I’m not at all against reversals in service but I would not suggest this as it would add at least 20-25 minutes to the already long enough journey time. It would also be a capacity destroyer for those 20-25 minutes on a very busy route.
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Should LNER be serving additional locations such as Huddersfield, away from their core route?
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61653 HTAFC
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Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying it would be a good idea: just that (if the capacity was there) it wouldn't necessarily be a binary choice between serving Huddersfield or Halifax/Bradford.
YorksLad12
Established Member
Let GC run the route; they can split at Kirkgate, run half to Halifax and Bradford Interchange as now, the other half to Huddersfield. That way, Huddersfield gets a daytime service.
Yes, I'm joking.
As someone who, pre-pandemic, travelled from Halifax to London several times a week I can safely say that changing at Leeds or Manchester is in no way an alternative to being able to get on a direct train, sit down and get on with work, sleeping etc. Travel like that is tiring enough with having to pack up one's laptop, bag etc., and walk across a station (or in Manchester's case, go to a different station).
Argument that changing trains will do are usually made by those more concerned with operational convenience than meeting what customers want.
It would also break some turnround times at Bradford, and either require an extra set or a lower frequency.
4-SUB 4732
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Personally, I’d be keen on the Government doing a massive change to the LNER bit. Loads of units that can barely be used, and a lot of electric route miles.
One I always liked the idea of was a Kings Cross - Nottingham, replacing one of the East Midlands ones in due course.
Obviously as the West Coast doesn’t do, for example, Blackburn, Burnley, Barrow (etc) there’s no reason for LNER doing loads of odds and ends but there’s definitely a case for an hourly Forster Square electric, and an hourly Glasgow Central to release that burden on ScotRail and XC.
Probably, on probability, no to Sunderland, Skipton, Huddersfield, Middlesbrough, Cleethorpes; but a definite yes to Hull and Lincoln.
One I always liked the idea of was a Kings Cross - Nottingham, replacing one of the East Midlands ones in due course.
Obviously as the West Coast doesn’t do, for example, Blackburn, Burnley, Barrow (etc) there’s no reason for LNER doing loads of odds and ends but there’s definitely a case for an hourly Forster Square electric, and an hourly Glasgow Central to release that burden on ScotRail and XC.
Probably, on probability, no to Sunderland, Skipton, Huddersfield, Middlesbrough, Cleethorpes; but a definite yes to Hull and Lincoln.
On what criteria?
4-SUB 4732
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Take as an example Sunderland, Skipton, Huddersfield, Middlesbrough and Cleethorpes. None of these justify an hourly service, but equally these places could be benefited by better quality local connectivity. Huddersfield is a prime example of that - reliable Leeds and Manchester Piccadilly (and potentially even Doncaster) connections would be best.
Bradford, Hull and Lincoln would be able to both justify an hourly service (even as a 5 car) but equally certain services could be amended to accommodate. So if Newark Castle (Nottingham) to Lincoln is hourly, it makes sense that LNER runs Newark North Gate to Lincoln as hourly with a couple of intermediate stops if there’s some big passenger numbers. That argument applies more to Hull, where if in future you’re expecting an XC service it would be better for it to be LNER (rolling stock and crew depot at DON), but it would also allow a recast of the Northern service to create a Scarborough to Doncaster instead, not requiring to cross all the layout.
Bradford hardly needs to justify given its size and catchment.
Harrogate, as a result of its position on the track layout at Leeds, would be better served by a half-hourly Metro local and a half-hourly ‘fast’ (Horsforth only) Knaresbrough / Poppleton.
Building an improved, regular hourly timetable of connections makes the timetable more robust but also permits decisions to be made about connecting traffic instead and using places such as Hull, Lincoln, Bradford, Doncaster (etc) as key interchanges.
With the exception of Cleethorpes, these all have good local connectivity.
Really?
Hull Trains run 2-hourly - I don't think they are demanding hourly?
Lincoln - that would be a spectacular increase compared with 2-3 years ago, unless you split at Newark (is that feasible? I've never seen it suggested.)
Running 5-car sets on the ECML at peak times is a bad use of capacity.
But most of Bradford's rail catchment is served equally well by Leeds (not to mention GC).
Harrogate is easy to access from the regular LNER platforms (5 planned),6,8, and commercially worth a regular through service.
My own preference for West/North Yorkshire would be to alternate Bradford and Harrogate 2-hourly (possibly Skipton instead of Bradford, but I am not sure that could be timetabled, or indeed platformed at Skipton).
Glenn1969
Established Member
I'm one of those that thinks changing is never an adequate substitute for a direct service and may just encourage people to drive instead. Bradford's Inter city offer is woeful for a City that size
But for years Bradford used to have a mid morning arrival/lunchtime departure that carried fresh air. GNER cut it and nobody even noticed apart from a few people doing it for the class 89 or one of the hired in class 90’s when they dropped. In the intervening years Bradford has dropped off the radar. I’ve witnessed it’s downfall over the last 25 years from when it used to be a vibrant busy city to the derelict ghost town that it is now and where the main industry appears to be mobile phone unlocking (look at the amount of empty shops in the new shopping centre and that’s before you look at the empty derelict shops all over the city centre). In that time Leeds has grown and grown into the amazing city that it is today with the largest financial district outside London.
It is ridiculous to try and have direct trains from everywhere to everywhere as there just isn’t the capacity for it. Public transport needs to concentrate on local travel first and foremost. Having good connections at the local railhead makes far more sense than squeezing a London service onto every branch line and busy commuter route.
4-SUB 4732
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It’s potentially lazy to suggest that Bradford wouldn’t have the ability to acclimatise to an hourly service. The reality is if it even just aids other local flows, such as Bradford - Leeds and Bradford - Wakefield (and even Bradford - Sheffield if done by Doncaster or Leeds / Wakefield), it will start to earn its keep.
In the case of when Leeds should have gone 3tph to London, and 1tph would have been via the Hambleton Chord, it would have been totally sensible for ‘that’ service to run through Leeds on Platforms 9-12, then go to Forster Square via the pair of tracks to Armley that the Airedale locals don’t (always forget what those are called!).
With all due respect, Bradford’s problems are far deeper than a lack of through trains. The railhead at Leeds (4tph from Interchange and 2tph from Forster Square) makes far more sense than clogging up the west end of Leeds with an additional fresh air carrying conflicting move in either direction each hour to/from Bradford.
4-SUB 4732
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Well the reality is Harrogate is hardly deserving, and when I’ve seen those daytime trains (non-Covid) they’ve equally been empty.
At least Bradford is a rather large city and should, if nothing else, be on the Intercity network. When we ever think of these things, it’s always the case that “Well that place is rubbish so what’s the point” when in reality it should be “If the resource allows this, why would one not do it, on the basis that it could bring benefits?”.
I equally agree that the Harrogate 2 hourly London service is a waste of resources (no doubt a political decision).
I know Bradford rather well (I am from there after all) and the downfall is nothing to do with a lack of Intercity services and to be fair it is on the Intercity network or did I dream about Grand Central? It has a perfectly good railhead at Leeds which is amply served by 6tph from Bradford and surrounding districts.
YorksLad12
Established Member
An excellent suggestion sir, with just two problems. Firstly, that third service was planned to run through to Harrogate, and secondly that third service was planned to run through to Harrogate. That allowed one of the other services to run to Bradford.
That plan, of course, has now gone the way of the dodo.
Let's try this from a different angle. Having agreed with you on the related Avanti thread, why not extensions during the day and into the evening timed to create capacity?
Imagine a half-hourly Northern stopping service augmented every hour by a semi-fast service. On every odd hour that semi-fast service is an LNER extension. Could you do the same with Bradford (as was proposed)? In theory it wouldn't be needed to Huddersfield (longer TPE trains) or Skipton (if running six cars in the peak, three off-peak), and it would allow Northern to strengthen other journeys.
It would be a lot of planning, I grant you. And you still run the risk of extensions being cancelled. But if it meets the criteria of moving actal people instead of recycled air...?
The current BDQ-LDS service more than meets demand. It isn’t going to magic extra passengers if it is just there alongside the current half hourly service especially missing out other stops. Plus the age old problem of paths. The Airedale line is one of the busiest in the north. Throwing in an additional marginal all day semi fast service could destroy the robustness across the whole NW triangle.
61653 HTAFC
Veteran Member
Bradford is a bit like Salford, in that it is overshadowed by its larger neighbour. The key difference being that Salford is much closer to Manchester than Bradford is to Leeds- meaning that it isn't as simple as crossing a river to get to the better-served place.
Bradford also isn't as big or important as the statistics would suggest: the population figure for Bradford District includes places like Shipley, Keighley and Bingley which have their own stations and town centres.
The idea that it somehow "deserves" or could even support an hourly service to London is frankly ridiculous, but it definitely does deserve (and can support) the handful of daily services it gets.
Sure, the idea of a standard hourly "Takt" is popular on this site at the moment, but it isn't the be-all-and-end-all. Likewise despite being from Huddersfield I'm realistic enough to understand that serving it every hour from London would be very silly (unless it was in the Wakefield/Stockport situation and the trains were passing through anyway), but a daily return pair of trains can be operated in marginal time and will inconvenience nobody.
Bradford also isn't as big or important as the statistics would suggest: the population figure for Bradford District includes places like Shipley, Keighley and Bingley which have their own stations and town centres.
The idea that it somehow "deserves" or could even support an hourly service to London is frankly ridiculous, but it definitely does deserve (and can support) the handful of daily services it gets.
Sure, the idea of a standard hourly "Takt" is popular on this site at the moment, but it isn't the be-all-and-end-all. Likewise despite being from Huddersfield I'm realistic enough to understand that serving it every hour from London would be very silly (unless it was in the Wakefield/Stockport situation and the trains were passing through anyway), but a daily return pair of trains can be operated in marginal time and will inconvenience nobody.
In reality, isn't Salford just an area of Manchester nowadays?
Bletchleyite
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Yes. It is no more of a place in its own right than the city of Westminster is to London.
61653 HTAFC
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Precisely the point I was making!
tbtc
Veteran Member
We seem to be having the same argument on two different threads (one about London - Manchester extensions and one about London - Leeds extensions), so I'm not sure which to post this in, but my basic thoughts are as follows:
This will always be a subject for debate. Obviously nobody *enjoys* changing trains, but then where do you draw the line to minimise the number of people who have to do so? A lot of this debate is focussed on Somewhere - Leeds - Kings Cross, but not all demand is *to* Kings Cross - we aren't debating direct trains from Leeds to Liverpool Street (even though it'd be handier for financial types heading to the City Of London and I'm sure that they don't like changing trains to get to the Square Mile just like Bradfordians don't like changing trains to get to Kings Cross
BR were quite canny at squeezing extra out of stock, e.g. there were Intercity diagrams from Edinburgh to Birmingham/ London that didn't leave Craigentinny depot until after the morning rush hour - this allowed BR to put an HST on a service from Aberdeen/ Inverness to Edinburgh, providing a lot more capacity than the "standard" service (and presumably allowing the train that would have run that Aberdeen/ Inverness path into Edinburgh to be used elsewhere to provide additional capacity on another line - e.g. HST replaces four coach train on the Aberdeen - Edinburgh service allowing the four coach train to replace a two coach train on a commuter service into Edinburgh from somewhere like Dunfermline). That's why the Highland Chieftan has the paths it does - it was originally the last HST out of Craigentinny - i.e. before the first northbound services arrived into Edinburgh from London to start providing subsequent southbound services - and the first HST back into Craigentinny - i.e. not a lot of demand from Edinburgh to London around 18:00 so why not use that stock to provide additional capacity at Inverness, even if there's precious little through traffic)
Given that LNER's demand flows are still fairly similar (in terms of "southbound in the morning and northbound in the evening" - peak extras etc), there will be some scope to run a commuter service into somewhere like Leeds with an 800/801 since it'd be better overall to fill a five/nine coach train with commuters from Skipton/ Harrogate into Leeds than run that unit as a fairly quiet London to Leeds service that leaves Kings Cross before 07:00. So I can see the attraction in using stock this way - there doesn't have to be a huge demand to get from Keighley to London (after all, what has London got that Keighley doesn't?) but it's more about "using a long train for Keighley to Leeds at rush hour is The Greater Good rather than keeping it in the depot until after the rush hour or beefing up the London - Leeds service in the morning peak. It doesn't even have to be a through service for London - e.g. you could use the stock for a Hull - Leeds service in the morning rush hour even though you're not going to run a Hull - Leeds - London service
One problem with that is that, whilst there's not huge numbers of Londoners trying to get into Leeds for 08:30, there will be a number of people coming from places like Wakefield into Leeds. So if you thin out the northbound service into Leeds in the rush hour (to provide additional capacity from Harrogate etc) then you have to accept that Wakefield passengers cramming onto a shorter Northern service is the price that you are prepared to pay. There's already a problem with Darlington/ Durham (where the peak service into Newcastle sees people crammed onto a short Northern DMU because there aren't many London/ Birmingham services that arrive into Newcastle until later in the morning
However, there are two other kinds of things being talked about on this thread (and the Manchester one).
Firstly, the "05:30" kind of token services that only exist to "put the town on the map" and give local politicians some kind of civic pride. Waste of time, disproportionate waste of resources too (e.g. it might only be one train a day that means stretching a diagram at the extreme margins but you're going to need to ensure enough staff are trained up on it - you're going to a lot of effort for minimal quantifiable benefit
Secondly, the "off peak" extensions. Tricky one. Sometimes you have a regular off peak service that a LDHS (Long Distance High Speed) train can work on - e.g. a Northern semi fast from Leeds to Harrogate that stops at the same stops that LNER use and takes an additional two hours for the round trip works out quite neatly for an extension of a London service. However, running an extended London service to Bradford Interchange or Skipton runs into the problem or whether the LDHS service on a busy line is meant to replace a Northern diagram and stop at Frizinghall/ Cononley or whether these stations miss out every couple of hours, since I doubt there's much space for the LNER service to be in addition to the existing Northern services through Shipley
To take a different Yorkshire example, there's two EMR services per hour from London to Sheffield and two "semi fast" services per hour from Sheffield to Leeds via Barnsley. Barnsley is one of the bigger places to lack a direct London service (it had one briefly under Midland Mainline). However, if you extended the EMR services to Leeds in place of the Northern services then you'd have to do something about Meadowhall (the platforms are too short for a 222 or an 810, so a "Barnsley - London" service would mean a reduction in services to Meadowhall)
And, if a five coach IET costs many millions of pounds then you've got to consider whether it'd be great use to always have one beyond Leeds (whether to Harrogate or Bradford or whenever)
Plus the complication of joining/splitting (e.g. if your plan is a ten coach train from London to Big Provincial City which then sees the front five coaches continuing to Smaller Place and then joining onto the next London bound train at Big Provincial City an hour or two later)
tl;dr version: It makes sense if you're using the train in spare time, but not so early/later that it's just a box ticking exercise - good connections at key interchanges (Leeds, Doncaster, Peterborough etc) are more important
This will always be a subject for debate. Obviously nobody *enjoys* changing trains, but then where do you draw the line to minimise the number of people who have to do so? A lot of this debate is focussed on Somewhere - Leeds - Kings Cross, but not all demand is *to* Kings Cross - we aren't debating direct trains from Leeds to Liverpool Street (even though it'd be handier for financial types heading to the City Of London and I'm sure that they don't like changing trains to get to the Square Mile just like Bradfordians don't like changing trains to get to Kings Cross
BR were quite canny at squeezing extra out of stock, e.g. there were Intercity diagrams from Edinburgh to Birmingham/ London that didn't leave Craigentinny depot until after the morning rush hour - this allowed BR to put an HST on a service from Aberdeen/ Inverness to Edinburgh, providing a lot more capacity than the "standard" service (and presumably allowing the train that would have run that Aberdeen/ Inverness path into Edinburgh to be used elsewhere to provide additional capacity on another line - e.g. HST replaces four coach train on the Aberdeen - Edinburgh service allowing the four coach train to replace a two coach train on a commuter service into Edinburgh from somewhere like Dunfermline). That's why the Highland Chieftan has the paths it does - it was originally the last HST out of Craigentinny - i.e. before the first northbound services arrived into Edinburgh from London to start providing subsequent southbound services - and the first HST back into Craigentinny - i.e. not a lot of demand from Edinburgh to London around 18:00 so why not use that stock to provide additional capacity at Inverness, even if there's precious little through traffic)
Given that LNER's demand flows are still fairly similar (in terms of "southbound in the morning and northbound in the evening" - peak extras etc), there will be some scope to run a commuter service into somewhere like Leeds with an 800/801 since it'd be better overall to fill a five/nine coach train with commuters from Skipton/ Harrogate into Leeds than run that unit as a fairly quiet London to Leeds service that leaves Kings Cross before 07:00. So I can see the attraction in using stock this way - there doesn't have to be a huge demand to get from Keighley to London (after all, what has London got that Keighley doesn't?) but it's more about "using a long train for Keighley to Leeds at rush hour is The Greater Good rather than keeping it in the depot until after the rush hour or beefing up the London - Leeds service in the morning peak. It doesn't even have to be a through service for London - e.g. you could use the stock for a Hull - Leeds service in the morning rush hour even though you're not going to run a Hull - Leeds - London service
One problem with that is that, whilst there's not huge numbers of Londoners trying to get into Leeds for 08:30, there will be a number of people coming from places like Wakefield into Leeds. So if you thin out the northbound service into Leeds in the rush hour (to provide additional capacity from Harrogate etc) then you have to accept that Wakefield passengers cramming onto a shorter Northern service is the price that you are prepared to pay. There's already a problem with Darlington/ Durham (where the peak service into Newcastle sees people crammed onto a short Northern DMU because there aren't many London/ Birmingham services that arrive into Newcastle until later in the morning
However, there are two other kinds of things being talked about on this thread (and the Manchester one).
Firstly, the "05:30" kind of token services that only exist to "put the town on the map" and give local politicians some kind of civic pride. Waste of time, disproportionate waste of resources too (e.g. it might only be one train a day that means stretching a diagram at the extreme margins but you're going to need to ensure enough staff are trained up on it - you're going to a lot of effort for minimal quantifiable benefit
Secondly, the "off peak" extensions. Tricky one. Sometimes you have a regular off peak service that a LDHS (Long Distance High Speed) train can work on - e.g. a Northern semi fast from Leeds to Harrogate that stops at the same stops that LNER use and takes an additional two hours for the round trip works out quite neatly for an extension of a London service. However, running an extended London service to Bradford Interchange or Skipton runs into the problem or whether the LDHS service on a busy line is meant to replace a Northern diagram and stop at Frizinghall/ Cononley or whether these stations miss out every couple of hours, since I doubt there's much space for the LNER service to be in addition to the existing Northern services through Shipley
To take a different Yorkshire example, there's two EMR services per hour from London to Sheffield and two "semi fast" services per hour from Sheffield to Leeds via Barnsley. Barnsley is one of the bigger places to lack a direct London service (it had one briefly under Midland Mainline). However, if you extended the EMR services to Leeds in place of the Northern services then you'd have to do something about Meadowhall (the platforms are too short for a 222 or an 810, so a "Barnsley - London" service would mean a reduction in services to Meadowhall)
And, if a five coach IET costs many millions of pounds then you've got to consider whether it'd be great use to always have one beyond Leeds (whether to Harrogate or Bradford or whenever)
Plus the complication of joining/splitting (e.g. if your plan is a ten coach train from London to Big Provincial City which then sees the front five coaches continuing to Smaller Place and then joining onto the next London bound train at Big Provincial City an hour or two later)
tl;dr version: It makes sense if you're using the train in spare time, but not so early/later that it's just a box ticking exercise - good connections at key interchanges (Leeds, Doncaster, Peterborough etc) are more important
How long was that after they were introduced? I thought they only started Dec 2019, was it before that?
It’s not a particularly fast service for the distance, so once you add a change the overall journey time becomes less attractive. I don’t know how you could resolve this tbf, a lot is down to geography and the layout of the lines, and I don’t think there’s any easy wins to improve times. There’s also demand for more stations on both routes which will not aid speed and capacity.
Aictos
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Using your own criteria, the likes of Bradford, Hull and Lincoln would be far better off losing direct London services and instead benefit by better quality local connectivity because why should some of the destinations you've care to name have a better service then others?
Another point I like to argue is why should LNER have to run Newark Northgate to Lincoln hourly when East Midlands Railway currently run a 1tp2h service, what makes you think that a hourly IC service should be provided?
modernrail
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Is this such a daft idea? As somebody who used to do Huddersfield - London quite a bit I would have thought this or the other suggestion of splitting an LNER at Doncaster would work best for the passenger. I would have thought the GC option would end up more reliable and less operationally annoying as you are doing the split at a quieter station off the mainline and you are also splitting closer to ‘the end’ so less chance of timing problems.
it does throw you straight to the big question though. If GC used 2 x 5 car for this, would you fill a 5 car with passengers just from Huddersfield. I don’t know, maybe you would on GCs service pattern.
People will only use the via Leeds LNER option if it remains the quickest option even with the layover at Leeds. It is not a great solution.
adrock1976
Established Member
I would be in favour of scrapping the LNER Harrogate extensions as this would allow further development of the loop line.
Dedicated pair of tracks reinstated Leeds - Armley Junction (so as not to get in the way of the Bradford FS/Skipton/Ilkley trains), Arthington Junction - Otley via Pool-in-Wharfdale reopened (trains every 15 minutes calling all stations), Leeds - York via Harrogate every 30 minutes (calling all stations, including a reopened Goldsboro station to tie in with residential development), Leeds - Ripon every 30 minutes calling all staions (both Ripon and York trains giving a combined 15 minute frequency between Leeds and Harrogate).
The Harrogate loop is the easiest heavy rail route east of the Pennines to give the Merseyrail style treatment.
Dedicated pair of tracks reinstated Leeds - Armley Junction (so as not to get in the way of the Bradford FS/Skipton/Ilkley trains), Arthington Junction - Otley via Pool-in-Wharfdale reopened (trains every 15 minutes calling all stations), Leeds - York via Harrogate every 30 minutes (calling all stations, including a reopened Goldsboro station to tie in with residential development), Leeds - Ripon every 30 minutes calling all staions (both Ripon and York trains giving a combined 15 minute frequency between Leeds and Harrogate).
The Harrogate loop is the easiest heavy rail route east of the Pennines to give the Merseyrail style treatment.
I feel like this should belong in a seperate thread (mods feel free to split if appropriat)
Agreed
Agreed if it’s not too costly
Agreed
I still believe that there’s opportunities missed by not providing frequent express services between York, Knaresborough and Harrogate. 4tph with 2 fast and 2 slow.
If the residential development reaches the railway, yes
Not convinced about Ripon, given you only hit the edge of Ripon and you miss places like Ripley.
Agreed, not too hard to segregate
YorksLad12
Established Member
I assume you're putting your new Otley station just off the A660, to the south-east of Otley itself? And, I assume you're going to be tunelling underneath Pool where the old track has been built on? The Ripon issues have been well aired in the past. So, possibly not the easiest.
On topic: One good (bad) reason for the LNER extensions is to clear platform space at Leeds. If it helps operationally, yes they should; but as a standard practice I don't think LDHS services should be filling in for missing local links.
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