A few more thoughts on the new franchise:
Doncaster – Lincoln is probably the lightest use line that EMT currently operate – I’ve never experienced any capacity problems on it – never heard of any capacity problems on it (but have had to stand on a few other EMT services…).
The fact that it’ll be upgraded from a single 153 to (at least) a two coach “new” train should be more than enough improvement for this lightly loaded route, but instead they are throwing additional resource at it so that it runs hourly.
Strange priorities, but similar in a way to the Northern franchise, where the focus was on improvements to pretty rural routes like Skipton – Lancaster or the East Yorkshire coast, rather than busy commuter lines into Manchester/ Leeds/ Sheffield. The increase to Doncaster – Lincoln feels more like “we must be seen to thrown a bone to some of the fringe stakeholders” rather than solving any of the bigger issues.
Nottingham – Grimsby is a welcome improvement (though a spare Northern unit would permit the Doncaster – Scunthorpe service to be extended through to Grimsby, doubling the service to the ECML at Donny for longer distance links – now that Doncaster – Scunthorpe is a stand-alone service it may fit better under EMR, could even interwork with the Lincoln – Doncaster service).
The problem with the Grimsby service is that Nottingham has a clear imbalance of services terminating from the west, but one of the few services from the east (currently ex Lincoln for most of the day) is due to terminate at Nottingham, which means even more services from the west will terminate here (including the new Crewe service, the truncated bit of the current Leicester stopper and the truncated Liverpool service which may require 6x23m worth of platform to layover at).
But you probably wouldn’t want to extend the Grimsby service much further west of Nottingham as you’d hit reliability over the flat junction at Newark (if the service is longer distance). Plus, if you want to improve longer distance links from Grimsby, but also provide a broadly half hourly service from Lincoln to Newark (bi hourly shuttle to Northgate, bi-hourly LNER service to London, hourly Grimsby to Nottingham) then that means some long waits at Lincoln for services to the ECML at Northgate. Can’t please everyone with clockface timetables though, and I think that this looks like a reasonable compromise.
Platform space at Nottingham is going to struggle though. At first glance it looks like ten services per hour terminating from the west (including the long ones ex London and hopefully long ones ex Liverpool too!), two services per hour terminating from the east (ex Grimsby and ex Skegness) and only two through trains per hour (the Norwich – Derby and presumably the Newark – Matlock). Note that I'm including the Northern/XC services here, i.e. total number of services terminating at Nottingham, not just restricting it to EMR.
I’ve not seen confirmation that Matlock – Newark is continuing but presumably *something* will continue to run a cross-Nottingham service to terminate at Newark Castle; maybe that’s still to be arranged which service once diagrams etc can be worked – maybe even a situation where the Newark Castle service comes *from* one destination but runs *to* a different one, e.g. Matlock – Nottingham - Newark – Nottingham - Leicester – Nottingham – Matlock?).
Must be a new thread in there (inspired by Nottingham) – the largest disparity between “terminating” and “through” trains per hour (at a station that has both services)?
