ARRIVA NOW RUNNING BRIGG TRAINS

BY PAUL JOHNSON, FRIENDS OF THE BRIGG & LINCOLN LINES

On Friday, April 1st Arriva took over the Northern Rail franchise on a 9-year contract. Our excellent work with Northern Rail will continue, I'm sure, under the Arriva Group.
After 5 years' continual growth of the Saturday-only service, it's now time to get down to business and provide the people we represent with something better than an anti-social Saturday timetable, and also with a better formulated pricing structure  as the present one is stopping new customers from travelling.
Things started badly on Saturday. A request went in 7 months ago for  a better unit to work the 0803 Sheffield Midland to Cleethorpes service.
Sadly, no Class 150 unit was present and railbus 142078 formed the trip. After standing in the sidings at Sheffield all night, it was like an igloo for customers travelling on this service.
The good news was  passenger numbers started to pick up. On the 0803 were 21 from Worksop, 12 at Retford Low Level and 9 joining at Gainsborough Central.
It was pleasing to see that a number of the new customers travelling  had the Brigg Line Guide to hand,  published by GRaB & FoBLL 
We still await news from Arriva Northern on the issue of  fares for the Brigg line. 
Come May when there are tweaks to the timetable, FoBLL & GRaB will be producing an A4 fare guide  for each of the  19 stations that fall under our remit. 
When we are dealing with new customers -  many have never travelled on a train before - basic and simple education is the key. 
Following on from the change from Northern to Arriva Northern on  1st April, I was informed that the tweets on Twitter on Fridays and Saturdays for the Brigg Line Guide have now stopped, as they look to trim down.
These tweets, spread over 2 days, created a lot of interest and customers who saw them have then used the trains.  Diplomatic talks are taking place to have these reinstated for our line.
It's no good having something if people don't know it's there!