Northern Rail delays and cancellations likely to continue until May 2019 while fares increase by 3.2 per cent

Northern Rail passengers will continue to suffer from overcrowding and delays as the company confirmed it had made only “modest changes” to its updated timetable, released on 9 December.

Further timetable enhancements have been postponed until May 2019.

Recent months have seen Northern Rail services hit by numerous delays and cancellations, while short trains with too few carriages at peak times have led to overcrowding.

From 14 October to 10 November, just under 40 per cent of trains were on time, while 5.4 per cent of services had less than the planned capacity and 3.8 per cent were cancelled.

Additionally, there have been extremely limited Northern services running on the last 16 consecutive Saturdays, with the next three Saturdays also affected, due to an ongoing dispute with members of the RMT union over the role of guards on trains.

Despite the disruption, travellers still face price increases in the New Year, with Northern Rail fares due to rise by 3.2 per cent.

Amending the timetable can often mean putting in extra services to relieve congestion and improve connectivity, but at present Northern simply doesn’t have the trains to do this.

“The ongoing infrastructure delays are the reason we announced – several months ago – that our new December Timetable will see only modest changes,” a Northern Rail spokesperson told The Independent.

“Postponing more significant timetable enhancements until May 2019 will help us stabilise our existing services and make them more reliable over the next few months. From May 2019, we expect customers to see additional services and further improvements to reliability.”

Northern puts the blame firmly in Network Rail’s court, as the nationally owned arm of the Department for Transport is responsible for all infrastructure upgrades.

It initially promised that Northern would get electrification on the main arterial Manchester to Preston line in 2016 – the two-year delay means the company has had to keep using old diesel trains it had planned to redistribute to other parts of the network.

However, the company has said it is investing £500m on building 98 new trains, a mix of electric and diesel.

“We are truly sorry for the delays and overcrowding our customers have faced in recent months,” the spokesperson said. “Over-running engineering works and worse-than usual autumn conditions have been the key reasons for the disruption customers have experienced.”

Although the “leaves on the line” excuse for late running trains is often treated as farcical, it is a serious issue according to Northern, particularly for its old Pacer trains left over from the Eighties.

At one point this autumn, 10 per cent of train stock had to be removed to sandblast compacted leaves off the tracks while repairing the damage they'd done to the wheels.

Network Rail has one piece of good news for commuters in the north – though perhaps not good enough to make up for months of disrupted services.

It has announced that charges to use the toilets at Leeds, Manchester Piccadilly and Liverpool Lime Street will be scrapped from 17 December.

Passengers are currently charged 40p to use the toilets at Leeds station, while Manchester Piccadilly and Liverpool Lime Street have 30p fees.

”This is a long-overdue Christmas present for train passengers in the North,“ Network Rail said in a statement.