Could Leeds-Manchester-Birmingham-Nottingham HS2/NPR Work?

[Purple Orange]

This sounds a bit odd at first, so bear with me.

Manchester Piccadilly HS2 is being designed to allow through services to reverse in/out with a 5 min dwell, using 200m trains in 400m platforms. Therefore could Birmingham Curzon Street enable the same thing?

The line between Birmingham & Manchester is capable of running 400m trains in 40 minutes, while the lines to Leeds and Nottingham will only be capable of 200m trains. Meanwhile it is now planned for Birmingham-Manchester to continue on to Leeds & Newcastle.

What I am proposing is to join and split services so that we have a 400m train running between Birmingham & Manchester, but split in both cities.

1. Train A, a 200m train, travels from Nottingham to Birmingham in 27 minutes.
2. It joins with a Train B (200m train) at Curzon Street.
3. Train A & Train B (400m) travels to Manchester in 41 minutes.
4. Train A splits from Train B.
5. Train B travels from Manchester to Leeds in 33 minutes, then on to Newcastle.
6. Train A has terminated at Piccadilly, cleaned & restocked etc, and awaits being joined with Train C (a 200m train from Newcastle & Leeds)
7. Train A and Train C travels to Birmingham in 41 minutes.
8. Train C terminates and awaits a service from Nottingham before heading north.
9. Train A heads on to Nottingham.

This would enable Manchester-Nottingham direct services in 73 minutes (including 5 min dwell at Curzon Street) on a 200m train, compared to 111 minutes via Sheffield on a 4-car 158.

 

[HST43257]

Funnily enough, the Leeds to Nottingham current journey time can be matched if you went via Manc and Brum - could be a capacity relief for those 2 car CAFs often full and standing!

Leeds to Manchester - 33 mins
5 min rev
Manchester to Birmingham - 41 mins
5 min rev
Birmingham to Nottingham - 27 mins

33+5+41+5+27=111

 

[Purple Orange]

Funnily enough, the Leeds to Nottingham current journey time can be matched if you went via Manc and Brum - could be a capacity relief for those 2 car CAFs often full and standing!

Leeds to Manchester - 33 mins
5 min rev
Manchester to Birmingham - 41 mins
5 min rev
Birmingham to Nottingham - 27 mins

33+5+41+5+27=111

The draw back is that unless 400m trains can run to Nottingham & Leeds, passengers wanting to do that journey would need to hop off and back on the other unit. This only really enables Nottingham-Manchester and Birmingham-Leeds/Newcastle, rather than Nottingham-Leeds/Newcastle.

It might reduce passenger movements in the station if people boarding in Manchester & Birmingham are mostly directed to the rear unit.

 

[HST43257]

The draw back is that unless 400m trains can run to Nottingham & Leeds, passengers wanting to do that journey would need to hop off and back on the other unit. This only really enables Nottingham-Manchester and Birmingham-Leeds/Newcastle, rather than Nottingham-Leeds/Newcastle.

It might reduce passenger movements in the station if people boarding in Manchester & Birmingham are mostly directed to the rear unit.

Unless 1 unit did the full journey and the other did a shuttle between Brum and Manc

 

[Purple Orange]

Unless 1 unit did the full journey and the other did a shuttle between Brum and Manc

But you end up with units the wrong way around. The train from Nottingham forms the front portion of the train heading to Manchester. In Manchester the train splits, but the rear unit at Birmingham is now the unit that would then become the front portion of the train to Leeds.

 

[Nottingham59]

Given the terminating stations at Curzon St and in Manchester, I think there's a lot of scope to run shuttles around two sides of the Manchester/Birmingham/Leeds triangle. Especially as all it needs is careful timetabling, with no additional infrastructure.

But three sides might be just too confusing for the travelling public. I would run three shuttle services on HS2: Leeds-Man-Brum; Man-Brum-Nottm. Liverpool-Brum-Sheffield. These would be in addition to the London high speed services, of course.

Rather than joining and splitting trains, I'd order an equal mix of 200m and 400m trainsets for theses shuttles, and reconfigure them to run for the first decade as 300m sets, which will fit into Nottingham, Derby, and Sheffield without rebuilding. How long are the platforms at Leeds and Liverpool?

 

[Bevan Price]

Given the terminating stations at Curzon St and in Manchester, I think there's a lot of scope to run shuttles around two sides of the Manchester/Birmingham/Leeds triangle. Especially as all it needs is careful timetabling, with no additional infrastructure.

But three sides might be just too confusing for the travelling public. I would run three shuttle services on HS2: Leeds-Man-Brum; Man-Brum-Nottm. Liverpool-Brum-Sheffield. These would be in addition to the London high speed services, of course.

Rather than joining and splitting trains, I'd order an equal mix of 200m and 400m trainsets for theses shuttles, and reconfigure them to run for the first decade as 300m sets, which will fit into Nottingham, Derby, and Sheffield without rebuilding. How long are the platforms at Leeds and Liverpool?

Liverpool Lime Street just holds an 11 coach Class 390 - with no easy way to create longer platforms.

 

[tomuk]

The draw back is that unless 400m trains can run to Nottingham & Leeds, passengers wanting to do that journey would need to hop off and back on the other unit. This only really enables Nottingham-Manchester and Birmingham-Leeds/Newcastle, rather than Nottingham-Leeds/Newcastle.

It might reduce passenger movements in the station if people boarding in Manchester & Birmingham are mostly directed to the rear unit.

But if the set leaving Curzon Street has the Nottingham unit at the rear it would be at the front when arriving in Manchester allowing a through service Nottingham to Leeds. Same in reverse

 

[HSTEd]

The draw back is that unless 400m trains can run to Nottingham & Leeds, passengers wanting to do that journey would need to hop off and back on the other unit. This only really enables Nottingham-Manchester and Birmingham-Leeds/Newcastle, rather than Nottingham-Leeds/Newcastle.

It might reduce passenger movements in the station if people boarding in Manchester & Birmingham are mostly directed to the rear unit.

The 200m/400m train length is not ordained by god or anything, especially since this train would not go anywhere near the core.

So you could just run a single unit of whatever the shortest platform on the route would be - probably something like 300m?

[EDIT: If you need two platforms long enough to accept the train, you manage 300m, limited by platforms at Nottingham]

 

[Purple Orange]

But if the set leaving Curzon Street has the Nottingham unit at the rear it would be at the front when arriving in Manchester allowing a through service Nottingham to Leeds. Same in reverse

But what unit would be joining at the front? I see the movement at Birmingham would be:

1. Arrival of 400m train from Manchester
2. The set nearest the station throat detaches and runs to Nottingham
3. The set nearest the station concourse waits for a Nottingham to Birmingham service to arrive where they join and then head to Manchester.

Given the terminating stations at Curzon St and in Manchester, I think there's a lot of scope to run shuttles around two sides of the Manchester/Birmingham/Leeds triangle. Especially as all it needs is careful timetabling, with no additional infrastructure.

But three sides might be just too confusing for the travelling public. I would run three shuttle services on HS2: Leeds-Man-Brum; Man-Brum-Nottm. Liverpool-Brum-Sheffield. These would be in addition to the London high speed services, of course.

Rather than joining and splitting trains, I'd order an equal mix of 200m and 400m trainsets for theses shuttles, and reconfigure them to run for the first decade as 300m sets, which will fit into Nottingham, Derby, and Sheffield without rebuilding. How long are the platforms at Leeds and Liverpool?

I don’t see how it would be confusing for the travelling public. The service would be running those shuttles you highlighted. The advertised services would be:

• In Nottingham: advertised as a service to Manchester via Brum.
• In Birmingham: advertised as (northbound) Birmingham to Manchester (front and rear portion) & Leeds (front portion only). (Southbound) the Nottingham train would be signposted as the front portion with passengers told which section of the platform to use.
• In Manchester: advertised as southbound Manchester to Birmingham (front & rear portion) & Nottingham (front portion only). Northbound Leeds & Newcastle (front portion).
• In Leeds: advertised as Leeds to Birmingham via Manchester. Northbound to Newcastle.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 1 Dec 2021 ==

The 200m/400m train length is not ordained by god or anything, especially since this train would not go anywhere near the core.

So you could just run a single unit of whatever the shortest platform on the route would be - probably something like 300m?

The train would be on the core HS2 line, but yes it could be a 300m train. However that means in Birmingham & Manchester, no portion of the train can terminate which is helpful operationally, and with the train being 300m it can’t easily be extended to accommodate greater capacity.

 

[HSTEd]

The train would be on the core HS2 line, but yes it could be a 300m train. However that means in Birmingham & Manchester, no portion of the train can terminate which is helpful operationally, and with the train being 300m it can’t easily be extended to accommodate greater capacity.

I mean core as in the capacity limited London-Birmingham segment.

And if we have need of more capacity than potentially multiple 300m trainsets per hour doing the Nottingham-Birmingham-Manchester-Leeds loop, I don't think money for some platform extensions at Nottingham will be off the table.
That would take a two platform limited train to ~342m, and 400m platforms at Leeds are probably going to be built at some point anyway.

You could also get a single 400m platform into Nottingham relatively easily if it was a west facing bay.

 

[Purple Orange]

I mean core as in the capacity limited London-Birmingham segment.

And if we have need of more capacity than potentially multiple 300m trainsets per hour doing the Nottingham-Birmingham-Manchester-Leeds loop, I don't think money for some platform extensions at Nottingham will be off the table.
That would take a two platform limited train to ~342m, and 400m platforms at Leeds are probably going to be built at some point anyway.

You could also get a single 400m platform into Nottingham relatively easily if it was a west facing bay.

I don’t think we should get too hung up about the length of the train, as it is capacity that is key. The 200m & 400m split allows for maximum utilisation of the HS2 network, but fundamentally it has 550 seats on a given unit which is the key.

I do think there is a lot to be said for terminating a unit at Birmingham and Manchester, as that will assist with enabling the biggest crowds to access the train long before the 5-min dwell time kicks in when the 2nd unit arrives.

 

[tomuk]

But what unit would be joining at the front?

Could be a unit from the depot at Washwood Heath or even a shunt from an adjacent platform. Curzon St has seven platforms, the seventh being a holdover from earlier HS2 plans as a termination point for HS1 services.

 

[Purple Orange]

Could be a unit from the depot at Washwood Heath or even a shunt from an adjacent platform. Curzon St has seven platforms, the seventh being a holdover from earlier HS2 plans as a termination point for HS1 services.

And how long would the dwell be for the train from Nottingham? Longer than 5 mins no doubt?

 

[nr758123]

The idea that you would run Leeds-Nottingham trains on a route 170 miles long starting out on a heavily used two-track mixed traffic route and then involving two reversals, when there is a direct route of about 70 miles, just seems completely daft to me.

 

[HSTEd]

The idea that you would run Leeds-Nottingham trains on a route 170 miles long starting out on a heavily used two-track mixed traffic route and then involving two reversals, when there is a direct route of about 70 miles, just seems completely daft to me.

Well this is the wonder of high speed rail - the fact that this is a somewhat practical option demonstrates how awful our "conventional" rail system is.
Ultimately people care about journey time and frequency, not how far they've technically travelled to their destination.

It's like the London Underground Map

If we are going to have Birmingham-Leeds trains, little reason to not run them to Nottingham along a very lightly used high speed railway to East Midlands Parkway and get the end to end traffic.

 

[Purple Orange]

Well this is the wonder of high speed rail - the fact that this is a somewhat practical option demonstrates how awful our "conventional" rail system is.
Ultimately people care about journey time and frequency, not how far they've technically travelled to their destination.

It's like the London Underground Map

If we are going to have Birmingham-Leeds trains, little reason to not run them to Nottingham along a very lightly used high speed railway to East Midlands Parkway and get the end to end traffic.

Indeed. If the argument was just A to B in the shortest distance, we would not have the M25 or M60.

In fact it’s not running any additional services, as it is a case of joining up existing services. However the unless single unit trains are used, the Leeds-Nottingham flow would not be used.