(24 Nov 2014, 10:00 pm)aureolin wrote Any source for this info?
(25 Nov 2014, 10:37 am)Scott wrote As an ocassional user myself, most carriages are empty, except on some occasional journeys - mainly the curry train.
I don't profess to be a regular customer on the Tyne Valley line, but in my limited experience, I agree with Scott that there are often a lot of empty seats in trains on this line.
Last summer; I purchased a 'Four in Eight day' Rover Ticket, which saw me travelling up and down the Tyne Valley on an almost daily basis (as I had also purchased a few return tickets to Hexham/Carlisle for the days in between if my memory serves). On a morning, I used the run towards Carlisle which is allocated a ScotRail train. The passenger numbers on this peak-time train were far from great; whilst I have absolutely no idea how many passengers it would take to equate to a profit on this sort of service, I was always surprised at the amount of spare seats and how a fairly frequent service could be justified. Each evening I returned on a different train, and there was only one occasion (out of Carlisle) where there was a lack of seats available. A Class 142 train had been allocated, which may help people work out which one this may have been. Passenger trends may well have changed since the summer of 2013, but Scott's post would suggest otherwise.
I still use the Northern Rail trains from Metrocentre to Newcastle, Heworth and Sunderland regularly now. I haven't really been able to identify any correlation with passenger trends on Saturdays: sometimes they're near enough empty, other times they're borderline full.