Britain's railways in 50 years time

[pmcgurk]

- Less than 100 miles of new railway will have opened across the entire country due to continued government paralysis
- a peak single from London to Manchester will be £50,000
- on the plus side, paper ticketing will finally have been eliminated

 

[SussexSeagull]

At some point, and we are beginning to see it now with the 40 degree temperatures in the Summer, if society is serious about avoiding it's own demise we are going to have to move on from doing a very bad attempt at offering a carrot to use public transport to actually getting serious about it.

I suspect High Speed rail will be either up and down the county or planned and a version of NPR and Crossrail 2 in place. Not entirely sure there is much room underground for a Crossrail 3! Conversely some of the very small stations will be closed or mothballed.

 

[rapmastaj]

The Portishead line is open at last. The line to the neighouring town of Clevedon is scheduled for reopening, but this has already been delayed by about 15 years.

 

[507020]

- Less than 100 miles of new railway will have opened across the entire country due to continued government paralysis
- a peak single from London to Manchester will be £50,000
- on the plus side, paper ticketing will finally have been eliminated

This is the most accurate prediction we’ve had! However, this actually represents an almost 80% fare cut in real terms, as even a conservative estimate for 50 years worth of inflation sees the value of the present £184.70 equivalent to ~£240,000 in 2072.

I know what I want the railway (and the world) to look like in 50 years and very much want to see it realised, but I don’t want to make any predictions with the current unelected government still in power.

 

[eldomtom2]

I am thinking here more of a US style scenario whereby the major long distance network is largely freight orientated as opposed to passenger,

The US is a very special case that could only be imitated if the UK privatised everything, went scorched earth on the rail unions, and grew five times in size.

 

[Bletchleyite]

This is the most accurate prediction we’ve had! However, this actually represents an almost 80% fare cut in real terms, as even a conservative estimate for 50 years worth of inflation sees the value of the present £184.70 equivalent to ~£240,000 in 2072.

Most countries where that sort of thing happens realign their currency, e.g. in that case a New Pound might be worth £1,000.

 

[507020]

Most countries where that sort of thing happens realign their currency, e.g. in that case a New Pound might be worth £1,000.

That has certainly been the case in the past when certain countries have lost control of their currency and it has become vastly less valuable than other comparable currencies, leading to much higher looking prices.

The thing is, that hasn’t happened to the pound (ever) and with another 50 years worth of inflation similarly affecting e.g. the US Dollar or Euro (if it still exists) with them retaining similar exchange rates to today, it seems more likely that we will see 6 figure rail fares in the next few decades than zeros deleted from prices, but how long before all prices become unmanageably high, even if wages keep up?

 

[yorksrob]

Most countries where that sort of thing happens realign their currency, e.g. in that case a New Pound might be worth £1,000.

Surely it would be the "new, new pound" !

 

[Thirteen]

Who's to say we'll have pounds and pences in 2072? We might have scrapped that in favour of World Dollars or Credits.

Ticketing is something I wonder how it'll evolve in 50 years time. The contactless payment we have now would have been alien to anyone in 1972 likewise e-tickets.

 

[haggishunter]

- The EU pushed for a bridge to Ireland, and the North Wales Coast Line is now the Anglo-Irish Mainline. The Camden Chords connect Dublin and Belfast to Paris and Brussels, via London.

Or if it goes via the shortest crossing route, so it will be the West Highland Line for Ireland from Glasgow! This is Arrochar and Tarbet, change here for services to Belfast and Dublin. Probably still a 156 mind!

 

[stuu]

This is the most accurate prediction we’ve had! However, this actually represents an almost 80% fare cut in real terms, as even a conservative estimate for 50 years worth of inflation sees the value of the present £184.70 equivalent to ~£240,000 in 2072.

I know what I want the railway (and the world) to look like in 50 years and very much want to see it realised, but I don’t want to make any predictions with the current unelected government still in power.

The inflation rate since 1972 is slightly more than 1000%. Which would make a £184 ticket cost £1840 in 2072 if the next 50 years follow the trend of the past 50 years have included many years of very high inflation.

What source are you using which estimates it at such an extraordinarily higher value in the next 50 years?

 

[Grecian 1998]

My predictions for 2072:

- There will be complaints that the 2 and 3 coach trains which replaced the Voyagers on XC routes in 2040 are unfit for purpose and leading to severe overcrowding. Criticism may also be given to the internal layout including a shop, cafe, restaurant and en suite shower facilities, but failing to include any actual seats.

Whoever is then operating Crosscountry will resolve this problem by making all services reservation only, and tickets sold by auction. It will also be possible to be outbid mid-journey, so a ticket that started off as valid at Exeter St Davids may become invalid by Taunton if someone at Taunton has paid more for the next leg and you will be asked to leave the service.

- There will be concerns that Birmingham New Street is unfit for purpose as a major interchange. Following this, it will be decided that something has to be done. The 'A' end will therefore become the main end for interchanges, and the 'B' end will become the main entry / exit point. Something will have therefore been done.

- Ticketing will be simplified by abolishing return tickets. Tickets will now be classified by 26 categories. At one end of the scale, the most expensive 'A' tickets will be valid for one journey on any train all week, whilst the cheapest 'Z' tickets will be valid on one service departing at 2200 on Monday night (January only, not including New Years' Day, Epiphany, Blue Monday or Burns Night). The more flexibility, the more expensive the ticket. This will however vary on a weekly basis, whereby the general capacity of the railways and any special events will be taken into account, and pricing and restrictions will be modified to meet the market accordingly.

- In entirely unrelated news, the railways will no longer be in deficit due to the number of penalty fares collected from people with the wrong ticket for the service in question.

- Lines where trains can run entirely on a 'one engine in steam' principle in passenger service, such as St Ives or Looe, will be run by classic heritage traction. Or class 150s as we currently call them.

 

[Technologist]

Making predictions about the railways themselves is unlikely to be a sensible starting point, its a bit like making 100 year predictions on Britain's canals in 1800 based on looking at previous canal performance. If you made predictions about rail in the 70's it would likely be that it was obsolete.

In the 50 year timeframe I would suggest that some of the following is likely true.

1: The majority of developed world housing in 2072 is already in existence today
2: Environmental legislation is likely tougher than it is today
3: Electrical energy is abundant and relatively cheap
4: AI can do most thinking and planning tasks better than people
5: Batteries are substantially better than those available today

This would give us the following developments:

Human form robots that can be instructed like a person are a well established technology as are non human form automation which can do generalised tasks like "build" or "farm". This means that we can build infrastructure relatively quickly and easily, provided we can get permission to do so. (I doubt law and politics will have allowed AI to simply "optimize happiness" and make decisions for us even if this is actually possible). Virtually every form of transport is now fully automated except where people gain enjoyment from doing it themselves.

I doubt very much employment is any less than today but the jobs are likely to be different and may be focused in areas where having a person do the service or task is considered to have value or where a person is still needed for higher level thought or imagination. The upshot is that it is likely that we travel less to go to a work location and more to either carry out a service, gather for a mass event or to see something.

1: I predict that something broadly in line with the ideas (but not the current execution) of the Boring Company will be widespread. Automation will make tunneling cheaper and environmental legislation will mean doing transport underground will make more sense in even moderately densely populated areas. Electric rubber tired vehicles can move at high speeds in the tunnels and don't need electrification, rails or signaling.

In low density areas the vehicles can drive out of the tunnels and do the last mile on the surface, in higher density areas they take a slip road off the deep level high speed tunnel climb up to the sub surface and drop the passengers at a lift. In really high density areas (stadiums) they could form a virtual train and drop people en-mass.

2: Personally driven cars are long gone from the strategic (dual carriageways) road network, instead in the outer lanes 8-12 seat EVs travel intercity distances at 150mph. Freight is mostly moved as containers by automated battery powered bogies which grab either end. Last mile freight is handled by autonomous vehicles in lower density area or by small diameter tunnels in higher density areas.

3: Removing all the personal vehicles means that a vast amount of space was freed up in cities and this also solved the last mile problem. Possibly many communities look a little like CentreParcs (car free and actually reasonably high density). Remember that at the moment 85% of UK passenger miles are conducted in a car with 1.4 occupants. If automation managed to up this to 4-8 at peak times the impact would be significant, if a portion of the vehicles were underground and the rest were able to drive bumper to bumper and miss each other at traffic lights the results would be transformative.

4: Further advances in battery technology mean that eVTOLs have been here for decades but rather than being mostly 4-6 seats they are 5-20 seat vehicles. Power is cheap, they are mass produced, highly utilised and Ryanair cheap. Many of the trips they make are ones that we can't make today. If the weather is nice people from Sheffield can fly to beaches in North Wales in 35 minutes with negligible planning (AI and connectivity organizes the flight and its timing with other likeminded people). eVTOLSs aren't going to be flying in droves from the suburbs to the inner city. The net effect is also that any two medium sized towns effectively has a "high speed rail" connection without having to build any infrastructure between them. This will likely significantly change land use over time.

The question is how would rail deal with this?

Obviously the same automation technology would work on rail, with the caveat that it adopts things much slower than other sectors due to the need to make everything compatible. However automation obviously has more profound effects on road transport than it does on rail. My predictions would be that where rail already exists and it is a primary mode it might be sticky because its existing infrastructure is already there. This would probably be the case with most of the tunneled London Underground. Potentially some of the intercity network might still be around where the density around the stations is sufficiently high to support it, but otherwise intercity and regional transport is likely to be conducted using point to point methods (eVTOL or Shared EV).

Freight rail definitely makes sense, probably forever. There isn't a better way to move bulk products so we might even see more lines being constructed in the future. I would expect that it will end up working similar to the road freight concept I discussed above with bogies grabbing containers individually, potentially even being dual mode and thus able to leave the tracks and being able to form virtual trains.

 

[Silenos]

The 2047 Water War between the Kingdom of England and Wales and the Republic of Scotland resulted in the devastation of much of the rail infrastructure of northern England, and the remainder, like much of the rest of the English network, was mainly stolen for scrap (despite the death penalty for anyone in the poor 95% found guilty of resource trafficking) or taken by mercenaries in the employ of one or more of the English banking barons. VTOL transport between the walled and guarded communities of the elite has largely replaced rail and road transport in England, although a few heritage lines, with heavily armed guards manning machine guns to protect their wealthy passengers, are retained for quaintness, with air filtration to remove the smog and holographic windows projecting images of the countryside as it was 100 years ago, so passengers are not forced to look at the squalor of the climate refugee camps and extensive shanty towns that cover much of what used to be the green belt and agricultural land. The Prime Minister has just led the People’s Conservative Party to a 70-seat majority based on the votes of the 12% of the population who are still able and willing to vote, and has vowed to rebuild ‘what everyone acknowledges to be the greatest country in the world, despite the treacherous blows of the ungrateful Scots and their EU allies’. His first act in office is to sign the legislation promised in his manifesto which will see the long-sealed Channel Tunnel finally destroyed with high explosive.

 

[70014IronDuke]

The DfT has ordered another study to assess the viability of extending East-West Rail from Bedford to Cambridge, and raising the Bletchley-Bedford line speed from 40 mph to 60 mph as a temporary measure, prior to a second increase to 70 mph "at the appropriate time", if and when EW Rail is extended.

 

[The Ham]

This is the most accurate prediction we’ve had! However, this actually represents an almost 80% fare cut in real terms, as even a conservative estimate for 50 years worth of inflation sees the value of the present £184.70 equivalent to ~£240,000 in 2072.

The inflation rate since 1972 is slightly more than 1000%. Which would make a £184 ticket cost £1840 in 2072 if the next 50 years follow the trend of the past 50 years have included many years of very high inflation.

What source are you using which estimates it at such an extraordinarily higher value in the next 50 years?

Even at 5% inflation year on year for 50 years we get to £2118.

 

[AzureOtsu]

class 701s finally enter service

 

[The Ham]

I suspect that a lot will look fairly similar, but there'll be a lot of changes - some which will be totally unexpected.

Technology will have changed a lot. However I have my doubts as to if things like Hyperloop will make as big as impact as some think. For instance monorail never really got established.

Even if it does, given typical project timeframes, it's likely to be limited to a few routes (between London and Europe maybe London and Scotland).

The population will be older, possibly having started to seen the risk population start to reduce. However there will likely be far more people willing to use public transport than is the current case (the youngest Millennials will be about 75 limited numbers of gen X's as they are all around 100).

This could result in some rural areas withering (those areas with small schools being the first to feel the impact) as families move away as schools start to close and be merged. Resulting in a slightly more urban population than is currently the case.

This benefits public transport, however it also means that suburbs start to get more dense (starts with a few more flats on developments, however starts to shift towards multiple level properties with roof gardens providing decent outside space).

As most goods are delivered automatically, the neees for car ownership for big items/large shops becomes a thing of the past, and so cars become a service people rent as they need it. This benefits public transport as it's not seen as a few pence to drive down the road.

Yes there'll still be car ownership, however for those who WFH, and so don't have to use a car every day, the economics of doing so shifts. Those who continue to own a car is likely to be more based around leasing, potentially even 5+ year old cars.

There will be more automation, for example phone tracking for rail travel costs. There'll be complaints about being tracked by some, however it wasn't that long ago that train tickets didn't have a mag strip and so really were untraceable. The level of data that we have associated with us now is huge and likely to only get bigger.

In some regards that larger data set means that it's just too big to be worth doing unless there's a need (missing person, you're wanted for some crime, etc.).

Phones are likely to be much more wearable, maybe even implanted (or linked to implants), although there may need to be a way of powering them (possibly either from a wireless charger within a bed or directly from energy within our bodies).

By being physically linked to us payments can be secure (ish), although we may need to authorise (app maybe) that we are making a trip.

Of course, whatever anyone guesses things are likely to be different. Technology could improve beyond whatever we could guess. Conversely we could be at the start of a century of decline and so the UK gets weaker and poorer and so things and up in ways we could imagine.

 

[sprinterguy]

Deleted

 

[HSTEd]

An optimistic future would be GoA 4 freight trains, GoA 4 metro/local trains and GoA 3 on everything else.

Intensive operational across all lines enabled by low staffing costs, a modern signalling system controlled from a handful of signalling centres with integrated service control rooms, and a growing high speed network allowing day trips from one end to the country to the other.
All this would enable rail to capture a far greater share of passenger transport without requirements of enormous subsidies.

Do I think this would happen? No, the industry is fundamentally incapable of the changes necessary.

 

[alansheppard77]

What do people expect the rail network in this country to look like, 50 years from now?
Could all trains be like the DLR in being driverless? Could ticket offices defy all expectations and outlast every other role and still be a thing in 2070 (sic)? Away from roles, could any of the rolling stock in use now still be in use in 50 years? Will running on diesel be 100% a thing of the past? Any major line closures? What about the status of the northern sections of HS2?

Interested to hear people's thoughts about 'the railway in the 70s', including wild predictions!

Thanks to the Unions most lines will be closed and mass redundancies

 

[Philip]

Thanks to the Unions most lines will be closed and mass redundancies

That's just doom and gloom and has been predicted every so often over the last 30 years (remember the McNulty Report?).

 

[The Ham]

An optimistic future would be GoA 4 freight trains, GoA 4 metro/local trains and GoA 3 on everything else.

Intensive operational across all lines enabled by low staffing costs, a modern signalling system controlled from a handful of signalling centres with integrated service control rooms, and a growing high speed network allowing day trips from one end to the country to the other.
All this would enable rail to capture a far greater share of passenger transport without requirements of enormous subsidies.

Do I think this would happen? No, the industry is fundamentally incapable of the changes necessary.

It could be possible. Not because the unions favour it, but rather because there's a lack of people to do what's needed across the country.

If staffing costs increase significantly across all industries, either the railways would have to pay more or there'll be a need for staff to be replaced by technology.

It will start with more drivers aids (which will start of being useful to drivers), there'll then be automation within depots (so there's a reduction in the need for staff to be track side) which could include shunting of units from a platform to a siding and back again.

Short self contained branches could be next (especially if they are rural and automation "saves" them from being closed).

Probably would require platform edge doors to minimise risk, which could be designed so that are a series of sliding doors with the train "telling" the platform which does to open to allow for different trains being used with different door spacings (each 1m of platform has an inner or outer track so that by moving them any door configuration could be allowed for, although this may not be as accurate as a custom built set of doors for a given unit - in that there maybe a wider gap than doorway - it would allow any unit to serve the station that had the ability to talk to the platform). Such communication would also ensure that wrong side door opening happened even less, it would also be an ASDO system - so any non platformed doors would remain closed.

 

[HSTEd]

Probably would require platform edge doors to minimise risk, which could be designed so that are a series of sliding doors with the train "telling" the platform which does to open to allow for different trains being used with different door spacings (each 1m of platform has an inner or outer track so that by moving them any door configuration could be allowed for, although this may not be as accurate as a custom built set of doors for a given unit - in that there maybe a wider gap than doorway - it would allow any unit to serve the station that had the ability to talk to the platform). Such communication would also ensure that wrong side door opening happened even less, it would also be an ASDO system - so any non platformed doors would remain closed.

I've thought a lot about this.

I'm not sure how hard it would be to provide a "universal door mask" - after all on almost all trains not much of the bodyside is made up of doors, and the development of wide through gangways and better door seals has reduced the importance of vestibule position regardless.

 

[317 forever]

Aventras, Desiros, 80xs and the first HS2 fleet will all be long gone. The national network fleet will be almost entirely unrecognisable compared to today.

Meanwhile TFL are still waiting for funding to replace the 1972 stock on the Bakerloo line, which by then have long ceased to provide any form of reliable service other than as a glorified museum line. And Network Rail or whatever their equivalent in 2072 will be will still be trying to use 37s, by that point over 100 years old, on RHTT work.

Aventras will have gone without having ever been used in service.

 

[jfollows]

It's obviously only tangentially appropriate to look back 50 years and then use that information to guess where we'll be in another 50 years, but I'll do it anyway.
I started using trains "seriously" in 1970, by which I mean that I used them to get to school starting in September 1970 (Poynton-Cheadle Hulme) and then wider (Poynton-Manchester in 1973, Macclesfield-Manchester in 1977) until 1980.
"Commuter" trains were important and frequent then, and they're not now. Evening stopping trains left Manchester for Poynton and other stations (only skipping Adlington with one train) at 15:53, 16:10, 16:43, 17:02, 17:15, 17:30, 17:43 & 17:58 in the 1974 timetable.
Now the service is a shadow of this - one train an hour plus one extra, and that's it.
In contrast, long-distance services are much more frequent, so it was only in 1974 that Manchester-London became hourly and Manchester-Birmingham was two-hourly (alternating with the Liverpool-Birmingham service).
So today "long distance" trains are the thing, and local trains aren't.
In addition, back in the 1970s it was almost unknown for any of the more frequent local services to be cancelled. Today that's a given, nobody cares any more about reliability.
However some things are similar - the stations are much the same (yes, Cheadle Hulme has a footbridge now) but recognisable.
Ticket enforcement has changed from checking tickets at both ends to doing neither but enforcing penalties against people who don't have tickets.

So I think in 50 years we'll have an even more impersonal service, the customer is always wrong, and the blame will be attributed to someone else - a different operating company, whatever. Post privatisation a lot of people kept the railways running well, but now and in the future it's about business and about money and about "customers" rather than passengers, and the existing trend of averaging disruption across large numbers of "customers" rather than looking after individual passengers will continue.

However the information available to individual passengers will continue to improve, for example it won't be just the few of us "in the know" who can look up our departure platform at Euston from the 205 bus going past King's Cross, so things like departure boards at Euston will become increasingly irrelevant.

I think there may be some legal developments in the near term which could reverse the stupidity of allowing things like last-minute cancellations to make figures look better to the detriment of passengers.

But I think a lot of things will remain similar, in the same way that the railways are similar today to the railways 50 years ago. I'm interested to see that Macclesfield signal box has finally gone, I spent hours waiting for trains and watching their progress on the panel from outside back then. Stockport will change eventually. But there will still be things in 50 years that we see today. I'd need to be 111 so I probably won't be around by then!

EDIT I should add that there's a synergy between information systems today and short-term cancellations which were unheard of in the past - today I can check that my desired train is actually running before I leave home for it, whereas back in the day even at the station it could have been cancelled and nobody - including the station staff - was any the wiser. I wouldn't dream of not checking before leaving home today whereas I couldn't do anything similar 50 years ago. Which is better - unreliable services that I know about before leaving home or generally reliable services that I have to hope are running? I suspect the trend is that in the future the services will be even less reliable, but we'll all know whether or not they're running, to an even greater extent than today. Maybe we'll dispense with the timetable altogether and instead subscribe to something which will inform us when our desired train is actually running?

 

[MattRat]

It's obviously only tangentially appropriate to look back 50 years and then use that information to guess where we'll be in another 50 years, but I'll do it anyway.
I started using trains "seriously" in 1970, by which I mean that I used them to get to school starting in September 1970 (Poynton-Cheadle Hulme) and then wider (Poynton-Manchester in 1973, Macclesfield-Manchester in 1977) until 1980.
"Commuter" trains were important and frequent then, and they're not now. Evening stopping trains left Manchester for Poynton and other stations (only skipping Adlington with one train) at 15:53, 16:10, 16:43, 17:02, 17:15, 17:30, 17:43 & 17:58 in the 1974 timetable.
Now the service is a shadow of this - one train an hour plus one extra, and that's it.
In contrast, long-distance services are much more frequent, so it was only in 1974 that Manchester-London became hourly and Manchester-Birmingham was two-hourly (alternating with the Liverpool-Birmingham service).
So today "long distance" trains are the thing, and local trains aren't.
In addition, back in the 1970s it was almost unknown for any of the more frequent local services to be cancelled. Today that's a given, nobody cares any more about reliability.

I think metro services might be on the way up though, to replace commuter trains. Crossrail was a huge success, and Manchester is showing aspirations for a Merseyrail style network. Merseyrail itself is also a great example of seeing metro service impact over the majority of those 50 years.

I can see other cities like Sheffield and Leeds looking to catch up with the other major cities.

 

[The Ham]

I think metro services might be on the way up though, to replace commuter trains. Crossrail was a huge success, and Manchester is showing aspirations for a Merseyrail style network. Merseyrail itself is also a great example of seeing metro service impact over the majority of those 50 years.

I can see other cities like Sheffield and Leeds looking to catch up with the other major cities.

Indeed, very local trains (London Overground) are the sort of travel which is likely to be useful.

The question comes, do we try and add extra stops to existing allow services to make this viable or do we run new services in the shadow of the existing services.

Any urban area with a population of over 1 million should be looked at first. However, over time smaller places could be looked at. Any where there's spare track capacity could be easy wins and could actually boost passenger numbers on the wider network by making rail travel easier to access.

We've already seen a trend towards this (for example the Exeter semi fast services which provide better connections to smaller places).

One of the examples I've given in the past for this is a Basingstoke to Ascot service (works require a grade separated junction east of Farnborough and South of Frimley to allow the service to run, otherwise would be only using existing track).

The slow lines between Basingstoke and Farnborough see 4 passenger trains (one only at Farnborough) an hour and maybe 2 freight trains, so there should be plenty of space to add in an extra service or two an hour, whilst the Frimley to Ascot line sees 2 passenger trains an hour.

Basingstoke is the limiting factor, and this is where further enhancements may be needed. Options include, Leisure Park gaining a siding with the metro services and the Basingstoke stoppers running to there to turn around not at the main Basingstoke station platforms, or electrification to Oakley, Overton, Andover or Salisbury to allow the Metro and Basingstoke stoppers to return around there.

Assuming that it only reached Basingstoke there's plenty of extra stations with decent (not big enough for a new line but a new station) population sizes and/or with places people wish to travel to which could be added. Basingstoke Leisure Park, Old Basing, Edenbrook/Elvetham (Fleet West), Southwood (Farnborough West, housing and business park), Frimley Green (at the new junction), Watchmore Park (Sainsbury's and a business park and not far from housing), Old Dean/Crawley Ridge, with others possible with future developments.

Whilst passenger numbers to/from each of those wouldn't be huge, and nor would the likely local ticket costs generated, if it generated no additional commuter or longer distance passengers (unlikely, as Southwood has one of BMW's UK major offices, which could see at least some passengers to/from the traditional rail network) each new station would need to average about 350 passengers a day (circa 250,000/year) paying £3 each to cover costs for a 1 every 2 hourly service (£200,000/coach lease costs, with lease costs being 1/3 of total costs).

That hasn't allowed for any increase in passengers from existing stations, for passengers going more than 2 stops, for the new journey options (i.e. Ascot to Basingstoke becomes a direct service, rather than a change, requiring a reasonable walk, at Reading as well as every station pairing between the two), none of these are going to be generating millions of passengers, however likely enough to justify at least an hourly service, given the existing stations a 3tph frequency.

With a 15ish/15ish/30 minutes service gaps is likely to see reasonable use. The preference would be 2 metro services to give a near 15/15/15/15 minute service gaps (i.e could be 12/18 in one half hour and then 18/12 in the other) however that would likely need wider benefits to be considered, especially given there would be need for a grade separated junction (one chord, Farnborough to Frimley, previously existed so shouldn't be too costly to build, it's getting back the other way which would likely need a new bridge under the Waterloo mainline and a chord over a lake being built which is where it could easily cost £150 million), however in an area where developments are likely to add to the already congested roads and rail use is fairy normal (there's a lot of collage aged rail travel in the local area, so making that easier from more places would likely cover a reasonable percentage of the uplift needed - say 20%)

Anyway it's those sorts of easy wins, where there's scope to add in services where there's local journey opportunities without impacting the existing network which are likely to see decent growth.

Even if a service doesn't serve the main city station but provides interconnectivity between lines which otherwise there's limited connections, it's likely to see fairly good use.

 

[Class15]

90050 is still stored at Basford Hall and the DB 90s are being used on 2 trains a week between Mossend and Daventry.

The 769s are still operating on Northern!

 

[BrummieBobby]

Absolute Block signalling will still be in use on parts of the network.