leamington platform 1?

[PLATFORM1¾]

ive bin trying to work out what is the purpose of leamington plat 1?? i know they leave trains there at night but apart from that?
looks like you can get there from cov but means going flat over the other lines on the way in and out
cant see any way of getting there from warrick side but cud be wrong.
why didnt they put in points to allow this??
seems a bit pointless when u could have the chilter shuttle from moor st or stratford end there. at the moment it blocks the entire west side when it comes or goes and stops plat 4 been used for the nuneton shuttle.
just seems like a botleneck at the west end of the station when you have 4 tracks go into 2 back into 4. could have three side by side moves at once if they made it fourtrack all the way til past the junction
my mate who works at the station says it delays trains quite a lot.
any ideas?
sorry for my bad grammer

 

[Cherry_Picker]

The station was built a long time before the current timetable. However to address your points:

Trains get stabled in platform 1 (and the dock behind it) so early departures towards the West Midlands will leave there. The rest of the time you'll need to shunt via the up/down main (towards Warwick) to access the platform. Bear in mind you'd have to cross the down line on the flat if you're coming in from the up line in service anyway so putting points in to allow this seems like a lot of expense for relatively little benefit.

There would be occasional moves throughout the day into platform 1 to facilitate stopping services towards Stratford or Birmingham but it appears that the new signal and pointwork associated with platform 3 (up platform, towards Banbury) have reduced the need for this as trains can now spin back towards Warwick or Kenilworth from there. I'm not sure there is any reason to further change things with the layout to the station right now so platform 1 will continue to be lightly used but the station is more flexible than it was before the NUCKLE upgrades.

edit: typo

 

[ChrisHogan]

ive bin trying to work out what is the purpose of leamington plat 1?? i know they leave trains there at night but apart from that?
looks like you can get there from cov but means going flat over the other lines on the way in and out
cant see any way of getting there from warrick side but cud be wrong.
why didnt they put in points to allow this??
seems a bit pointless when u could have the chilter shuttle from moor st or stratford end there. at the moment it blocks the entire west side when it comes or goes and stops plat 4 been used for the nuneton shuttle.
just seems like a botleneck at the west end of the station when you have 4 tracks go into 2 back into 4. could have three side by side moves at once if they made it fourtrack all the way til past the junction
my mate who works at the station says it delays trains quite a lot.
any ideas?
sorry for my bad grammer

The chronology was that the Stratford shuttle departed from platform 1 during the day in B.R. days. About 1993 (about the same time as the sidings were rationalised), the signalling from platform 4 was altered to allow passenger trains to start from that platform, eliminating the shunt. Subsequently the Stratford service was remapped from CT to Chiltern and became a largely through service from Marylebone.

Isn't the long-term plan to eliminate the Moor Street-Leamington shuttle run by Chiltern?

I wouldn't put congestion at Leamington in my top fifty locations for attention.

 

[ajs1981]

Are they planning to replace the shuttle with anything? It seems a useful part of the service frequency? Although I'm biased as my local station is part of the route.

 

[Cherry_Picker]

It would just go back to being run by WMT (or whoever operates the local franchise).

 

[ajs1981]

Thanks for the information.