Of course there are always exceptions to prove the rule.
You can't make it work, the loops etc are all wrong to serve Carno. Bow Street worked as it just ate into the Aberystwyth turnaround.
Or "Southampton Airport" - though admittedly that's not a town!
Didcot Parkway does operate as a parkway station (in the conventional use of the term) for many towns in the area like Wantage and Abingdon, just not for Didcot
Soham is not a tiny town. Its population was 12,336 at the 2021 census, and the station that opened is on a line with an existing passenger service.
The car park has 450 spaces. I wouldn't call that small
Similarly, if you drive to a station called "X Parkway", be aware that you may or may not be able to catch a train to the centre of "X"!
It did seem a bizarre bit of public investment, spending the considerable sum on the station to provide airport travellers with better access, while at the same time cancelling the second half of the overall project because the government now doesn't like air travel at all.
It is right by the junction between the North Devon Link Road and the M5. Effectively it's the intercity station for the whole of North Devon (as well as Tiverton itself), and is pretty well designed for that. Even from most of Plymouth it's quicker to drive on the A38 to Tiverton Pkwy than to drive into the city centre and catch the fairy slow and winding rail route through Devon I'd say it's an ideal Parkway station.
True, there is the second more modern use of Parkway as a station close to an airport- Southampton, Luton, Liverpool South.
A quick hunt around the internet reveals Liverpool South Parkway appears to be approaching the top 10% of stations by passenger numbers and so no white elephant in that sense.
Would making Carno a loop and passing point instead of Tallerdig make things better or worse in that regard?
I drive past the proposed 'Rugby Parkway' site regularly and there certainly isn't that much room for a car park. Unless it goes on the south side, of course
That's as maybe, the station will be sited where Houlton and the lower and of Hillmorton meet. Anyone heading to Rugby us more likely to get off at Rugby Midland (to use its old name) as car parking space on what will remain on the site won't exactly be expansive, unless the whole field between there and Stobart's at DIRFT is earmarked. Even then we'll be picking up the one-stop-wonders (known in the bus industry as lazy b[
From a bus industry perspective property developers gave to provide funding for bus services for X amount of years (I'm fairly sure it's 5), it's called Section 104 money. It's meant to get public transport services up and running early on. Most of the routes I do around new bits of Rugby are on 104 money. Houlton, Ashlawn and the new bit of the Cawston estates are on that.
The original plans had the up trains non stop at Tallerdig, passing the down train. A loop at Carno might make it better, but you would still have issues at Fron I suspect as you would be later there and clashing with the down train. That would put the down train later again at Carno meaning it might need to be a longer loop like Welshpool.
That would mean the additional expense of separate platforms for each direction at Carno. Down trains are usually timed to get to Talerddig first where a dwell of 3 minutes is scheduled. The up train usually passes one minute after the down has arrived; the up is timed for 1 minute there due to engineering allowance, but probably passes without stopping in most cases (it's possible the historical timings are influenced by older more time-consuming block procedures from RETB days). The down then departs 2 minutes after the up arrives/passes, which gives a little margin for minor late running. While typical, not all passing timings are exactly like this. If the trains passed at Carno, the down would have to wait for the up there and depart a little later. Then you'd be looking at the implications at the next loop. You couldn't really save on the 3 minute first train arrival timing penalty with a short station passing loop though. It might work with a longer, more dynamic loop but still at the extra station construction expense. Perhaps better to extend the Talerddig loop eastward a distance, not all the way to Carno but to some location between, so even with a Carno stop the down's clearance of the single line to the east isn't delayed any more than today. It looks like the first road overbridge encountered, a recent construction ~400m east of Talerdig, has been built sufficiently wide for a double track formation.
I think if that station will ever be built, it would be served quite nicely by the Northampton loop services, but I'd say the people who would in theory use it will be commuters to the London region, as the majority of people who have moved to Houlton are from London and the SE.
Yep. Most likely all station Northampton then Milton Keynes, Watford Jn and then Euston or variations thereof.Even though it's not built yet, I am going to say HS2 and The Birmingham interchange Station
I think if that station will ever be built, it would be served quite nicely by the Northampton loop services, but I'd say the people who would in theory use it will be commuters to the London region, as the majority of people who have moved to Houlton are from London and the SE.
You can't speed it up apart from potentially at either end, the infrastructure is built upon the trains passing at particular points. Speed the trains up and they either have to wait longer at Welshpool or Talerddig.
Ah, though that still leaves well over a third of it to attempt to speed up….though I guess that the only opportunities would be any level crossing or weak bridge issues - can’t be signal sighting!
If there was room in the timetable an hourly stopping service to Dunbar giving the stations from Edinburgh to Drem a half hourly service would be useful.
