Post by Admin on Mar 20, 2006 15:09:17 GMT
Central Trains recently announced that some of their daily trains bewteen Derby and Crewe will no longer be stopping at Longton and Longport.
No reason was given and there were speculations among concerned and interested members of the public who have our local services at heart, as to why they had been removed as it didn't make sense. Removing these two stops didn't seem to give any useful gain in other services' throughput.
In last Saturday's Sentinel (18th March 2006) however, in an article about plans to build car parks at the major (Virgin route) stations, all seems to be clear if you will note in the article that Virgin are planning to run a hourly service to London via Crewe and Stoke, thus any local trains having to stop at Longport would get in the way of these 'lucrative' services. Nothing in it for us locals of course, just the greed of Virgin inter-city planners. My worry is this is the thin end of the wedge for both Kidsgrove and Alsager too. Losing passengers that used Longport and Longton will give the train operators ammunition to say that the 'stopping' service (Derby to Crewe local) is not being patronised as before, so they could also justify closing Kidsgrove and Alsager from this route, which would inevitably lead to total closure of the service as there would only be Stoke left on the route.
Be aware. This is mainly how Etruria station lost it's life.
No reason was given and there were speculations among concerned and interested members of the public who have our local services at heart, as to why they had been removed as it didn't make sense. Removing these two stops didn't seem to give any useful gain in other services' throughput.
In last Saturday's Sentinel (18th March 2006) however, in an article about plans to build car parks at the major (Virgin route) stations, all seems to be clear if you will note in the article that Virgin are planning to run a hourly service to London via Crewe and Stoke, thus any local trains having to stop at Longport would get in the way of these 'lucrative' services. Nothing in it for us locals of course, just the greed of Virgin inter-city planners. My worry is this is the thin end of the wedge for both Kidsgrove and Alsager too. Losing passengers that used Longport and Longton will give the train operators ammunition to say that the 'stopping' service (Derby to Crewe local) is not being patronised as before, so they could also justify closing Kidsgrove and Alsager from this route, which would inevitably lead to total closure of the service as there would only be Stoke left on the route.
Be aware. This is mainly how Etruria station lost it's life.