Norwich in 90 - Could a half-hourly 90 minute operate?

[Tobbes]

I travelled on the 1900 ex-LST tonight to Ipswich for the first time since it became one of the "Norwich in 90" services, and I was very impressed; roughly 55m 30s to Ipswich, with fast, strong running throughout. Sorry if this has been done to death elsewhere - the last thread I could find was from 2015.

Since it was so good, (and is followed by the 1902 stopping Colchester, Manningtree, Ipswich, Stowmarket, Diss and Norwich), I was wondering what constraints exist to stop GA running say 1730, 1800, 1830 and 1900 to the 90 minute schedule, followed two minutes later by a normally timed service? Do the 90 min services need a special consist (it looked like an ordinary mainline 90+Mk 3 rake to me), or is it just special pathing (and if so, how restrictive is this of other capacity - @ChiefPlanner @Bald Rick ?)

Many thanks in advance.

 

[JonathanH]

I was wondering what constraints exist to stop GA running say 1730, 1800, 1830 and 1900 to the 90 minute schedule, followed two minutes later by a normally timed service?

Insufficient rolling stock and the need to operate other trains on the Shenfield to Colchester bit of the line. There is a Harwich service that gets looped at Witham for seven minutes to allow the Norwich in Ninety service to run and a Clacton service had to be moved to depart Liverpool Street earlier to clear Colchester in time.

 

[Tobbes]

Insufficient rolling stock and the need to operate other trains on the Shenfield to Colchester bit of the line. There is a Harwich service that gets looped at Witham for seven minutes to allow the Norwich in Ninety service to run and a Clacton service had to be moved to depart Liverpool Street earlier to clear Colchester in time.

Many thanks - so with more rolling stock, would it be possible?

 

[yorkie]

Many thanks - so with more rolling stock, would it be possible?

If you also loop more trains, and are prepared to allow reliability to suffer, yes in theory. In practice the other users of the line are not going to allow that to happen.

 

[eastdyke]

The 'London to Norwich 90 min timings' thread is here:
https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/london-to-norwich-90-min-timings.178937/

 

[JonathanH]

Sorry if this has been done to death elsewhere - the last thread I could find was from 2015.

The thread you are looking for is here
https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/london-to-norwich-90-min-timings.178937/

 

[Tobbes]

Many thanks to all.

 

[Bald Rick]

Three choices:

1) slow down services to Essex
2) remove calls from Essex services
3) build extra tracks through Essex (at least through two consecutive stations between Ingatestone and Colchester)

For the current services, option 1 was chosen.

 

[Tobbes]

Three choices:

1) slow down services to Essex
2) remove calls from Essex services
3) build extra tracks through Essex (at least through two consecutive stations between Ingatestone and Colchester)

For the current services, option 1 was chosen.

Fair enough. Four-tracking Shenfield to Colchester would be excellent, but how you do this through Chelmsford (short of a long bypass tunnel) is beyond me. 7-8km from Margaretting to Boreham - nice and straight, so presumably fast, too.

 

[trebor79]

The line could do with more tracks full stop. It can be a painfully slow trundle between Liverpool Street and Chelmsford. Often times I've become convinced we are heavily delayed, only to find we arrive at Liverpool Street bang on time.

 

[Tobbes]

The line could do with more tracks full stop. It can be a painfully slow trundle between Liverpool Street and Chelmsford. Often times I've become convinced we are heavily delayed, only to find we arrive at Liverpool Street bang on time.

Indeed!

 

[Bald Rick]

Fair enough. Four-tracking Shenfield to Colchester would be excellent, but how you do this through Chelmsford (short of a long bypass tunnel) is beyond me. 7-8km from Margaretting to Boreham - nice and straight, so presumably fast, too.

But the issue is, you wouldn’t be bale to run any more trains, as the route west of Shenfield is full. All it would enable is a handful of trains to be faster. A few minutes saving for the relatively small number of punters from Colchester and beyond is nowhere near enough to make a business case. You need more capacity for that.

 

[Tobbes]

But the issue is, you wouldn’t be bale to run any more trains, as the route west of Shenfield is full. All it would enable is a handful of trains to be faster. A few minutes saving for the relatively small number of punters from Colchester and beyond is nowhere near enough to make a business case. You need more capacity for that.

Fine, so how do we do that? The demand is clearly there, and growing.

 

[Bald Rick]

Fine, so how do we do that? The demand is clearly there, and growing.

Build a new line. But there will never be a case for it.

More capacity can be (and is being) provided with the new fleet. But it’s not quicker.

 

[AM9]

Fine, so how do we do that? The demand is clearly there, and growing.

Demand maybe for capacity, but the line is there for many other users, not just the few who want to get to and from Norwich a few minutes faster.

 

[Tobbes]

Demand maybe for capacity, but the line is there for many other users, not just the few who want to get to and from Norwich a few minutes faster.

I don't disagree, and I'd be very keen for Essex commuters to have a faster and more reliable service. The real question is what is the unrestircted demand, given planned housing growth through to 2040? Let's work out what we need to plan for (& if that's more capacity from London - presumably Liverpool Street - to Colchester) and then scope out what the option are. One answer may be a pair of 16 mile tunnels from Shenfield to Stratford, and a pair of tunnels as a Chelmsford avoiding line - this is massively expensive and may not work anyway. But there must be options other than pricing off demand and/or slowing everything down to be an all stations stopper super-metro to Witham/Colchester.

 

[MarkyT]

...and a pair of tunnels as a Chelmsford avoiding line - this is massively expensive and may not work anyway. But there must be options other than pricing off demand and/or slowing everything down to be an all stations stopper super-metro to Witham/Colchester.

Or alternatively a Chelmsford avoider on the surface, partly following the highway bypass, the A12. Something like:

A bit of additional quadrupling north and south of the new line could bypass three stations in total, for effective speed/stopping pattern segregation.

Note that's about 18 km or 11 miles of new construction

 

[Bald Rick]

But there must be options other than pricing off demand and/or slowing everything down to be an all stations stopper super-metro to Witham/Colchester.

Yep people say that about lots of lines, but, eventually you run out of ‘other options’ than building additional tracks or lines. Track capacity is ‘lumpy’.

It’s the same on the WAML, SWML, WCML, MML, ECML (soon), GWML (soon), SE routes via London Bridge, and various other places. Once we get to maximum train length and passenger density, it’s either slower trains, higher fares, or additional tracks / lines.

 

[Bald Rick]

Or alternatively a Chelmsford avoider on the surface, partly following the highway bypass, the A12. Something like:

A bit of additional quadrupling north and south of the new line could bypass three stations in total, for effective speed/stopping pattern segregation.

Note that's about 18 km or 11 miles of new construction

But no extra capacity.

 

[MarkyT]

But no extra capacity.

I know. I wasn't recommending it! If there were 4 tracks from Shenfield to the new junction, Shenfield TfL terminators might be extended to Chelmsford with a turnback siding to the north somewhere, but these may not be particularly popular as customers would demand faster services to Liverpool Street as well, and the town needs its links to Colchester and beyond to remain by some means. Then there are the freights...

 

[trebor79]

Another option would be to upgrade and electrify the Breckland Line. Then servicessome could use that route to London and free up a bit of capacity on the route via Colchester and Chelmsford.
Big job but might be cheaper than whole new bits of railway, especially if that involves lots of tunnel.

 

[Bald Rick]

Another option would be to upgrade and electrify the Breckland Line. Then servicessome could use that route to London and free up a bit of capacity on the route via Colchester and Chelmsford.
Big job but might be cheaper than whole new bits of railway, especially if that involves lots of tunnel.

But the Norwich - London services aren’t really for Norwich-London passengers., which make up about 20% of the people who use those trains. They are primarily for Colchester / Ipswich - London journeyed, plus quite a lot of intermediate traffic between all stations Norwich - Ipswich inclusive.

Besides, the WAML and ECML are full, so sending Norwich trains via Cambridge means cancelling other trains to fit them in. Or extending trains that terminate at Cambridge, but they are all full in the peaks already.

 

[JonathanH]

It kind of needs a "HS4" solution - routed to enable non-stop journeys from a London terminal to Stansted, then a nearby junction with one line to Colchester and another to Cambridge which then goes on to join the ECML near Peterborough. I imagine it wouldn't be cheap and I'm not sure how you would get something like 18tph on it to justify the investment.

Are there any existing plans for such a line?

 

[MarkyT]

But the Norwich - London services aren’t really for Norwich-London passengers., which make up about 20% of the people who use those trains. They are primarily for Colchester / Ipswich - London journeyed, plus quite a lot of intermediate traffic between all stations Norwich - Ipswich inclusive.

True of many longer distance London trains, which also form the backbone of regional services along the extremities of their respective main lines, in Devon and Cornwall for example. Arbitrary round numbers of minutes or integer hour journey time aspirations irritate me intensely. Towns and cities are not placed magically at distances that can automatically be achieved in theses times economically if at all by any particular generation of technology, and we're reaching the limit of what can practically be achieved on the existing network. I'm not against making journey time improvements per se, but where they're so proscribed they result in useful traffic stops en route being missed where that diminishes transport utility AND the business economics of the operation, they're flat out absurd, but the marketing bods seem to like them so it's probably best just to continue to allow them to claim the fastest journey time for some single obscure mid afternoon departure that skips a couple of stops, while the vast majority of customers continue to travel on the regular interval services throughout the day that follow the established stopping pattern in slightly more than 90 but not too much in the case of Norwich.

 

[30907]

The leaked map published on a certain newspaper website refers specifically to additional "lines" in East Anglia, implying (but of course not promising) something substantial...
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7675019/HS2-ahead-despite-soaring-costs.html

 

[ChiefPlanner]

As East Anglia is (seriously) an area of increasing population growth , very tongue in cheek - perhaps a new HS line from "somewhere" which has terminal capacity in / near Central London (answers on a stamp please) to a suitable location clear of Colchester might be the answer.

Once upon a time , I spent an enjoyable half hour at home looking at a "route" from say Leytonstone with this idea in mind. But then back in the 1960's or sllghtly later - there were argued ideas about serving Maplin from Gospel Oak , done at a time when the rest of the DfT was considering draconian cuts to most of what was then BR.

 

[ChiefPlanner]

Demand maybe for capacity, but the line is there for many other users, not just the few who want to get to and from Norwich a few minutes faster.

Not forgetting freight of course ....the word Felixstowe comes to mind with markets in the Midlands , the North and beyond.

 

[brad465]

But the Norwich - London services aren’t really for Norwich-London passengers., which make up about 20% of the people who use those trains. They are primarily for Colchester / Ipswich - London journeyed, plus quite a lot of intermediate traffic between all stations Norwich - Ipswich inclusive.

Besides, the WAML and ECML are full, so sending Norwich trains via Cambridge means cancelling other trains to fit them in. Or extending trains that terminate at Cambridge, but they are all full in the peaks already.

Does the 20% figure include passengers that want to go beyond Norwich but have to change there? Having gone via Norwich to/from Great Yarmouth earlier this year it came to mind as an example.

 

[Tobbes]

But the Norwich - London services aren’t really for Norwich-London passengers., which make up about 20% of the people who use those trains. They are primarily for Colchester / Ipswich - London journeyed, plus quite a lot of intermediate traffic between all stations Norwich - Ipswich inclusive.

Interesting. It also makes you wonder what changed populations and working patterns would mean for reopening some of the intermediate Ipswich - Norwich stations closed in 1966 with 2tph all-stations service (Ipswich, Claydon, Needham Market, Stowmarket, Finningham or Mellis for Eye, Diss, Tivetshall, somewhere south of Norwich, Norwich) - with a regular reliable service, housing is very likely to follow.

 

[Bald Rick]

Does the 20% figure include passengers that want to go beyond Norwich but have to change there? Having gone via Norwich to/from Great Yarmouth earlier this year it came to mind as an example.

Yes, it is everyone on the trains from London to Norwich throughout, regardless of where they are going to /from