The new timetable has now been published and Slaithwaite and Marsden will see significant improvements to peak train services in the December 2019 timetable.
Since the May 2018 timetable fiasco SMART along with our colleagues from Mossley & Greenfield have met with TfGM, WYCA, Transport for the North (TfN), TransPennine-Express and Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham, and took our concerns direct to the then Secretary of State for Transport Chris Grayling.
Indeed, we had been talking to some of these organisations as far back as 2011 to set out our concerns about what the May 2018 timetable pattern would mean for Slaithwaite, Marsden, Greenfield and Mossley.
TPE and TfN have listened to our concerns, and understood why things needed to change, and the result is a new timetable from December 2019 which will deliver:-
- An equal interval half-hourly peak service to Manchester Piccadilly and the reinstatement of the half-hourly peak stopping service to Huddersfield, restoring the frequency which existed for 30 years until the May 2018 timetable change.
- an hourly peak service direct to and from Leeds.
- The end of the failed experiment of the skip-stopping service, so there will again be direct trains between Greenfield, Mossley, Marsden and Slaithwaite.
- A later last train from Manchester at 23:35 and from Leeds at 23:05, seven days a week.
- Earlier first Sunday morning trains.
It involves changes which the railway industry spent the past seven years insisting were impossible.
There’s a strange anomaly in that Northern will continue to manage both Slaithwaite & Marsden stations, even though none of their trains will call at either station.
For historical reasons which no longer make much sense, there’s more than one timetable showing train services at stations between Stalybridge and Huddersfield. Northern’s version of the new timetable, or at least that past of it between Manchester and Huddersfield, is online at https://d2cf7kiw5xizhy.cloudfront.net/images/timetables/2019-10/dec-may-timetables/Northern_25_booklet_1219_24pp.pdf. This is the only version of the timetable to show connecting services to Manchester Victoria.
TPE has published a timetable showing trains at all intermediate stations between Manchester and Leeds. They have also published a much larger timetable, showing all their services on the North Transpennine Route between Liverpool/Manchester and Leeds/Hull/ Scarborough/York/Middlesbrough/Newcastle. Link is https://www.tpexpress.co.uk/travel-updates/timetables
There’s one unexpected downside, which is that the first weekday eastbound train is approximately 20 minutes later than at present. Since May 2014 this was at 0614 from Marsden, in May 2018 this changed to 0610. From 15th December 2019 this will be 0630 from Marsden. TPE acknowledge that there are passengers who will be inconvenienced by this, but acknowledging an issue is only the first step towards finding a solution. SMART made a suggestion which we thought could provide a solution, but we have been given reasons why our suggested solution can’t be implemented at present. We will continue to make the case for an eastbound train giving an arrival time in Leeds before 7am.