Welcome to 1989! A new world is breaking upon Manchester’s rail network with full use being made from May 15th of the Windsor Link and diversion of all long-distance services to Piccadilly from Victoria. Additional local trains will run on most lines south of Piccadilly, with service intervals upgraded to at least quarter-hourly throughout the day. Six local trains per hour will link Stockport and Manchester, with most running beyond to exotic destinations such as Warrington, Bolton & Wigan.

It all promised so much, but within hours of service start on May 15th, 1989, the timetable was descending into chaos. Quite simply, the timetable was unworkable in practice. Insufficient slack, unhappy commuters swapping between trains that no longer took them where they wanted to go and simple late running combined to cause massive delays in the rush hours that failed to clear unless trains were terminated early or cancelled.

See if you can improve on the reality of May 1989 and keep the service running. You WILL find some trains impossible to keep to time – the working timetable is designed that way!

The timetable is derived from the summer 1989 LM Region working timetable in my possession, plus Supplement No.1 to the WTT, issued on its commencement date.