Chris Gibb's HS2 proposal

[Trainbike46]

What is the actual minimum infrastructure necessary to operate 400m trains across the WCML corridor?

400m platforms at Liverpool, Manchester and Glasgow?

I'd say the minimum is 400m platforms at Crewe, so you can run 2x200m up to there, and split for multiple destinations (e.g. combined Liverpool/Lancaster or Liverpool/Manchester trains) - that way you make the most of limited Trent Valley paths

HS2 never planned to have 400m platforms at Liverpool or Glasgow, instead planning on combined Edinburgh/Glasgow trains and 200m Liverpool trains

 

[The Planner]

What is the actual minimum infrastructure necessary to operate 400m trains across the WCML corridor?

400m platforms at Liverpool, Manchester and Glasgow?

Where are you stopping trains enroute?

 

[HSTEd]

Where are you stopping trains enroute?

Well at the normal Avanti/ICWC served WCML stations north of Birmingham.
Presumably some will be able to use SDO (selective door opening), at least on some platforms.

I think Stoke, for example, should be able to use SDO.

 

[The Ham]

Well at the normal Avanti/ICWC served WCML stations north of Birmingham.
Presumably some will be able to use SDO (selective door opening), at least on some platforms.

I think Stoke, for example, should be able to use SDO.

I would suggest ASDO would likely be better, although that would add some cost.

However I would suggest that the ideal would be to have platforms of at least 300m (although 270m should be a minimum, as they should allow the first 3 carriages of the second unit to be able to be stopped at a platform) so that there's a reasonable chance that someone wouldn't have too far to walk within the train to get off.

I would expect 400m platforms at the end of routes where double units could be expected and where trains are expected to split.

From day one you could probably get away with one or two stations (the splitting point) with 400m platforms on the classic network.

 

[Nottingham59]

What is the actual minimum infrastructure necessary to operate 400m trains across the WCML corridor?

400m platforms at Liverpool, Manchester and Glasgow?

Basically yes. I note also that Crewe, Warrington, Wigan and Preston seem to have space which suggests that it would be relatively easy to lengthen platforms in those places.

The way HS2 was conceived missed the opportunity to run much longer trains on the WCML non-stop, to grow the market and double WCML capacity at far lower cost than building a new line.

 

[FGWHST43009]

I'd say the minimum is 400m platforms at Crewe, so you can run 2x200m up to there, and split for multiple destinations (e.g. combined Liverpool/Lancaster or Liverpool/Manchester trains) - that way you make the most of limited Trent Valley paths

HS2 never planned to have 400m platforms at Liverpool or Glasgow, instead planning on combined Edinburgh/Glasgow trains and 200m Liverpool trains

Wouldn't this deliver fewer seats on the main London-Edinburgh corridor considering an Azuma has 611 seats and LNER currently run 2tph from London to Edinburgh?

 

[Manutd1999]

I wonder how the cost of the proposed 390 refurbushment compares to the cost of the platform lengthening requirements required for 400m operation?

With 400m platforms at Manchester, Crewe and Carlisle, plus SDO, you would largely solve the capacity issues caused by the 200m sets.

 

[HSTEd]

I wonder how the cost of the proposed 390 refurbushment compares to the cost of the platform lengthening requirements required for 400m operation?

With 400m platforms at Manchester, Crewe and Carlisle, plus SDO, you would largely solve the capacity issues caused by the 200m sets.

In cost terms the cheapest option is probably to pay Alstom/Hitachi what it costs to modify the order into 300m sets.

HS2 is not going to be short of capacity so not maximising train lengths on the core is unlikely to be an issue.

 

[goldisgood]

Wouldn't this deliver fewer seats on the main London-Edinburgh corridor considering an Azuma has 611 seats and LNER currently run 2tph from London to Edinburgh?

I'd presume that lower intermediate traffic from Preston and Carlisle compared to the North East will mean the capacity is fine for most of the year, especially with fewer stops on most services and some services remaining on the East Coast Main Line? The intermediate flows as they currently stand are relatively significant, although looking for growth it may leave Edinburgh a bit short on capacity. Seating the bulk of Carlisle/Preston passengers in the Glasgow portions (which will see increased capacity) might well solve this issue though, especially with compulsory reservations?

 

[Bald Rick]

In cost terms the cheapest option is probably to pay Alstom/Hitachi what it costs to modify the order into 300m sets.

HS2 is not going to be short of capacity so not maximising train lengths on the core is unlikely to be an issue.

Is the right answer! (or maybe 250m, so that platfrom extensions arent needed).

 

[MarkyT]

Is the right answer! (or maybe 250m, so that platfrom extensions arent needed).

I think they would be amenable to supplying the same number of vehicles as originally contracted, just configured into different length trainsets. The design, with distributed traction, is supposedly modular and I recall a statement that the concept was envisaged to be able to be supplied in different lengths like most Japanese HS trains. If most of the trains in the revised order were longer than a uniform 200m fleet then there'll be a surfeit of driving vehicles. The spares could be exchanged for non-driving vehicles. I don't know whether all cars are to be motored or if, like the 80x, the driving vehicles will be trailers. If the latter, upgrading them to powered might mean a minor cost uplift, although the cabs saved are pretty complex and expensive modules too, so it might even be a saving for the supplier.

 

[Nottingham59]

In cost terms the cheapest option is probably to pay Alstom/Hitachi what it costs to modify the order into 300m sets.

HS2 is not going to be short of capacity so not maximising train lengths on the core is unlikely to be an issue.

Is the right answer! (or maybe 250m, so that platfrom extensions arent needed).

Agreed.

But keep running 400m trains to Curzon St, and identify where platforms could be lengthened quickly to 400m (e.g. Preston, Carlisle, Edinburgh) and reconfigure the 300m trains back into 200m and 400m units when done.

 

[The Ham]

In cost terms the cheapest option is probably to pay Alstom/Hitachi what it costs to modify the order into 300m sets.

HS2 is not going to be short of capacity so not maximising train lengths on the core is unlikely to be an issue.

It may well be the cheapest, however I suggest that it may not be the best value for money.

What is, I don't know, but it's likely to involve some platform lengthening to allow 400m trains running beyond HS2 tracks.

The complication with 250(ish)m trains is that they start to cause the risk of wrong units being in the wrong place once you start to use 400m sets. That's not a problem when it's 9 and 11 coach units or 4 and 5 coach units or even 5 and 9 coach units as they can sub for one another fairly easily. However it becomes harder when you've got 8 and 10 coach units which run 8, 10 and 16 coach services.

It'll mean that you'll have to have more spare units, as efficiently you'll have to count the 8 coach units and 10 coach units as separate fleets.

I'll return to the point I made previously how many of the current 11 coach services (which are only about 1/2 if the current Euston Glasgow services) are more than 80% full (which would equate to 93% full for the HS2 services)?

As over the course of the day the total number of seats to Glasgow would be higher using the HS2 services than currently:

Therefore there's a range of seating capacities for the existing fleet depending on how they are deployed. Currently is roughly a 50:50 split in the Avanti services, which gives an average seating capacity across the day of around 590 seats, so actually over the day the number of seats would increase by using HS2 stock.

That compares with an average number of seats of over 600 (the exact number is unknown but it's up to 628, so will likely be in the 600-625 seat range).

If you wanted extra capacity over the baseline then I've previously suggested swap the current 390's to TPE and build one 400m platform to allow splitting, whilst that's likely to be more capacity for Wigan - Glasgow than the upgraded 390 option and likely broadly similar capacity to the 10 coach HS2 units, but with a faster journey time.

It's also worth noting that to run any 400m trains north of HS2 you'll need a 400m platform somewhere to split/join services. Therefore it'll be short-sighted to build that (as you'll likely have to build it anyway) as otherwise you may not be able to run the number of services north of (say) Crewe as the but of the WCML between there and the end of HS2 works become the bottleneck.

With a 400m platform you can run two services (say a 200m unit to Liverpool and a 200m unit to Manchester) which allows another service to be run elsewhere, which limits the impact of the bottleneck.

If you've paid for the units to be 8 and 10 coaches, what happens when growth is such that you need to run more services north of HS2? Either you've got to pay for line upgrades to allow more services through, or you've got to reform (maybe with additional coaches) the "existing" fleet back to 8 coaches and still build the 400m platform(s).

The question comes, actually how much are you going to save (even in the short term) by paying for the trains to be reformed vs lengthening some platforms to allow splitting/joining the services and do either options provide you with useful (i.e. you can put a price to) ongoing benefits?

The point I'm making here's little point paying £20 for something with no ongoing benefits when for £40 you can get something which gets you £2 in benefits over the next 10 years and there's a good chance you'll have to pay £50 in 10 years time anyway for the the thing which was going to cost £40 now.

 

[Halifaxlad]

On this new section of HS2 to Birmingham will the signalling be compatible with Pendlinoes ?

 

[MarkyT]

On this new section of HS2 to Birmingham will the signalling be compatible with Pendlinoes ?

Pendolinos will need equipping with ETCS anyway for planned infrastructure fitment on the north WCML. HS2 will be ETCS. They have a eurobalise reader for TASS already and in the route modernisation were originally planned to have an advanced cab signalling system that was cancelled. I expect a complete new fitment to latest hardware and software baseline will be required within which it should be possible to emulate the TASS functionality for areas remaining with conventional signalling in the south.

 

[Sorcerer]

On this new section of HS2 to Birmingham will the signalling be compatible with Pendlinoes ?

I believe the idea was to give the Pendolinos the signalling equipment so they could run on cab signalling from ETCS which would eventually be rolled out on the WCML along with HS2. They would have to be because we can't have trains running above 200km/h (125mph) without cab signalling and HS2 is already engineering for high speeds.

 

[Halifaxlad]

It may well be the cheapest, however I suggest that it may not be the best value for money.

What is, I don't know, but it's likely to involve some platform lengthening to allow 400m trains running beyond HS2 tracks.

The complication with 250(ish)m trains is that they start to cause the risk of wrong units being in the wrong place once you start to use 400m sets. That's not a problem when it's 9 and 11 coach units or 4 and 5 coach units or even 5 and 9 coach units as they can sub for one another fairly easily. However it becomes harder when you've got 8 and 10 coach units which run 8, 10 and 16 coach services.

It'll mean that you'll have to have more spare units, as efficiently you'll have to count the 8 coach units and 10 coach units as separate fleets.

I'll return to the point I made previously how many of the current 11 coach services (which are only about 1/2 if the current Euston Glasgow services) are more than 80% full (which would equate to 93% full for the HS2 services)?

As over the course of the day the total number of seats to Glasgow would be higher using the HS2 services than currently:



That compares with an average number of seats of over 600 (the exact number is unknown but it's up to 628, so will likely be in the 600-625 seat range).

If you wanted extra capacity over the baseline then I've previously suggested swap the current 390's to TPE and build one 400m platform to allow splitting, whilst that's likely to be more capacity for Wigan - Glasgow than the upgraded 390 option and likely broadly similar capacity to the 10 coach HS2 units, but with a faster journey time.

It's also worth noting that to run any 400m trains north of HS2 you'll need a 400m platform somewhere to split/join services. Therefore it'll be short-sighted to build that (as you'll likely have to build it anyway) as otherwise you may not be able to run the number of services north of (say) Crewe as the but of the WCML between there and the end of HS2 works become the bottleneck.

With a 400m platform you can run two services (say a 200m unit to Liverpool and a 200m unit to Manchester) which allows another service to be run elsewhere, which limits the impact of the bottleneck.

If you've paid for the units to be 8 and 10 coaches, what happens when growth is such that you need to run more services north of HS2? Either you've got to pay for line upgrades to allow more services through, or you've got to reform (maybe with additional coaches) the "existing" fleet back to 8 coaches and still build the 400m platform(s).

The question comes, actually how much are you going to save (even in the short term) by paying for the trains to be reformed vs lengthening some platforms to allow splitting/joining the services and do either options provide you with useful (i.e. you can put a price to) ongoing benefits?

The point I'm making here's little point paying £20 for something with no ongoing benefits when for £40 you can get something which gets you £2 in benefits over the next 10 years and there's a good chance you'll have to pay £50 in 10 years time anyway for the the thing which was going to cost £40 now.

Lengthening platforms to 400m will be highly expensive, the majority of stations upon the WCML could be lengthened to 300m without the same level of disruption and expense.

Splitting and joining trains (whatever the length) still makes the railway less efficent than having all the sets the same length. Splitting and joining sets isnt something that should be encouraged as it also creates confusion and passenger mangement issuses when done in platforms.

My biggest bug bear is that capacity cant be increased to Scotland if you focus on running around 200m sets in pairs.

The easiest solution is to keep it simple and straightforward, if HS2 was also much simplier and straightforward built to 125mph railway it wouldnt have had as much opposition as a lot more of it could have skated around some of these woodlands!

 

[Sorcerer]

Lengthening platforms to 400m will be highly expensive, the majority of stations upon the WCML could be lengthened to 300m without the same level of disruption and expense.

Splitting and joining trains (whatever the length) still makes the railway less efficent than having all the sets the same length. Splitting and joining sets isnt something that should be encouraged as it also creates confusion and passenger mangement issuses when done in platforms.

My biggest bug bear is that capacity cant be increased to Scotland if you focus on running around 200m sets in pairs.

The easiest solution is to keep it simple and straightforward, if HS2 was also much simplier and straightforward built to 125mph railway it wouldnt have had as much opposition as a lot more of it could have skated around some of these woodlands!

Building it to a 125mph specification wouldn't have been that much cheaper and considerably less value for money since you aren't using the best of the technology available to you. The issue with 200m long trains now is the fact that much of the route has been scaled back so any 400m long platforms at terminal stations are no longer on the table, and without the lines providing capacity relief you can't fit as many seats on a single 200m long unit. People would've opposed HS2 regardless of what kind of railway it was going to be, because much of it stems from not understanding it's real purpose.

The options now would be to either restore the scrapped legs or change the specification of the trains from 200m to maybe 250m, or at a push 265m to match the length of an eleven-coach Pendolino and also provided greater numbers of seats. If a seven-coach 807 can be built to match the capacity of a nine-coach Pendolino, a 265m long train can certainly match that of an eleven-coach. Otherwise most stations couldn't handle a longer unit; at Liverpool Lime Street an eleven-coach Pendolino is almost the entire length of the longest platforms, so 300m is certainly not going to cut it.

 

[The Ham]

Lengthening platforms to 400m will be highly expensive, the majority of stations upon the WCML could be lengthened to 300m without the same level of disruption and expense.

Splitting and joining trains (whatever the length) still makes the railway less efficent than having all the sets the same length. Splitting and joining sets isnt something that should be encouraged as it also creates confusion and passenger mangement issuses when done in platforms.

My biggest bug bear is that capacity cant be increased to Scotland if you focus on running around 200m sets in pairs.

The easiest solution is to keep it simple and straightforward, if HS2 was also much simplier and straightforward built to 125mph railway it wouldnt have had as much opposition as a lot more of it could have skated around some of these woodlands!

Even if you were to run 400m trains, most platforms would only need to be 275m with SDO to then have 3/8 of the rear coaches at the platform. As enough people are able to walk through 3 coaches (if not 5) to make the longer trains worth running.

However there's benefits in a station or two being lengthened to 400m, even if you don't split services.

Whilst splitting services does come with issues, arguably the need to do so would only happen if there was a need to because passenger numbers had increased. I return to the question I raised, how many services are currently 11 coaches which are full enough that they wouldn't fit into the HS2 trains?

However, SWR (and SWT had more when they ran them) fairly frequently splits and joins services at platforms. Whist they do it with units you can walk between units, they also don't really do reservations so there's not that which helps with passenger management.

Also HS2 already have one service suggested to split (phase one service) which was a Liverpool/Lancaster service.

If there's currently not the demand for 10 coach HS2 units, why pay to change them from 8?

If we find that there's demand by the time they start running HS2 service, then for the couple of extra services a day which need the extra capacity then split the trains.

For example you could run a Liverpool/Blackpool service with the latter timed to connect with the TPE services to Scotland at Wigan or Preston.

If after a few years I'd running we are starting to run more than 2tph in at least a few hours of the day and several of the other hours there's also extra splitting services then changes are the usage would be enough to justify building more of what's been cut (of not all of it).

That's assuming that Manchester isn't able to take 400m trains within a short timeframe after that.

There's 7 (non Birmingham services which could be 400m all the time), one of those is already suggested to split (so also 400m) leaving 6. Of that 3 serve Manchester, over the course of the day there's about an 18(9 coach) 22 (11 coach) split on services to Manchester, that's 23,000 seats a day.

40 trains with 600 seats would be 24,000 seats a day, so even with 200m trains Manchester would see an increase in capacity, however it's also worth noting that one of the other services would be going to Macclesfield and so even if individual services were uncomfortably full done people might opt to swap to that service and change to a local service to get to Manchester (or possibly the demand to Stafford, Stoke, and Macclesfield could be enough that the Manchester services don't get overloaded).

Therefore of 7 services:
4 will have more capacity over the day that currently
1 will be a new service providing capacity which could be used by those who had previously been on the Manchester trains
1 will already be splitting
1 will have extra capacity next of gaining a second service (half of the above train)

It seems a lot of effort to change the contract for fairly limited benefit for a fairly limited time period, but with the risk that it messes up the length of trains for the rest of their working lives.

 

[FGWHST43009]

Could a similar project to this be done for the East Coast Mainline? Maybe build a few new lines to bypass congested sections and curvy bits like Welwyn then upgrade other stretches to 250kmh and run the Azumas at 250kmh?

 

[weeklycommuter]

In cost terms the cheapest option is probably to pay Alstom/Hitachi what it costs to modify the order into 300m sets.
HS2 is not going to be short of capacity so not maximising train lengths on the core is unlikely to be an issue.

Is the right answer! (or maybe 250m, so that platfrom extensions arent needed).

They should stay with the plan to have 8 car 200 metre long HS2 sets which can form double sets and fill them with 2+2 standard class only seating to deliver double set 400 metre long trains each with 1,100 seats. I see this as the only way to deliver the big increase in the number of seats on trains needed to fully meet demand for affordable train travel at all times London to Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, North West England, Glasgow and Edinburgh and end the current exorbitant train fares which are used to ration train seats by price.

The trains need to have toilets, plenty of space for luggage and space for disabled passengers but no first class 2+1 seating and any catering must be a trolley. The only real long distance services will be London to Edinburgh and Glasgow. London to Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool which will account for most HS2 services will take less than two hours. There are commuter services from London to many places in the South of England that will take longer than these HS2 services. Stations on the combined HS2 and West Coast Mainline routes all the way from London to Edinburgh and Glasgow that are served by HS2 trains need to have platforms that can support the calling and terminating of 400 metre long double set HS2 trains and they should start planning to build new platforms or extend existing platforms to deliver this. They could in some cases, such as Edinburgh and Glasgow, divide the trains at a station on route.

Without 400 metre long trains the investment in 400 metre long platforms at Old Oak Common, Birmingham Interchange and Birmingham Curzon Street will have been wasted and it will not be possible to deliver the promised number of seats London to Birmingham. I am not sure it would work to change the order to a mix of 200 metre sets that can form double sets London to Birmingham and different trains 250 metres or 300 metres long for HS2 services from London Euston to destinations North of Birmingham. There are a limited number of paths on the West Coast Mainline North of Birmingham and even if HS2 Euston is built with ten platforms it will not be possible to run more than 16 trains an hour on HS2 so to get the full benefit of the greatest possible increase in the number of seats on trains from the very large amount of taxpayers' money invested in HS2 it is essential to run HS2 services with 400 metre long trains filled with 2+2 standard class only seating to provide 1,100 seats per train.

 

[Halifaxlad]

Without 400 metre long trains the investment in 400 metre long platforms at Old Oak Common, Birmingham Interchange and Birmingham Curzon Street will have been wasted and it will not be possible to deliver the promised number of seats London to Birmingham.

I do concur.

Whilst from the offset I would have never gone with 400m long trains, to have them between London & Birmingham would be sensible even if it requires additional staff.

I do quite like the overall idea of refurbishing the pendolinos perhaps their (eventual) replacement should be 300m ? Granted, that would significant alterations to Lime St or an entirely new station eventually!

The only issuses I can see with Gibbs proposal is this presumption that Manchester will get an 400m underground station. 400m services are never going to run through Manchester to Leeds so there isnt much point in putting them underground at vast expense. Im open to 400m platforms at Manchester but these would be better provided adjacent to the existing platforms upon the Northern side.

Ideally I would keep NPR segregated from HS2 by having an underground East to West line.

 

[HSTEd]

It seems a lot of effort to change the contract for fairly limited benefit for a fairly limited time period, but with the risk that it messes up the length of trains for the rest of their working lives.

Is it truly a "fairly limited period"?

I don't see the money required for major platform extensions being available any time soon.
Attempting to fit 400m platforms at Manchester and the like could cost a very large amount of money. From an inspection of the sectional and appendix and google maps, it appears to be that it would probably take a complete reconstruction of the station approach to be made truly workable.

A fleet of 275/300m trainsets, possibly with a handful of 400m sets mixed in, would seem to be the best option to get capacity out of the infrastructure that is known to be available.
We shouldn't bet the house on some future project occurring - indeed that is one of the reasons we are in this mess in the first place!

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 7 Jun 2024 ==

400m services are never going to run through Manchester to Leeds so there isnt much point in putting them underground at vast expense.

Why not?
Even after Phase 1 is built Manchester-London trains are going to be fast enough that Leeds-Manchester-London would be at least somewhat competitive (~1hr40 to Manchester, so ~2hr30 to Leeds) with the current Leeds-London trains.
If Gibb's proposed de-facto Phase 2 line is built the time advantage would be decisively in favour of HS2, in that case it could even take over the path assigned to Manchester Airport-Leeds trains.

Leeds has platforms that can take trains over 300m long (See the old Eurostar-stock 'White Rose' services).
But personally I agree that very expensive underground stations are probably unnecessary in a world where ETCS Autoreverse exists!

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 7 Jun 2024 ==

Without 400 metre long trains the investment in 400 metre long platforms at Old Oak Common, Birmingham Interchange and Birmingham Curzon Street will have been wasted and it will not be possible to deliver the promised number of seats London to Birmingham. I am not sure it would work to change the order to a mix of 200 metre sets that can form double sets London to Birmingham and different trains 250 metres or 300 metres long for HS2 services from London Euston to destinations North of Birmingham. There are a limited number of paths on the West Coast Mainline North of Birmingham and even if HS2 Euston is built with ten platforms it will not be possible to run more than 16 trains an hour on HS2 so to get the full benefit of the greatest possible increase in the number of seats on trains from the very large amount of taxpayers' money invested in HS2 it is essential to run HS2 services with 400 metre long trains filled with 2+2 standard class only seating to provide 1,100 seats per train.

Whilst the platform length issue is somewhat unfortunate, we must be careful not to allow ourselves to be seduced by the sunk-cost fallacy.
In any case, I'm not sure you'd bother with any 200m sets in this scenario.
It would probably be easier just to change the order to 275/300m sets for services to destinations north of Birmingham plus a handful of 'crowdbuster' 400m sets for Birmingham shuttles.

That would allow routine coupling and uncoupling to be abandoned and maximise achievable capacity on the Birmingham shuttles.

 

[The Ham]

Is it truly a "fairly limited period"?

I don't see the money required for major platform extensions being available any time soon.
Attempting to fit 400m platforms at Manchester and the like could cost a very large amount of money. From an inspection of the sectional and appendix and google maps, it appears to be that it would probably take a complete reconstruction of the station approach to be made truly workable.

A fleet of 275/300m trainsets, possibly with a handful of 400m sets mixed in, would seem to be the best option to get capacity out of the infrastructure that is known to be available.
We shouldn't bet the house on some future project occurring - indeed that is one of the reasons we are in this mess in the first place!

The point was that if the 10tph
3 to Birmingham will be able to be 400m
1 to Liverpool/Lancaster will need a 400m platform to split at anyway
1 to Liverpool which would see extra capacity from the above service (but could have a second unit attached to split at the same station as the above service to serve somewhere else, say, Blackpool)
3 to Manchester will give a small uplift over the day plus
1tph to Macclesfield which will relieve capacity a little in some of the above services on top of their existing small daily uplift
1tph to Glasgow which would see a small daily uplift although could see some capacity uplift by the Lancaster service being timed well to connect with TPE services to Scotland

Ignoring the Birmingham trains, that's 7tph, 6 of 8 coaches and one of 16 is 64 coaches of capacity, with the option of it rising to 72 (or even 80 if you could find a destination to split the Glasgow train as well) without needing to build any additional 400m platforms. If 6 of the trains were 10 coaches (to get to 11 might be an issue, as I believe that you'd no longer be able to serve Liverpool as it can't take 12 coach 390's) that would be 74 coaches.

That means to get nearly the same capacity out of London you'd only need to add the suggested Blackpool service to the Liverpool service, with more available if you could split the Glasgow service (especially if that was to Edinburgh where most of the same stations north of Wigan are going to be served, so it's only really once in Scotland there's a risk of people being on the wrong half).

If you can get a good interchange time on the Lancaster service (with the risk of wetting portion travel for this service and the Blackpool service being limited as the other half would be Liverpool, so whilst frustrating you're not heading a significant distance the wrong way even if you end up at the terminus) to a TPE service to Scotland you could move some 390's to TPE to slightly improve the journey time to Glasgow, which would take a few off the HS2 services to Scotland but still leave the direct services for those who need it.

However as soon as you are able to deliver 400m platforms for Manchester (as there's likely to be new platforms anyway soonish as part of NPR, or whatever it's called but definitely not HS2 into Manchester is why I said a fairly limited period) that's going to significantly boost the capacity into Manchester. One you've got the new platforms/lines to Manchester, even if the trains were limited to (say) 300m you would likely be able to extend the Macclesfield service, which would make it 4tph to Manchester (even if the latter only left 1 minute later than the previous Manchester service and arrived 1 minute before the following one, some people would use it if it wasn't as busy).

Other than Manchester, I'm not sure that anywhere else would benefit that much from 250m stock, even then Manchester would have 3 and a bit trains an hour (because of the Macclesfield service taking some of the strain) and have a small uplift over the day compared to the current capacity.

Therefore, what is the benefit you're getting from creating 10 coach trains and is it worth the cost, especially if you may need to run more 400m trains during their lifetime with the associated cost of reversing then back to 400m trains?

If you need to lengthen Liverpool to take 275m or longer trains, (as I believe that platform 9 is 267m long) then arguably it'll be better to use that money towards building the extra tracks into Manchester and the 400m platforms there as Liverpool is already benefiting from having 2tph and so the risk of those trains being the trains with capacity issues is likely to be small.

Given the above in yet to be convinced that there's a benefit from running 250m long trains, especially given you could always build some extra middle coaches at a future date to run (say) 300m trains to Manchester, or even build some new 4 coach units to pair up with the 8 coach units so you could run 300m trains to Manchester (or other places) but also split a 12 coach train to run to Liverpool but with the 4 coaches splitting to run separately into Lime Street (maybe as a stopping service or even just waiting at South Liverpool Parkway to then head south again).

Changing to 10 coach trains now is probably more risky than keeping the 8 coach units and setting what future developments happen (including where there's an actual need for extra capacity).

 

[andyjd70]

Exactly this. In the longer term, when a 400m platforms can be delivered at Manchester Piccadilly, said 10 car 250m HS2 trains can then be used on services like Birmingham-Manchester and Birmingham-Edinburgh/Glasgow via whatever new line is built north of Handsacre.

I believe the issue with this is the sidings / maintenance facilities have been designed for 200m trains, the link below goes into a lot of the details https://www.railengineer.co.uk/pendolino-plan-for-hs2/

 

[AHBD]

I believe the issue with this is the sidings / maintenance facilities have been designed for 200m trains, the link below goes into a lot of the details https://www.railengineer.co.uk/pendolino-plan-for-hs2/

Could they make the proposed longer (than 200m) sets 'halve-able' only for slow speed maintenance moves under own power?....(but maybe that would be an expensive software change so could they just split those longer sets and shunt the 'halves' into the depot?