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I agree. When Chris Gibb presented his proposals I think it assumed that the WCML would be significantly upgraded to allow 140mph for a lot of Stafford Scotland. If the WCML is being upgraded then why not just upgrade it so tilt is not needed. It saves a pendolino a few minutes between Preston...

I'm not saying it's necessarily viable to build a HS line all the way to Scotland but I'd dispute that the travel market is tiny. There's around 3 million journeys from Edinburgh to London airports alone. There's already over 2 million passengers per year on trains from London to Edinburgh...

There'll be some abstraction from western Coventry at least given it'll be similar/quicker to get a bus to HS2 than central Coventry. It'll be interesting to see how much demand gets abstracted from Coventry through people driving to Interchange too. There'll definitely be need for fast...

I think that shows part of the problem though. Yes capacity has been increased but it's been by constantly changing the trains operating the service every decade. That lead to huge complexity in operations, with multiple fleets of trains, and a poor service. Introducing new fleets is disruptive...

No it's not possible for us to know for certain what forecast has been used and I could be wrong. There's plenty of history to show that the DfT and particularly the treasury are very risk adverse organisations when it comes to spending, particularly on day to day expenditure. If 50% capacity...

The problem with demand for North Transpennine is that there isn't an accurate baseline of demand to forecast from. Pre-Covid a lot of trains were 3 car 185s because the 802s and mk5s weren't fully introduced. Even were they had been introduced, it generally takes a few years for passengers to...

Hull is planned to go to 2 trains per hour so there is an increase in capacity. Middlesbrough services will see a slight reduction in capacity. TPE demand is massively surpresed by the upgrade currently. Since that has been going on for a few years now, I think it'd be very difficult to...

Of course they'd but put to use. I'm not disputing that but is the quantum of units going to fit with their alternative or is it going to be a case of square pegs. It's seems like the kind of thing that the franchised system produced over and over again. I was hoping that the greater public...

The plans for NPR are different to HS2 though. We're talking about far smaller diversions from the classic route from Marsden to somewhere around Liverpool. If NPR is built most, if not all of the services will be diverted on to it. There won't be capacity between Marsden and York for...

Of course people said the same about Crossrail, TRU and HS2 and they're all happening/completed to a large extent. As far as I know, the plans for HS2 remain largely similar to what has been discussed in the past. Anyway, I'll avoid drifting off topic from the new TPE rolling stock. The trains...

Burnham is a big backer of NPR. It's not rocket science as to what the requirements will be. They've been fairly consistent over the decade. What's the point of spending £1 billion on development of new lines and ordering incompatible rolling stock with line, it's an inconsistent decision. Its...

Yes because you're can't commit funding that far into the future but the government's plan is to deliver this, £1.1bn in development funding is a big commitment, so rolling stock should reflect that commitment.

The government is spending money on developing a business case for NPR currently and Rachel Reeves committed £45 billion to it. Doesn't mean it's definitely going to happen but the government should be at least be ordering rolling stock compatible with NPR.

At least some of the services that these new trains are planned to operate on will be diverted on to NPR. The classic line will maintain a service but it will be relatively limited (e.g. 2tph) with most services being diverted newly proposed infrastructure from Marsden to Manchester and onward...

Seems a strange decision to me. For one, 110mph seems to slow for the ambitions for new highspeed rail infrastructure in the north which is surely going to be 140mph capable. Yes that's still likely two decades away but these trains will only be ~10 years old at that point. The 120 metre...

Using which platforms at York? I don't think there's much scope for terminating additonal services without additonal platforms. There's also potential capacity issues at Colton Junction.

It's not the plan from what I've seen but it definitely should be considered and would revive the plan for an East Leeds Parkway.

Because Cross Gates and Thorpe Park serve the Leeds urban area and therefore serve large populations and have better onward transport connections. East Garforth and Micklefield serve populations of a couple of thousand, East Garforth because most of Garforth's population will use Garforth and...

Thanks for posting, definitely interesting that the thinking is a temporary platform that can be removed to allow for four tracking. It seems to suggest that Network rail is fairly confident four tracking will happen and I'd guess that's what funding announced for NPR, between Leeds and York...

If there wasn't a line there already I'd agree but there so it'd be a relatively cheap. I don't see it being massively different to Portishead in terms of suffering slow bus services. Stocksbridge is smaller but would be an easier line to reopen than Portishead. My personal opinion on Sheffield...