Camp Hill Line - passenger use

[Chris Butler]

I am not familiar with the Birmingham area, so maybe I am missing some obvious things.

From Birmingham New St heading south X-Country trains can either:

1. Leave the west end of New St and take the line through Five Ways/Selly Oak etc to King's Norton and then south to Bromsgrove and onwards, or
2. Leave the east end of New St and take Proof House and St. Andrews Junction to join the Camp Hill line to King's Norton and then south to Bromsgrove and onwards.

I am wondering what drives the choice of which services are timetabled to use which route. The only two reasons I can see that would drive the choice are
a) to free capacity on route 1), and/or
b) to avoid reversal at New St..
Is there some other reason that drives the timetabled routing that I am missing ?

Route 2) seems to be used by services to/from Manchester (plus one Glasgow service) other than early/late in the day when some Birmingham terminators also use route 2) **. Is the primary driver the need to free capacity on route 1) and the Manchester services are chosen just because they are the most convenient or is the primary driver the desire to avoid reversing (and so minimise loiter times) at New St ?

** A WMT Worcester service also uses the Camp Hill route on Saturdays, but I assume that is for maintaining route knowledge over a diversionary route.

 

[Ianno87]

Quite often, it's to save conflicting movements at New Street.

For example, a Manchester to Bristol train, if reversing to continue via Selly Oak, would have to reverse across the path of every other service at the west end of the station, whereas by proceeding via Camp Hill it "only" conflicts with one half of the station (due to the flyover at Proof House)

Sonetimes one route or the other can give a better timetabled journey time too, depending on what other services need to be followed.

 

[PHILIPE]

You might find some interesting info here and it also contains a link to a thread previous to that:-

www.railforums.co.uk/threads/camp-hill-line-birmingham.138107