I agree with this. The number of times I go past a freight TOC’s depot and it’s full of trains doing nothing, yet passenger TOCs are forced to ration rolling stock to the bare minimum. If freight TOCs are going to have a surplus of locomotives, at least use them to accelerate freight services to avoid taking up multiple passenger train paths!
Might that be a matter of when "peak" running is? I could draw the same conclusion going past a depot off peak, or at the weekend, for a passenger operator.
Until fairly recently, I passed Newton Heath TMD pretty much every day at varying times (and had done for several years) - the depot was always empty, off peak or peak times, yet services were still short formed. Compare that with DRS Crewe, there has never been an occasion I've passed there and seen less than 10 class 68s doing nothing lined up next the mainline!
5tph in the hours where there is a service from Liverpool to Glasgow, although I guess that would have to give way. That would be getting to the levels of duplication once seen between York and Newcastle.
Do freight/diesel locos also not have lower speed limits on Shap Summit compared to electric and multiple units? Or have I mixed that up with something else? If it is the case though than that kind of difference in speed limit uses up capacity on the route as well which could play a part in limiting the number of services over the WCML north of Lancaster. Even fixing that though there is capacity restraints at Glasgow Central to deal with as well.
Could that go hourly, instead of a freight path? Or if that was possible, would the path be better used from somewhere else?
You run the services out of London as a flighted pair, then you stop the slower one at Milton Keynes, Warrington Bank Quay and Wigan and slot the Manchester train in the gap between the two London services at Preston.
You basically have to do this. Edinburgh has two trains arriving from london very close together.
Where do these Edinburgh services need to run to? Is that instead of Glasgow in some instances?
Sorry I meant 2 trains in 2 hours so 1tph, my bad!! Like one at 12:00 from Euston to Edinburgh then one at 13:00 from Chester to Edinburgh then 14:00 Euston to Edinburgh if you get what I mean?
To 7 coaches?
the trouble is that this option does nothing at all to enhance the capacity or timetable options northbound from Crewe or Warrington, Crewe being (ironically) the worst-served WCML node on this route!
Guessed as much!
Picking up on these two specifically. If we assume the timetable and pathing permitted these services, I feel like the fast would be better off not calling at Crewe and instead simply running non-stop to Preston and calling only at Carlisle and quite possibly Lancaster afterwards. It'd be comparable to the fast Edinburgh on the ECML running non-stop to York and serving only Darlington, Newcastle and Berwick-Upon-Tweed, and from the new winter timetable will call only at York and Newcastle.
It would, but the passenger flows for Preston, Carlisle and Glasgow, and the number of paths available, don't easily support such a service missing out the other stops.
Certainly not if the service was hourly, hence why I was operating on the assumption that we were able to get both a fast and a semi-fast as is currently the case with LNER Edinburgh trains. I remember the 16:30 calling only at Preston being scrapped because the following 16:33 to Preston was so packed even if it was still a shorter formation. Indeed if this hypothetical semi-fast terminated at Preston you'd have even more demand for the fast going further north.
Just pass the existing Crewe service to the InterCity operator and link it to the existing Birmingham to Glasgow path from Crewe.
Do people from Birmingham really want the delay of having their Scottish connection going via Manchester? How much time does that add to the journey? It was bad enough in the CrossCountry days with that detour.
