The 20 plus passengers today, April 21st, waiting for the 11.04 to arrive, just waited. Without the benefit of the government to intervene as in the volcano issue, when rail services are concerned the passengers come bottom of the list. The 11.04 to Huddersfield never arrived. Eventually after spending an extortionate amount of money telephoning the call centre in India were able to acertain that the train had been cancelled. To add insult to injury the notice telling passengers that the Tannoy does not work, informs passengers that calls to the BT landline only cost 10 per minute, but there is no landline at the station, nor any other Northern Station that we are aware of. Let us hope that Lord Adonis will not be allowed to give them a 22 year franchise
Just in case passengers get excited about finding out when Northern Rail will run trains. Below we print a recent e-mail sent to us by a passenger together with the last known position of Northern.
Sent: Mon, 12 April, 2010 11:24:48
Subject: RE: Northern Rail – Reference NR/77891
Hello Northern Rail
I has been another two months without announcements at Marsden station. In
your email below dated 8 Feb you stated that you would keep in touch with
me regarding timescales and priority. I haven’t heard anything from you
since. If this is being discussed at the “highest possible level within
Northern” and is a “huge priority” I would have expected to have been given
an update by now.
To re-iterate, I first flagged this issue to Northern Rail on 4 September
2009. This is over 7 months ago. I have also made you aware that the
system had not been working for a number of months prior to this. So we’re
now looking at the best part of a year that this system has been out of
action.
Going back your email below, you state you were “much closer now to
resolving this problem” – given that this was two months ago, how close are
we now?
Regards
L
From Northern Rail Leeds,: February 8th 2010
Dear Ms W
Thank you for your correspondence, which was recently sent to Karen Toon
our customer relations manager and other railway managers within Northern
and Passenger Focus.
As you know we have responded to you previously regarding the issues of the
announcing at Marsden station, unfortunately despite putting in a temporary
fix at Marsden and other stations with Ditra the system is not currently
working and is unlikely to work in the short term.
There has been quite a significant business case put forward by our head
stations to the board of Northern, along with a proposed funding bid by the
Passenger Transport Executive who like ourselves would like to resolve this
matter for our customers.
Despite our best efforts the P.A system we have at the present time has
been deemed not fit for purpose so it will need to be replaced by a new
system that will be much more reliable and robust, although it has been a
very frustrating period we have been advised that we are much closer now to
resolving this problem in the longer term.
I regret that we cannot advise you of any timescales for the implementation
of the new P.A system at the present time, once we receive any further
information we will contact you and give you a priority update.
I can confirm to you that this matter has been discussed at the highest
possible level within Northern and his a huge priority, if we can be of any
further assistance please do not hesitate to contact me at anytime.
Thank you once again for your constructive comments on this important
issue.
Yours sincerely
Trevor Beevers
Customer Relations Duty manager,
Northern Rail
Leeds