare seats.

Hi Linz,

I've taken the liberty of spreading your URL around a bit to see if there's anyone else out there who might be interested in adding their name to this.

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=24872935950#!/group.php?gid=24872935950
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Hebden-Bridge/343290002650?sk=wall
http://www.rochdaleonline.co.uk/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=13608&title=commuter-trains-too-short

And there's also a piece queued for moderation on http://www.hebdenbridge.co.uk. Let's hope some of these bear fruit.

Myf

So, rather annoyingly, a small debate started up on the Rochdale online forums, but they have a strict policy of no outbound links, so they've removed my link back to this page.

What that means is that there's some insightful comment on that page, but no people coming here to actually support your campaign.

Here's what one person says:

"Any one who embarks upon the daily commute to/from Manchester will be only to aware of what it's like to travel on the "Sardine Express". Boarding a peak time train at Castleton is bad enough but I pity anyone who has to boards at either Mills Hill or Moston, they usually stand a 1/10 chance of getting on. The situation at Mills Hill has been exaggerated since the closure of the Oldham Loop, with commuters now being forced in to using Mills Hill for their journey.

There may be light at the end of this horrendous daily commute though. Northern Rail have been promising additional carriages for some time now (Since April at least if not earlier). http://rochdaleonline.co.uk/news-features/2/news-headlines/55200/carriages-boost-for-rochdale-and-calder-valley-route The question should be when will these carriages arrive? That's what we should all be pushing Northern on - The fulfillment of their pledge. I am sure STORM will happily take up this cause."

If you'd like to see the other comments too, they are all on http://www.rochdaleonline.co.uk/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=13608&PID=274821#274821

Myf

Have you seen this? http://www.rail.co/2011/08/10/northern-rail-to-introduce-more-carriages/

“We are delighted that we will be able to provide much needed additional capacity for our passengers from December. These carriages will deliver an extra 800,000 seats on peak time services across the north of England every year.

“Overcrowding has been one of the biggest challenges we have faced and one of the biggest causes of complaint tor passengers.

“I would like to thank our stakeholders for their support in helping demonstrate the clear need for more carriages for the north of England.”

Would LOVE to think this page played its part, although I do know this issue has been going on far longer than FMT has been around. :)

FMT was the straw though ;)

Ha ha, hope you're right, Bill. That would be nice to believe.

Tons more insight on here now: http://mancunian1001.wordpress.com/2011/08/12/all-your-pacers-belong-to-us/. The problem with mentioning campaigns on other sites - they start talking about them over there!

I'm delighted to see that Northern has responded - but disheartened to read that while we are promised additional carriages they will be Pacers and Sprinters - elderly secondhand stock with all the problems that entails. 22 'new' carriages across the whole of the Northern franchise isn't actually going to make a lot of difference, especially when those carriages are shorter than the equivalent 153s, and therefore carry fewer passengers.

I happened to get the 0848 from Manchester Victoria to Bradford last week. Interestingly a very crowded 2 carriage train arrived at 0840. When everyone had disembarked the a further carriage (that had been standing at the platform) was added to make the train a 3 carriage train. This was somewhat empty all the way through to Bradford.

Although I sympathise with people on this route, having travelled on it for a few times there mainly seem to be 3 carriage services, and with trains every 20-30 minutes there does seem to be plenty of seats available on the trains I have been on (even at rush hour). This contrasts somewhat with the trains that go between Manchester and New Mills which are always 2 carriages (the bus trains) and get are always overcrowded at peak times.

If there's a shortage of carriages, then it is very difficult to make existing trains longer *or* run additional trains. I believe Northern have been trying to get additional carriages for some time - we'll have to trust them to make good use of them when they do arrive.

One solution which I've seen used in Helsinki: where nearly all of the commuter trains are EMUs, during peak hours a few loco-hauled services are also run for commuter benefit. This greatly increases capacity on the outer suburban routes and frees up EMUs for the very heavy inner suburban traffic. After arrival the loco-hauled trains are quickly shunted out of the way into the nearby depot, to be sorted out once the rush dies down.

Note that to make a longer train, the extra carriage(s) have to be available at the *start* of the journey. It seems likely that the extra mentioned in comment #21 arrived from a different direction, probably carrying it's full complement of pasengers, and was attached to the departing train mainly to move it to where it was needed next.

arriva trains wales really need to add more carriages on. they sometimes only have two! and people have to stand for about an hour! its really unfair when you pay the same price but dont get a seat.

@Ian, if you're travelling from Bradford you get a better service - more trains and fewer passengers at that point of the journey. I travel from Walsden and in the peak travel hours we have a reduced service, and are almost full by the time the train reaches us from Leeds-Bradford. Not all the Bradford-MCV trains stop at all the stations, which is why I think Northern should make sure they put 3 coaches on when they do stop at all the stations. I'm also pleased that when you've travelled the line "a few times" it's usually three carriages. However, I travel the line twice a day and the majority of the trains I get are two carriages.

@Jonathan, if they can't give us longer trains, they could make sure that all the trains that travel on the line stop at all the stations on the line. That would also help the situation. We have been promised 'new' coaches from October - but what we're getting are old Pacers and Sprinters, which have a smaller capacity than the 153s we currently see most of. So we may end up with three carriages but less capacity!