WCML southern end future. What you would like to see

[Bartsimho]

Following on from this thread with some actual revenue information present before it was removed (but present on wayback machine)

What should the paths of the Southern WCML look like post HS2 and what could be changed now looking at the data.

Liverpool needs a second London service an hour with what it generates with only 1tph and London-Wilmslow does very well surprisingly as well.

 

[anthony263]

Hourly London Euston to Shrewsbury service. Pity they can't be extended further to Aberystwyth etc.
The southern service needs to be extended to Milton Keynes and run half hourly.

 

[jfollows]

Liverpool needs a second London service an hour with what it generates with only 1tph and London-Wilmslow does very well surprisingly as well.

Yes, I think Wilmslow is a bit of a railhead for surrounding areas - Hale, Altrincham, and environs plus M56. Stockport may be better for Sale. There's a car park in the vicinity of the station for £5.60 a day which I believe fills up quite well (272 spaces) but has spaces for early commuters.

 

[Bartsimho]

Hourly London Euston to Shrewsbury service. Pity they can't be extended further to Aberystwyth etc.
The southern service needs to be extended to Milton Keynes and run half hourly.

That is cited on page 89 as a minimum passenger service requirement with High Priority and a value of £1m so I guess after HS2 to Birmingham opens that will be instated unless something else changes

 

[Bletchleyite]

Liverpool needs a second London service an hour

On HS2, not the south WCML.

 

[MattRat]

More trains in general would be nice, as that would hopefully help to reduce prices.

 

[cle]

I think more services should call at Watford Junction - the Leighton Buzzard services feels overly generous. With a ton of home-building in Watford to go with it (as well as throughout the route) - but including more 'city style' apartments as it is more of a London fringe and more walkable. People moving to MK want a house.

The problem children are Coventry and Stoke. The latter might get a decent HS2 hourly. The former still needs fast WCML services. But they should call Watford and MK. Rugby is better served on the Trent Valley services, and then towards Coventry via the many Northampton services. Although fast Weedon services could then run slower to Birmingham also.

If the Bakerloo was extended to NXG, re-energized with new stock and frequency increased - I'd advocate semi-fast calls at a newly extended (to 12car) Queens Park.

Willesden platform aspirations will no doubt rear their head too, and of course after HS2, Wembley Central gets a much better service. Hopefully some station works can make it more open and normal to use - if frequency is high. Crucially, it's had a ton of apartment development and the Stadium complex is much more of a draw than it was.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I think more services should call at Watford Junction - the Leighton Buzzard services feels overly generous. With a ton of home-building in Watford to go with it (as well as throughout the route) - but including more 'city style' apartments as it is more of a London fringe and more walkable. People moving to MK want a house.

I wouldn't do that by removing the LBZ stops which make sense - it's well used. I'd do that by reinstating the half hourly Watford shuttle and removing Bushey/Harrow calls from the existing stopper.

 

[Bartsimho]

I think more services should call at Watford Junction - the Leighton Buzzard services feels overly generous. With a ton of home-building in Watford to go with it (as well as throughout the route) - but including more 'city style' apartments as it is more of a London fringe and more walkable. People moving to MK want a house.

The problem children are Coventry and Stoke. The latter might get a decent HS2 hourly. The former still needs fast WCML services. But they should call Watford and MK. Rugby is better served on the Trent Valley services, and then towards Coventry via the many Northampton services. Although fast Weedon services could then run slower to Birmingham also.

If the Bakerloo was extended to NXG, re-energized with new stock and frequency increased - I'd advocate semi-fast calls at a newly extended (to 12car) Queens Park.

Willesden platform aspirations will no doubt rear their head too, and of course after HS2, Wembley Central gets a much better service. Hopefully some station works can make it more open and normal to use - if frequency is high. Crucially, it's had a ton of apartment development and the Stadium complex is much more of a draw than it was.

I always favour the service style of where a singular city has 2 or 3 stops with the idea of 2 outer edge stations and the main central station. So Watford Junction would be the Outer Edge of London station and I'd have all trains which are for the Birmingham Cluster stop at Watford Junction. The Leighton Buzzard calls make almost £14m pre-covid so the level of service should be retained although with the extra capacity from HS2 it might make sense to move them to another service. Also LBZ to Watford Junction makes £519k so it is one of the best flows not involving London BR.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I always favour the service style of where a singular city has 2 or 3 stops with the idea of 2 outer edge stations and the main central station. So Watford Junction would be the Outer Edge of London station and I'd have all trains which are for the Birmingham Cluster stop at Watford Junction. The Leighton Buzzard calls make almost £14m pre-covid so the level of service should be retained although with the extra capacity from HS2 it might make sense to move them to another service. Also LBZ to Watford Junction makes £519k so it is one of the best flows not involving London BR.

To be honest I think the present service is an absolute masterpiece of timetabling which (when considered with stuff like the Marston Vale) carries most of the benefits of Takt. Thus I'd keep it as the base and make only minor tweaks plus add stuff on top.

So perhaps for the LNR services we could have:

1. Make the hourly peak fast Euston-MKC-Northampton hourly all day
2. Add a WFJ stop to the other Birmingham service (providing for Leighton-Watford too)
3. Add 2tph Euston-Harrow-Bushey-Watford
4. Remove the Harrow and Bushey stops from the existing stopping service, speeding it up a bit

and 5. Reinstate the Southern service, ideally at 2tph.

That lot would give Watford 6tph to/from Euston which is really pretty good, as well as improving things for Northampton and not significantly disadvantaging many people.

One thing I would like to see would be the construction of a Marston Vale-MKC chord, which I'm pleased to see does actually feature in Network Rail documentation and not just my head. The line would be quite busy if it went to MKC instead of Bletchley and if the stations along it were used as the centre of small eco towns, and would be a decent start of an "MK Metro" (with apologies to Julian Peddle's old bus company). We could also have all East West Rail services run via MKC in that case, serving one of its primary markets. HS2 would release the paths to do this, though apparently 6 tracking Bletchley-MKC is under consideration as another way to provide them.

Pre COVID there was consideration of a much higher frequency on the south WCML, but I just don't think that's justified any more - extending all services in the above pattern to 12.350 or 10.730 would provide pretty much all the capacity needed for a long time.

 

[Bartsimho]

To be honest I think the present service is an absolute masterpiece of timetabling which (when considered with stuff like the Marston Vale) carries most of the benefits of Takt. Thus I'd keep it as the base and make only minor tweaks plus add stuff on top.

So perhaps for the LNR services we could have:

1. Make the hourly peak fast Euston-MKC-Northampton hourly all day
2. Add a WFJ stop to the other Birmingham service (providing for Leighton-Watford too)
3. Add 2tph Euston-Harrow-Bushey-Watford
4. Remove the Harrow and Bushey stops from the existing stopping service, speeding it up a bit

and 5. Reinstate the Southern service, ideally at 2tph.

That lot would give Watford 6tph to/from Euston which is really pretty good, as well as improving things for Northampton and not significantly disadvantaging many people.

One thing I would like to see would be the construction of a Marston Vale-MKC chord, which I'm pleased to see does actually feature in Network Rail documentation and not just my head. The line would be quite busy if it went to MKC instead of Bletchley and if the stations along it were used as the centre of small eco towns, and would be a decent start of an "MK Metro" (with apologies to Julian Peddle's old bus company). We could also have all East West Rail services run via MKC in that case, serving one of its primary markets. HS2 would release the paths to do this, though apparently 6 tracking Bletchley-MKC is under consideration as another way to provide them.

Pre COVID there was consideration of a much higher frequency on the south WCML, but I just don't think that's justified any more - extending all services in the above pattern to 12.350 or 10.730 would provide pretty much all the capacity needed for a long time.

I think a totally new plan would be needed as according to the report there are 9 paths an hour released for passenger services which should be enough for an almost total recast. I'd have no traditional services terminating at New Street as they should all extend somewhere (from the current 3tph to Birmingham I'd have 1tph extending to Shrewsbury, 1tph cutting down to Worcester Shrub Hill via Kidderminster, 1tph cutting back up to Stoke-On-Trent).

I feel like point 3 is redundant and should be left to the Watford DC lines with the Peaks having the extra 2tph Euston-Harrow-Bushey-Watford services.

I do like 5 and with more trains stopping at Watford Junction it becomes a viable bypass of the Terminals and should be priced that way.

The Marston Vale services for EWR I think should be done with 6 tracking not just the free HS2 paths as that gives an even greater benefit although looking at some space constraints it appears that all 4 existing tracks would need to be shifted to the Western side of the route to allow the tracks on the Eastern side as this also just needs doing by Winterhill

 

[Bletchleyite]

Under no circumstances should any LNR services extend past New St. It was a disaster last time and would be again.

Don't lose sight of LNR's primary purpose. It isn't there as a "Ryanrail", it's there to provide local services. The cheapo long distance offering uses spare capacity and must never drive the service planning. It did once and it was utterly disastrous.

If you mean the "Avanti" services then it'll be 2tph. These could validly extend but shouldn't trip on other TOCs' toes nor do anything that would cause unreliability.

Also HS2 releases 5 paths, not 9, because some of the existing services (2 Brum, 1 Manc, 1 North Wales) remain on the fasts.

 

[Bartsimho]

Under no circumstances should any LNR services extend past New St. It was a disaster last time and would be again.

Don't lose sight of LNR's primary purpose. It isn't there as a "Ryanrail", it's there to provide local services. The cheapo long distance offering uses spare capacity and must never drive the service planning. It did once and it was utterly disastrous.

If you mean the "Avanti" services then it'll be 2tph. These could validly extend but shouldn't trip on other TOCs' toes nor do anything that would cause unreliability.

Also HS2 releases 5 paths, not 9, because some of the existing services (2 Brum, 1 Manc, 1 North Wales) remain on the fasts.

Sorry I wasn't on about LNR with those 3 paths. I got the 9 paths from looking at the document page 58, this was counting up the number of paths in the translucent light blue which is stated to be released by HS2 and the Interregional/Local services which are those which LNR run are not released from HS2 only the Intercity services. It shows 2 Local services not released which continue past Coventry. it also shows a North Wales Intercity path unreleased. This was for Configuration State G however which is full HS2 West operability.

So unreleased there are:
4 Watford DC (TfL)
2 Tring services (LNR)
2 Coventry Corridor Local (LNR)
1 Crewe Interregional (LNR)
1 Manchester Intercity via Trent Valley and Stoke (Avanti)
1 North Wales via Trent Valley (Avanti)
1 Watford Junction from WLL (Southern) (Uses DC Lines anyway)

While released paths are:
3 Intercity Coventry Corridor (Avanti)
2 Intercity Northwest and Scotland via Trent Valley (Avanti)
2 Intercity Liverpool via Trent Valley (Avanti)
1 Intercity Manchester via Trent Valley and Crewe (Avanti)
1 Intercity Manchester via Trent Valley and Stoke (Avanti)

Giving 9 released paths.

 

[Bletchleyite]

While released paths are:
3 Intercity Coventry Corridor (Avanti)
2 Intercity Northwest and Scotland via Trent Valley (Avanti)
2 Intercity Liverpool via Trent Valley (Avanti)
1 Intercity Manchester via Trent Valley and Crewe (Avanti)
1 Intercity Manchester via Trent Valley and Stoke (Avanti)

Giving 9 released paths.

No, two of the fast Coventry corridor paths are not released. These would remain as EUS-WFJ-MKC-RUG-COV-BHI-BHM. These are necessary to ensure Coventry and MKC still receive good fast services.

Also there is only one Scottish path at present, not two. The other one is an extended Birmingham.

Thus it's 6 that are released, not 5, I'd forgotten the second Liverpool.

 

[Bartsimho]

No, two of the fast Coventry corridor paths are not released. These would remain as EUS-WFJ-MKC-RUG-COV-BHI-BHM. These are necessary to ensure Coventry and MKC still receive good fast services.

Why does the report itself show them as released then?

 

[Bletchleyite]

Why does the report itself show them as released then?

They might be technically released, but any situation that doesn't give Coventry a fast service to London, and MK a fast service to Birmingham, is going to be untenable. Thus de-facto they're not really released.

The most you could do with them is extend the Birmingham end - but you can be sure that whatever timetable does run there will be two classic line fasts from Euston to Birmingham calling at MKC and Coventry.

 

[ChiefPlanner]

Said this before , and will say it again - there needs to be a cross Watford link from Harrow towards at least Bletchley / MK. Not just work traffic either. (though the Southern service can cover this !)


Finally - the extremely below par Watford Junction needs considerable improvement - at least a subway relief , much better facilities and an "improvement" on modal interchange including taxi etc - which is frankly well below standard for such a major interchange , catchment area. Unchanged since NSE / IC days ......

 

[PTR 444]

There should be more stopping trains on the Trent Valley Line. It seems absurd that places like Nuneaton and Tamworth are still only planned to have one train per hour when the removal of fast trains will free up more capacity for stopping trains and freight.

Ideally, I’d double the Euston - Crewe service to 2tph while also making it the primary service for London - Rugby, with the Coventry fasts skipping Rugby.

 

[Bletchleyite]

There should be more stopping trains on the Trent Valley Line. It seems absurd that places like Nuneaton and Tamworth are still only planned to have one train per hour when the removal of fast trains will free up more capacity for stopping trains and freight.

Ideally, I’d double the Euston - Crewe service to 2tph

This makes sense.

while also making it the primary service for London - Rugby, with the Coventry fasts skipping Rugby.

This really doesn't. The residual Birmingham fast line service should be EUS-WFJ-MKC-RUG-COV-BHI-BHM twice an hour, perfect clockface. Fairly obviously people in Rugby may wish to use it to go to Birmingham or indeed Coventry.

 

[ChiefPlanner]

This makes sense.



This really doesn't. The residual Birmingham fast line service should be EUS-WFJ-MKC-RUG-COV-BHI-BHM twice an hour, perfect clockface. Fairly obviously people in Rugby may wish to use it to go to Birmingham or indeed Coventry.

Well , from proverbial senior managers "back in the day" - and probably more so now - Rugby looks as much as to the West Midlands as it does to that there London .....

 

[The Planner]

Said this before , and will say it again - there needs to be a cross Watford link from Harrow towards at least Bletchley / MK. Not just work traffic either. (though the Southern service can cover this !)


Finally - the extremely below par Watford Junction needs considerable improvement - at least a subway relief , much better facilities and an "improvement" on modal interchange including taxi etc - which is frankly well below standard for such a major interchange , catchment area. Unchanged since NSE / IC days ......

Bridge at the southern end has been looked at for the last few years, never gets the funding.

 

[A0]

Northampton should be 3 or 4 tph to London, not 2 as at present.

There also should be a second Trent Valley service, ideally via Northampton, so maybe fast to Northampton, then all stations to Crewe.

 

[Energy]

I'd like to see a Crossrail to MK, though I'd be very suprised if it happened.

 

[ChiefPlanner]

Bridge at the southern end has been looked at for the last few years, never gets the funding.

Endless discussions on "master plans" - must be one of the worst stations in all respects for amenities - hardly any shelter on platforms , waiting areas with zero ambience and cold (metal seats and tiled walls) , a filthy bus interchange and a dark , depressing tunnel to access a car park. Hardly "world class" for Europe.........

 

[Bletchleyite]

I'd like to see Crossrail to MK, though I'd be very suprised if it happened.

I really, really wouldn't. As stated many times, splitting the service between disparate London stations would be a right pain.

Save it for Crossrail 2 which I believe is intended to have a Euston station.

 

[PGAT]

Save it for Crossrail 2 which I believe is intended to have a Euston station.

There would be a station at Euston St Pancras but it never actually serves the WCML

 

[PTR 444]

This really doesn't. The residual Birmingham fast line service should be EUS-WFJ-MKC-RUG-COV-BHI-BHM twice an hour, perfect clockface. Fairly obviously people in Rugby may wish to use it to go to Birmingham or indeed Coventry.

Ahh I must have overlooked that flow. I guess you could have a fast Birmingham - Northampton service that only calls at BHI, COV and RUG however. Speaking of which…

Northampton should be 3 or 4 tph to London, not 2 as at present.

There also should be a second Trent Valley service, ideally via Northampton, so maybe fast to Northampton, then all stations to Crewe.

How about 4tph between London and Birmingham via Northampton:

2tph Watford Junction, Hemel Hempstead, Leighton Buzzard, Bletchley, MKC, Wolverton, Northampton, Long Buckby, Rugby, Coventry, Birmingham International, Birmingham New Street

2tph Milton Keynes Central, Wolverton, Northampton, Long Buckby, Rugby, Coventry, Canley, Tile Hill, Berkswell, Hampton in Arden, Birmingham International, Marston Green, Lea Hall, Birmingham New Street

 

[ChiefPlanner]

I really, really wouldn't. As stated many times, splitting the service between disparate London stations would be a right pain.

Save it for Crossrail 2 which I believe is intended to have a Euston station.

All been looked at before - for another Crossrail branch - less pressure now of course with OOC and HS2 at some time (plus of course greater TPH on the Victoria and Northern Lines than were possible way back)

I wish I had kept the workings out for a West Midands /Northampton to Liverpool St via the Navarino Road curve service with 312's ! .....crayonistas would be proud .....

 

[Energy]

I really, really wouldn't. As stated many times, splitting the service between disparate London stations would be a right pain.

To be honest I'm not really fussed which Crossrail it happens to, I just personally dislike the services taking above ground platform space at Euston.

 

[cle]

I wouldn't do that by removing the LBZ stops which make sense - it's well used. I'd do that by reinstating the half hourly Watford shuttle and removing Bushey/Harrow calls from the existing stopper.

I wasn't advocating removing calls, only that they don't need quite so many non-stops, i.e. all should stop at Watford and some one of Hemel/Berko also.

Ideally, I’d double the Euston - Crewe service to 2tph while also making it the primary service for London - Rugby, with the Coventry fasts skipping Rugby.

I would do this too. LNR should, and do provide Rugby with its Birmingham and Coventry services.


I don't think the Southern should run beyond Watford Junction, and so P10 would be neded for those 2tph. Therefore I can't see 2tph Harrow/Bushey shuttles working truncated at Watford, unless they go to Tring. Or someone invests in the Abbey Line, lol. Or potentially that old side platform at Hemel could be re-engaged.