If there’s two things Brits love to complain about, it’s miserable weather and unreliable public transport. In exciting news for northerners, there will be a bit of both to talk about at the water cooler tomorrow (January 24), that is if you can get in to work at all.
Storm Éowyn is, by all accounts, going to be quite a big one. Northern Ireland will take the brunt of it, but it is set to pass over the Emerald Isle and hit the north west of England and Wales from early tomorrow morning with winds of up to 90mph – you can learn more about the storm itself and various weather warnings here.
As always, weather this grim is going to be disruptive to our day-to-day lives, and the Met Office has issued warnings that power lines may go down, and that, ‘injuries and danger to life could occur from flying debris’. In light of these forecasts, Northern Rail has pulled the plug on several of its routes, saying that in the interest of public safety, on certain routes no trains or replacement buses will be running.
Train disruption caused by Storm Éowyn
‘Do not travel’ warnings have been issued by the rail provider for the following following services:
- Oxenholme to Windermere (Windermere branch)
- Barrow-Carlisle (Cumbrian Coast)
- Settle-Carlisle
- Barrow/Windermere – Manchester Airport
- Carlisle – Barrow/Lancaster
- Morecambe Heysham Port – Lancaster
- Blackpool North – York (from Bradford to Blackpool)
- Wigan – Leeds
- Manchester Victoria – Leeds
- Huddersfield – Sheffield (Penistone Line )
- Hebden Bridge – Halifax (Calder Valley)
- Leeds – Nottingham
- Newcastle – Carlisle
- Ashington – Newcastle (Northumberland line)
- Newcastle – Edinburgh
And passengers are ‘strongly advised’ to avoid travelling on the following journeys, as they will be severely disrupted:
- Leeds-Lincoln (will operate Sheffield-Lincoln only)
- Sheffield-Scarborough (will operate Hull-Scarborough only)
- York-Bridlington (will operate Hull-Bridlington only)
- Leeds-Knottingley
- York-Blackpool North (will operate Bradford Interchange-York only)
- Leeds-Harrogate
- Leeds-Chester (will operate between Chester and Manchester Victoria only)
As well as the services which they have already cancelled or part-cancelled, Northern have also alerted travellers that ‘trains may be cancelled at very short notice with onward connection not possible’, and that you should ‘try not to rely on the last services of the day as they may be cancelled, and bad weather may restrict road transport’.
Beyond Northern, LNER has cautioned against travelling north of York, and Transpenine Express expects delays and cancellations across all of its inter-country services. Avanti West Coast is also ‘advising customers not to travel north of Preston or on our North Wales route’, tomorrow.
Basically, if you can work from home tomorrow (January 24), it’s probably best that you do – especially because there’s a small chance that the internet access will be partly cut, and your weekend will start early. Every storm has its silver linings.
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