Correct - at the time the Bury line basically needed total renewal, and the Altrincham line was getting increasingly antiquated too.
Light Rail offers a frequency for short trips (where frequency generates demand, not "ambience" of the rolling stock) that heavy rail can't compete with, without consuming Central Manchester rail capacity, and takes folk into the city centre rather than the periphery and most of Manchester's stations do.
Anyone saying the Metrolink increased frequency on the Altrincham line is simply incorrect. The heavy rail frequencies in the peaks in the 1960s were higher than the highest Metrolink frequencies now, so they have not in that sense seen an improvement.
The railway is 100 times better as a transport system than the Metrolink is. The Altrincham and Bury lines are suffering to this day since their conversion to light rail. The railway has its faults but it can at least deliver a reasonably reliable service to a set timetable, unlike TfGM Metrolink, which seems to cancel trams and the whole service when they feel like it.
The Metrolink should never have happened, it causes chaos for road users in the city centre and has downgraded the service on lines which used to have trains running on them. If you want to run electric vehicles on the Atherton line then electrify it, along with Westhoughton, Southport and Kirkby.
Exactly. We are in a situation where some lines (Chat Moss, Bolton, Blackpool) have been upgraded, some lines have been
downgraded (Bury, Altrincham, Oldham Loop, MML north of East Didsbury) and some lines are still in effectively 1980s condition (Southport, Kirkby, Atherton, Westhoughton, CLC, Calder Valley, Huddersfield, Clitheroe, Rose Hill, Hope Valley, Mid Cheshire etc) which is a significant downgrade on how they ran before that. (Styal, Crewe, Macclesfield/Stoke and Hadfield/Glossop/Guide Bridge lines are effectively in 1990s condition which is sufficiently good to continue, but they have seen no improvements since privatisation)
The remaining unupgraded lines need to be brought up to the same standard as the lines which have recently been electrified and the interfaces between them upgraded to match, complete with electric replacements for Sprinters.
The problems of the 1980s persist on those heavy rail suburban lines that were not converted and are not used for longer-distance heavy rail services, hence the desire (?need) to convert the Atherton and ex-GC lines to SE Manchester to Metrolink.
The problems of the 1980s persist where the lines are still in 1980s condition. 142s still ran to Atherton and Kirkby until the very end. I visited Swinton station in the rain last year and found that I got less water on me when stood in the open than if I stood under the canopy.
If tram-trains are introduced on the GCR lines, does this precede some “proper” train services running again to Bury and Altrincham among all the Metrolink services?
Except the huge demand on the Bolton corridor that wants to get to Castlefield. Demand from Bolton is the second highest flow to/from Manchester, after London, and needs to be spread around the city.
Quadruple Castlefield and grade separate the junctions in Salford.
Of course, Sheffield isn't an option due to crossing the Piccadilly throat. But the suggestions of cutting all direct Airport service to the Lakes, Scotland, Yorkshire and the North East is barmy.
Would a “Bletchley Flyover” be an option
if they did that it would not fix the unreliability of different spec trains coming from many originating points, over poor infrastructure (Single track, absolute block signalling etc). And who fancies fitting ECTS etc to Cl 156 and 158's
There is so much to delay a train coming from barrow or Middleborough. and a hiccup in Leeds can quite spoil the Castlefield service.
Redoubling work will begin at Kirkby soon. The problems in Manchester can partially be solved by just electrifying and resignalling in every direction from Manchester and the rest by quadrupling, redesigning junctions with grade separation and building a Picc-Vic tunnel.
What’s wrong with 156s and 158s? The 150s, 153s, 155s and 769s need to be scrapped first. Northern will likely receive 175s from TfW in the next few years, since they are already route cleared on much of the Northern network from their previous operations.
Ultimately if the raw number of paths through the system increases, this makes it more practical to allow margin to be put into the scheme to deal with out-of-order trains in the system.
Also scrapping the 156s and 158s in favour of 195s is going to be cheaper than most major infrastructural changes!
But scrapping anything won’t help at all. The Barrow/Windermere services are 195s and those are some of the most frequently delayed. The infrastructure improvements are all that can save us at this point.
