Could service patterns be improved at Earlestown, Lea Green and Newton-le-Willows?

[Bevan Price]

Lea Green has an opportunity to be a fantastic rail head. It could do with some better facilities, including lifts down to the platforms instead of the crazy ramps. It has the option of significantly better onward transportation via public transport and private vehicle. (5 mins from A570) Whilst being on the main bus routes to between St Helens and both Warrington and Widnes.

With the proper amount of investment, a truely integrated transport node could be created. The biggest barrier to this in my opinion is the name. Lea Green gives the impression it is in a small village, re-naming it as St. Helens South, would be a major improvement.

Lea Green is a poor choice for a station serving long-distance trains. It is only really suitable for use as a suburban station for local services. It has rather narrow platforms, no proper waiting rooms - just basic draughty bus shelters, and the car park was starting to get overfilled even before the TPE services started to stop there. And it is not even in Lea Green - it is in the Marshalls Cross area of Sutton, St.Helens. The only advantage is that it currently has better daytime bus services to St. Helens town centre than St. Helens Junction - the latter used to have much better bus services, but that was before Arriva took over the local buses. Lea Green also has bus services to/from Widnes, but the same buses pass Widnes station, which is probably the preferred choice for Widnes area residents. (And Lea Green now has no buses to/from Warrington.)

Trans Pennine is proving to be an increasing awful, unreliable service, with frequent cancellations, and they seem to care s*d all about Lea Green passengers when they cancel trains; if a "Scarborough" service is cancelled, Lea Green passengers can be left waiting for an hour or more if travelling to/from the Manchester direction. They (TP) could - but usually don't make the next "Newcastle" service make an additional stop at Lea Green, in addition to the booked stop at Newton Le Willows.

St. Helens Junction used to have car parking problems, but the car park was enlarged considerably - at about the time our useless council lobbied for the TPE stops to be moved to Lea Green. The (Northern) service to/from Manchester is slower, less frequent - and less reliable since the "Airport" services were extended beyond Manchester Airport to Crewe.

Within Newton Le Willows, Earlestown station is easily the best located station for many of the residential areas - but has a tiny car park. But - like Lea Green, it now lacks decent waiting rooms, and the triangular layout can be inconvenient when trying to make connections.

Newton Le Willows has a nice, newly rebuilt station, with smallish, but adequate waiting rooms - but even the enlarged car park is much too small, and on-street car parking in surrounding areas can be a problem.

As for the TPE services, I think the best solution would be 1 tph calling at Newton Le Willows, and 1 tph calling at both St. Helens Junction & Earlestown. Overall schedules should not need changing - almost every eastbound TPE train I have used gets stopped - or slowed to a crawl - in "Bermuda Triangle" (a.k.a. the Ordsall Lane /Salford /Castlefield area. ). If running on time, TPE trains towards Liverpool always have signal checks, waiting for their arrival platform to be vacated by a departing TPE service.

And just to remind everyone - there has not been much improvement in almost 60 years.
Liverpool to Manchester used to take 36 minutes with one intermediate stop - operated by Class 124 dmus limited to 70 mph. The move from Manchester Exchange to Victoria increased journey times by (at most) one minute.

 

[BillBlue80]

Lea Green offers a really important service to the town of St Helens. St Helens is increasingly becoming a commuter suburb for Liverpool and Manchester. It is part of the Liverpool City Region which helps to give the town more influence in lobbying for where trains in the Liverpool/Merseyside region stop.


The towns industry has seen a significant decline over the last 30 years as has the town’s population. The Council has also been one of the hardest hit the entire country by austerity measures. The grand plan of the council is to build large amounts of new housing that entices new people to the town, giving a boost to Council tax revenues and local business.


It is believed that giving the town better links to Liverpool in particular and the wider region can be really beneficial to the town. There is a feeling that Liverpool’s economy has boomed over the last decade or so, whilst the St Helens economy has gone in reverse. Having shiny new express trains stopping at both Lea Green and Newton Le Willows, plus the Glasgow services that will stop at St Helens Central is a real boost for the town and an effort to rebalance the economy in the city region.


It is much more convenient to get to Lea Green by bus as it has a far more regular bus service. St Helens Junction is a similar distance from the centre of town by car but I’ve found myself completely stranded there on a Sunday when using public transport. A lot of new housing has been built close to Lea Green and having an hourly fast service to Liverpool taking just 15 minutes helps to make this property more desirable. It did seem rather unwise that just before asking for the switch they developed parking at St Helens Junction,


In terms of Newton-Le-Willows you have Andy Burnham (Mayor of Greater Manchester) living less than 10 minutes drive away in Leigh/Golborne (places the railways have long forgotten). He therefore has a real awareness of the geographical importance of Newton-Le-Willows station to his community, not just in terms of being able to commute to Manchester but also to travel further afield to Leeds, York and Newcastle. The only options from neighbouring Wigan across the Pennines are incredibly slow stopping services. So Newton gets a good flow of passengers from the Greater Manchester areas of Leigh, Golborne and Wigan on top of those from St Helens (especially those people living in the suburbs of Newton, Earlestown and Haydock). They have done a fantastic job of redeveloping Newton-le-Willows station, with excellent parking and step free access. Although as you’d imagine however it is already fully saturated with cars Monday-Friday.


St Helens is split into two constituencies St Helens North and St Helens South. The North constituency in which Newton sits is traditionally seen as containing a higher proportion of more affluent areas of the town. The South (where Lea Green is) has more deprived areas (although there are still some affluent areas). I’m sure both local MPs were keen to be able to boast about improved rail connections to their respective electorate, which is possibly another reason stations in both of the towns constituencies benefited.


It is amazing to see the transformation in services to the town. Soon residents of St Helens will be travelling almost exclusively on Northern Class 331/195, TPE Class 802 (Nova 1), Class 397 (Nova 2) Class 68 + Mk5 (Nova 3). Quite a transformation from the Pacers, Class 150 and 156’s that previously dominated for the last few decades.

 

[urbophile]

But for a commuter town like N le W to have effectively only one tph to/from Liverpool is a scandal. Actually of course there are two trains, but within 10 minutes of each other in both directions, and the second is a slow all-stations stopper.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

But for a commuter town like N le W to have effectively only one tph to/from Liverpool is a scandal. Actually of course there are two trains, but within 10 minutes of each other in both directions, and the second is a slow all-stations stopper.

There's supposed to be another new service coming, the Calder Valley-Liverpool.
No hint as to when/if that will happen though, or its stopping pattern.
Newton le Willows (and Earlestown for that matter) have the new Chester-Victoria-Leeds service as well.
They also get extra Victoria/Lime St services in the peak (when the Liverpool-Warrington BQ services are diverted).

 

[TheGarner]

Lea Green is a poor choice for a station serving long-distance trains. It is only really suitable for use as a suburban station for local services. It has rather narrow platforms, no proper waiting rooms - just basic draughty bus shelters, and the car park was starting to get overfilled even before the TPE services started to stop there. And it is not even in Lea Green - it is in the Marshalls Cross area of Sutton, St.Helens. The only advantage is that it currently has better daytime bus services to St. Helens town centre than St. Helens Junction - the latter used to have much better bus services, but that was before Arriva took over the local buses. Lea Green also has bus services to/from Widnes, but the same buses pass Widnes station, which is probably the preferred choice for Widnes area residents. (And Lea Green now has no buses to/from Warrington.)

Trans Pennine is proving to be an increasing awful, unreliable service, with frequent cancellations, and they seem to care s*d all about Lea Green passengers when they cancel trains; if a "Scarborough" service is cancelled, Lea Green passengers can be left waiting for an hour or more if travelling to/from the Manchester direction. They (TP) could - but usually don't make the next "Newcastle" service make an additional stop at Lea Green, in addition to the booked stop at Newton Le Willows.

St. Helens Junction used to have car parking problems, but the car park was enlarged considerably - at about the time our useless council lobbied for the TPE stops to be moved to Lea Green. The (Northern) service to/from Manchester is slower, less frequent - and less reliable since the "Airport" services were extended beyond Manchester Airport to Crewe.

Within Newton Le Willows, Earlestown station is easily the best located station for many of the residential areas - but has a tiny car park. But - like Lea Green, it now lacks decent waiting rooms, and the triangular layout can be inconvenient when trying to make connections.

Newton Le Willows has a nice, newly rebuilt station, with smallish, but adequate waiting rooms - but even the enlarged car park is much too small, and on-street car parking in surrounding areas can be a problem.

As for the TPE services, I think the best solution would be 1 tph calling at Newton Le Willows, and 1 tph calling at both St. Helens Junction & Earlestown. Overall schedules should not need changing - almost every eastbound TPE train I have used gets stopped - or slowed to a crawl - in "Bermuda Triangle" (a.k.a. the Ordsall Lane /Salford /Castlefield area. ). If running on time, TPE trains towards Liverpool always have signal checks, waiting for their arrival platform to be vacated by a departing TPE service.

And just to remind everyone - there has not been much improvement in almost 60 years.
Liverpool to Manchester used to take 36 minutes with one intermediate stop - operated by Class 124 dmus limited to 70 mph. The move from Manchester Exchange to Victoria increased journey times by (at most) one minute.

Earlestown could do with a bit of a makeover that's for sure. Additional covered seating/waiting would be nice - Especially if you are on the platforms further away. Although this thread really isn't about that but hey.

 

[urbophile]

There's supposed to be another new service coming, the Calder Valley-Liverpool.
No hint as to when/if that will happen though, or its stopping pattern.
Newton le Willows (and Earlestown for that matter) have the new Chester-Victoria-Leeds service as well.
They also get extra Victoria/Lime St services in the peak (when the Liverpool-Warrington BQ services are diverted).

Still nothing like a Merseyrail service though. Despite the new station being plastered all over with Merseyrail branding. (Yes I know it's really Merseytravel, but who knows the difference?)

 

[geoffk]

I believe the car park at St. Helens Jn has been extended, also it has longer and wider platforms than Lea Green, and a cafe.

 

[cle]

Frankly, the TPE services should call at neither. Or Newton, really.

What is needed is a semi-fast hourly or two per hour between Liverpool and Victoria/Rochdale/somewhere not far - calling at Huyton, Lea Green, St Helens Junction, Earlestown and NLW. Salford Central once that has platforms back too. It's for moving the folks of any of those towns to either city for work/play and for local connections.

Long distance services like the Newcastle/Edinburgh shouldn't be calling at sub-million stations really.

 

[Senex]

The trouble with trying to run fast trains between the major Northern cities is that every Tom, Dick and Harry want them to stop at their particular blade of grass en route.

Frankly, the TPE services should call at neither. Or Newton, really.

What is needed is a semi-fast hourly or two per hour between Liverpool and Victoria/Rochdale/somewhere not far - calling at Huyton, Lea Green, St Helens Junction, Earlestown and NLW. Salford Central once that has platforms back too. It's for moving the folks of any of those towns to either city for work/play and for local connections.

Long distance services like the Newcastle/Edinburgh shouldn't be calling at sub-million stations really.

The trouble is, the way our system is set up it's the people who want a stop at every blade of grass who seem to call the shots, while relatively little attention is paid to those who want fast transport between the great centres. The result satisfies no-one: the short-distance passengers get relatively infrequent and overcrowded services; the long-distance passengers get a very low quality of environment on legs like Leeds-Huddersfield, Leeds-Wakefield, Manchester-Bolton, etc.

I know some people hate here the mention of a Taktfahrplan, but wouldn't a properly-designed national "rhythmic timetable" serve both the short-distance passengers by a service such as Huyton, Lea Green, St Helens Junction, Easlestown, Newton, and Salford and the way from Liverpool to Manchester (perhaps extended on to Leeds calling at similar sizes of place) and the long-distance passengers with a Liverpool-Manchester-Leeds-York-Newcastle service? Yes, it would need additional infrastructure, given how much has been removed over the years. But every country that has introduced a successful Taktfahrplan has asked itself what facilities it needs for such a timetable, made sure that they are provided, and only then introduced the timetable (thus avoiding fiascos like the Castlefield Corridor).

 

[kieron]

But for a commuter town like N le W to have effectively only one tph to/from Liverpool is a scandal. Actually of course there are two trains, but within 10 minutes of each other in both directions, and the second is a slow all-stations stopper.

I would say that the Newton-le-Willows station in Newton-le-Willows effectively has 1 train an hour because the TPE ones take around 20 minutes, and the Northern ones 40. They have to be close together at one end to avoid the TPE catching up.

By contrast, the Earlestown station has two fairly evenly spaced (37 minutes seems to be the biggest daytime gap between services), but they're both pretty slow.

 

[Statto]

The main issue with adding more intermediate stations for TPE to call at will be pathing, especially Leeds to Manchester which is at capacity now.

St Helens Junction is the better station & has buses using & stopping in the turning circle next to the platforms, as mentioned the car park has been enlarged too, most buses at Lea Green stop on the main road which is a busy dual carriageway although had pedestrian crossings, St Helens Junction i find is a much easier interchange from rail to bus.

 

[Mollman]

Frankly, the TPE services should call at neither. Or Newton, really.

What is needed is a semi-fast hourly or two per hour between Liverpool and Victoria/Rochdale/somewhere not far - calling at Huyton, Lea Green, St Helens Junction, Earlestown and NLW. Salford Central once that has platforms back too. It's for moving the folks of any of those towns to either city for work/play and for local connections.

Long distance services like the Newcastle/Edinburgh shouldn't be calling at sub-million stations really.

You have to remember that when the Liverpool - Scarborough services was diverted from the CLC to Chat Moss route Northern's Liverpool - Manchester Airport express service basically did a swap (I know it is not as simple as that). If the TPE services were introduced on top of the existing service pattern you probably would have had one running non-stop and the other stopping at either Lea Green or St Helens Jnc as the Newcastle - Liverpools used to in the 80s.

If Northern were to get an extra path for extending a Calder Valley service to Liverpool then it would make sense for that to pick up the old Airport express's stops allowing at least one of the TPEs to go back to non-stop.

 

[cle]

You have to remember that when the Liverpool - Scarborough services was diverted from the CLC to Chat Moss route Northern's Liverpool - Manchester Airport express service basically did a swap (I know it is not as simple as that). If the TPE services were introduced on top of the existing service pattern you probably would have had one running non-stop and the other stopping at either Lea Green or St Helens Jnc as the Newcastle - Liverpools used to in the 80s.

If Northern were to get an extra path for extending a Calder Valley service to Liverpool then it would make sense for that to pick up the old Airport express's stops allowing at least one of the TPEs to go back to non-stop.

I agree - if it could be bi-mode stock.

But yes I see the points on what has been inherited. Places like Lea Green and Earlestown, even St Helens as a whole, do not need fast services to Leeds, York and Newcastle. But they do need rapid services to their major centres (Liv/Man) where occasional travellers can connect on to anywhere.

There aren't too many shacks at the Manchester end (unlike the WBQ route with locals on both sides of Warrington, it's fairly sparse aside from Eccles and Patricroft) - whereas the Liverpool end here is a proper local line also. That is the only imbalance in having a semi-fast classification of service (6tph, 2 fast TPE, 2 semi as we've described, 2 slow)

 

[Gareth]

We could do with fourtracking at least the Liverpool side, if not the whole thing really.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

You have to remember that when the Liverpool - Scarborough services was diverted from the CLC to Chat Moss route Northern's Liverpool - Manchester Airport express service basically did a swap (I know it is not as simple as that). If the TPE services were introduced on top of the existing service pattern you probably would have had one running non-stop and the other stopping at either Lea Green or St Helens Jnc as the Newcastle - Liverpools used to in the 80s.

If Northern were to get an extra path for extending a Calder Valley service to Liverpool then it would make sense for that to pick up the old Airport express's stops allowing at least one of the TPEs to go back to non-stop.

The problem since 2018 was making the Airport semi-fast EMU a stopper, allowing the Victoria stopper to be withdrawn in favour of the extra TPE service on the Chat Moss route.
That would be because no more trains could get through Castlefield.
Meanwhile, the TPE path via Warrington went to a new diesel Northern Airport service - they had to terminate it somewhere and chose the Airport - again.
The EMU could have run to Victoria, but that is congested too because the wires don't continue eastwards.
Although the changes were well sign-posted, and maintained frequencies, neither route seems happy with the result.
I've seen reference to NR looking at a "5th" fast service between Manchester and Liverpool.
Maybe this is just the promised Calder Valley service (the extension of the remaining Victoria terminator), but its stopping pattern has never been confirmed.
But all stalled by the complexity of sorting out Castlefield/Ordsall Lane.

 

[Bevan Price]

Although not well-publicised, the TPE "Covid" timetable has reduced the Liverpool / Manchester section to mainly one train per hour. Initially, these mostly called at both Lea Green & Newton Le Willows, but a later revision cut most of the stops at Lea Green, leaving about 5 per day each way, plus huge gaps between TPE services. Fortunately I do not need to travel much until the Covid situation has (hopefully) cleared, but it just reinforces my low opinion of TPE as a train operator.

 

[Starmill]

I would say that the Newton-le-Willows station in Newton-le-Willows effectively has 1 train an hour because the TPE ones take around 20 minutes, and the Northern ones 40. They have to be close together at one end to avoid the TPE catching up.

By contrast, the Earlestown station has two fairly evenly spaced (37 minutes seems to be the biggest daytime gap between services), but they're both pretty slow.

I agree. The Newton-le-Willows to Liverpool service in particular isn't actually that good as it is. Ironically the best way to improve it on current resources might be to move the Lea Green stop to Newton-le-Willows, but that's certainly not going to happen!

The Northern service running through to Liverpool from the Calder Valley line could improve matters... IF it is ever delivered.

 

[Ianno87]

We could do with fourtracking at least the Liverpool side, if not the whole thing really.

Roby-Huyton is 4 track already.

 

[Gareth]

Yes, I know.

 

[Bevan Price]

I agree. The Newton-le-Willows to Liverpool service in particular isn't actually that good as it is. Ironically the best way to improve it on current resources might be to move the Lea Green stop to Newton-le-Willows, but that's certainly not going to happen!

The Northern service running through to Liverpool from the Calder Valley line could improve matters... IF it is ever delivered.

And if it has a useful stopping pattern; there were once suggestions that it might only call at Huyton between Liverpool & Manchester.