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Back in December London Midland removed twelve carriages from the 17:51 from Euston.  The result was immediate and painful for the people who rely on that train to get them home - Overcrowding, probably 30+ people standing per carriage and some not getting a seat until Hemel Hempstead.  I put up a post at the time - Rob Peter, pay Paul.

London Midland have finally admitted that they need to put the four carriages back onto the 17:51, but it looks like we have to wait until the next timetable change which will be in May.  We could go on here about why it will take so long to organise this, but there's probably a whole stack of bureaucracy and complication around finding a spare unit and getting it into the right place at the right time.

What I'd prefer to do here is to ponder on how London Midland could have got it so wrong.  Anyone who was a regular on the 17:51 before the change could have told them that that train wasn't under-utilised.  The middle seat in a bench of three was often empty (rarely do you get three adult commuters sat together who can squeeze in there with comfort) and the front 2-3 carriages usually had spare seats, but the five or six carriages at the rear of the train (the London end) were always packed.  I often boarded at the last minute and the numbers of people standing in the doorways and corridors sometimes made it impossible to work my way forward until after the Watford call.

This week the @londonmidland Twitter feed (first class source of information - strongly recommend to anyone with a smartphone) came up with the following stats for the 17:51 pre-change:

I asked if the counts were for departure Euston and whether they included days during school holiday periods.  The response given was as follows:

The reference to manual count here relates to the automatic system that London Midland are using on the trains.  Each door is equipped with a sensor which counts people on and off (see DILAX Passenger Counting).

Whether the DILAX system was in place for the full duration of the count I don't know, but if it was then I'm sorry, the system is either inaccurate or someone has misinterpreted the data. 

There is absolutely no way that the 17:51 from London Euston to Northampton started it's journey on an average weekday with only 39% of the seats taken.



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