Direct london services

[David Dunning]

Given the fact that once again Shrewsbury is to be without direct trains to London I am interested in forum members views on how important these services are. It does seem to a bit hit and miss of late . Is it right that every major town in North Yorkshire apart from Scarborough is now London linked (York Northallerton Selby Thirsk Skipton and soon both ways to Harrogate) while recently Bury St Edmonds Shrewsbury Telford and Lowestoft have all lost them .
If Howden can have a service to London then shouldnt Bolton Barrow and Barnsley have them too . .

 

[Invincibles]

Links to major business centres are what is important.

As has been mentioned elsewhere the hub and spoke approach to airlines seems to be doing better than a network of long distance flights. I actually favour more investment in high speed links with few (if any) stops between London and Southampton Parkway, Plymouth (stop at Exeter), Cardiff (stop at Bristol Parkway), Birmingham, Glasgow/Edinburgh (stop at Lancashire Parkway), Manchester, Newcastle (stop at Yorkshire Parkway and East Midlands Parkway). Beyond that classic compatable trains would run out to the major cities not readily served. Otherwise each HS station would have connections into the classic lines with dedicated shuttles bringing passengers into the hub. This would be rather like Heathrow does with aeroplanes and mean that no major city need be more than 1 hour from a high speed connection into London and therefore most would have a journey to central London of under 3 hours including all connections.

A little off topic, but I think that we need to think more about the big picture and just adding odd services to London maybe neglects that.

(The south east, east anglia and other areas not really mentioned would continue as they are, until it becomes easily justifiable to build HS to Norwich. York would be a "terminus" on the ECML which would carry a lot more Lincoln to London trains as well as the York to London and could in theory have enough paths to make these trains faster)

It might be good to see a Sheffield starter run from Barnsley as MML used to and maybe Chiltern can go to Shrewsbury, but really I think that there is a bigger change potentially.

 

[cuccir]

If Howden can have a service to London then shouldnt Bolton Barrow and Barnsley have them too . .

But Howden is on the way to Hull; it's little or no effort for the London service to stop there. There are plenty of other places in North England which have a London service by virtue of location rather than size: Northerallerton, Alnmouth, Berwick, Oxenholme, Penrith, and even the likes of Durham, Crewe, Wakefield, Lancaster mightn't have the services if they were more remote.

I think that whilst London services can be good - they act to promote rail travel locally due to their high profile - better connections to regional hubs are equally, if not more, important. To take Barrow, where I grew up - it would be much better regaining its direct service to Liverpool, and perhaps gaining a service to Leeds, than services to London IMO.

 

[Failed Unit]

To me decent connections are more important than direct. The industry doesn't do that anymore. I am sure Lincoln passengers would be more than happy with a 10 minute connection at Newark but now an 11 minute delay on the mainline is a big deal. You are stuck at Newark or on a bus. People drive. People miss direct trains now because trains can't be held, even if by leaving on time more passengers are left behind then are on the train in the first place. (often the case at Newark)

 

[thefab444]

Is it right that every major town in North Yorkshire apart from Scarborough is now London linked.

Technically, I think Scarborough has a summer-only Saturday service to St Pancras.

 

[Fred26]

If Cambridge to Ipswich was wired, you could extend the Cambridge Cruisers to Bury St Edmunds... but then if you're going to say Bury should have direct London services, perhaps the same argument could be made for Thetford and Wymondham. How about Great Yarmouth and, not forgetting, Lowestoft?
In an ideal world I'd like to see a lot of towns gain direct services to London, but there just isn't the capacity. That's why there's anomalies like Howden getting five trains per day to London on the Hull services, when Bury St Edmunds has ten times the population and gets 0 trains to London.

 

[43167]

Given the fact that once again Shrewsbury is to be without direct trains to London I am interested in forum members views on how important these services are. It does seem to a bit hit and miss of late . Is it right that every major town in North Yorkshire apart from Scarborough is now London linked (York Northallerton Selby Thirsk Skipton and soon both ways to Harrogate) while recently Bury St Edmonds Shrewsbury Telford and Lowestoft have all lost them .
If Howden can have a service to London then shouldnt Bolton Barrow and Barnsley have them too . .

This is an opertunity that the EC operators (past & present) cant seem to see.

Scarborough should have a London service to/from Kings Cross.

 

[David Dunning]

Technically, I think Scarborough has a summer-only Saturday service to St Pancras.

yes it does , I forgot that one

 

[radamfi]

Without doubt it is more important to have good connections than lots of direct services. With good (and respected) connections, as standard on the continent, you effectively have a much larger range of available destinations than if you just had a few through services.

 

[cle]

This is an opertunity that the EC operators (past & present) cant seem to see.

Scarborough should have a London service to/from Kings Cross.

Southerners don't go to Northern seaside towns. Even Blackpool is largely off people's radar...

Unless you think London-bound traffic is viable? In which case, connections at York are very easy, onto fast trains.

 

[jopsuk]

Whilst connections are unattractive even when easy, I'm of the option that it's better to have hourly (or better) single-change services to London than to have a token one or two a day service. In many cases, it is the local service that needs improved.

 

[Oswyntail]

I agree that connections are more important than direct runs for most places - so long as they are proper connections. For instance, the London trains are scheduled to arrive in Leeds a few minutes before an Ilkley train leaves. In the evenings they are often late, and allow insufficient time to get to the Ilkley train, which, if you miss it, leaves an hour wait. A "proper connection" would leave sufficient time to make the connection in normal operation, and would hold the connecting train if the major train is too late. Or would put on sufficient trains so that a long wait would be ruled out. This would mean co-operation between the TOCs, and a change to the compensation regime. So unlikely to happen.

 

[radamfi]

I think British TOCs (and even British enthusiasts and rail professionals) genuinely don't understand what makes a good connecting rail network. If people took a short time to study (and ideally travel around) German/Dutch/Swiss etc. rail networks then there would be no debate and this thread wouldn't even exist.

 

[tbtc]

The whole "direct links to London" argument doesn't convince me.

I asked previously for evidence to support the much quoted claim that "this will attract business to invest in the region", based on the number of years that Hull Trains, WMSR and Grand Central had been running. In the end the only example anyone could give was Max who mentioned a call centre that moved from Leeds to Hull (correct me if I am wrong)

If you take the example of Wrexham (which is losing its direct London link) I think it'd be much more important and relevant to have direct links to Manchester and Liverpool. Both are about an hour's drive away but have no direct trains to/from Wrexham (apart from one late night Wrexham - Manchester journey which started recently as a combination of an existing service from Shrewsbury/Wrexham to Chester and an existing Chester - Manchester service).

A direct service to the biggest "city" in the "sphere of influence" would count for a lot more than a direct train to/from London IMHO. A London service may be a nice "day out" once in a while, but a (better) service to a big "local" city might be enough to mean you can get a job there.

Take Barnsley as an example (mentioned by David Dunning). It used to have a London service (a three hour trip in a two-car 170, reversing at Nottingham and stopping at several places) and one train an hour to Leeds (all stops reversing at Castleford). Now Barnsley has no London service, but the Leeds service is now three trains an hour (with one all stops reversing at Castleford, but two are "fast" stopping only at Wakefield Kirkgate). The improved service to Leeds is much more important, and I know of people who use it to commute to Leeds (who'd never have used the hourly stopper before).

Due to the nature of railways there will always be some small places with a direct London train whilst bigger places have none (e.g. Northallerton, Aviemore, but not Bolton or Huddersfield).

However, I think there are some journeys where a London link can be tagged on. For example, with EMT running a number of journeys from Neville Hill in Leeds to Sheffield in the morning (some in service, some light), and back in the evening, there's the scope to stop some of these at Barnsley/Rotherham on the way - marginal cost to the TOC. However, this is no substitute to having a decent service to the cities nearby.

 

[W-on-Sea]

Howden's a funny one, but it's on the line and stopping there probably has more positive than negative knock-on effects. Lots of journalists work there, too (since the Press Association relocated a lot of their work there from London a few years ago), so possibly having such trains stopping there has positive consequences for the image of the railway well beyond the number of people who actually use them.

But, all in all, yes, proper conncections are what are required. (Another thing that must have done for WSMR - the way their arrivals tended to just miss the two-hourly service to Aberystwyth was most unsatisfactory). I think we certainly could learn from the Germans!...Or I would think that had WSMR and Arriva Trains Wales been in different owensrship...

 

[merlodlliw]

The whole "direct links to London" argument doesn't convince me.

I asked previously for evidence to support the much quoted claim that "this will attract business to invest in the region", based on the number of years that Hull Trains, WMSR and Grand Central had been running. In the end the only example anyone could give was Max who mentioned a call centre that moved from Leeds to Hull (correct me if I am wrong)

If you take the example of Wrexham (which is losing its direct London link) I think it'd be much more important and relevant to have direct links to Manchester and Liverpool. Both are about an hour's drive away but have no direct trains to/from Wrexham (apart from one late night Wrexham - Manchester journey which started recently as a combination of an existing service from Shrewsbury/Wrexham to Chester and an existing Chester - Manchester service).

A direct service to the biggest "city" in the "sphere of influence" would count for a lot more than a direct train to/from London IMHO. A London service may be a nice "day out" once in a while, but a (better) service to a big "local" city might be enough to mean you can get a job there.

Take Barnsley as an example (mentioned by David Dunning). It used to have a London service (a three hour trip in a two-car 170, reversing at Nottingham and stopping at several places) and one train an hour to Leeds (all stops reversing at Castleford). Now Barnsley has no London service, but the Leeds service is now three trains an hour (with one all stops reversing at Castleford, but two are "fast" stopping only at Wakefield Kirkgate). The improved service to Leeds is much more important, and I know of people who use it to commute to Leeds (who'd never have used the hourly stopper before).

Due to the nature of railways there will always be some small places with a direct London train whilst bigger places have none (e.g. Northallerton, Aviemore, but not Bolton or Huddersfield).

However, I think there are some journeys where a London link can be tagged on. For example, with EMT running a number of journeys from Neville Hill in Leeds to Sheffield in the morning (some in service, some light), and back in the evening, there's the scope to stop some of these at Barnsley/Rotherham on the way - marginal cost to the TOC. However, this is no substitute to having a decent service to the cities nearby.

Wrexham, is losing one of its two London links,W/S, VT remain with its 0700
and 1810 return. Well for the time being.

Bob

 

[ObservationCar]

I think Wrexham, Shrewsbury and many other places in England should recieve a beter London Service. It is a London centric network, and your town or city is at a financial loose end without a direct (even if its just one a day) service to London. High Speed is the answer, but will it cause Manchester, Stoke, Leeds, York, Bristol to become dormitory cities to an ever expanding London?

Saying that, it is just a matter of circumstance that a settlement of 1,400 in the Highlands (Kingussie) gets 2 direct trains to London each day,1 of which is more to serve the village with a service to/from Inverness/Central Belt, due to few services, London comes as a bonus.

 

[kentuckytony]

I think British TOCs (and even British enthusiasts and rail professionals) genuinely don't understand what makes a good connecting rail network. If people took a short time to study (and ideally travel around) German/Dutch/Swiss etc. rail networks then there would be no debate and this thread wouldn't even exist.

As I occasionally mention: still all better train service than from my nearest big city (Cincinnati OH, population around 600,000 including suburbs) to Washington, DC or New York, NY.

This service - the Amtrak Cardinal - runs about twice a week. Once a day in alternating directions.

And freight (goods) trains have the right-of-way, often delaying the train by many hours while sitting on sidings in the middle of wilderness in Kentucky or West Virginia. "Shoot me a bear, Ma!"

Sometimes running out of water for drinking, washing, and flushing :-x. And the vending machines get emptied or broken.

Of course we just love our cars and highways here, so that is the price we pay!