Rail bosses forced to update timetables in Derbyshire in face of rising cancellations

Rail passengers are being urged to check before they travel after bosses announced a raft of temporary changes due to poor performance.
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East Midlands Railway has announced an amended timetable on its regional routes as it works to address the issues.

The operator introduced a new timetable in May, including earlier and later trains between Chesterfield and London – but says some of the changes have “not performed as expected”.

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While it’s inter-city services between Chesterfield and London are unaffected, it has made changes to its Regional services, including Liverpool-Norwich, via Chesterfield, Derwent Valley Line services between Nottingham and Matlock, and Robin Hood Line services between Nottingham and Worksop, via Shirebrook and Creswell.

An EMR spokesman said: “In recent weeks it has become apparent our new timetable has not performed as expected resulting in short-notice cancellations.

“We are sorry we have not performed as we, or our customers, expect.

“Everyone at EMR is immensely disappointed, but we have introduced a dedicated team to fix these issues and reinstate these services as swiftly as possible.

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“We are working to understand the detailed reasons behind those areas which are not working well.

East Midlands Railway's regional services are operating to an amended timetable.East Midlands Railway's regional services are operating to an amended timetable.
East Midlands Railway's regional services are operating to an amended timetable.

“While we fix these issues, we must introduce a reduced timetable which will run until further notice.

“This will allow us to protect key services and routes such as those to Skegness – as well as ensuring we have sufficient capacity across the network.

“We will still run 85 per cent of our normal timetable, which equates to more than 460 trains per day.

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“This reduction will help to reduce short-notice cancellations and short-forming, which we know are immensely frustrating for our customers.”

For a full list of changes, see bit.ly/2TQQLI3

It is further disruption to EMR’s regional services after rail union RMT announced eight days of industrial action on the routes following a dispute over EMR “issuing inferior contracts to some train guards”.

EMR senior conductors who are members of the RMT are instructed not to book on for any shifts that start on Sundays, June 27, July 4, July 11, July 18, July 25, August 1, August 8 and August 15.

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