Huddersfield - Sheffield - London Open Access

[trickyvegas]

I think a modified 25 car Velaro D would be suitable? Might not be long enough to cope with demand increases though..?

15 Standard class carriages
5 first Class
1 Cinema coach
1 Icerink coach
2 Sleeper coaches
1 Pizza Express car

Running every 15 minutes, 24/7

:P

You missed off the Greggs Premier Dining coach.

 

[Greenback]

What, no Wetherspoons? And perhaps Pizza Express could incorporat a small Starbucks or Costa Coffee?

 

[N Levers]

What, no Wetherspoons? And perhaps Pizza Express could incorporat a small Starbucks or Costa Coffee?

Don't forget the Waterstones book store car

 

[anthony263]

Gowerton certainly needs one, if only for the local Conservative Club outings. Although I gather this week's trip to Haringey has been postponed.

Hopefully once the double track through Gowerton is done, the 07:28 Carmarthen - London Paddington & 17:45 London Paddington - Carmarthen services will be able to make a stop. I must admit i have always wanted to ctahc a HST from there. While your at it, when the extra services start to Fishguard how about running a direct London - Fishguard service again?

Might get some more use out of these 5 carriage IEP's which can run in pairs between London & Swansea where they can split.

GOCO seem to be planning on ordering new rolling stock as well, in fact their proposal does seem to be coming along.

 

[northwichcat]

Related to some of the serious comments about choice of route, calls and total service time:

When I saw 'Winsford Parkway' listed as a calling point I queried this with Alliance Rail for a number of reasons:
1. Winsford station's parking facilities are already full for most of the day.
2. There is land close to Winsford station that hasn't been built on but there's a reason for this - subsidence due to salt mining - which causes the River Weaver to turn in to Winsford Flashes. You don't want someone parking their car, catching the train and returning to find the car park gone and all the cars drifted off to Northwich.
3. To access Winsford from the M6 or A556 you need to go through the town of Middlewich - so it's hardly a place to be attracting non-local people to drive to.
4. Winsford station's platforms barely hold a 4 car 350 never mind a 6 car Polaris.

I suggested they could do Crewe-Sandbach-Middlewich-Northwich (reversal) - Warrington Bank Quay instead which would have a number of advantages:
1. Running a passenger service on what's a freight only line should surly aid their bid.
2. Middlewich is a better place for a Park & Ride than Winsford due to being closer to both the A556 and M6.
3. They could get the Altrincham & Knutsford to London markets which would be more lucrative than the Winsford market.

Their response was that they were aware of issues with Winsford, but it's their preferred option with Hartford their backup option.

They said my suggestion wouldn't be considered for a two reasons:
1. It would make the service slower than the franchised operator.
2. It would involve a reversal.

Now, for the other plans some of them certainly will be slower than the franchised operator and apparently Sheffield-Kings Cross would require a reversal. I think the real reason for saying Winsford was actually that Grand Central had a rival bid for Blackpool-London services which included a proposed call at Hartford, so Alliance wanted their bid to be different.

 

[Greenback]

Hopefully once the double track through Gowerton is done, the 07:28 Carmarthen - London Paddington & 17:45 London Paddington - Carmarthen services will be able to make a stop. I must admit i have always wanted to ctahc a HST from there. While your at it, when the extra services start to Fishguard how about running a direct London - Fishguard service again?

Might get some more use out of these 5 carriage IEP's which can run in pairs between London & Swansea where they can split.

GOCO seem to be planning on ordering new rolling stock as well, in fact their proposal does seem to be coming along.

They could have done with a HST last year when flights were suspended because of the ash cloud. ATW sent down a 6 car hybrid DMU which I saw coming in at Swansea. It was jam packed!

I don;t think FGW would want to run a service to Fishguard again unless foot passenger traffic rises considerably. judging from the south west though, they may well want to make a call at Gowerton on the Carmarthen services.

 

[bb21]

Even if these services do get the go-ahead, am I the only one finding that it is a tad too ambitious to be running hourly down the common sections? (That said, I wouldn't mind them calling at Nuneaton with that if the fares are reasonable and they don't take as long to get into Euston.)

 

[Greenback]

Even if these services do get the go-ahead, am I the only one finding that it is a tad too ambitious to be running hourly down the common sections? (That said, I wouldn't mind them calling at Nuneaton with that if the fares are reasonable and they don't take as long to get into Euston.)

It's all far too ambitious, and I remain unconvinced that any of these services will ever happen!

 

[northwichcat]

Even if these services do get the go-ahead, am I the only one finding that it is a tad too ambitious to be running hourly down the common sections? (That said, I wouldn't mind them calling at Nuneaton with that if the fares are reasonable and they don't take as long to get into Euston.)

For all the services they would require 2 paths per hour on both the WCML and ECML. If some of the services get the go ahead but others don't I'd imagine they'd revise patterns. At present I imagine the 2 hourly Huddersfield-Euston would be interworked with 2 hourly Huddersfield-Kings Cross even though it doesn't say so.

I'd personally like to see the Leeds-Stockport-Euston service be revised to be an hourly service calling at Bradford, Halifax, Huddersfield, Stalybridge, Stockport, Alderley Edge... Euston. Interwork it with North TPE and Calder Vale after Manchester Hub to try and best utilise the 6 car capacity to reduce overcrowding on existing services in the Huddersfield, Bradford and Leeds area. This should then be their priority service.

I imagine the reason for not having the above as their suggestion is that it's too similar to Grand Central's rejected plan but that was mainly rejected because GU proposed using 180s and because Alderley Edge would need platform lengthening which they didn't mention that they would fund in their proposal.