Change here for London?

[Magrar]

Setting aside passengers hate changing trains and the longer journey time, is the solution to increasing capacity on London bound lines to force far more passengers to change trains?

Why should every single train headed to London from outside the Capital Zone, always have its own path all the way to a London terminal?

There must be stations out there on London main lines which could expanded and reconfigured to allow their basic function to be an interchange, perhaps with the remaining through services bypassing these stations altogether.

With the London part of the journey performed with trains of identical design, high capacity high frequency people moving shuttles, double deckers eventually, surely there would be an increase in the absolute maximum number of people who can be shifted at peak times.

And in the off peak, maybe even a saving by virtue of not wasting resources to transport fresh air on this London leg. Transporting fresh air in other parts of the country having benefits in terms or travel options, and with the new shuttle stock taking up part of their current workload, we'd also be able to offer even more options in the outer regions.

It would be a hard sell politically, maybe even losing passengers in the short term, but I'm sure they'd come back if the higher capacity markedly reduced fares, with others added as first time rail users by the new options.

 

[The exile]

The thing is that, in general, the times when there is the greatest pressure on line capacity are also those where there is greatest pressure on on-train capacity.

You terminate a “branch train” short to free up a path into London and the have to add a train in to pick those passengers up as there’s no room on the other trains.

There are places where it’s been done, of course (the most recent probably being the Greenford no longer running into Paddington) but it only makes much sense where you’ve got a really short rake taking up a full main line path (and little prospect of demand increasing to require strengthening).

Do you have some specific suggestions?

 

[Failed Unit]

If you look at a lot of the stations at the edge of London, they are not really set up for the interchange (along with turning around of the train)

Stratford was mentioned in the past, however like Finsbury Park it isn’t that good for turning around from the north. Finsbury Park for example often runs the train ECS to Kings Cross. Further north on the ECML, you have Stevenage. But Thameslink want all the extra passenger?

 

[The exile]

The one place where it might actually be practical to do this in the medium term would be in connection with a Chiltern connection to Old Oak Common.

I'm sure someone will supply lots of reasons why it wouldn't work but, given the relatively poo onward connections from Marylebone, it might make sense to send the entire Birmingham service to OOC - freeing up capacity into Marylebone for outer- and inner-suburban services (I suspect the precise opposite of the sort of thing you had in mind)

 

[MCR247]

Setting aside passengers hate changing trains and the longer journey time, is the solution to increasing capacity on London bound lines to force far more passengers to change trains?

Why should every single train headed to London from outside the Capital Zone, always have its own path all the way to a London terminal?

There must be stations out there on London main lines which could expanded and reconfigured to allow their basic function to be an interchange, perhaps with the remaining through services bypassing these stations altogether.

With the London part of the journey performed with trains of identical design, high capacity high frequency people moving shuttles, double deckers eventually, surely there would be an increase in the absolute maximum number of people who can be shifted at peak times.

And in the off peak, maybe even a saving by virtue of not wasting resources to transport fresh air on this London leg. Transporting fresh air in other parts of the country having benefits in terms or travel options, and with the new shuttle stock taking up part of their current workload, we'd also be able to offer even more options in the outer regions.

It would be a hard sell politically, maybe even losing passengers in the short term, but I'm sure they'd come back if the higher capacity markedly reduced fares, with others added as first time rail users by the new options.

I’m struggling to get my head round the paragraph I’ve highlighted in bold - reconfigure stations to facilitate more/easier interchange but then stopping less services there than present?

I’d be all for reducing the number of 5 car trains on the southern ECML for example, but that can only happen through ordering more trains for LNER (in progress, although I imagine there will still be some 5 car azuma workings out of King’s Cross) and by getting open access operators to either increase their train lengths, work together or cease operation.

I could be wrong but I think there are probably some services where through working to London allows for trains that wouldn’t be profitable/efficient uses of capacity if split. One that comes to mind locally is the slower of the two EMR Intercity services between Nottingham and London (xx12 off Nottingham calling at Beeston, E Mids Parkway, Loughborough, Leicester, market harborough and Kettering). Split that in two at Leicester and you’d have a relatively (compared to the others) empty Leicester - London service and a pretty empty Nottingham - Leicester 158 or 170

 

[Magrar]

You'd be changing a two/four track through station to something that's routinely used as a terminus from both directions, so as to ensure the next train to arrive from [insert place here] is in the right place to disembark passengers onto the platform where the next shuttle train to London already is (or soon will be) about to depart.

So that could be the same face, or adjacent faces. And so for any trains not part of this enforced change here please regime, for practical reasons, might just run through on avoiding lines.

 

[MatthewHutton]

The one place where it might actually be practical to do this in the medium term would be in connection with a Chiltern connection to Old Oak Common. I'm sure someone will supply lots of reasons why it wouldn't work but, given the relatively poo onward connections from Marylebone, it might make sense to send the entire Birmingham service to OOC - freeing up capacity into Marylebone for outer- and inner-suburban services (I suspect the precise opposite of the sort of thing you had in mind)

No I think that would work and would fit in the timetable and would be a good idea.

There is a challenge of where the Old Oak Common services would connect and where there’s space. I guess probably they’d have to use the High Wycombe bay platform?

 

[frankmoh]

A few Greater Anglia trains terminate at Stratford, including the bizarrely short Stratford-Meridian Water service.

 

[Kite159]

The one place where it might actually be practical to do this in the medium term would be in connection with a Chiltern connection to Old Oak Common. I'm sure someone will supply lots of reasons why it wouldn't work but, given the relatively poo onward connections from Marylebone, it might make sense to send the entire Birmingham service to OOC - freeing up capacity into Marylebone for outer- and inner-suburban services (I suspect the precise opposite of the sort of thing you had in mind)

I guess that will be one way to boost usage figures at old oak elephant when it eventually opens

 

[stevieinselby]

How big a deal is it that line capacity into London is hampered by too many short trains? Not counting inner suburban services, the only trains I can see that regularly run into London on the former Southern region with fewer than 8 carriages are from Uckfield (3), Reigate (4) and Salisbury/Exeter (6).

here are occasional 5-car intercity services into Paddington and Euston but not huge numbers, and in most cases extra capacity would be better added by lengthening those trains rather than replacing them with more mainline trains. It's probably the proliferation of 5-car intercity services into Kings Cross where we see the biggest problems with open access operators services plus some of LNER's less frequent branches.

There is certainly a discussion that could be had around whether Lincoln or the towns of West Yorkshire need a direct service or could be better served by regular connections, although in practical terms I don't know that reconfiguring any if the stations would be a sensible option – that's a lot of disruption and expense for a pretty marginal gain, and if you're looking at a station like Doncaster or York then there's a lot more to worry about than whether I've particular service gets a cross-platform connection with the London train (which would probably be impractical to do in both directions anyway).

 

[Falcon1200]

There must be stations out there on London main lines which could expanded and reconfigured to allow their basic function to be an interchange, perhaps with the remaining through services bypassing these stations altogether.

Any examples in mind of such locations?

 

[swt_passenger]

Setting aside passengers hate changing trains and the longer journey time, is the solution to increasing capacity on London bound lines to force far more passengers to change trains?

Why should every single train headed to London from outside the Capital Zone, always have its own path all the way to a London terminal?

They don’t always have their own path. It’s why they have joining of up trains, and splitting of down trains.

With the London part of the journey performed with trains of identical design, high capacity high frequency people moving shuttles, double deckers eventually, surely there would be an increase in the absolute maximum number of people who can be shifted at peak times.

DD trains are so unlikely with existing infrastructure limitations it will never happen.

 

[The Planner]

How big a deal is it that line capacity into London is hampered by too many short trains? Not counting inner suburban services, the only trains I can see that regularly run into London on the former Southern region with fewer than 8 carriages are from Uckfield (3), Reigate (4) and Salisbury/Exeter (6). There are occasional 5-car IC services into Paddington and Euston but not huge numbers, and in most cases extra capacity would be better added by lengthening those trains rather than replacing them with more mainline trains. It's probably the proliferation of 5-car IC services into Kings Cross where we see the biggest problems with OOA services plus some of LNER's less frequent branches. There is certainly a discussion that could be had around whether Lincoln or the towns of West Yorkshire need a direct service or could be better served by regular connections, although in practical terms I don't know that reconfiguring any if the stations would be a sensible option – that's a lot of disruption and expense for a pretty marginal gain, and if you're looking at a station like Doncaster or York then there's a lot more to worry about than whether I've particular service gets a cross-platform connection with the London train (which would probably be impractical to do in both directions anyway).

Trade off between permissive working that takes place at some terminal stations as your trains are shorter, therefore you can run a higher frequency, or you make them longer and run less, or spend serious cash infrastructure wise.

 

[swt_passenger]

How big a deal is it that line capacity into London is hampered by too many short trains? Not counting inner suburban services, the only trains I can see that regularly run into London on the former Southern region with fewer than 8 carriages are from Uckfield (3), Reigate (4) and Salisbury/Exeter (6).

There have been a few 10 and 9 car DMU services from Salisbury in fairly recent memory, 10 x 23m being the maximum length for Waterloo platforms. Today there’s 6 x 9 car sets booked according to RTT and also a few 8s.

 

[cle]

A few Greater Anglia trains terminate at Stratford, including the bizarrely short Stratford-Meridian Water service.

How big a deal is it that line capacity into London is hampered by too many short trains? Not counting inner suburban services, the only trains I can see that regularly run into London on the former Southern region with fewer than 8 carriages are from Uckfield (3), Reigate (4) and Salisbury/Exeter (6).

It is an interesting topic - the notion of 'outer hubs' terminating shorter or smaller services. Much of this in Japan for smaller branches, like Chiba or Omiya. Stratford WAML is a great example, OOC could well be another.

On the Uckfield/Reigate topic, a future rebuilt East Croydon could in theory maybe turn a few services from the Tat/Cat/Reigate/Tonbridge/Uckfield lines as extras - if they couldn't get paths all the way into London which should all be 8-12 cars.

But it won't have the width for bays... maybe a side on the p5/6 side. Croydon is a destination for many in the area (jobs, shopping, connections) - and also, much like London Bridge, feeds multiple termini. So many change anyway. Could be a way to offer growth to shorter formed routes. I guess Purley also can do this, but doesn't quite feel as hub / turn up and go once you get off your local train! Same for Redhill, which isn't even close to London either.

I remember once upon a time, West Ealing was a contender for Chiltern - technically it does this same notion today but not at any scale.

 

[The exile]

It is an interesting topic - the notion of 'outer hubs' terminating shorter or smaller services. Much of this in Japan for smaller branches, like Chiba or Omiya. Stratford WAML is a great example, OOC could well be another.

Though I suspect that the true bottlenecks may well be further out than places like that.

 

[Peter Mugridge]

Perhaps part of the answer would be to do more splitting and joining once past the busiest section in order to have both a through service to as many locations as possible and a longer formation on the busier section ( like Southern do at Haywards Heath and Horsham ) although the downside of this is that it risks importing delays from one part of the system into another, and there is always the slight risk of a heavy shunt during the joining operation.

 

[The exile]

Perhaps part of the answer would be to do more splitting and joining once past the busiest section in order to have both a through service to as many locations as possible and a longer formation on the busier section ( like Southern do at Haywards Heath and Horsham ) although the downside of this is that it risks importing delays from one part of the system into another, and there is always the slight risk of a heavy shunt during the joining operation.

And it is of course useless if there's nothing to join to (ie your branch with through London service justifies 4 coaches only - thus only utilising 1/3 of the capacity of a path onward into London - but all the other trains are already full length and basically need to be). Adding coaches at the junction station would make better utilisation of a path but isn't actually going to free any up.

 

[stevieinselby]

Perhaps part of the answer would be to do more splitting and joining once past the busiest section in order to have both a through service to as many locations as possible and a longer formation on the busier section ( like Southern do at Haywards Heath and Horsham ) although the downside of this is that it risks importing delays from one part of the system into another, and there is always the slight risk of a heavy shunt during the joining operation.

The poor reliability is the main reason why this is not often done – splitting is absolutely fine but joining for the return journey risks blocking a platform for an extended period of one of the incoming trains is delayed, which depending on the station could cause knock-on delays to other services as well as delaying those passengers on board who are stuck waiting for the other half of their train to arrive.

 

[81A]

This would likely kill a lot of leisure travel to London. Many people only use the train a few times a year to visit the capital and would probably park and ride at a tube station instead if changing were involved (since they-rightly or wrongly-consider changing trains a risky faff).