Passengers face five weeks of railway misery on weekdays with replacement buses from Huddersfield to Leeds taking up to 90 minutes to do the journey … and there will also be buses to Manchester Airport too.
The latest of the TransPennine Route Upgrade (TRU) means services between Huddersfield and Leeds and Huddersfield to Manchester Airport will be replaced by buses every weekday – 24 hours a day Monday to Friday – from Monday, October 21, to Friday, November 22.
Some trains will run to Leeds from Huddersfield via Wakefield.
Weekend services are scheduled to run as normal to both Leeds and Manchester Airport.
Chris Nutton, major projects and TRU director at TransPennine Express, said: “TransPennine Express won’t be able to run trains on the line through Dewsbury and Morley. To keep as many people on trains as possible we will divert trains between Huddersfield and Leeds via Wakefield Kirkgate, increasing journey times.
“Rail replacement services will connect Huddersfield, Dewsbury, Leeds, and all local stations in between. We advise customers to check before they travel.”
People can check on the diversionary routes and rail replacement buses at nationalrail.co.uk
The TransPennine Route Upgrade is a multi-billion-pound rail programme designed to bring faster, cleaner, greener and more reliable journeys across the north of England.
As part of the next phase of improvements, engineers will be installing the foundations and supporting masts for overhead line equipment along a section of the railway in the Dewsbury and Morley areas, part of the wider work to fully electrify the TransPennine route.
Other upgrades include 3km of track renewals, 420m of drainage renewals and 680m of track formation improvements.
For the five weeks from Monday, October 21 to Friday, November 22 these bus services will replace the trains.
- Huddersfield to Leeds (via Dewsbury): An hourly rail replacement bus service will run between Huddersfield and Leeds, calling only at Dewsbury. The estimated journey time is 65 minutes.
- Huddersfield – Leeds (all local stations): An hourly rail replacement bus service will run between Huddersfield and Leeds. This service will stop at Deighton, Mirfield, Ravensthorpe, Dewsbury, Batley, Morley and Cottingley. The estimated journey time is 89 minutes.
- Huddersfield to Manchester Airport (via Stockport): An hourly rail replacement bus service will run between Manchester Airport and Huddersfield, calling only at Stockport. The estimated journey time is 80 minutes.
Written by: ANDY HIRST who runs his own Yorkshire freelance journalism agency AH! PR (https://ah-pr.com/) specialising in press releases, blogging, website content, copywriting and ghost-writing autobiographies.