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If there is a Manchester-Birmingham capacity problem and it's really not possible to find a way to run the Manchester-Reading as 8 car minimum due to the Reading reversal
Is Reading that big a deal? There are only a handful of XC services using platform 3 – seems to be five today, either reversing or terminating – compared with about 40 calls at the through platforms, which can accommodate full length trains (and need to, as three trains each way are formed of double sets).
Under the same definition of existing resources, but slightly fewer of them as no crew training would be required, the 6 spare Voyagers (and the following 2 once GC are done with them) could go to XC to extend the existing services. Reading may be a problem but at least you could ensure all of those were 5 with no single 4s at all, and the Bristol could be 9 all day. It's a complete no-brainer to give XC these units, they are literally doing nothing and are the same as their existing fleet.
Based on comments from others, my initial thoughts were along the lines of the following:
- Provide XC with the currently unutilised Voyagers
- Refurbish the 350/2s to provide 2+2 seating and tables
- 1tph Bournemouth to Liverpool (5-car Voyager or 8-car if Reading reversal not an issue)
- 1tph Bristol to Manchester (8/9-car Voyager)
- 1tph Liverpool to Birmingham International (8-car 350/2s) - new platform or reversing siding delivered if needed also to terminate TFW and local services*
- 1tph - Manchester to Coventry (12-car 350/2s) - Manchester Piccadilly is the 11th largest destination from Coventry with around 34,000 journeys per year so worth keeping this link in my view if capacity to reverse there (a further 25,000 direct journeys between Birmingham International and Manchester)
- Set in train (pun intended) the process of Voyager replacement with longer electric and bi-mode 80* type units sufficient to replace both the Voyagers and 350/2s with the re-extension of the Coventry terminators if there are paths available as far as works, even if this is only to Leamington
Post GBR I would also like to see LNWR services and the XC services using the northern part of the WCML transferred to a larger 'West Coast' sub-division (ECML XC services to 'East Coast' and XC Turbostar services to a 'Midlands' franchise) so you wouldn't have any new route miles added to franchises/sub-divisions.
*You might even be able to get a small contribution from the Airport and NEC if this facilitates improved services from the station to Liverpool and Manchester - MAG contributed £50m to the Metrolink extension to the Airport for example.
Looking at some of the destinations that will lose direct services to Manchester under the above approach however, these flows are not insignificant at 137,000 - Leamington 21,000; Banbury 14,000; Oxford 29,000; Reading 35,000; Basingstoke 8,000; Winchester 4,000; Southampton Airport Parkway 5,000; Southampton 13,000; and, Bournmouth 8,000. This compares to 236,029 between Birmingham and Manchester so is around 60% of the total and this rises to 83% if including Coventry and Birmingham International. Obviously not an exhaustive list of cross Birmingham flows but shows these are not insignificant and that it would be difficult to easily sever these.
The best suggestion is swapping 1 Birmingham-Liverpool diagram with the XC Bournemouth-Manchester. You would need to have crews conduct Route Learning on either route (would have to be done within 6 months) before a a TT change. You would need to swap some station calls about as well to make it all work. Also with the Manchesters being 8 car EMU, then the Bay platform at New Street would have to revert to the WMR Shrewsbury Semi-Fast. As someone said, the Bristol-Manchesters being mostly double sets can remain as is.
We have tried running LNWR Birmingham-London Servcices before beyond New Street and up the Chase line before, and what a disaster that was, so any talk of Northampton-Manchester is is making things more complicated that they need to be from a planning and reliability point.
The best suggestion is swapping 1 Birmingham-Liverpool diagram with the XC Bournemouth-Manchester. You would need to have crews conduct Route Learning on either route (would have to be done within 6 months) before a a TT change. You would need to swap some station calls about as well to make it all work. Also with the Manchesters being 8 car EMU, then the Bay platform at New Street would have to revert to the WMR Shrewsbury Semi-Fast.
It would be good if there were those services, yes, but not to the complete exclusion of the long distance service entirely because that also has value, though it could be less frequent, e.g. 0.5tph.
I think to do that you'd need to build some directed infrastructure German/Swiss style, though, e.g. passing loops at selected stations. For that you design the long term timetable and build the infrastructure to specifically support it (e.g. no need to 4-track Brum-Rugby, you just need extra loops at relevant stations - and notably Stechford already has one!)
Short loops at stations where the faster service doesn't call aren't ideal though- unless the loops extend some distance one or both sides of the station you end up with extended dwells "baked in".
Short loops at stations where the faster service doesn't call aren't ideal though- unless the loops extend some distance one or both sides of the station you end up with extended dwells "baked in".
They're fine because you can "bake in" those extended dwells on a local service where speed is not of the essence. The concepts work fine in pretty much all the Takt countries.
That's great, makes it even easier from a New Street occupation prespective.
As for the other comment above mine, while it would be nice to extend to Coventry to offer through services to cater for demand, Coventry-Birmingham Int is pretty much at capacity so a non-starter. The timings do not work for LNWR London/Northampton-New Street services to operate as a through train withtout a WCML TT recast.
That's great, makes it even easier from a New Street occupation prespective.
As for the other comment above mine, while it would be nice to extend to Coventry to offer through services to cater for demand, Coventry-Birmingham Int is pretty much at capacity so a non-starter. The timings do not work for LNWR London/Northampton-New Street services to operate as a through train withtout a WCML TT recast.
Absolutely do not, under any circumstances whatsoever, operate a through Euston-Manchester via Birmingham WMT service. This would be even worse than the through Liverpool etc in 2019 because it would add the potential for cross-pollination of delays from Castlefield onto Euston. This is about the most nonsensical idea I have ever seen posted on this Forum given the known experiences from 2019 with the problems caused by way of through services across New St to far less compromised destinations.
I don't support splitting the service at Northampton, as has already been made clear, but this would be worse than doing that. It would absolutely destroy Euston to the point of uselessness (which the 2019 service was close to doing already!)
* Yes I know it'd be a main train shed service, but Castlefield delays do affect the Piccadilly throat to an extent.
The only WMT Euston service that should go anywhere near Manchester is the Crewe were that to be extended, and then it should go to Vic to avoid Castlefield knock-on.
Absolutely do not, under any circumstances whatsoever, operate a through Euston-Manchester via Birmingham WMT service. This would be even worse than the through Liverpool etc in 2019 because it would add the potential for cross-pollination of delays from Castlefield onto Euston. This is about the most nonsensical idea I have ever seen posted on this Forum given the known experiences from 2019 with the problems caused by way of through services across New St to far less compromised destinations.
I don't support splitting the service at Northampton, as has already been made clear, but this would be worse than doing that. It would absolutely destroy Euston to the point of uselessness (which the 2019 service was close to doing already!)
* Yes I know it'd be a main train shed service, but Castlefield delays do affect the Piccadilly throat to an extent.
The only WMT service that should go anywhere near Manchester is the Crewe if it is decided to extend that, and ideally into Vic, not Picc, to avoid Castlefield having any effect on it.
In my 350 world, the Manchester interworks with the Liverpool and doesn't touch the London at all.
However, I was trying to find somewhere for the other Manchester (30 arrival that currently goes to Bristol at 42) (33 departure that currently comes from Bristol at 24), but London is certainly not that place. Even if there is also a 36 to London that lines up
Now that I realised they are in play there is a 20 minutes past from Liverpool (which could go to Manchester at 33), but the Liverpool departs at 34 and that is a very tight turnaround for the 30 from Manchester.
It demonstrably doesn't. It might in theory, but connecting up two parts of the railway that are particularly prone to delays and which operate with relatively little slack without very long mid-route layovers* does exactly what you would think it would do, i.e. make the delays at both ends many, many times worse.
Just read back to the many threads on 2019 on this Forum. It didn't work then and it wouldn't work now, and you're talking connecting to a city with far more delays than Liverpool and Rugeley had.
* Sure, you could mitigate by having it sit at Northampton for half an hour and continue in the next path, but then you've de-facto broken the through service anyway and you're also wasting stock and crews by having them sit at Northampton for half an hour doing nothing twice an hour.
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However, I was trying to find somewhere for the other Manchester (30 arrival that currently goes to Bristol at 42) (33 departure that currently comes from Bristol at 24), but London is certainly not that place. Even if there is also a 36 to London that lines up
Correct. Nothing on WMT that has been further north than New St (or maybe Wolves at an absolute push) should go to Euston whether advertised as a through service or not (or vice versa). It'll create an absolute mess just like it did in 2019.
In a really ideal world, there should be no interworking at all on a given day of units or crews between the WMT WCML service groups other than the MKC and Tring locals with each other. Everything else should be wholly self contained even if it is a bit inefficient.
It demonstrably doesn't. It might in theory, but connecting up two parts of the railway that are particularly prone to delays and which operate with relatively little slack without very long mid-route layovers* does exactly what you would think it would do, i.e. make the delays at both ends many, many times worse.
Just read back to the many threads on 2019 on this Forum. It didn't work then and it wouldn't work now, and you're talking connecting to a city with far more delays than Liverpool and Rugeley had.
* Sure, you could mitigate by having it sit at Northampton for half an hour and continue in the next path, but then you've de-facto broken the through service anyway and you're also wasting stock and crews by having them sit at Northampton for half an hour doing nothing twice an hour.
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Correct. Nothing on WMT that has been further north than New St (or maybe Wolves at an absolute push) should go to Euston whether advertised as a through service or not (or vice versa). It'll create an absolute mess just like it did in 2019.
In a really ideal world, there should be no interworking at all on a given day of units or crews between the WMT WCML service groups other than the MKC and Tring locals with each other. Everything else should be wholly self contained even if it is a bit inefficient.
I fully agree. It works in terms of times lining up. It does not work in any other sense.
Another answer that might also function time wise is Liverpool and Manchester 350s splitting and joining at Stafford. Their paths seem to follow each other in both directions, so that is about as perfect as you can get for splitting. The only challenge there is that you are limiting one of the services to 4-car 350. You could give each city 1 8-car and 1 4-car each hour, but that is not the huge uplift that could be delivered keeping the services separate from Birmingham. The splitting option has a second upside in that you can maintain CrossCountry to Wolverhampton and/or use the freed up Wolves paths for other services.
This is simply untrue. In Germany, a Takt country, it's provided by way of regional services being very cheap, particularly with the Deutschlandticket but even before that with stuff like the Schoenes-Wochenende-Ticket. For years it's been common for less well-off people to make long journeys on regional services because it's cheap, while the ICE is excellent but pricey. It is directly analogous to Avanti vs. WMT on the WCML - the situation with the "cheap and fast vs. expensive and slow" thing is a near textbook copy. Plus Germany has Flixtrain, which is a low frequency budget Open Access operator sort of analogous to Lumo.
Sure, Switzerland and the Netherlands don't have analogies, but they do have affordable (in the former case if you have a Halbtax, but pretty much everyone does, the full fare is basically a tourist tax) mainstream services. I would love us to cut the Anytime Return between London and Birmingham to fifty quid, bringing it into line in real terms (noting that Swiss pay is much higher than here) with fares in CH with Halbtax*, but it's just not happening. Thus you need to provide for the market that can't afford over a hundred, and for short journeys booking well in advance isn't the solution, because your car doesn't require booking in advance. (Note not to conflate booking in advance with Advance fares - the regional operators that offer these tend to off them at low prices close to departure). This is different to London-Edinburgh, where almost nobody makes that journey on a whim, and almost everyone knows they'll be making it a month or more ahead.
* It's an outrageous £197 at the moment, which is closer to what London-Manchester would be if per mile the fares were the same as London-Edinburgh's Anytime fare. Even Chiltern's is a still totally unreasonable £148.40.
Germany is a not a good example of a takt country. A true takt allow passengers to take all reasonable trains on an ordinary ticket (i.e. neither premium nor advance).
Both NS and SBB are break even or make an operational surplus - no different to UK Treasury expectations.
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I did mention that option above. A less frequent (perhaps two hourly base), true long distance XC with high spec (but shortish) trains running infrequently with enforced compulsory reservation to keep the local passengers off, and an overlay of more frequent, longer, EMU where possible services to provide for the local need. The issue with XC is probably them trying to be all things to all people rather than adopting the more common local-IC split that most countries do.
Much of the Cross Country network is on two-track sections, so there will always have to be compromises. The only way to deliver a true high-spec XC is completing HS2.
Creating more tiers with lower frequencies and compulsory reservations would be making our railway less Dutch and more French - a retrograde step.
Germany is a not a good example of a takt country. A true takt allow passengers to take all reasonable trains on an ordinary ticket (i.e. neither premium nor advance).
I don't agree at all. Takt simply has two elements - a clock face timetable (which can be on a frequency lower than hourly, in Germany it's often 0.5tph) and planned connections between trains at nodes as part of that timetable. It says nothing whatsoever about the fares system. The fares system is relevant to this thread in that the LNER fare increase trial could well provide a solution to XC overcrowding by pricing people off an making reservation de-facto mandatory (not one I favour, but it would satisfy the basic premise), but it's not relevant to Takt.
That isn't true of SBB. Like most countries, SBB's regional services receive subsidy from their relevant Canton. The InterCity operation breaks even/makes a small surplus, but so would a Serpellised UK. It's just not a sensible argument. There are also tendered regional services in the Netherlands, typically operated by companies other than NS.
Germany is, as a country, the most similar to the UK of any other European country in my view, both in terms of size and travel demand - indeed the German IC/ICE system is very similar to CrossCountry in concept indeed. Thus, similar concepts work here as well.
The whole UK is not like the Netherlands or Switzerland, though I suppose one could argue the South East is a bit like the Netherlands and the North is a bit like Switzerland. The UK is a large country with needs that are very different from those small scale, high volume systems.
And how does Germany solve a problem like XC? Unsurprisingly it solves it with long trains, sometimes as long as 400m. That, in the end, is the root of the XC problem - the blindly incompetent planners of Virgin Trains in the late 1990s decided that you could drastically improve and modernise a service and yet expect a small capacity REDUCTION to work. While it predates this Forum, uk.railway slated it to absolute bits, and it was 100% correct in doing so. The short and long term fix is simply more rolling stock for XC so it can operate longer trains - first (short term) the 8 remaining Voyagers, 6 of which could be in service within a month or two, then long term a new order of something like 7 and 9 car IETs. Pretty much everything else is tweaking round the edges - not to say we shouldn't do it, but it's not the solution long term.
I don't agree at all. Takt simply has two elements - a clock face timetable (which can be on a frequency lower than hourly, in Germany it's often 0.5tph) and planned connections between trains at nodes as part of that timetable. It says nothing whatsoever about the fares system. The fares system is relevant to this thread in that the LNER fare increase trial could well provide a solution to XC overcrowding by pricing people off an making reservation de-facto mandatory (not one I favour, but it would satisfy the basic premise), but it's not relevant to Takt.
That's a very narrow way to interpret takt. Taktfahrplan at the most basic means a timetable easy to understand and navigate. A railway that does not allow passengers to enjoy the full benefit of the timetable is not a good railway.
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Germany is, as a country, the most similar to the UK of any other European country in my view, both in terms of size and travel demand - indeed the German IC/ICE system is very similar to CrossCountry in concept indeed.
The whole UK is not like the Netherlands or Switzerland, though I suppose one could argue the South East is a bit like the Netherlands and the North is a bit like Switzerland. The UK is a large country with needs that are very different from those small scale, high volume systems.
The Dutch- and Swiss-like metropolitan regions and their travel patterns should not be penalised by lazy French ways.
And how does Germany solve a problem like XC? Unsurprisingly it solves it with long trains, sometimes as long as 400m. That, in the end, is the root of the XC problem - the blindly incompetent planners of Virgin Trains in the late 1990s decided that you could drastically improve and modernise a service and yet expect a small capacity REDUCTION to work. While it predates this Forum, uk.railway slated it to absolute bits, and it was 100% correct in doing so. The short and long term fix is simply more rolling stock for XC so it can operate longer trains - first (short term) the 8 remaining Voyagers, 6 of which could be in service within a month or two, then long term a new order of something like 7 and 9 car IETs. Pretty much everything else is tweaking round the edges - not to say we shouldn't do it, but it's not the solution long term.
Absolutely do not, under any circumstances whatsoever, operate a through Euston-Manchester via Birmingham WMT service. This would be even worse than the through Liverpool etc in 2019 because it would add the potential for cross-pollination of delays from Castlefield onto Euston. This is about the most nonsensical idea I have ever seen posted on this Forum given the known experiences from 2019 with the problems caused by way of through services across New St to far less compromised destinations.
Not trying to argue that it's a sensible idea, but a service that terminates at Manchester Piccadilly by definition does not add the potential for cross-pollination of delays from Castlefield any more than the existing Avanti Manchester services do.
I can think of sillier suggestions that have been made in the last couple of weeks, let alone "ever". Sheffield to Brighton via Thameslink, anyone?
It would be good if there were those services, yes, but not to the complete exclusion of the long distance service entirely because that also has value, though it could be less frequent, e.g. 0.5tph.
I think to do that you'd need to build some directed infrastructure German/Swiss style, though, e.g. passing loops at selected stations. For that you design the long term timetable and build the infrastructure to specifically support it (e.g. no need to 4-track Brum-Rugby, you just need extra loops at relevant stations - and notably Stechford already has one!)
Based on comments from others, my initial thoughts were along the lines of the following:
- Provide XC with the currently unutilised Voyagers
- Refurbish the 350/2s to provide 2+2 seating and tables
- 1tph Bournemouth to Liverpool (5-car Voyager or 8-car if Reading reversal not an issue)
- 1tph Bristol to Manchester (8/9-car Voyager)
- 1tph Liverpool to Birmingham International (8-car 350/2s) - new platform or reversing siding delivered if needed also to terminate TFW and local services*
- 1tph - Manchester to Coventry (12-car 350/2s) - Manchester Piccadilly is the 11th largest destination from Coventry with around 34,000 journeys per year so worth keeping this link in my view if capacity to reverse there (a further 25,000 direct journeys between Birmingham International and Manchester)
- Set in train (pun intended) the process of Voyager replacement with longer electric and bi-mode 80* type units sufficient to replace both the Voyagers and 350/2s with the re-extension of the Coventry terminators if there are paths available as far as works, even if this is only to Leamington
In my 350 world, the Manchester interworks with the Liverpool and doesn't touch the London at all.
However, I was trying to find somewhere for the other Manchester (30 arrival that currently goes to Bristol at 42) (33 departure that currently comes from Bristol at 24), but London is certainly not that place. Even if there is also a 36 to London that lines up
Now that I realised they are in play there is a 20 minutes past from Liverpool (which could go to Manchester at 33), but the Liverpool departs at 34 and that is a very tight turnaround for the 30 from Manchester.
The current XC Bristol to Manchester should stay as it is, as can be operated as a double formation. The Liverpool would be a single voyager most hours
At the moment the long dwell at Northampton (c.10 mins) functions as an effective service break anyway. However it has the advantage of forming a West Mids - MK stopping service by maintaining the through advertisment.
The two halves of this service need to be half-hourly minimum. The provision of an MK area stopper to the West Mids is also important, although there is an argument that it could be split for 1 half of the hour I would suggest that breaking it outright is not productive. In addition this service forms the only direct services from the intermediate stations between Birmingham International and Coventry, and Long Buckby, to Euston. Reducing or removing these direct links to force change at Coventry or Northampton would lead to a material drop in ridership, especially when the Avanti services are already so heavily used.
Northampton cannot function as a takt node in the Dutch model for the wider rail network because it is bypassed by the fast lines. You would need that role to be taken on by MK (which has limited platform capacity for terminating too many trains at once), or Rugby (which has a restrictive layout for terminating services from Coventry).
As it happens, Rugby connections aren't bad. One of the Birmingham - Northampton services per hour connect into the the Trent Valley - Euston at Rugby with a connection time of 10 minutes. In the other direction the connection is 20 minutes. With the timed connection at Northampton also available, there are two routing choices for cheap 'LNWR only' tickets.
The former is true. The latter is not. Even if you work it out financially, the benefit to society is what you want to look at. That is, you don't want to get dragged into knowing, as it were, the price of everything and the value of nothing, which the DfT and Treasury are rather good at.
Benefits to society include things like reducing pollution and congestion by taking people out of cars and providing mobility which means employment is easier to access and companies can grow more effectively by being able to employ the skills they need. Thus "bums on seats" is a better measure than revenue. It's not, or rather shouldn't be, simply a means for the Government to make money.
Benefits to society scale with revenue. A self-sustaining railway isn't at the mercy of cuts.
Transporting passengers over longer rolling stock minutes and staff minutes while the faster service has empty seats (as you claim) is inefficient. If societal benefits is really what you care about then you shouldn't be advocating 'poor trains'. You yourself have spelt out ways of offering better value Avanti fares while protecting full yields - if that leads to a slight reduction in yield from 'excess surplus' to 'break even' levels then that ought to be something you should support.
We have continuous electrification for Euston - Northampton; Northampton - Birmingham; Birmingham - Manchester. Clearly a Euston - Manchester would be a bad idea, so it comes to a choice of breaking at Northampton or Birmingham.
Breaking at Northampton allows network-wide release of crowding suppressed demand. Your implied assertion that XC's crowding is solved by existing 221s alone and any additional capacity is unnecessary is not credible. Your assertion that the cheap-fare Birmingham market must be carried in exactly the same way as current and there are no possible alternatives and that any loss of revenue or welfare cannot possibly be outweighed by suppression release on the entire Cross Country network is also not credible.
This simply isn't true either. Generally the biggest benefits the railway brings are on short distance urban commuter routes in large cities (because of the major disbenefits of cars in cities), and because these services are slow and short distance you can't charge high fares for them, so they require subsidy.
Transporting passengers over longer rolling stock minutes and staff minutes while the faster service has empty seats (as you claim) is inefficient. If societal benefits is really what you care about then you shouldn't be advocating 'poor trains'. You yourself have spelt out ways of offering better value Avanti fares while protecting full yields - if that leads to a slight reduction in yield from 'excess surplus' to 'break even' levels then that ought to be something you should support.
We have continuous electrification for Euston - Northampton; Northampton - Birmingham; Birmingham - Manchester. Clearly a Euston - Manchester would be a bad idea, so it comes to a choice of breaking at Northampton or Birmingham.
And the correct place to break, given established flows and local travel demands, is Birmingham. Breaking at Northampton would solely be for operational convenience; breaking at Birmingham reflects actual travel demands, both in terms of a budget service and in terms of direct trains from places on the south WCML to Birmingham and smaller places around Birmingham and Long Buckby to Euston.
Breaking at Northampton allows network-wide release of crowding suppressed demand. Your implied assertion that XC's crowding is solved by existing 221s alone and any additional capacity is unnecessary is not credible. Your assertion that the cheap-fare Birmingham market must be carried in exactly the same way as current and there are no possible alternatives and that any loss of revenue or welfare cannot possibly be outweighed by suppression release on the entire Cross Country network is also not credible.
With respect we will have to agree to disagree on this. The existing south WCML timetable is extremely well designed and serves the markets it serves very well, the only way you're going to improve it very much requires HS2 to be completed. It's not perfect Takt, but the nature of the demands on that piece of the railway doesn't demand perfect Takt - it's not the Netherlands or Switzerland with distributed demand - it's mostly demand to/from London and secondarily Birmingham on these local services, which like it or not is more like the French model where Paris is of utmost importance. XC is subsidiary to this and should not allow these successful services to be broken up, particularly given that I've outlined other ways to add capacity that don't necessitate doing that.
This isn't arguing about where an overall insignificant 2-car DMU from Southport once an hour should go. This is major flows with 160 or 240m trains that are busy pretty much all day because they offer what the passenger wants - good connectivity at low fares.
Your point about deliberately running slower services at lower prices not being great for resource use is a reasonable one were it not for one thing - these services already exist to serve local needs and nobody is suggesting reducing their frequency, thus you wouldn't significantly reduce costs if you did change the split. Even if you got rid of the cheap fares, you are still going to want 2tph semifast Euston-Northampton-Birmingham in some form to serve the various local markets it serves. And as if to demonstrate that, I sometimes use these services on an inter available ticket too, because sometimes it's just easier to go direct even if it's a bit slower. Changing the break to Northampton serves nobody but the Takt purist.
The existing Cross Country pattern works poorly at Birmingham. Despite all arms running 2tph (assuming the pre-Covid timetable gets restored somehow), most cross-Birmingham directions only have a 1tph opportunity to travel as the overlapping dwells are below the minimum interchange time of New Street. Simplifying the service pattern into 2tph consistent pairings (with services meeting 15 minutes apart) would create 2tph journey opportunities for everyone. Segregating Stour and Gloucester is just a bonus.
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The Birmingham centred network is generally untidy. All sorts of half hourly but not quite - the biggest culprit is lack of symmetry. Take Birmingham - Stafford, it's distributed 4tph in one direction but flighted pairs of 2tph in the other. Just sorting these would do wonders for effective frequency (no longer connection made in one half hour but missed in the opposite half hour) and performance. That would contribute to future systematic rather than reactive timetable evolutions, and provide clarity on strengthening options.
They do a lot to keep people out of old, polluting cars, far more than Avanti which is much more likely to be chosen by someone driving a modern ULEZ compliant ICE car or an EV
Manchester-Northampton is just a pointless idea. It's not a pair of places that have high demand to be connected together with direct services. I suspect you'd have fewer people using that as a through service than you would have Long Buckby-Euston passengers, who would also lose their direct service completely
It's not about the end to end passengers, just like Altrincham is just a convenient place to run Bury services to, rather than any huge demand to travel between the towns (see also such )
The railway has these "pairs" of services all over the place - from where the Hamilton trains go on the other side of Patrick to which Valley Lines service runs through to Penarth or which Thameslink trains go to Peterborough
Birmingham justifies a half hourly service on the fully electrified line to Northampton.
Birmingham justifies a half hourly service on the fully electrified line to Manchester. Don't overthink it.
Whilst we have a surplus of EMUs and a scarcity of DMUs, the priority ought to be matching these up to free Voyagers to provide additional coaches between say York and Bristol/ Reading
Continuing to run DMUs long distances under the wires is ridiculous - sure, with a lot of additional money we could do various things in the medium/long term. Taking a couple of Voyagers out of storage won't make much difference. We need to take more serious action, the status quo isn't working
They've got their resources, they've secured long term contracts for their resources. Blame Westminster for not tying them up for the XC network (Arriva weren't able to do anything, given the way the contract kept getting kicked down the road)
It doesn't waste any resources running a WMT service between London and Birmingham though - it's still necessary to provide a local service to Birmingham from Canley, Tile Hill, Berkswell and Hampton-in-Arden etc, in the same way that there is still a need for London services from Northampton, Milton Keynes, Bletchley and Leighton Buzzard. You may as well combine them at Northampton and fill seats on them with end to end London to Birmingham customers
Having trains from London/ Liverpool terminate there uses up a lot of scarce platform capacity
Northampton is not a busy station. There is space there for a London service to terminate/ lay over on one platform, and space for a Manchester service to terminate/ lay over on the other platform
No-one has come up with a satisfactory answer for what you do with the Reading to Birmingham corridor if the Bournemouth service were chopped north of Birmingham (How is, say, Reading to Nottingham and Manchester to Northampton in any way better than just retaining Bournemouth to Manchester but running longer trains?)
What meaningful capacity do we have to run longer Reading to Manchester trains?
We've certainly got dozens of EMUs sitting idle. Running a half hourly Northampton - Manchester would soak up a chunk of those EMUs, allowing more trains from Reading to Birmingham to be beefed up
If we had no electrification in the UK or had fully electrified all of our busy lines then this wouldn't be an issue (and I'm sure someone will be along in a moment to say how "enlightened" our Continental neighbours are..) but we are where we are. And it's not working.
Or just keep it simple and use existing units and paths by swapping the Reading XC with Liverpool for one of its EMU services per hour, and run that at 240m
Wait... For all your 'concern' about the environmental impact of travel, your solution is to replace half of the EMUs between Liverpool and Birmingham with pure diesels? Am I reading that right?
So, instead of Voyager drivers/ guards etc knowing just the Manchester line, and the EMU crew knowing only the Liverpool line, you'd stretch these wider... You'd have 125mph DMUs stopping at the various smaller stations currently used by Liverpool - Birmingham trains... Given that we currently see a Bristol - Manchester unit becoming the next Manchester - Bournemouth train, personally you're relaxed about Liverpool getting a train *from* one southern destination but *to* a different one?
And in the event of delays, it's currently 'feasible' for LNW and XC to adapt to delays (since if everything is half an hour late then nothing is half an hour late), running each one hourly to two destinations feels a recipe for disaster
But I guess that this is more about "putting Liverpool on the long distance map" and/or "we want what Manchester has", rather than anything serious
It is better, as the Manchester to Northampton service can be run by electric trains (such as the spare class 350/2s), releasing diesel Voyagers to strengthen XC services on non-electrified routes. It is 'greener' and reduces lengthy diesel 'running under the wires'.
We don't have sufficient Voyagers for demand on existing services
We realistically need additional carriages on most Voyager routes
We have plenty of spare 100/110mph EMUs
One of the four "arms" of the XC network is fully electrified
I don't know why people are struggling to see the obvious option that would allow us to increase capacity on the Manchester leg with cleaner trains, whilst using the freed Voyagers to boost capacity on the other legs
Instead there's a lot of whataboutery regarding Germany...
That, in the end, is the root of the XC problem - the blindly incompetent planners of Virgin Trains in the late 1990s decided that you could drastically improve and modernise a service and yet expect a small capacity REDUCTION to work
They accepted the bid, they refused to finance the additional Voyager carriages that Virgin wanted
Even the additional ones for the 390s required a lot of government dithering before they begrudgingly agreed to pay for some (but not all) to be extended
The existing Cross Country pattern works poorly at Birmingham. Despite all arms running 2tph (assuming the pre-Covid timetable gets restored somehow), most cross-Birmingham directions only have a 1tph opportunity to travel as the overlapping dwells are below the minimum interchange time of New Street. Simplifying the service pattern into 2tph consistent pairings (with services meeting 15 minutes apart) would create 2tph journey opportunities for everyone. Segregating Stour and Gloucester is just a bonus
I've argued for this before. Simplify XC into a half hourly Yorkshire - South West corridor and a half hourly Manchester - Reading corridor (both with appropriate extensions beyond their core), so that each runs independently
Since serious surgery is needed for XC though. The services are to fragile to be reliable. The services are too busy to accommodate existing/future passengers. And the current nationwide muddle means XC is too complicated/expensive for Government to solve in it's current state
Separating the "everywhere to everywhere" combination of services is the only way to give each branch some chance to grow
And, whilst "suppressed demand" is an incredibly overused phrase on here, I think that XC certainly has some
It actually doesn't as both Liverpool (or Shrewsbury) and London services can use the same platform, the Liverpool is usually a 4-car and uses the 'B' end, the London is an 8-car and can use the 'A' end in most hours so it's quite efficient.
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The 7 x 221s currently stored at Derby would allow most of the Manchester to Bournemouth services to run as double sets for a start - it's a bit more nuanced than that as they interwork with Bristol services, but there aren't many diagrams which do a round trip from Manchester to both Bournemouth and Bristol in a day (it's an 18 hour cycle)
It's not about the end to end passengers, just like Altrincham is just a convenient place to run Bury services to, rather than any huge demand to travel between the towns (see also such )
It can be. If you're pairing up services it does make sense to consider which pairings are of most benefit if there aren't significant negatives.
I did look at this with regard to the Milton Keynes bus network a while back. The pairings there are pretty random (all routes are pretty long and of similar length so swapping them around doesn't overly impact vehicle requirement). Thus it probably makes sense to try to pair the residential-only "branches" with the destination "branches" rather than just with each other, and as Bletchley and Wolverton are connected by rail pairing those by bus doesn't take priority, it's rather better to pair a residential branch with a destination branch.
Of course pairing things that would cause massive knock on disruption doesn't make sense, and ergo we don't want a through Manchester-Brum-Northampton-Euston service. But as Brum-Northampton-Euston does work pretty well and is proven to do so, and London is a key demand centre, that's a pairing you don't want to break unless you absolutely have to. We did absolutely have to during West Coast Route Modernisation, pretty much. But now we don't and thus we shouldn't.
The railway has these "pairs" of services all over the place - from where the Hamilton trains go on the other side of Patrick to which Valley Lines service runs through to Penarth or which Thameslink trains go to Peterborough
Birmingham justifies a half hourly service on the fully electrified line to Northampton.
Birmingham justifies a half hourly service on the fully electrified line to Manchester. Don't overthink it.
I'd suggest you're underthinking it to be honest. The primary destination from local stations between Northampton and Birmingham is without doubt Birmingham with the possible exception of Long Buckby. But Euston is an attractive secondary destination, and it is provably possible to serve it.
Whilst we have a surplus of EMUs and a scarcity of DMUs, the priority ought to be matching these up to free Voyagers to provide additional coaches between say York and Bristol/ Reading
Continuing to run DMUs long distances under the wires is ridiculous - sure, with a lot of additional money we could do various things in the medium/long term. Taking a couple of Voyagers out of storage won't make much difference. We need to take more serious action, the status quo isn't working
Actually, the 12 Avanti Voyagers which have already gone to XC of a total of 20 (hope I've got that right) have already made a very significant difference to XC overcrowding. Another eight is almost that many again, and is likely to almost completely solve the problem, provided it is possible to run double sets on services reversing at Reading in some form (even if that involves, for example, shunting one off at Oxford, but some postings above would suggest that there are ways to accommodate it without doing that).
The question of "should we truncate CrossCountry so as to reduce diesel under-wires running" is a slightly different one to the one posed by the opening of this thread, and I suspect I might differ from others here in a firm "no" as the answer to that. We don't want to create more Ormskirks and Headbolt Lanes purely for that reason* when bi- and tri-mode units are a practical, modern alternative to the laborious old fashioned approach of swapping locomotives which was how XC previously avoided under-wires diesels. Thus, the fix to this specific issue is to order XC a new full-length bi- or tri-mode fleet, not to start lopping bits off just because they are electrified. In the meantime the pressing issue is overcrowding, and I am pretty confident you could close to 100% resolve it by way of those additional 8 Voyagers plus possibly the Liverpool/Manchester tweak allowing a 12 car EMU Manchester-Birmingham service once an hour. And that would require no changes to established south WCML flows.
* I know there are other reasons to segregate Merseyrail, certainly from anything that goes anywhere near Castlefield or is impacted by it (even Preston is a worry, to be honest, only Wigan Wallgate wouldn't be), but these are comparable to why a Manchester-Brum-Northampton-Euston service would not be desirable despite the 2019 WMT through services being on paper a good idea.
They've got their resources, they've secured long term contracts for their resources. Blame Westminster for not tying them up for the XC network (Arriva weren't able to do anything, given the way the contract kept getting kicked down the road)
Much as it would have been nice to give XC all the 22x and form them into 7 and 9 car sets with a load of end coaches binned off, that would probably be a waste when Scotland urgently needs rid of the HSTs which are just not fit for purpose any more. And provided we do accept double sets on everything, the 221s are almost certainly enough to resolve the problem.
Is there anyone who knows the XC diagrams here? Are a further 8 221s enough to eliminate all single set running if we ignore any possible platform constraints? If not, how many single 5 car sets would remain? I'm pretty sure we have already, except out of course running, eliminated single 4 car sets? Can anyone confirm?
Having trains from London/ Liverpool terminate there uses up a lot of scarce platform capacity
Northampton is not a busy station. There is space there for a London service to terminate/ lay over on one platform, and space for a Manchester service to terminate/ lay over on the other platform
However, if you don't increase the number of services between Manchester and New St, but rather simply increase their length, you don't need to do that. The problem with XC is the four and five car sets and secondarily that Voyagers have an incredibly inefficient layout. If XC was operating 9-car IETs on everything we wouldn't even be having this discussion, as XC would be working just fine.
We've certainly got dozens of EMUs sitting idle. Running a half hourly Northampton - Manchester would soak up a chunk of those EMUs, allowing more trains from Reading to Birmingham to be beefed up
That reads like "we need to invent an idea so the 350/2s aren't scrapped" to me. Though we could certainly use some of them with the Liverpool split idea.
If we had no electrification in the UK or had fully electrified all of our busy lines then this wouldn't be an issue (and I'm sure someone will be along in a moment to say how "enlightened" our Continental neighbours are..) but we are where we are. And it's not working.
If we hadn't a single electrified line but the Voyagers had originally been built as 7 or 8 car units we wouldn't be having it either. Electrification is only relevant in the sense that we've got a spare EMU fleet, but we've already got a spare DEMU fleet too! Giving those Voyagers to XC is a no-brainer, and it just might be enough for the next ten years while something more sensible is ordered.
Wait... For all your 'concern' about the environmental impact of travel, your solution is to replace half of the EMUs between Liverpool and Birmingham with pure diesels? Am I reading that right?
And replace half the DEMU service between Manchester and Birmingham with EMUs. It wouldn't increase the number of diesel services, simply change where they go!
So, instead of Voyager drivers/ guards etc knowing just the Manchester line, and the EMU crew knowing only the Liverpool line, you'd stretch these wider... You'd have 125mph DMUs stopping at the various smaller stations currently used by Liverpool - Birmingham trains... Given that we currently see a Bristol - Manchester unit becoming the next Manchester - Bournemouth train, personally you're relaxed about Liverpool getting a train *from* one southern destination but *to* a different one?
And in the event of delays, it's currently 'feasible' for LNW and XC to adapt to delays (since if everything is half an hour late then nothing is half an hour late), running each one hourly to two destinations feels a recipe for disaster
Only an issue if you have TOC specific tickets, and GBR are getting rid of those. In 2026, both our "WMT" and our "XC" will be red, white and blue and in the event of disruption your ticket will be valid on either.
No, it's about being able to replace one Manchester-Birmingham 5 car DEMU per hour with a 12-car EMU, thus providing the extra capacity we're talking about, with nothing other that a bit of extra route knowledge and a small number of EMUs being the cost of doing so. It's a much cheaper solution than creating a Manchester-Northampton overlay that nobody really wants.
We don't have sufficient Voyagers for demand on existing services with XC now.
Fortunately there are 8 more Voyagers, 6 of which could be in service next week (OK, slight exaggeration, but pretty soon) and 2 more within a couple of years.
Do we agree that if XC operated a minimum of 8 cars on all services there wouldn't be an issue? I certainly think that - can anyone confirm if those Voyagers would be enough to achieve that, or at least come very close to it?
One of the four "arms" of the XC network is fully electrified
I don't know why people are struggling to see the obvious option that would allow us to increase capacity on the Manchester leg with cleaner trains, whilst using the freed Voyagers to boost capacity on the other legs
The question is if that disruption of the entire through service is necessary, because that's what XC is for. If we don't accept that that's what XC is for, then it's perhaps time to get rid of it entirely!
I've argued for this before. Simplify XC into a half hourly Yorkshire - South West corridor and a half hourly Manchester - Reading corridor (both with appropriate extensions beyond their core), so that each runs independently
I can see sense in that (though I'd put the branches the other way round personally), but it would still have Voyagers operating half hourly services out of Manchester towards Birmingham...
The services are too busy to accommodate existing/future passengers. And the current nationwide muddle means XC is too complicated/expensive for Government to solve in it's current state
Solving XC is dead easy. A fleet of 7 and 9-car IETs would solve it pretty quickly, and that's what they should have got rather than dithering about it. TPE is a great example - it was a problem worse than XC when it was all 3-car 185s, and now it's been given a load of new rolling stock that roughly doubles capacity on all routes it doesn't really have a problem any more bar the odd bit of high-peak standing which isn't economic to resolve on any service and will always happen unless you do enforced compulsory reservation and provide separate local services.
It literally just requires the money for more rolling stock, and the diesel-under-the-wires issue is solved by bi-modes just as it has been on the GWML and shortly will be on the MML and in a bit longer on Northern.
Bi-modes, curiously, were one of those things that was roundly rubbished as a concept 20 years ago (even when I rode my first bi-mode in Hamburg about 25 years ago and it worked fine there). They're a solid concept that work well in places like the GWML (give or take engine problems, but those could happen to a pure DMU operating as a connection too - they're flaws with those units, not flaws with the concept). And if you have overcrowding and can run longer trains, it's the obvious fix. Can anyone remember how grim Manchester Airport-Blackpool was when that was 2-car DMUs? What was needed was capacity, and now it's got it it's great, with seats for more or less everyone except in the high peak and at a pleasingly low density too!
I would certainly agree with that. I personally refuse to use it because of the overcrowding problem, for one. But I do think there are other aspects like quality - if you want businesspeople to travel by train from Newcastle to Bristol (say) instead of flying, you're going to need to provide them with, affordably, the sort of accommodation where they can do a full day's work, which means the present high density interiors are unsuitable, and those are being perpetutated in the refurbs. Another case for long IETs*, perhaps with a more Avanti like layout so as to provide a lot of tables suitable for working on a laptop.
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The 7 x 221s currently stored at Derby would allow most of the Manchester to Bournemouth services to run as double sets for a start - it's a bit more nuanced than that as they interwork with Bristol services, but there aren't many diagrams which do a round trip from Manchester to both Bournemouth and Bristol in a day (it's an 18 hour cycle)
Are there actually 9 not with XC now? Thought it was 8? One more would make even more of a difference.
* Doesn't have to be IETs, could be 897s, but what it does need to be is full length trains with a low density of seating, plenty of tables and plenty of luggage space, just like the HSTs that used to work CrossCountry services. 807s with diesels would be a very good start, though I think you'd also want some 9 car sets for the busiest services, diagrammed accordingly like Avanti does with the Pendolinos.
The full Oxford–Banbury train service is finally to be reinstated. CrossCountry’s new timetable from May includes half-hourly trains from Oxford throughout the day, restoring the pre-Covid service level.
Is there anyone who knows the XC diagrams here? Are a further 8 221s enough to eliminate all single set running if we ignore any possible platform constraints? If not, how many single 5 car sets would remain? I'm pretty sure we have already, except out of course running, eliminated single 4 car sets? Can anyone confirm?
There are around 30 x single set Voyager diagrams (mostly 5-car sets - New Street station working sheets can be obtained under Freedom of Information requests so these give a good guide), so you'd need an extra 30 units to completely eliminate single sets
An order of, say, 21 7-car bi-mode 80x would allow all Manchester to Bournemouth/Bristol services to use the wires between Coventry/Birmingham and Manchester, and in turn all Edinburgh - Plymouth services to run as pairs of Voyagers, noting that the Voyagers are not life expired and probably have another 10 or so years left in them.
There are around 30 x single set Voyager diagrams (mostly 5-car sets - New Street station working sheets can be obtained under Freedom of Information requests so these give a good guide), so you'd need an extra 15 units to completely eliminate single sets
Umm, wouldn't you need 30 units to eliminate them all? But if you could portion work, you could presumably strengthen services where needed rather than sending a double set all the way to Penzance in winter even if that specific service would have ten people on it between there and Exeter.
I think the solution is an extra tph or two Birmingham-Leeds, only stopping at Derby, Sheffield and Wakefield. In my experience this is the most crowded section.
With the possibility of Chiltern bringing in the Moor Street - Oxford service which would alleviate pressure from that corridor, and LNWR's Manchester extensions adding capacity to that stretch, it looks like the future is bright(er) for XC.
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Massive own goal from DaFT and ROSCOs
