Proposal for alternative to Northern Powerhouse Rail

[stevieinselby]

That's why new lines are such a good idea. I genuinely can't believe that TRU is actually cheaper than building a new railway between Manchester and Leeds. (Assuming that it uses conventional stations and approaches). Especially once cost of disruption is taken into account.

Imagine that the whole of HS2 was like the bit between Aylesbury and Euston – that's what we're looking at across the Pennines. Much of the land is wild upland and moorland that would be totally unsuitable to build a railway on, and most of what is not upland and moorland is densely populated areas in steep-sided valleys. Any completely new route would be likely to involve significant amounts of tunnelling (very expensive), significant amounts of compulsory purchase and demolition (very expensive) and significant despoilation of valuable countryside and sensitive habitat (politically and environmentally unacceptable). There just aren't the large swathes of flat farmland between Manchester and Leeds that could easily and cheaply be acquired to provide a suitable route for an intercity standard railway, especially when you need to connect it to station throats that are already over-capacity.

HS2 in full would have been cheaper and quicker than providing an equivalent upgrade to the ECML, XCML, WCML and MML. I'm not convinced the same would be true for HS3.

For avoidance of doubt I assume the reason that this is bollox is because of those 27,000 seats between Manchester and London a significant proportion of those are made up of people who either travel from Manchester and get off before London or are people who get on at an intermediary station between Manchester and London and get off at London or before.

A much better way would just be to look at home many people are on every Pendolino at different times of the day, is such data available in open source?

The three big problems with quoting "27,000 seats" are (1) demand isn't evenly spread across the day, so taking off some more lightly loaded trains at quiet times doesn't allow you to run any more trains at busy times when there isn't enough capacity, (b) it doesn't take into account the significant number of people travelling to/from intermediate stations, or possibly beyond (eg is a person travelling from Romford to Rochdale included? They will undoubtedly use the London to Manchester train for its entire length, but their ticket is neither from London nor to Manchester) and (iii) the WCML doesn't just serve Manchester, and other routes to the north west and Scotland may be more overcrowded but there isn't the space to run more trains.

I believe there is data available on how many passengers are typically on each train, but I'm not sure where to find it or how easy it is to access at scale.

The limit to train acceleration is thus passenger comfort which on the London underground is limited to around 1.3ms/s, however with EV car motors and battery assist our next generation BEMU will be able to keep that rate of acceleration up until it passes 125mph, hitting 300km/h in 68 seconds and 3km from the start point. So with a 300kph speed and BEMU acceleration rates we could near half the journey time and therefore the number of trains needed to maintain the service. In the table below I compare a class 800 with a BEMU with 22MWe drivetrain limited to a max acceleration of 1.3ms/s (power output is calculated from sizing a battery that would fit into the weight delta between a class 800 and 801).

Where does the limit of traction fit here? To what extent can that rate of acceleration be reliably maintained in all conditions? There's no point in timetabling trains based on applying full beans on a dry rail and then finding that you've got massive delays every time it rains because trains don't have enough grip. It's bad enough that some lines have a degraded timetable during leaf-fall season. And can we realistically maintain the same rate of acceleration as speeds increase? It seems that the only way to do that would be to ramp up the power being transmitted to the wheels at higher speeds – there's a reason why acceleration falls away as speed increases, and it's called the laws of physics. Unless trains are sandbagging to start with and holding back power that would go beyond what they can get traction for, which feels like it might be an unnecessarily energy-intensive way of running.

As a secondary benefit shooting for something like this would actually make rail something exciting for lay people, getting on a train that accelerates more like an aircraft taking off will actually be exciting. See Tom Scott's reaction to riding the SC Maglev which accelerates at a similar rate.

The other reason for not having intercity trains accelerate like the Victoria Line and/or a 747 is that you're much more likely to have passengers still moving around the carriage and standing or sorting out their luggage, and if the train takes off like a rocket then you're putting those people at much more risk of falling. On the tube, people get on and within seconds either take a seat or grab a handrail before the doors close and the train sets off. On a plane, people are seated and strapped in before they hit the taxiway, let alone the runway. But on an intercity train? Very often there are people still trying to find their seat or hefting cases into the overhead racks or whatever as the train leaves the station, so we don't want those trains going off like a greyhound.

I would run the Scarborough as a shuttle to York, I use it fairly regularly to and from Seamer to Manchester and its far more reliable when it runs that way even although it means a change. The path across York Station between Leeds and the Scarborough line crosses across the main ECML lines, and through Scarborough trains can only use platforms 5 or 3/4 which is one long platform, so running Scarborough services west of York immediately introduces a lot of failure points in the timetable. When it was/is a through service if its even a few minutes late at York you lose yet more time getting a path through York.

Connectivity is nice, but if reliability suffers then that is a much bigger problem. Its not so bad going west as the train from Scarborough can sit in Platform 4 and wait for for a path through the station so passenger changing are off the treain and making their connections, its going the other way (West to East) that fails on a regular basis, passenger with connections are sat outside York awaiting a platform. Obviously a unidirectional service is a physical impossiblity.

I wonder if there's any possibility of an additional track from the Down Main between platforms 3 and 5 with a crossover to reach platform 4? That would solve a lot of the problems of a Scarborough-bound train blocking the DM or platform 5 while waiting for up trains to pass, if they could use platform 4 without needing to run through platform 3 to get to it. Leeds is the second most common destination from Scarborough after York, with 10% of passenger journeys (York has 23%), so removing the through journeys is a significant inconvenience for passengers, although that would be mitigated to some extent if the York to Scarborough service was increased to half-hourly.

 

[HSTEd]

I'd love an underground four platform station in Manchester, but that is going to be one hell of a project.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 10 Sep 2025 ==

Where does the limit of traction fit here? To what extent can that rate of acceleration be reliably maintained in all conditions? There's no point in timetabling trains based on applying full beans on a dry rail and then finding that you've got massive delays every time it rains because trains don't have enough grip. It's bad enough that some lines have a degraded timetable during leaf-fall season. And can we realistically maintain the same rate of acceleration as speeds increase? It seems that the only way to do that would be to ramp up the power being transmitted to the wheels at higher speeds – there's a reason why acceleration falls away as speed increases, and it's called the laws of physics. Unless trains are sandbagging to start with and holding back power that would go beyond what they can get traction for, which feels like it might be an unnecessarily energy-intensive way of running.

The limit to traction is often near or above the limit of passenger comfort in most conditions. With modern motor drives, permanent magnet or synchronous reluctance traction motors and lithium batteries we have functionally unlimited power available. We can keep the train just shy of slipping until its doing 125mph if we want. And we can have the train dynamically respond to traction conditions to accelerate as fast as can be accelerated without wheelslips.

Trains with electric transmissions have always had to deliberately reduce tractive effort at low speeds to avoid wheelslip, nothing new there.

As to wet rail - Japanese studies indicate that after about axle eight, the railhead is dry even in pouring rain. So longer trains accelerate better in bad weather. Doesn't help so much with leaf fall but that is still a comparatively localised phenomenon, and one that can be anticipated at the time timetables are drawn up.

EDIT:

Imagine that the whole of HS2 was like the bit between Aylesbury and Euston – that's what we're looking at across the Pennines. Much of the land is wild upland and moorland that would be totally unsuitable to build a railway on, and most of what is not upland and moorland is densely populated areas in steep-sided valleys. Any completely new route would be likely to involve significant amounts of tunnelling (very expensive), significant amounts of compulsory purchase and demolition (very expensive) and significant despoilation of valuable countryside and sensitive habitat (politically and environmentally unacceptable). There just aren't the large swathes of flat farmland between Manchester and Leeds that could easily and cheaply be acquired to provide a suitable route for an intercity standard railway, especially when you need to connect it to station throats that are already over-capacity.

HS2 in full would have been cheaper and quicker than providing an equivalent upgrade to the ECML, XCML, WCML and MML. I'm not convinced the same would be true for HS3.

Despite various dodgy decisions on tunnel design, the tunneling on HS2 is about the only thing that has actually gone well.

I don't think just boring a Pennine Base tunnel would come out ruinously expensive if you don't try to do anything silly to it like try to shrinkwrap it to the trains or design for 400kph.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 10 Sep 2025 ==

The other reason for not having intercity trains accelerate like the Victoria Line and/or a 747 is that you're much more likely to have passengers still moving around the carriage and standing or sorting out their luggage, and if the train takes off like a rocket then you're putting those people at much more risk of falling. On the tube, people get on and within seconds either take a seat or grab a handrail before the doors close and the train sets off. On a plane, people are seated and strapped in before they hit the taxiway, let alone the runway. But on an intercity train? Very often there are people still trying to find their seat or hefting cases into the overhead racks or whatever as the train leaves the station, so we don't want those trains going off like a greyhound.

My experience with the tube is that people often move around the trains when under braking or acceleration. Indeed where I live now people move around busses under far greater, and far less predictable, acceleration loads.
Tube style accelerations of ~1.1m/s/s has been assessed as being acceptable to the vast majority of standing passengers in various academic studies. I believe it is considered very widely acceptable for people who are actually moving about the train.

Also a railway that has trains accelerate this fast won't be a true intercity railway any more - a classification which is increasingly marginalised in the UK as it is.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 10 Sep 2025 ==

To be honest the distances dont lend themselves to proper (~180mph/300kph) high speed rail, Liverpool Manchester is under 40 miles, Manchester Leeds is 45miles and Leeds York is just over 25 miles, which is the main transpennine northern route. Aim for a 100mph railway.

Those distances are long enough for modern (in revenue service today) EMUs to achieve average service speeds of around 100mph.
The ~55km of a direct new route from Liverpool to Manchester could be covered by a 300km/h top speed unit in ~15 minutes non stop.
It's probably 16 minutes Leeds-Manchester non stop, probably 20 with a stop at Huddersfield.

If you did stop at Huddersfield the railway could rid itself of the Standedge tunnels entirely and turn the stub of line up to Diggle into a Metrolink route - which would serve the ribbon development up there far better than the railway ever would.
A new line from Manchester to Liverpool would allow us to devote the existing lines to local services and likely rationalise some of the infrastructure. Especially if the CLC gets Metrolink'd/Merseyrail'd

 

[mike57]

I wonder if there's any possibility of an additional track from the Down Main between platforms 3 and 5 with a crossover to reach platform 4? That would solve a lot of the problems of a Scarborough-bound train blocking the DM or platform 5 while waiting for up trains to pass, if they could use platform 4 without needing to run through platform 3 to get to it. Leeds is the second most common destination from Scarborough after York, with 10% of passenger journeys (York has 23%), so removing the through journeys is a significant inconvenience for passengers, although that would be mitigated to some extent if the York to Scarborough service was increased to half-hourly.

York used to have two middle tracks between 3 & 5. Here is snip from a picture taken in 1973 (Full picture on York Press archive website) which shows it clearly: (Edit, ignore platform numbers they were changed around the same time)


I think it was 'rationalised' in the late 80s, possibly in connection with electrification. Had this layout been retained access to the Scarborough line from the West could be a lot easier. There is a lot of 'stuff' in the space where the two middle tracks were, but there is room. Will it happen? I wont say 'never' but not in any foreseeable future.

As with a lot of rail infrastructure 'rationalisations' that took place in the period up to the end of the 1980s, they are now limiting growth, another obvious one, 4 tracks through Crossgates. Then 4 tracks from Huddersfield to the start of the Standedge tunnel, I know after reducing to two track the speed limit was raised (65 to 85?) but would we have been better with the old formation, giving 7.5miles of 4 track west of Huddersfield, the lower speed limit would add maybe 3-4 minutes, but the extra capacity and the ability of fast services to overtake stoppers would probably get a chunk of that back and give a more robust timetable with more capacity for stopping services.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 11 Sep 2025 ==

It's probably 16 minutes Leeds-Manchester non stop, probably 20 with a stop at Huddersfield.

If High Speed Rail build ever becomes a possibility again in the UK the I would actually prioritise Leeds Manchester over Liverpool Manchester. You currently have two reasonably flat and straight routes between Liverpool and Manchester which could probably be upgraded further, but Leeds Manchester is ultimately limited by the geography of the existing lines.

Off the wall thought, how much would (almost) fully tunneled 125/140 mph route between Leeds and Manchester cost, then retain the existing route as is for local services

 

[Bald Rick]

I think it was 'rationalised' in the late 80s, possibly in connection with electrification. Had this layout been retained access to the Scarborough line from the West could be a lot easier. There is a lot of 'stuff' in the space where the two middle tracks were, but there is room. Will it happen? I wont say 'never' but not in any foreseeable future.

Yes remodelled ahead of electrification. And all lines were 20mph IIRC. Which would be a significant constraint on capacity with today’s timetable.

 

[quantinghome]

It's a political straw man on the part of the thinktank and Reform to describe Northern Powerhouse Rail as "High Speed". It's always been planned for conventional intercity speeds. And the whole point of the rather circuitous planned route between Liverpool and Manchester is to provide better connectivity and capacity by separating intercity and local trains, not end-to-end speed.

Don't be fooled. As with the campaign against HS2, they are following the classic wrecking strategy of proposing a superficially convincing alternative which is then quickly forgotten as soon as the original plan is cancelled.

 

[Peter749]

York used to have two middle tracks between 3 & 5. Here is snip from a picture taken in 1973 (Full picture on York Press archive website) which shows it clearly: (Edit, ignore platform numbers they were changed around the same time)

I think it was 'rationalised' in the late 80s, possibly in connection with electrification. Had this layout been retained access to the Scarborough line from the West could be a lot easier.

In what way would it be easier?
There was only two through platforms that could access the Scarborough line and it is the same two platforms as today.
What do you need for an Hourly service on the line

The Single track bridge is more of a constraint

 

[mike57]

There was only two through platforms that could access the Scarborough line and it is the same two platforms as today

You could 'go up the middle' and reach platform 4 without running up the length of 3 or 5, you still have to cross the southbound line at the north end of 3, but there could be trains in 3 & 5 and you could still leave or depart from 4. The single track bridge is less of an issue as if there are are conflicts they dont block the ECML platforms and routes.

The issue is that trains from Leeds making for Scarborough have to cross pretty much all through lines. With a robust timetable not a problem, it worked fairly well up until 2018, but as you try to squeeze more trains through the same sections margins are lowered, and one minor delay rapidly propagates to other services.

As a speculative discussion, had the old 4 track layout been retained, with improvements to allow a higher approach speed, then it would have helped, as to the likelyhood of it being reinstated, well as I said earlier, never is a long time, but in this case I think never will probably apply.

Going back further in time the Scarborough branch was accessible from more of the platforms. This snip from a 1930s map shows the north end tracks (NLS Scotland)

 

[Kingston Dan]

It's a political straw man on the part of the thinktank and Reform to describe Northern Powerhouse Rail as "High Speed". It's always been planned for conventional intercity speeds. And the whole point of the rather circuitous planned route between Liverpool and Manchester is to provide better connectivity and capacity by separating intercity and local trains, not end-to-end speed.

Don't be fooled. As with the campaign against HS2, they are following the classic wrecking strategy of proposing a superficially convincing alternative which is then quickly forgotten as soon as the original plan is cancelled.

Exactly and Gilligan is behind both campaigns. The idea above that Gilligan knows rail is ludicrous other than in the sense he wants to close most of it down. He is no friend of the the railway.

 

[Northumbriana]

I have to agree, planning a new high speed line is pointless, and will not happen (as in boots on the ground) in any foreseeable timeframe. Like it or not, HS2 has killed off any future high speed rail projects in the UK for a generation.

To be honest the distances dont lend themselves to proper (~180mph/300kph) high speed rail, Liverpool Manchester is under 40 miles, Manchester Leeds is 45miles and Leeds York is just over 25 miles, which is the main transpennine northern route. Aim for a 100mph railway.

4 tracks where it can be delivered without significant demolition, e.g. east of Leeds - Crossgates, 3 tracks from Huddersfield to Marsden, maybe as a reversible 'overtaking track', and the big one, get the electrification finished.

In the wider picture on northern (as in area not TOC) routes, if more capacity is needed it needs to be delivered by longer trains not increasing frequency. There are still far too many 2 and 3 car trains running on a network that is 'at capacity'. For the Newcastle - Liverpool service this needs a minimum 8 car service hourly as a 'proper' Intercity service.

That then leaves the issue of Manchester City centre, the current arrangements are a bodge, that has evolved over many decades, and is now not fit for purpose. Short term use the space beyond Platform 1 at Piccadilly to create maybe two more platforms for services terminating from the east. Dont try and run TPE on to the airport, operationaly its a pain. Run the airport service as a self contained shuttle from a pair of dedicated platforms, maybe 10/11

That then leaves Castlefield, I agree that a tunneled east west route, connecting the routes from Stalybridge and Rochdale with Chat Moss and CLC routes to Liverpool and possibly a spur to the airport is the optimum choice, retaining Castlefield for local services, but in the current climate that seems like pie in the sky. Even the proposed Platform 15/16 at Piccadilly and associated Castlefield improvements seem unlikely

Given the wider political and economic situation I would be very surprised if any funding is forthcoming in the next 5 years or so. No doubt lip service will be paid, but as for any actual work starting beyond that which is currently in progress (Dewsbury - Huddersfield), I just dont see it happening.

Surely any tunnel across Manchester would be better suited for North West-South East traffic given the demand on those routes?

 

[Topological]

Whilst there is a lot to commend the Reform plan, it misses a core objective of the NPR plans - serving Manchester Airport. It makes sense that Reform think less about global connectivity,. Thankfully, the other parties seem to be on with the idea that the economy is global.

Even the not exactly friends of the North Tories knew that they needed to connect Manchester Airport in to Leeds and Liverpool (even if it was just to make money for their business friends).

Moving the Liverpool and Leeds traffic out of Castlefield and Victoria will mkae a large difference to the local options. I still think a tunnel will be needed to grow the region, but at least there will be a few paths created. A link to allow Manchester-Scotland via the HS tunnel and airport would be the next highest value for money once the tunnel is built.

I know not everyone agrees with my perspective that we are in an era of regional, rather than city, level thinking on the economy.

 

[Technologist]

Where does the limit of traction fit here? To what extent can that rate of acceleration be reliably maintained in all conditions? There's no point in timetabling trains based on applying full beans on a dry rail and then finding that you've got massive delays every time it rains because trains don't have enough grip. It's bad enough that some lines have a degraded timetable during leaf-fall season. And can we realistically maintain the same rate of acceleration as speeds increase? It seems that the only way to do that would be to ramp up the power being transmitted to the wheels at higher speeds – there's a reason why acceleration falls away as speed increases, and it's called the laws of physics. Unless trains are sandbagging to start with and holding back power that would go beyond what they can get traction for, which feels like it might be an unnecessarily energy-intensive way of running.

Coefficient of friction for a steel rail/wheel is typically 0.35-0.5 so in theory a BEMU with every wheel powered could accelerate at 3.5-5 ms/s. Typically an EMU like a Class 374 only has about 50% of its wheels powered, so with all the wheels powered we could manage to double acceleration of existing vehicles without having a lower factor of adhesion.

1.3ms/s is sufficiently below the theoretical maximum that it should be possible to maintain this rate of acceleration in most conditions, if we are talking about a railway with high frequency, high speed, high acceleration trains the revenue will also justify keeping vegetation down around it and using modern techniques "laser" to clean the rails. Once the trains are going along every few minutes there won't be sufficient time for anything to accumulate. On the deceleration and safety side GBR should put some effort into eddy current technology, we could likely make some significant operational improvements if we can have the trains be able to brake substantially harder in emergencies using a system which is not dependant on friction to operate.

Regarding power if we use on board batteries to supplement to OHLE we can effectively accelerate at the traction/passenger comfort limit all the way to top speed. Power is not a constraint if we use the automotive BEV supply chain. The 5 car BEMU I describe earlier has a power to weight of ~122bhp/tonne which is about 1/4 of a 4 door performance BEV.

The other reason for not having intercity trains accelerate like the Victoria Line and/or a 747 is that you're much more likely to have passengers still moving around the carriage and standing or sorting out their luggage, and if the train takes off like a rocket then you're putting those people at much more risk of falling. On the tube, people get on and within seconds either take a seat or grab a handrail before the doors close and the train sets off. On a plane, people are seated and strapped in before they hit the taxiway, let alone the runway. But on an intercity train? Very often there are people still trying to find their seat or hefting cases into the overhead racks or whatever as the train leaves the station, so we don't want those trains going off like a greyhound.

The plane analogy was descriptive rather than precise, planes typically accelerate at about 2.5-3ms/s even so it's perfectly possible to stand up on one, see tea-traying (riding a tea tray down the aisle of an ascending aircraft) and other things cabin crew do while dead heading.

The point about the "high speed national metro" is that it would be a metro it wouldn't be an "Intercity Train". The doors and seating will be more like Thameslink as would the journey durations, people take bags on the underground generally grabbing a grab handle when they get on and then looking for seats once the train gets going.

With rapid acceleration a 25 mile journey would take 9 minutes with an average speed of 163mph, with a 90 second dwell per station average speed would be 140mph. So if you had a line going London, Luton, Leister, Nottingham, Sheffield, Manchester you could get to Manchester in 1hr 15min. If you want a pee and a meal get off the train and then board the next one a few minutes behind it, this is a Metro. If you went for this paradigm you basically have most of the UK population in a single travel to work area, I'd argue that this would be utterly transformational in a way that HS2 just isn't.

If rail want's to be relevant it needs to keep evolving and that means creating grander visions and then doing the R&D. It means asking not if I want much higher performance trains but releasing that we could have them essentially for free and then looking at what we could do with them.

 

[Peter749]

Surely any tunnel across Manchester would be better suited for North West-South East traffic given the demand on those routes?

I don't think any underground main line tunnel is a good idea.
You get too many people going on different trains waiting on the same platform - you see that on 13 & 14 at Piccadilly where less than half the passenger waiting will get on any service

An underground station would have limited platforms - maybe 4 - and it would not be a nice place to wait for a train.
You see this with the Thameslink platforms at St Pancras.

With rapid acceleration a 25 mile journey would take 9 minutes with an average speed of 163mph, with a 90 second dwell per station average speed would be 140mph. So if you had a line going London, Luton, Leister, Nottingham, Sheffield, Manchester you could get to Manchester in 1hr 15min.

Strange that other countries don't share your views.
The rapid acceleration would only work in a Tunnel as the weather would stop trains from getting up to maximum speed and you would have to build a lot of new infrastructure for this idea
Never going to happen.

If you want a pee and a meal get off the train and then board the next one a few minutes behind it, this is a Metro. If you went for this paradigm you basically have most of the UK population in a single travel to work area, I'd argue that this would be utterly transformational in a way that HS2 just isn't.

Rubbish
You don't make a long distance train in to a Metro.

 

[nr758123]

If you did stop at Huddersfield the railway could rid itself of the Standedge tunnels entirely and turn the stub of line up to Diggle into a Metrolink route - which would serve the ribbon development up there far better than the railway ever would.

It's probably getting a bit off-topic, but if what you appear to be suggesting happens then anyone in Slaithwaite or Marsden who works in Manchester should either change job or put their house up for sale.

 

[HSTEd]

It's probably getting a bit off-topic, but if what you appear to be suggesting happens then anyone in Slaithwaite or Marsden who works in Manchester should either change job or put their house up for sale.

There are several other options available.
They could take the train from Marsden or Slaithwaite to Huddersfield and double back. Depending on connection time they either come out about the same total journey time or come out ahead because it will only be ~12 minutes or so from Huddersfield to Manchester on a new line.

Or they drive (a car, e-bike or similar) to the Metrolink stations on the west side of the Pennines.
These are not particularly large flows in any case, certainly compared to the flows that would be unlocked by a Metrolink conversion of the western portion of the line (and related railways in eastern Manchester)

 

[Northumbriana]

I don't think any underground main line tunnel is a good idea.
You get too many people going on different trains waiting on the same platform - you see that on 13 & 14 at Piccadilly where less than half the passenger waiting will get on any service

An underground station would have limited platforms - maybe 4 - and it would not be a nice place to wait for a train.
You see this with the Thameslink platforms at St Pancras.

If this was a tunnel for IC services surely HS2 would link into it?

 

[HSTEd]

I don't think any underground main line tunnel is a good idea.
You get too many people going on different trains waiting on the same platform - you see that on 13 & 14 at Piccadilly where less than half the passenger waiting will get on any service

An underground station would have limited platforms - maybe 4 - and it would not be a nice place to wait for a train.
You see this with the Thameslink platforms at St Pancras.

With a custom designed station you can provide substantial waiting areas, including potentially on the surface.
And there aren't that many distinct stopping patterns on the relevant trains in any case.

I don't see why an underground station is inherently worse in a world where all the trains are electric, indeed it might be nicer in the winter to not be freezing.

The rapid acceleration would only work in a Tunnel as the weather would stop trains from getting up to maximum speed and you would have to build a lot of new infrastructure for this idea
Never going to happen.

Outside of edge cases like leaf fall, the bulk of the train will see a dry railhead whatever happens.
Any water/ice is rapidly driven off the railhead or evaporated by the giant metal rollers running over it.

Japanese studies suggest that by about axle eight, the weather becomes irrelevant to axle traction.

Short trains see some performance change as a result of weather, but 200m+ trains will perform pretty much the same in all weathers.

Rubbish
You don't make a long distance train in to a Metro.

Why not?

"Long distance" trains have been turning into Metro type services since the dawn of the railways.
The distance needed for "long distance" has grown and grown and grown over the last two centuries, why would it stop?

Transpennine Express and its Class 185s demonstrates the long-term direction of travel.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Transpennine Express and its Class 185s demonstrates the long-term direction of travel.

As compared to the end doored fleet they ordered later?

I usually shout against door position prejudice and quite like the 185s but they don't make TPE a metro service.

 

[stevieinselby]

"Long distance" trains have been turning into Metro type services since the dawn of the railways.
The distance needed for "long distance" has grown and grown and grown over the last two centuries, why would it stop?

Transpennine Express and its Class 185s demonstrates the long-term direction of travel.

So ... comfortable seating with generous width and legroom, first class section and onboard catering ... doesn't sound much like a metro type service to me!

 

[HSTEd]

So ... comfortable seating with generous width and legroom, first class section and onboard catering ... doesn't sound much like a metro type service to me!

First class sections and legroom don't make it a Metro service in this context, this is purely a statement about stopping pattern, intensity and the like.

Also as someone who regularly travels on TPE South's service (in first class no less!) the onboard catering offer has been steadily vanishing for the last decade.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 13 Sep 2025 ==

As compared to the end doored fleet they ordered later?

An end door fleet that was so succesful that they dumped a big chunk of it almost immediately? hehe I kid.

I usually shout against door position prejudice and quite like the 185s but they don't make TPE a metro service.

I did say direction of travel.
And the direction is in the direction of a metro service on a sliding scale between true high standard intercity and metro, and has been for several decades.
As trains have accelerated the justification for many of the features of long distance trains have evaporated.

The future of the UK railway looks an awful lot more like a Class 395 than it looks like an old style intercity rake.

 

[Bletchleyite]

The future of the UK railway looks an awful lot more like a Class 395 than it looks like an old style intercity rake.

A 395 is not a metro unit. Not even close.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 13 Sep 2025 ==

Also as someone who regularly travels on TPE South's service (in first class no less!) the onboard catering offer has been steadily vanishing for the last decade.

South TPE is a regional express service. It's very different from north TPE and arguably should be operated by Northern. I'd say it's considerably less InterCity than Barrow and Windermere.

 

[stevieinselby]

First class sections and legroom don't make it a Metro service in this context, this is purely a statement about stopping pattern, intensity and the like.

A high-frequency service, yes, but you can still have a high-frequency intercity service. If anything, TPX have been moving more towards a proper intercity service with the introduction of the Nova fleets, although they have never been truly intercity but more a regional express. While they do have some trains that stop more than you would expect an "express" to do, that's more around lack of capacity on the core section meaning that some trains are having to do double-duty, and a lot of that should be resolved once TRU is complete and the coast-to-coast services can get back to running a properly limited stop service alongside a decent metro-style local service.

 

[Brubulus]

A 395 is not a metro unit. Not even close.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 13 Sep 2025 ==



South TPE is a regional express service. It's very different from north TPE and arguably should be operated by Northern. I'd say it's considerably less InterCity than Barrow and Windermere.

The only part of TPE that's intercity is Manchester-Scotland, the rest of it is regional express, like Barrow/Windermere, though it's on the intercity side of that.

 

[Topological]

The only part of TPE that's intercity is Manchester-Scotland, the rest of it is regional express, like Barrow/Windermere, though it's on the intercity side of that.

Barrow/Windermere is Northern, but appreciably was TPE.

Liverpool - Manchester - Leeds - York - Darlington - Durham - Newcastle would be an intercity pattern. You can probably squeeze Huddersfield in there and still call it more intercity than regional express.

However, there are currently more stops in that Liverpool to Newcastle route because there are no semi-fast services to pick up the slack. This is the point @stevieinselby makes well.

NPR is all about an intercity service on the route, but delivers better as it brings in another major traffic generator (Manchester Airport) and creates a dedicated alignment free from the stopping services.

 

[daodao]

Barrow/Windermere is Northern, but appreciably was TPE.

Liverpool - Manchester - Leeds - York - Darlington - Durham - Newcastle would be an intercity pattern. You can probably squeeze Huddersfield in there and still call it more intercity than regional express.

However, there are currently more stops in that Liverpool to Newcastle route because there are no semi-fast services to pick up the slack. This is the point @stevieinselby makes well.

NPR is all about an intercity service on the route, but delivers better as it brings in another major traffic generator (Manchester Airport) and creates a dedicated alignment free from the stopping services.

The massive diversion of the original NPR proposal via Manchester Airport is unnecessary and unaffordable.

 

[HSTEd]

A high-frequency service, yes, but you can still have a high-frequency intercity service. If anything, TPX have been moving more towards a proper intercity service with the introduction of the Nova fleets, although they have never been truly intercity but more a regional express. While they do have some trains that stop more than you would expect an "express" to do, that's more around lack of capacity on the core section meaning that some trains are having to do double-duty, and a lot of that should be resolved once TRU is complete and the coast-to-coast services can get back to running a properly limited stop service alongside a decent metro-style local service.

I'm not really sure that lack of capacity is the major driver here.

I think its that there is a strong political driver towards more stops on trains (and economic, to encourage traffic from secondary stations), and the counterveiling driver to reduce journey times is much less powerful than it was.
In the old days, with low performance loco hauled stock, a stop on a fast train could easily cost you ten minutes in end to end journey time.

With the high performanc eunits we have today the journey time driver against stops is far less powerful, whilst the political and journey time driver for more stops remains unchanged.
With the even higher performance units of the future, we could be lookin at two or three minutes lost per stop versus non-stop.

As train accelerations get better, there is less incentive to have complex, intricate mixed stopping patterns because the advantages of the fast train over the semi fast or the stopper get smaller.
And intricate stopping patterns come with their own costs, especially in infrastructure terms.

 

[eldomtom2]

With the even higher performance units of the future, we could be lookin at two or three minutes lost per stop versus non-stop.

But that adds up - if you had the current Huddersfield line TPE services stop at every station between Manchester and Leeds you'd be looking at a 25-30 minute time penalty.

 

[HSTEd]

But that adds up - if you had the current Huddersfield line TPE services stop at every station between Manchester and Leeds you'd be looking at a 25-30 minute time penalty.

It would, but at the low speeds found on the existing railway the journey time extension would be significantly shorter.

At 75mph the train will only lose about 35 seconds plus the dwell time per stop.

Of course the real problem with the existing TPE route is that it is painfully slow thanks to its geometry and station density, which is why I agree that replacing it is a good idea upthread.
Then the existing line can be rationalised.

 

[Northumbriana]

If HS2 was to reach Manchester and Scotland might it be better if the Scotland trains went through Manchester via a continuation of the airport tunnel?

With a link onto a new line to Leeds and Liverpool and also Sheffield perhaps it could link Glasgow, Edinburgh & Liverpool (via Chat Moss?) to Leeds, Manchester Airport, Sheffield, Nottingham, Birmingham & London. Thereby making Manchester more of a hub rather than being bypassed.

 

[Peter749]

Of course the real problem with the existing TPE route is that it is painfully slow thanks to its geometry and station density, which is why I agree that replacing it is a good idea upthread.
Then the existing line can be rationalised.

So in the real world the Trans Pennine route is bing improved and electrified but you think it should be rationalised in the future?
How stupid is that?

Got a problem with the new route - ok divert via the old - except it would not be suitable because somebody spent money to make it worse

 

[HSTEd]

So in the real world the Trans Pennine route is bing improved and electrified but you think it should be rationalised in the future?
How stupid is that?

Well just because someoen spent some money on it does not mean it should be sacrosanct forever.
If a fast line is opened the line, as it exists now or after the upgrade, will have lost its primary reason to exist.

Got a problem with the new route - ok divert via the old - except it would not be suitable because somebody spent money to make it worse

Might be worse in some ways but better in others - see the example I give of Metrolink conversion to serve the people along the route.

Rationalisation will also reduce the money pouring away on it every singel day on maintenance and upkeep.
In an emergency "get people home" scenario, we already have another route between Manchester and Leeds in any case, via Halifax.