Railways: Reliability

Lord Greaves Excerpts

Tuesday 31st October 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greaves (LD)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lady Randerson on introducing this short debate. Unlike previous speakers, who have talked about the whole country—and the Tisbury loop—I want to talk about just one example in Lancashire, on eight miles of track and serving three stations. These are the Northern local services from Preston to Colne, notably those to the last three stations on the line, Brierfield, Nelson and Colne in the borough of Pendle. The problem is the number of trains that simply do not turn up.

In addition to all the ordinary reasons for that, such as staff not turning up, the problem is that, from where it leaves the main line over to Yorkshire at Gannow Junction in Burnley, the line is just an eight-mile-long single-track siding that ends in the buffers at Colne station. There is one train an hour. If a train to Colne is late or if the previous train was late and is still blocking the siding, the train turns back at Burnley. Passengers are left on the platform at Colne, Nelson and Brierfield, and incoming passengers from the Preston and Blackburn direction are turfed off the train at Burnley and left to their own devices.

I have some recent examples of that, as reported on the Facebook group “Colne Talk”. Andrew from Trawden said that on 12 July 2017 he caught the 1800 from Preston to Colne. It was about 20 minutes late leaving Preston and, just after Bamber Bridge, the passengers were informed that it would terminate at Burnley Central.

Helen Margaret reports:

“In the last six weeks, I’ve had two last minute total cancellations, one mad dash to Burnley in the morning last minute as not coming to Colne and been terminated at Burnley twice”.


She goes on to say:

“For me, the train is essential. As a nursing student at UCLAN”—


the University of Central Lancashire, in Preston—

“the option of living on campus is out of the question, as I am married with three children. Without this service, I simply could not undertake my degree, as I don’t drive”.

Steven reports:

“Today my son on his way back from Preston University had to get off at Burnley after buying a return ticket to Colne—no explanation and no refund offered. This isn’t the first time this has happened”.


Andrew from Brierfield reports:

“On Wednesday 18th October, the 7.29 arrival at Brierfield had terminated at Burnley Central on its way to Colne. It was supposed to leave Colne at 7.20 but never made it up there”.


Indeed, we are up in the Lancashire Pennines.

Sarah reports:

“My other half missed two last week from Nelson to Preston due to last minute cancellations”.


Helen Margaret, again, said:

“I got about £1.70 compensation for having to get a bus from Burnley to Colne. So the compensation does not even compensate for the bus fare. There have been days I haven’t had the spare cash and had to wait for the following train an hour later. I’m a nursing student trying to provide for a family at the same time”.


Patricia Hall, from Colne, reports:

“My son started a new job at Burnley College Monday 9th Oct. Train fine on the day. Tuesday got to the station train cancelled had to leg it to the bus and was late on his 2nd day through no fault of his own … not a good start to a new job”.


Karen Hillary Starkie reports that on,

“27 September they cancelled 2 early morning trains from Colne. Finally got on the train at 8.15 which meant I got to work in Blackburn 3 hours after I set off from home!”.

That is about 15 miles away. She goes on to say:

“Have claimed for train delay but doesn’t help to keep me in a job … I’m now at risk of redundancy as I cannot guarantee getting in on time when my job moves to Blackburn soon”.


She went on:

“After eight and a half years in my job and 18 months short of retirement age, I am now in the precarious position due to this unreliable service”.


Tony—not me, somebody else—reports:

“My wife works in Oswaldtwistle and regularly has trains cancelled or terminate at Burnley … A rough guess her train has been affected at least 10 times”.


She adds:

“The service is terrible and needs a complete upgrade, including link through to Skipton”,


one of the east-west links that the noble Lord, Lord Patten, mentioned.

Ben reports:

“Three times in the last two weeks I’ve had to take/pick up my Mum from Burnley/Blackburn as the service hasn’t run to Colne. One of those times we brought a group of young girls back who lived in Colne and had been kicked off late at night in the dark and expected to wait over an hour for the next train”.


Nobby reports:

“I was there that night. My wife was trying to organise taxis for everyone”.


Indeed, she did so. He adds:

“It’s disgusting that young girls of 13 or so are being kicked off miles from home, bad enough adults but kids!!!”.


I could go on and on with these.

One of the clear results is that it is having an effect on the number of people using this service. I have here the numbers of people in and out of these three stations over the past 20 years. They were going up and up until about three to five years ago. I have the figures from 2012 to 2015. Brierfield is down from 35,366 to 31,504; Nelson is down from 146,768 to 129,762; and the three stations together are down from 279,892 to 258,212. So in the light of the general increase in people using the railways, clearly, if trains do not turn up, people will not use them—and there is no suitable alternative bus service for those particular journeys.

In the medium term, the noble Lord, Lord Patten, says that he has a passing loop. If he does not like it, he should give it to us; we would love a passing loop. There used to be one at Nelson station; British Rail in its stupidity took it away. It will cost a great deal more to reinstate it than it cost to take it away. In the very long term, we want our railway back to Skipton and a proper double-track railway from Burnley to Skipton but, in the short term, Northern, which runs this service, needs to take its responsibility seriously and put on replacement transport, whether that means buses, mini-buses, taxis or whatever. There is a motorway between Colne and Burnley that can fill in when necessary. Northern needs to do it, and I call on the Government to put pressure on the new franchise to make sure that it provides a proper rail service to people in the Pendle area who want to use it.