Mission possible

Anyone following this blog or the accompanying Twitter feeds will know that I've got a been in my bonnet about the lack of Bletchley calls on the fast services during the PM peak.  During the day and from mid evening we have trains that do Euston-Leighton Buzzard-Bletchley but not between 4-7pm.  The reason for this isn't clear, but it is specifically sanctioned in the West Midlands Franchise Agreement between the Department for Transport and London Midland ("Peak departures from London Euston may omit to call at Bletchley" page 79 section 5.5).

Well it took a dispute between London Midland and ASLEF (train drivers' union) to make it happen, but on two days in the past week Bletchley was back on the timetable for a couple of fast peak services home!

The dispute appears to have started over driver training in the Birmingham area, but the result is that the drivers are working only their basic contractual hours.  This has been rumbling on for weeks, but only recently has its impact extended to commuter services in/out of Euston.



17:46 timetable Monday 21/02/2011


On Monday, with no overtime being worked, from Euston London Midland had to cancel the semi-fast 17:24 and stop the fast 17:46 at Leighton Buzzard.  A conversation started on Twitter with @londonmidland about where the 17:46 was actually going to terminate.  It turned out that the train was going to have to run through to the platforms at Bletchley to drop off the guard so London Midland agreed to make that an official stop.  

On Friday London Midland had to cancel the 17:51.  Further conversations took place on Twitter and that morning @londonmidland confirmed that the 17:46 and 18:13 would have additional stops at Bletchley).

There are many positives that have come out of this.  Bletchley passengers have been helped enormously by the additional stops (Friday's 17:46 must have had 50+ who got off on platform 1).  Passengers bound for other destinations on other services have benefited by the correspondening reduction in passengers on their trains.

Twitter has proved its worth and @londonmidland has rightly earned a lot of praise for the willingness to take this things up.  After years of showing inflexibility when there are problems, London Midland and Network Rail have done well to take action and adapt their normal timetables.



17:46 timetable Friday 25/02/2011


Some people on Twitter on Friday night made the very valid point that we shouldn't have to ask for these timetable changes.  Hopefully though, London Midland have got the message and now they realise that thiese kind of changes can be made without the entire line grinding to a halt, we'll see them doing this pro-actively.

And who knows, is there maybe someone in London Midland's planning team who is now starting to think that Bletchley can reappear on the timetables for the fast services in the PM peak?  It would be nice to think so, because I for one greatly miss the old 17:40 that went non-stop to Bletchley...



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