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They may not need to do much to do that.  Northern Rail's performance is dropping at an outstanding rate.  Cancellations are up from about 6% to 28% in the last few days.  National Express East Coast and East Midlands Trains don't seem to be fairing well either.

There is a yo-yo pattern to performance statistics.  You get poor results, everyone complains, efforts are made, performance increases, the DfT or TOC decide to do something to rock the boat (new stock, new timetable, new operator, new boundaries etc) and performance pluments, everyone complains, efforts are made, performance increases....

We now have the rediculous situation where SWT are cutting staff, a few years down the line they will be recruiting again when they realise that the cuts have caused service standards to slip.

What the railway needs more than anything is stability and it has never had it.

There has been a lot of hard work put in by FGW staff and NR staff on the GW to improve performance in the last year, the performance figures posted on the NR intra net show that FGW have gone from low to mid 80% of just over a year ago to around the 90% on the rolling average, where as you mention some others have like the East Coast have crashed and burned

Tim your post could be titled "Everything you need to know about why our railways are unable to provide a decent service."  ;D

We won't get stability either... the present government believe in reorganising everything every three years or so, and of course if the Tories get in they'll want to make their mark by, you know, reorganising everything.  ::)

on northens performance....didnt they get some of there pacers back?

Yes they got 5x142s to replace 5x153s that went to or are going to East Midlands Trains.

They also got 3x180s.  Two of which failed yesterday while the third was undergoing maintainence.

Demonstrating that splitting up a small fleet of already unreliable trains will make them even more unreliable! At least when they were all on the Oak there was a large pool of parts and specialist engineers to nurse them back to full health through the night ready for the next morning.

Apparently Northern staff have said the 180s they've received hadn't been serviced at all well.  Possibly FGW didn't bother as they knew the refurbished HSTs would replace the 180s.

Most of them have been sat in a depot for months doing nothing!

The Northern staff, or the 180s?!

 :D :D :D :D :D ;D ;D ;D ;D :D :D :D :D Good un that!!

That'll explain why so many services are cancelled due to a crew member being unavailable.

What services are the 180s diagrammed for? Also, how many 180s in total are there?

I saw three 180s yesterday morning in FGW land, one on the Cotswold line, one south of Oxford and a third near Reading. 

Am I right in thinking that FGW have only got three? If so all in service.

Yep. All in service yesterday. Helping to make sure that HST's were available to cover all the busiest holiday diagrams to the West Country and South Wales. They remain ideal for that sort of task - yet, as it stands, they will not be here to do a similar job next year, when the single extra HST set arrives from the ECML.

Thanks for that, but i was referring to what services the ones now owned by Northern will be diagrammed for ;)

There are two daily 180 diagrams, for three sets, 180103, 106 and 108:

1. 6.53 Blackpool North-Hazel Grove, via Manchester Piccadilly, 9.33 Hazel Grove-Preston, 14.23 Preston-Hazel Grove; 16.33 Hazel Grove-Blackpool.

2. Works 9.22 Manchester Victoria-Blackpool and 11.20 return, then 13.22 from Manchester and 15.20 return, 17.19 and return and 21.22 Manchester to Blackpool. This set overnights at Blackpool to do diagram one the next day, so I guess the 23.13 from Blackpool returns the other set to the depot at Newton Heath, just east of Victoria.

These jobs are probably even more stop-start than the Cotswold Line, so not sure how the 180s will like them. Modern Railways has new fleet performance figures for all types of train and Hull Trains are getting far better figures than FGW ever has for the 180s, probably because of sustained high-speed running without the stress and strain of stop-start.

However you look at it - what a waste of a 125mph train!

Just checked the timetable for those services (http://www.northernrail.org/pdfs/timetables/20081117/20.pdf page 20 onwards)

It seems the Hazel Grove to Preston service calls at Heaton Chapel and Levenshulme, which are two stations which most services go through on the WCML between Stockport and Manchester.  However, between Manchester and Preston it calls mostly at the same stations as the Manchester Airport to Blackpool North service run by Transpennine Express using 100mph 185s.

On the other hand the Manchester Victoria to Blackpool service calls at most stations except a couple of very small ones.

The reason Northern are using 180s on those routes is because they needed extra capacity and they couldn't get hold of any Sprinter units in time.  I have heard is suggested that the 180s should have gone to Arriva Trains Wales with 4-5 158s or 175s going to Northern.