The October closure has now been and gone, and any passengers travelling to or from Manchester should have seen the difference at Stalybridge station. When the two new platforms are fully operational, which should be from the December timetable change, it should be much easier to reduce the impact of delayed trains.
Following the intervention of our local councillors, MP and others (and SMART too), Metro agreed to ask Northern Rail to look at how they could retain a train service up to Marsden, and Northern agreed to run the first train of the day (0648 from Marsden, 0652 from Slaithwaite).
In spite of the late decision to run this train, apparently Northern were pleasantly surprised that more people than usual were using this train.
Credit where it’s due, Northern did a fairly good job of publicising the replacement buses, with the printed timetables clearly identifying the location of replacement bus stops (something which has been very poor in publicity for previous closures and bus replacements).
However, it has to be better next time. Between now and 2018, this route is to be modernised and electrified, and closures for engineering works will take place from time to time. The train operating companies (Northern and First Trans Pennine, or anyone else who gets awarded the new franchise when the current one expires) need to run trains rather than replacement buses wherever practicable. It is not acceptable simply to do what is operationally easy regardless of the inconvenience to passengers. And Metro need to tell the train operating companies to run trains wherever practicable.