DELAYS to the promised two trains an hour and stranded schoolchildren at Greenbank station were top of the agenda during a face-to-face meeting between Mike Amesbury and the transport secretary.

The Weaver Vale MP called for the meeting and told Chris Grayling ‘the blame game needs to stop’, saying his constituents needed to start seeing promises fulfilled on the lines around Northwich.

Mike said: “I pressed for Northern to honour the two trains per hour promise that should have happened in December.

“We also spoke about the horrendous experience of schoolchildren being left stranded on the platform at Greenbank.

"He claimed that Northern had informed him that it was due to capacity issues at Piccadilly with Network Rail responsible for this.

“I informed him that Northern had spoke about Network Rail’s concerns about the number of unstaffed crossings and said that the blame game needs to stop and that Northern needs to meet its contractual promise.”

The secretary said he would intervene and look at both the capacity issues and the delay of the new rolling stock.