Transport for Wales (TfW) publishes annual report for 2020-2021,
Transport for Wales (TfW) has published its annual report and financial statements for the year to 31 March 2021, a year which saw the transfer of the railway back into public ownership and work to transform the Core Valleys Lines as part of building the South Wales Metro. As the first set of consolidated financial statements for the Transport for Wales Group, figures released today show total grant-funded expenditure of £638m made up of: £356m of revenue funding for provision of rail passenger services. This included £176m of Covid-19 revenue support and other emergency measures funding. £88m capital funding for […]
Nantwich in Bloom volunteers receive another award
Nantwich in Bloom (NiB) volunteers have received an Highly Commended award in the 2020 Cheshire Best Kept Stations competition. The award was given in recognition of the continuing efforts made by NiB to keep the station looking attractive despite the Coronavirus pandemic and restrictions during 2020. The first photo shows some of the Nantwich in Bloom volunteers who have helped care for the beds and planters on the platforms, with John Kitchen. Hilary Slack is holding the award. Hilary and Sue Sherwood are wearing TfW Station Adopter tabards in the second picture and John Kitchen from Cheshire Best Kept Stations […]
TfW announce timetable revisions from 16 May 21
TfW say they are introducing new timetables across the network from Sunday 16 May 2021. The only change known to us on the Crewe – Shrewsbury line is the provision of southbound weekday and Saturday morning stops. The 08.31 from Manchester will now call at Nantwich 09.17, Whitchurch 09.28 and Wem 09.37. This is very welcome. We have been asking for this for sometime. TfW say also there will be some re-timings and amendments to services in particular affecting services in the north of our network. This is their list of significant changes, none of which apply to us: Cancellation […]
Progress on new trains for TfW
There is some news in recent railway press about the new trains intended for our line. Modern Railways has some information this month and Railcolournews has an item https://railcolornews.com/2021/04/19/uk-dmu-for-wales-first-caf-civity-diesel-train-delivered/?fbclid=IwAR29nG06iLtvRD7QyOpPajT9P74MbNgOQ6pQZIzFSl5AmvZlNEoMJugY4Jc The good news is that CAF have outshopped the first two of the 197 sets in Newport and these are undergoing testing. It is reported that the first unit 197001 is in Crewe. There are 77 two and three car sets to build. Some of these are intended for the long distance services for our line. There is to be a sub group of 14 three car sets with first […]
SMS text messages from TfW – March 21
We continue to monitor the messages with view to understand what is happening on the line, So we record the messages for Crewe Shrewsbury all day and for both directions. You can see the list of messages for March 2021 here We have made a simple analysis of these and the table is below. There were 83 messages in March for 54 events. From this we can see that about half of the events in March (48%) are problems for NR with track issues, points failure and signal failures predominating. Here is the data for October 20 here . Data […]
New ticket machines for Whitchurch / Nantwich
We are pleased to report that TfW have installed two new ticket machines at Witchurch and Nantwich station. We reported on this project in 2019, but these are the first machines to reach our line. There have been recent reports of them going in at Hereford. This is good news. So there are now machines on both platforms. https://caspa.org.uk/re-franchising/new-ticket-machines/
SMS text messages from TfW – February 21
We continue to monitor the messages with view to understand what is happening on the line, So we record the messages for Crewe Shrewsbury all day and for both directions. You can see the list of messages for February 2021 here We have made a simple analysis of these and the table is below. There were 108 messages in February for 56 events. From this we can see that again more than half of the events in February (59%) are problems for NR with points failure and signal failures predominating. We have updated the table for January after doing the […]
PRM and Sprinter fleet
We recently asked Transport for Wales about progress on ‘ Persons with Reduced Mobility’ upgrading of Sprinter Classes 150 and 153. They have now replied. In summary, 150s were complete in 2019 and also part of the fleet of (26) 153s. Of the remaining 13 153 units that are not compliant, 9 will be converted in 2021 and 4 retired. TfW confirm that these non compliant units are never operated singly and are always coupled to a fully PRM-compliant class 150 or 153. These units have now been renumbered into the 1539xx number series to ensure they are readily identifiable […]
SMS text messages from TfW – January 21
Transport for Wales provide SMS messages to notify of disruption in timetabled services. You can sign up for this here: https://www.journeycheck.com/tfwrail/ There are options for the time of day, stations and direction. We have been monitoring the messages for some time with a view to understand what is happening on the line, So we record the messages for Crewe Shrewsbury all day and for both directions. You can see the list of messages for January 2021 here We have made a simple analysis of these and the table is below. There were 101 messages in January for 63 events. Where […]
TfW unit diagrams for spring 2021
TfW have made available the unit diagrams from the long term plan (LTP) for spring 2021. These appeared on recent response to a freedom of information request. The response is an unsearchable five hundred page pdf document. But if this is your thing, flipping the pages on the screen will get you something. You can view and download it here. To give you a start, here are some of the page references relevant to us. Usual health warnings on the accuracy of this below. It is just a guide. Happy hunting!