Got this reply today from Northern regarding the shambles when we played Ipswich on 20 November.
Thank you for your latest email on this matter, and for your patience while I have been awaiting a response from our planning team regarding this,
Sadly, although I have just received a response from our planning teams regarding the services on the day, it ultimately didn't include anything that I hadn't discovered for myself. While they advised they would indeed typically prioritise mass-spectator events for any strengthening that we are able to carry out to our services, at this point in time their aim was to prioritise what they considered to be the busier times for those wishing to travel for the run-up to Christmas, with trains closer to the kick-off times for both local matches being the recipient of any extra carriages should we have been able to field any.
However, looking into the reports I had found for the day, we were not only unable to locate any extra train units to strengthen services in the area, but we were also battling a lot of staff shortages (many of which were Covid-related), something which continues to blight our staffing levels and has since led to our issuing temporary timetables for reduced services in some areas from the 4th January 2022 (until, provisionally, 19th February).
As stated both by myself in my earlier email, and one of our managers during your call-back on the 26th November, we do not tend to hold any of our rolling stock in reserve, preferring instead to have all of our available trains out on the network and in use as we service a large number of passengers, and cities, across the North of England. While we have managed over the last few years to replace the aging and much hated Pacer trains with 101 new specially designed train units, and fully refurbish all of our other remaining train units, we still don't have the spare capacity which would allow us to hold stock back in reserve waiting for a special event just so we can add it to the existing services. However, I have seen that we have recently received the go-ahead for some more new trains, although as they have yet to be designed and built they can be 2 or more years yet away from arriving into our fleet. In the meantime, we will continue to keep our eye out for any extra carriages that we can lease and add to our trains, although I am aware that there does seem to be a nationwide shortage of spare units at the moment.
I have also submitted a chase on the FOI requests that our manager submitted on your behalf, although I would have expected their responses to be sent out to you directly, so I can only apologise if you have not heard back yet on these.
As such, the 2-carriage train that you encountered that day was provided as scheduled - it is always planned to be a 2-carriage train for that service, although a quick check shows that we were able to add an extra 2-carriages to the 11.22 service on the Saturday just gone (15th January).
