northwichcat
Veteran Member
So where would the bi-modes arriving at Bolton from Wigan go under your proposal?
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Northern timetable plan for May 2018
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So where would the bi-modes arriving at Bolton from Wigan go under your proposal?
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thealexweb
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Can you link the franchise agreement? My understanding is that it is TPE's choice.
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Philip
On Moderation
They would work fully electric via the Chat Moss.
northwichcat
Veteran Member
It was actually the ITT that mentioned keeping Bolton-Manchester travelers off the Scottish services. However, I don't think 'may be designated as' would be included in the actual franchise agreement if First weren't seriously considering adding those restrictions.
northwichcat
Veteran Member
Your idea is a non-starter then considering 2tph between Bolton and Manchester via Wigan is a franchise requirement and 8 x 769s have been allocated due to delays in electrification including Bolton to Wigan. (Unless you can find an alternative way of using the 769s, retaining 2tph between Wigan and Manchester via Bolton and not requiring using more DMUs than have been allocated.)
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Philip
On Moderation
You're misreading what I'm suggesting. Bolton to Wigan would still have two trains per hour but one of them would be the Northern Connect to Cumbria, which would also serve Westhoughton en route, using 195s. The Alderley Edge to Wigan could then run non-stop along Chat Moss, using 769s (or normal 319s since it'd be a fully electric route).
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northwichcat
Veteran Member
I missed that bit - I wrongly thought you would try and keep Connect services as fast services to be time competitive with TPE's Manchester-Preston services.
It would also have to serve Hindley and Salford Crescent to meet the franchise requirements. The time penalty for that diversion and the extra stops is 15 minutes in each direction. Even if there's no pathing issues from your proposed diversions it would probably mean an additional Cumbria diagram is needed and consequently one or two extra 195s, unless you have longer gaps between services at peak times - which is what you were trying to avoid!
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Philip
On Moderation
Does Hindley need to be served? The Stalybridge service could serve Hindley and then there are also the four Atherton line trains. I think you're being very over-generous with your extra 15 minute timing, considering we're talking about a route with only 2-3 extra calls but with (soon-to-be) a much higher line speed and as mentioned above a slightly shorter route.
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northwichcat
Veteran Member
I compared the Wigan-Manchester Oxford Rd timings on the Southport-Airport service with the timings on the Scotland-Manchester Airport services and the difference is just under 15 minutes.
The franchise agreement does say for Mon-Fri "Thirty-five services departing from Manchester to Westhoughton shall also call at Hindley." and shows a total requirement of 35 services per day between Westhoughton and Manchester, so yes. To add a bit more detail it looks like half the Atherton line services will skip Swinton, Hag Fold and Hindley and only 1 in 4 off-peak services will call at Moorside and Ince.
Philip
On Moderation
Even if Hindley is served as well you're adding an extra 4 stops, so 10-12 minutes. But then that will be shaved off considerably by having fast accelerating DMUs fully utilising the new 100mph line-speed between Salford and Crows Nest Junction. Your timings are for a slow-accelerating 75mph DMU, currently with 2-3 minutes layover time at Salford Crescent. It'll make a big difference.
northwichcat
Veteran Member
We don't yet know how good the 195 acceleration will be or what type of service they'll perform best on - ones where they can accelerate from 0 to 100 and stay at high speeds, or ones where they have to do 0 to 60 to 0 to 60 etc. Neither do we know that there would be a good path meaning there's no layover time or waiting at junctions. We do know there is a good path available between Manchester Airport and Lancaster via Chat Moss as TPE are giving it up for Northern to use and incidentally Virgin weren't happy with TPE getting that path in the first place!
Philip
On Moderation
As it stands there are no obstacles for services using the Parkside Junction, but how do you know it will be so good once the new services have been added to the Chat Moss line; an extra TPE and the Northern Connect to Chester? The other thing to consider in all this is that Wigan will soon have two semi-fast services to Manchester via the Atherton line, one of which will be using Turbostars. Do you know for sure that the Atherton line semi-fast won't be a quicker service into Manchester than non-stop via the Chat Moss?
northwichcat
Veteran Member
Surely it will be good if the semi-fast Atherton line services do offer a fast journey time between Wigan and Manchester. Currently none of the Northern services are anyway near as fast as the TPE service, so Wigan just has 1 fast service to Manchester an hour. On the other hand Bolton has 7tph to Manchester and none of them are particularly slow - even the stopping Victoria service only takes a few minutes longer to reach Manchester than the Blackpool North to Manchester Airport express.
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Philip
On Moderation
It will be good for Wigan passengers if the new Atherton line services provide quick journeys into Manchester. However, for me that in turn renders using the Chat Moss route as fairly pointless. It was never used for this route up until four years ago and all it is doing is taking away trains and good inter-urban connection opportunities from the Bolton and Chorley lines, to save a very small handful of minutes, if that.
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Just the hourly Leeds-Calder Valley-Airport service (actually starting as a limited Leeds to Oxford Rd service off-peak from Dec 2017).
Northern also proposed a Blackburn-Todmorden-Airport service, but that isn't happening yet, if at all.
The Blackburn via Todmorden is going to Southport instead of Kirkby so not much difference on that. Like you say not much movement on sending it to the airport at present with 15 and 16 at Piccadilly dead.
There will be plenty of TPE services passing over the chord at least.
There will be plenty of TPE services passing over the chord at least.
It's a little generous to describe the TP service as running every two hours. There's 4 a day, with most gaps being around 3 hours (with 5 a day in July, August and at weekends).
http://www.tfgm.com/journey_planning/RouteMaps/TP.pdf
Greybeard33
Established Member
The Atherton line is 50mph and the semi-fasts (presumably the two Southport services?) will still stop at Daisy Hill, Atherton, Walkden and Salford Central (maybe plus Salford Crescent?), so it seems highly unlikely that they will be as quick as a non-stop service to Oxford Road via the Chat Moss. Also the line will be at capacity with 4tph, so if the Chat Moss service were diverted that way it would have to replace the Wigan Wallgate terminator, which presumably will be all stations (along with the Kirkby service). Or one of the Southport services would have to become all stations instead, so Southport to Manchester passengers would have slower journeys.
The proposed May 2018 timetable has 8tph all day on the Bolton to Salford Crescent line. Do you know that there is capacity for even more than this? Unless there is, the Wigan/Chat Moss route is not "taking trains away" from the Chorley line, it is providing additional capacity.
How do the passenger numbers between Manchester/Manchester Airport and Barrow/Windermere compare with those between Bolton and Lancaster/beyond? I suspect the former group is larger, yet you seem happy for them to suffer more stops and more crowded trains just to save the latter the minor inconvenience of a change at Preston. Even if there were a direct diesel service from Bolton to Lancaster via Wigan, it might well be quicker to take the fast electric Blackpool service from Bolton to Preston via Chorley and change to a VTWC service from Preston to Lancaster.
Philip
On Moderation
Currently the occasional semi-fast peak time Atherton line services between Wigan and Manchester take about 32 minutes into Victoria, this compares with 24 minutes using the Chat Moss route. Is an extra 8 minutes really that big a deal?
I've no doubt that once all of the electrification work is complete and the rolling stock shifted away from 75mph DMUs to regular 90-100mph running, you could fit plenty more than 8 trains per hour between Salford and Bolton. In terms of making the quickest journey for Preston passengers travelling to Manchester, the Chorley and Bolton route will soon provide by far the quickest journey times. That's why ideally all intercity and regional express services from the North into Manchester should be routed this way and not via Wigan.
Are any 100mph stretches planned between Salford and Euxton, and how much 90?
Shaw S Hunter
Established Member
Those peak-only semi-fasts are non-stop from Atherton to Salford Crescent, so in practice the difference is at least 10 minutes on a journey which can be done in under half an hour: that's quite a lot!
Wigan may be very well served by trains running up and down the WCML but these days it also needs decent connections to/from Manchester as employment has shifted away from the former coalfield towards the regional centre. The Chorley route will still provide fast services from Preston to Manchester but that doesn't have to mean at the expense of denying Wigan passengers a fast connection too. It may be that Bolton passengers won't be able to use all of them but they will still have plenty of other services with the same journey time to/from Manchester and plenty of connection opportunities at Preston (or even Wigan).
And to answer a previous point you can't send the Alderley Edge service via Chat Moss as it's required to fulfill TfGM's desire for through services between Bolton and Stockport.
The Ormskirk-Preston service is to be concatenated with the currently concatenated Preston-Blackpool South and Preston-Colne services. This could be challenging given the single track sections at the extremities of the three arms of the service. As I understand it trains to and from Ormskirk will be scheduled to pass on the WCML. Presumably Rufford loop could provide some degree of mitigation in emergencies.
Francis
Member
The majority of Chorley's 116,000 population (2017 estimate) live either in the town itself, or in Adlington, Coppull, Euxton or Clayton Brook i.e. within 3-4 miles of the town centre. The outlying villages - Mawdesley, Eccleston, Anglezarke, Brinscall etc, have relatively small populations. We are not so rural as you make out, unfortunately.
I well know that rail travel is not simply proportional to population, that the Lake District attracts many tourists, that Preston and Carlisle are nodal interchanges for much wider areas.
Yet we stop East Coast trains at Retford (22,000), Newark (27,000), Grantham (43,000), and Transpennine stops at say Thirsk (5,000), Northallerton (17,000), Lockerbie (4,000) serving also Dumfries (31,000), so why omit any stop between Preston and Bolton, when the total Leyland-Chorley population is 215,000, considerably larger than the city of Preston itself?
Sometimes we need a reality check to look where possible passengers actually live, and to provide for them. Otherwise we could end up providing marvellous services for tiny hamlets and ignoring sizeable population centres. It would be a bit like the 'rotten boroughs' situation before the 1832 Reform Act.
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LeylandLen
Member
For those outside the Leyland Buckshaw area, as mentioned Buckshaw is free and much bigger than Leylands 2 car parks with more cars parking on adjacent roads (no yellow lines yet ! )and maybe some using the free Tesco car park (does it have restrictions?)
It will not be long therfore if a charge is made at Buckshaw for Leyland to be full by 0900 thus putting off anyone wanting a daytrip .
MidnightFlyer
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Well, the lack of a London Midland Trent Valley-esque equivalent means that something has to serve the three ECML stations you list. Retford is primarily served by the York stoppers, which I would guess are rather quiet (ergo have the physical capacity) to stop, and it also provides connections to Worksop and (from the north) Lincoln. Newark provides the easiest connections into Lincoln from London and without EC would get nothing aside from the ten or so trains per day towards Lincoln, which would now be practically pointless owing to removed connectivity. Grantham provides Nottingham's shortest route to London and I would guess in certain situations, its quickest journeys too, as well as serving connections to Sleaford, Boston and Skegness. Without EC services calling both it and Retford would have the two-hourly Hull Train services and nothing else, massively harming their usability and connective uses.
Thirsk and Northallerton, like Lockerbie, are necessitated owing to the lack of alternative: Thirsk would be left with 10 trains a day courtesy of Grand Central, as would Northallerton (assuming you discount its two-hourly EC services). The fact that the Newcastle services also stop there suggests to me there is some form of market at Northallerton, not just an operational reason. Lockerbie would be left with its handful of VT services at the extremes of the day, and I'm presuming if TP services are bad enough, then VT ones are similarly disallowed.
As before, like Diss and Alnmouth, its a mixture of operations, geography and good fortune that lends itself to service provision. In these instances, it's the lack of alternatives should service x not stop: this does not apply to Chorley, who in the absence of TP services, still have three services per hour to Manchester and Preston / Blackpool, as I've said before, not a bad return for a town of its size. The capacity issues which haunt the Scottish TP services are unfortunately one of the reasons why I'm further sceptical of the Chorley case.
Greybeard33
Established Member
From the Blackpool - Manchester Electrification thread, mostly 100mph, except through Bolton and Chorley stations. This will tend to reduce line capacity, because there will be an increased differential in average speeds between the fast trains and the stoppers. Therefore a bigger gap will be needed behind the stopper in order that the following fast service does not catch it up. The new 100mph signalling is still 3-aspect, which requires longer block sections than 4-aspect.
It seems likely that the 2tph from Rochdale to Blackburn/Clitheroe via Bolton will both be operated by 75mph DMUs for the foreseeable future, further complicating pathing between Bolton and Salford.
Class 170101
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To make the Chat Moss Route more competitive I would also look at the speeds in the Golborne Jn area. If I remember Correctly its a very slow junction link from the WCML onto the Chat Moss Lines (20mph?)
Philip
On Moderation
On the last point, it's been mentioned previously that Northern are looking at using 158s for the Blackburn/Clitheroe services. If this is true then these will be the slowest trains on the route, but still able to run at 90.
Shaw S Hunter
Established Member
If only it was that simple! From the WCML through the divergence at Golborne Jn is indeed just 20 mph but south of there the route splits at Lowton Jn, again at 20 mph, to two sharply curved routes towards Parkside Jn and Newton Jn. Both these curves are also limited to 20 mph. All these are close together so there would be little to be gained by any speed increases through the junctions. And also bear in mind that Golborne Jn is a divergence from a super-elevated curve, curving the opposite way to the divergence, with a 90 mph limit; to increase the diverging speed at Golborne Jn would require relocating the junction a little to the north so as to make the diverging route flat enough for a higher speed. Such a relocation would need additional land purchase which is unlikely to be worth the expense given the minimal, if any, gains to be made. Another example of our Victorian inheritance tending to hold us back: in the future genuinely fast trains making such a journey will be using HS2, if all goes to plan!
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