Adding 400m platforms to Manchester Piccadilly

[squingo44]

Though of course if there was something like 6-8 tph to Manchester, the loading on trains that run beyond might spread itself out to not cause problems to traffic for Leeds/ Scotland.

Yes, I'd envision that HS2 will eventually be running at least 6 TPH to Manchester. At that point, there simply wouldn't be capacity to run separate services to Manchester and to Scotland.

Hourly is perfectly fine, it's not a metro.

But HS2 explicitly _is_ building a segregated high-speed network so that the major cities outside London can function as interchange hubs in their own right! We should be building for a world where anyone in the north of England can hop on their nearest train to Manchester Piccadilly, and then get on the next train to Birmingham, London, or Scotland, without needing to plan ahead!

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 13 Jul 2026 ==

here is no credible proposal whatsoever for a high speed line from Manchester to Scotland, so you can forget that.

Once an underground station at Piccadilly gets built, it would be relative simple to connect it up to the Chat Moss Line and eventually build a new high-speed alignment joining the WCML closer to Preston. It's expensive, for sure, but we shouldn't kneecap the network by building Manchester Piccadilly as a terminus station because it's cheaper in the moment.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 13 Jul 2026 ==

Because Manchester is important enough to have services to both London and Scotland, without inconveniencing those who have no reason to divert through Manchester. And important enough that its services to London don't need to have Scotland passengers taking up seats.

Building an underground HSR stations and tunnel under Manchester is going to be more expensive than building some HSR infrastructure in open country to provide extra capacity for Scotland services by the more direct route, potentially including Manchester-Scotland services.

How are you going to get a more direct route from Manchester to Scotland? If it has to go via Manchester Airport and up and down the same tunnel as the southbound Manchester services, you're limiting the capacity of the network to partially more capacity than we have currently. We're absolutely need more connectivity in the long-run than a terminus station at Manchester can provide.

4 TPH Euston - OOC - B'ham Interchange - Manchester Airport - Manchester Piccadilly - Preston - Edinburgh/Glasgow sounds like a reasonable baseline to me for a future service, and I can imagine it going as high as 6 or even 8 TPH.

 

[Bletchleyite]

But HS2 explicitly _is_ building a segregated high-speed network so that the major cities outside London can function as interchange hubs in their own right!

No it isn't. It is building a segregated high speed line to relieve the south WCML (and other bits of the WCML if it ever gets past Birmingham).

We should be building for a world where anyone in the north of England can hop on their nearest train to Manchester Piccadilly, and then get on the next train to Birmingham, London, or Scotland, without needing to plan ahead!

You can with hourly long distance services (most local services are at least 2tph anyway). However increasingly trains are priced dynamically and so planning ahead is the norm and that is not likely to change but rather move more that way.

Once an underground station at Piccadilly gets built, it would be relative simple to connect it up to the Chat Moss Line and eventually build a new high-speed alignment joining the WCML closer to Preston. It's expensive, for sure, but we shouldn't kneecap the network by building Manchester Piccadilly as a terminus station because it's cheaper in the moment.

Manchester Piccadilly already is a terminus station.

4 TPH Euston - OOC - B'ham Interchange - Manchester Airport - Manchester Piccadilly - Preston - Edinburgh/Glasgow sounds like a reasonable baseline to me for a future service, and I can imagine it going as high as 6 or even 8 TPH.

It doesn't sound sensible or necessary at all, not unless you build HS2 to Phase 2 so that would actually make Edinburgh faster. And even if it did, you'd run it straight up the WCML, not via Manchester.

 

[HSTEd]

Because Manchester is important enough to have services to both London and Scotland, without inconveniencing those who have no reason to divert through Manchester. And important enough that its services to London don't need to have Scotland passengers taking up seats.

Direct route is somewhat subjective, but the straight line between Glasgow and Handsacre passes through Eccles, the line to Edinburgh passes east of central Manchester.

Going through central Manchester doesn't seem to be meaningfully less direct than going through Warrington or Wigan.

Building an underground HSR stations and tunnel under Manchester is going to be more expensive than building some HSR infrastructure in open country to provide extra capacity for Scotland services by the more direct route, potentially including Manchester-Scotland services.

Giving the state of the planning system, I no longer think that is quite as sure as it once would have been.

Surface construction, even in open country, appears to no longer be cheap.

 

[Austriantrain]

4tph Liverpool-NPR-> Manchester Airport-Manchester Piccadilly -> Leeds via NPR -> TPE destinations
4tph London-HS2-WCML->Manchester Airport-Manchester Piccadilly->NPR to Leeds
2tph XC from the south-Manchester Airport-Manchester Piccadilly -> NPR to Leeds -> TPE destinations
2tph Wales->Mid-Cheshire Line-> Manchester Airport-Manchester Piccadilly-> Leeds via NPR. (The Mid Cheshire is right next to the Airport so take it over, extend Metrolink to Ashley)

That's 12.

If everything you do is just run NPR-related services through such a station, and if - logically then - there is only a single station for Manchester at Piccadilly, the only advantage of a through station is a minor and in the end irrelevant time saving. In particular, there is no advantage at all for the City of Manchester or Greater Manchester. Unless - very unlikely - this through station including tunnels through the city turn out cheaper than an overground terminal, there is simply no point in spending money on it.

If there was more money - which there is not - better save it for a tunnel that is really useful for Greater Manchester, namely for local rail, be it Metrolink or heavy rail.

 

[The Ham]

You wouldn't want to fill the London to Lancashire/ Scotland trains with London to Manchester passengers. A proper HSL through Manchester with non-platforn fast lines might make sense, and a junction for Leeds would mean that London to Leeds trains wouldn't need to stop at Manchester either.

Though of course if there was something like 6-8 tph to Manchester, the loading on trains that run beyond might spread itself out to not cause problems to traffic for Leeds/ Scotland.

If we were running London Leeds and London Scotland and Manchester Scotland services via Manchester or would be fairy easy to have 6-8tph without increasing the number of paths needed.

10tph could likely look something like:

3tph London Scotland via Manchester (using the paths north of Manchester of the London Scotland and Manchester Scotland services)

3tph London Leeds (using the original HS2 frequency)

2tph London Newcastle (using HS2 paths just via Manchester)

2tph London Lancaster/Blackpool (using Manchester services and extending a bit north using paths of Manchester to Lancaster and Blackpool services)

That would mean that London Manchester passengers would be fairly diluted across a lot of services and so wouldn't likely cause capacity issues.

With NPR paths east west, you would have a fairly decent number of services for a 400m platform at Manchester.

Yes it might be sightly slower than bypassing Manchester, however with a higher frequency a (say) 8 minute slower journey time would be mostly offset by the fact that the maximum wait time would fall from 30 minutes to 20 minutes for a journey between London Scotland.

Whilst 3tph isn't amazing, it's still just about frequent enough that there would be quite a few people who would just turn up and get the next train without looking at the timetable (as long as they knew the duration of the journey).

Likewise, whilst Manchester wouldn't quite be underground frequencies, it's closer enough that the average wait time would be 3 minutes and so there's almost no delay and with a journey time of around 70 minutes there'd likely be a significant shift from road travel due to the time saving (it may only be, say, 1% of traffic, but interms of increase in rail travel that's quite significant).

That would mean that other public transport in Manchester would see an uplift in use, due to the shift from cars.

 

[Zomboid]

If we were running London Leeds and London Scotland and Manchester Scotland services via Manchester or would be fairy easy to have 6-8tph without increasing the number of paths needed.

10tph could likely look something like:

3tph London Scotland via Manchester (using the paths north of Manchester of the London Scotland and Manchester Scotland services)

3tph London Leeds (using the original HS2 frequency)

2tph London Newcastle (using HS2 paths just via Manchester)

2tph London Lancaster/Blackpool (using Manchester services and extending a bit north using paths of Manchester to Lancaster and Blackpool services)

That would mean that London Manchester passengers would be fairly diluted across a lot of services and so wouldn't likely cause capacity issues.

With NPR paths east west, you would have a fairly decent number of services for a 400m platform at Manchester.

Yes it might be sightly slower than bypassing Manchester, however with a higher frequency a (say) 8 minute slower journey time would be mostly offset by the fact that the maximum wait time would fall from 30 minutes to 20 minutes for a journey between London Scotland.

Whilst 3tph isn't amazing, it's still just about frequent enough that there would be quite a few people who would just turn up and get the next train without looking at the timetable (as long as they knew the duration of the journey).

Likewise, whilst Manchester wouldn't quite be underground frequencies, it's closer enough that the average wait time would be 3 minutes and so there's almost no delay and with a journey time of around 70 minutes there'd likely be a significant shift from road travel due to the time saving (it may only be, say, 1% of traffic, but interms of increase in rail travel that's quite significant).

That would mean that other public transport in Manchester would see an uplift in use, due to the shift from cars.

There would be some Birmingham trains in that mix. Accepting that Curzon Street is a terminus (and it's probably right that it is) with 3tph to London, you could easily run 3tph from Birmingham to Manchester and beyond using the extension of the paths of those terminators. Though that could run into capacity trouble once it gets off the high speed infrastructure, presumably somewhere around Wigan.

Also, how are we serving Liverpool? Via the WCML at Crewe/ Handsace, or maybe via Manchester and a connection at the end of the HSL to something like the Liverpool - Springs Branch line?

 

[HSTEd]

If everything you do is just run NPR-related services through such a station, and if - logically then - there is only a single station for Manchester at Piccadilly, the only advantage of a through station is a minor and in the end irrelevant time saving.
In particular, there is no advantage at all for the City of Manchester or Greater Manchester. Unless - very unlikely - this through station including tunnels through the city turn out cheaper than an overground terminal, there is simply no point in spending money on it.

If there was more money - which there is not - better save it for a tunnel that is really useful for Greater Manchester, namely for local rail, be it Metrolink or heavy rail.

Even if we ignore the journey time saving, an underground through station does have substantial advantages over the proposed surface reversing terminal in terms of disruption.
The surface terminus will come with enormous disruption to the surface environment with the related expensive legal battles and ongoing blight.

The land around the station is extremely valued for future redevelopment, building station approaches and tunnel entrances all over it will disrupt the ability to monetise it in future.
Attempting it will pick an unnecessary political fight which the project will require political and financial capital to win, especially with the proposal for stacked railway viaducts. My own view on this is that engineering problems are almost always cheaper to solve than political ones.

Additionally, I think it appears that any NPR approach to a new station complex in Manchester from the North East is going to require substantial tunnelling - I can't see a practical route into the centre of Manchester that does not.

A single tunnel from the Airport, through Piccadilly and out towards the north east dug using a large bore TBM or two would allow the project to proceed with minimal surface disruption - only access shafts would be on the surface.

 

[The Ham]

Even if we ignore the journey time saving, an underground through station does have substantial advantages over the proposed surface reversing terminal in terms of disruption.
The surface terminus will come with enormous disruption to the surface environment with the related expensive legal battles and ongoing blight.

The land around the station is extremely valued for future redevelopment, building station approaches and tunnel entrances all over it will disrupt the ability to monetise it in future.
Attempting it will pick an unnecessary political fight which the project will require political and financial capital to win, especially with the proposal for stacked railway viaducts. My own view on this is that engineering problems are almost always cheaper to solve than political ones.

Additionally, I think it appears that any NPR approach to a new station complex in Manchester from the North East is going to require substantial tunnelling - I can't see a practical route into the centre of Manchester that does not.

A single tunnel from the Airport, through Piccadilly and out towards the north east dug using a large bore TBM or two would allow the project to proceed with minimal surface disruption - only access shafts would be on the surface.

Even if the surface (say is cut and cover) isn't suitable for development, having a large area of public realm would be of useful for the city.

There would be some Birmingham trains in that mix. Accepting that Curzon Street is a terminus (and it's probably right that it is) with 3tph to London, you could easily run 3tph from Birmingham to Manchester and beyond using the extension of the paths of those terminators. Though that could run into capacity trouble once it gets off the high speed infrastructure, presumably somewhere around Wigan.

Also, how are we serving Liverpool? Via the WCML at Crewe/ Handsace, or maybe via Manchester and a connection at the end of the HSL to something like the Liverpool - Springs Branch line?

I was assuming Liverpool would be via the WCML, rather than via Manchester.

Likewise, I hadn't counted any of the Birmingham services, as I was looking at London services

Of course a similar, (but probably around 6-8tph rather than 10tph) high frequency could be delivered.

For example, a minimum of 2tph Birmingham to Manchester, 2tph Birmingham Leeds and Birmingham York.

 

[Austriantrain]

The land around the station is extremely valued for future redevelopment, building station approaches and tunnel entrances all over it will disrupt the ability to monetise it in future.
Attempting it will pick an unnecessary political fight which the project will require political and financial capital to win, especially with the proposal for stacked railway viaducts. My own view on this is that engineering problems are almost always cheaper to solve than political ones.

Additionally, I think it appears that any NPR approach to a new station complex in Manchester from the North East is going to require substantial tunnelling - I can't see a practical route into the centre of Manchester that does not.

A single tunnel from the Airport, through Piccadilly and out towards the north east dug using a large bore TBM or two would allow the project to proceed with minimal surface disruption - only access shafts would be on the surface.

As I wrote before: If the underground station is cheaper, go for it.