From the report:
Which confirms it's route km, which means that if there's lots of quad tracks in a country or would show up as more intensively used than if they were mostly twin tracks (or even hard large amounts of single tracks).
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Do direct London services actually matter?
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From the report:
Which confirms it's route km, which means that if there's lots of quad tracks in a country or would show up as more intensively used than if they were mostly twin tracks (or even hard large amounts of single tracks).
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I thought so. Sending 12tph through a twin-tracked route is more intensive than sending 23tph through a four-tracked route. A single tracked branch line can be considered "intensively used" if there's always a train in section (see many rack railways in peak season). A consequence of using infrastructure as intensively as possible is that there is no room for disruption.
Now if anyone wants to stand on a bridge overlooking the Zurich Hbf throat they may well see a very intensively-used route compared to a given British terminal. However if they focused on just one line and counted the number of trains passing they may well find that the British track is more intensively-used.
Compared to some other similar towns / cities that are sited a few miles further on from a much larger regional centre (eg Bradford, Sunderland, Bolton, Rotherham), Wolverhampton does very well.
And very few people do the Stafford shuffle. I consider myself expert in getting myself around the GB rail network, and I’ve done it twice in about 200 trips. And one of those was a family emergency where I had to drop everything at my desk (conveniently at Euston!), had just missed the Birmingham but made the Liverpool and a tight connection at Stafford.
France works on a low-frequency relatively high capacity on 99% of lines. Mostly the inverse of the UK.
I believe it’s more expensive too?However, Stafford’s a fairly popular railhead for Telford.
It was a great pity that the planned Shropshire to London via Stafford didn’t happen. It might have delivered decent through journey times.
would have screwed it up for everone else though!
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Isn’t that a poor example as it has tight turnarounds - hold the branch train and it is probably late on it’s return, continuing the delays?
Which is probably why the branch shuttle generally arrives/departs 15 minutes before/after mainline services call.
mike57
Established Member
A quick skim read of the thread hasn't highlighted another reason why people desire direct services, those with large/heavy luggage or young children, and those whose mobility is less than perfect. Add that into the previously highlighted issues of connections, and different ToCs which frequently leaves you in a situation where ToC A has caused your delay, and your journey on ToC B becomes a nightmare of explaining why you are on the 'wrong' train and sometimes less than stellar responses to the explanation from the rail staff.
In order to get people out of cars and on to the train the journey needs to be hassle free and reliable, and when things do go wrong the recovery needs to be simple. The current structure of the railways means this is frequently not the case where connections are involved, and the travelling public realise this. A lot of the problems are self inflicted because of the 'Balkanisation' of the railways. Back in BR days a connection would be held for a few minutes at a junction station, nowadays its a different ToC and will not happen. Given the timetable padding that happens these days a lot of services could soak up a small delay without too much detriment to other services.
Not on a London connection, but I have actually witnessed it several times at Seamer where a slightly late TPE service is pulling in, the Northern connection down the coast is sitting there. The guard continues with his despatch and by the time the doors open on the TPE the Northern service is pulling out. In BR days I never saw this happen.
In order to get people out of cars and on to the train the journey needs to be hassle free and reliable, and when things do go wrong the recovery needs to be simple. The current structure of the railways means this is frequently not the case where connections are involved, and the travelling public realise this. A lot of the problems are self inflicted because of the 'Balkanisation' of the railways. Back in BR days a connection would be held for a few minutes at a junction station, nowadays its a different ToC and will not happen. Given the timetable padding that happens these days a lot of services could soak up a small delay without too much detriment to other services.
Not on a London connection, but I have actually witnessed it several times at Seamer where a slightly late TPE service is pulling in, the Northern connection down the coast is sitting there. The guard continues with his despatch and by the time the doors open on the TPE the Northern service is pulling out. In BR days I never saw this happen.
The ease of journeys is why there should probably be some direct services, however to only have direct services can lead to a worse service overall.
If you had three branch lines all with 1tph going to a major town, the capacity into the major town can be limited by the use of short trains and each branch line has 1tph.
However, if you run a shuttle on each branch and a mainline service you have 3tph on the mainline which can be more easily made longer as fewer stations need to be lengthened.
You could also, depending on the length of the branch line, see the frequency on the branch lines improve. Even going to every 45 minutes rather than every hour will see passenger numbers increase as it's more likely to be travelling when you want it to (most people are still going to need to look at a timetable anyway and those who use the service regularly will soon learn 9:00, 9:45, 10:30, 11:15, 12:00).
If the mainline is every 20 minutes then missing a connection is a 20 minute delay not an hour.
Ideally you'd try and weave some direct services in there as well, but even one train every 3 hours would probably be enough to keep the majority of the passengers traveling with large items, traveling with kids etc.
However, being able to increase the frequency more would help further.
Almost no one thinks I'm not going to change at a tube station as the frequencies are so high that any delay is seen at a rounding error (you could be delayed more by having to wait longer at 3 road crossings!).
Whilst you're never going to have that on a branch line, getting to 4tph on the mainline (which is more than doable on a twin track railway even with a few fast services depending on the length of the section) would make the change easy enough that realistically few people would be that bothered about changing.
If you had three branch lines all with 1tph going to a major town, the capacity into the major town can be limited by the use of short trains and each branch line has 1tph.
However, if you run a shuttle on each branch and a mainline service you have 3tph on the mainline which can be more easily made longer as fewer stations need to be lengthened.
You could also, depending on the length of the branch line, see the frequency on the branch lines improve. Even going to every 45 minutes rather than every hour will see passenger numbers increase as it's more likely to be travelling when you want it to (most people are still going to need to look at a timetable anyway and those who use the service regularly will soon learn 9:00, 9:45, 10:30, 11:15, 12:00).
If the mainline is every 20 minutes then missing a connection is a 20 minute delay not an hour.
Ideally you'd try and weave some direct services in there as well, but even one train every 3 hours would probably be enough to keep the majority of the passengers traveling with large items, traveling with kids etc.
However, being able to increase the frequency more would help further.
Almost no one thinks I'm not going to change at a tube station as the frequencies are so high that any delay is seen at a rounding error (you could be delayed more by having to wait longer at 3 road crossings!).
Whilst you're never going to have that on a branch line, getting to 4tph on the mainline (which is more than doable on a twin track railway even with a few fast services depending on the length of the section) would make the change easy enough that realistically few people would be that bothered about changing.
William3000
Member
There are a number of towns in East Anglia (some quite sizeable),without a direct connection to London including Whittlesea/Whittlesey, Stamford, Spalding, March, Brandon, Thetford, Attleborough, Wymondham, Sheringham, Cromer, North Walsham, Great Yarmouth, Lowestoft, Woodbridge, Sudbury, Beccles, Halesworth, Saxmundham, Woodbridge, Newmarket, and Bury St Edmunds.
Lowestoft, Great Yarmouth, and Bury St Edmunds are large towns of 40,000+.
Lowestoft, Great Yarmouth, and Bury St Edmunds are large towns of 40,000+.
Falcon1200
Established Member
Not always; More than once I arrived at Birmingham New Street on a late running train from Manchester only to see the tail light of the 1925 connection to Oxford and Reading disappearing into the tunnel - And the next train was 2040! Not such an issue for Manchester-Oxford and Reading passengers nowadays as there is a direct service.....
It helps of course if the interchange is well-designed from the passenger point of view. An island platform with a central bay (think platforms 1-3 at Llandudno Junction or Swindon, or as an extreme example the pre-Beeching Pontypridd) is ideal, at the expense of more point changes (and therefore opportunities for things to go wrong) compared with somewhere like Cardiff Queen Street where the former shuttle was completely isolated from movements on the through lines - more robust operationally but less convenient for the passengers.
The Office for National Statistics produce a list of built up area populations based on the 2021 census. Built up areas are large if over 100k, medium if over 20k and small if over 5k.
None of the above are large. Lowestoft, Great Yarmouth, Bury St Edmunds, Sudbury, Thetford and March are medium. Spalding and Stamford are also medium but I wouldn't count them as East Anglian, they are in Lincolnshire.
The rest are small, except Halesworth and Saxmundham, which don't even get to a 5k population.
And I can think of at least 4 medium size East Anglian Towns with no railway at all: Wisbech, Haverhill, Gorleston and Dereham.
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Palmerston
Member
It feels odd that Great Yarmouth doesn't have a direct service.
Trainbike46
Established Member
But, doing that inflates journey time compared to a 5ish minute connection
With two of the East Anglian towns mentioned, Great Yarmouth and Sheringham a direct service would probably require a reversal in Norwich thus taking up platform space, Sudbury would also require a reversal at Marks Tey. All three porposAls would also require a path on the south end of the GEML.
However the value of a London connection can be shown by Brsintree. In an attempt to increase reliability on the GEML and free up a path Braintree trains were changed to.a shuttle to Witham, this was reversed after negative feedback from passengers.
However the value of a London connection can be shown by Brsintree. In an attempt to increase reliability on the GEML and free up a path Braintree trains were changed to.a shuttle to Witham, this was reversed after negative feedback from passengers.
No trains direct but lots of Sports Direct bags in summer.
renegademaster
Established Member
For Great Yarmouth, the change at Norwich isn't too much a faff , no stairs, and normally 15 or so minute wait
What's the alternative? To have a two-way seamless connection one of the routes must have a longer dwell time than the other - it must arrive five minutes before the other train(s) depart, and leave five minutes after they arrive. Convention is that the branchline train does this as it's terminating so dwell times don't extend journey times. However journey times on the line are 27 minutes each way which means really tight turnarounds (and skipping Coombe Junction Halt) to maintain an hourly service.
Your options are:
1. Have mainline trains in both directions arrive simultaneously and dwell long enough to reliably make both connections in lieu of the branchline train dwelling long enough to make both. Could you really justify extending journey times on Penzance to London trains for the benefit of a handful of passengers joining from the branch?
2. Changing the branch service to have a non-clockface pattern to allow for extended dwell times. Who would benefit from that?
3. Reducing the branch service to two-hourly or 2tp3h to maintain a clockface timetable with enough dwell time to make connections. I'm not sure that reducing the frequency will decrease journey times when you consider that the average time a casual passenger waits at Looe would increase as a result. The productivity of the unit and crew will drop by a third too.
4. Upgrade the infrastructure; with electrification, upgrade level crossings, replace the token machines with TCB and motorise Coombe Junction to reduce the journey times. How are you going to get this expenditure past the Treasury?
stevieinselby
Established Member
In some cases – and this is true of the Looe branch – where the branch itself is tightly timed, there may not be a lot of leeway. The train arrives at Liskeard and has just enough time to turn around before it leaves again, so if you optimise connections in one direction then you are likely to worsen them in the other.
Yes, in an ideal world, the branch line train would arrive in the bay platform 5 minutes before the mainline trains come through in both directions, waits for 10 minutes, then leaves 5 minutes after the mainline trains have been through ... but that assumes there is enough slack in the round trip time for the branch line to do that, which won't always be the case!, and it also relies on up and down trains on the mainline coming through at the same time.
This goes back to what I was saying earlier. Birmingham New Street is a hugely busy station with trains departing every couple of minutes in one direction or another. It would be difficult to know which connections it was worth holding and how long to allow for passengers to make their way through the maze.
William3000
Member
I take your point. Stamford station is 100 metres from the Cambridgeshire border so while technically right, I included it.
Trainbike46
Established Member
I agree that there isn't a better alternative for this branch without infrastructure upgrades - and that highlights that at the end of the day, timetabling is about managing competing demands.
From a pure rail perspective yes; however there are broader political and economic considerations.
For example, I don't think there's a need for either Bradford or Harrogate to have a direct London service; instead faster, more frequent connections to Leeds would be desirable. The LNER services take up valuable space on the lines (e.g. it's my understanding that the Harrogate LNER takes up more than one path that could be available for Northern trains), however the Harrogate trains are popular because:
People from Harrogate prefer a direct train, both for convenience and don't have to slum it on Northern trains and Leeds station and it's seen as a "prestige" service befitting Harrogate's "status"
Direct train services are often used in local areas to (successfully) attract business investment, and are seen as a visible win for the local leaders.
Removing the Harrogate to London service would receive alot of pushback politically, especially as the service crosses two Mayoral areas (WY and NY).
With Bradford as an example, it would be hard locally as even if it makes sense, Bradford feels (not unfairly at all) that it has been left behind and neglected when it comes to transport connections. Politically it would be challenging for WY to support removal this as the Mayors require support from all the Leaders of local authorities who make up their cabinet - this may be softened a bit under the new devolution paper.
Political support for such service creations and removals should not be underestimated. Especially considering the parochial nature of local places AND the fact that there are already huge disparities in transport connectivity across the country. Certain towns and cities have excellent rail connectivity relative to their size due to their historic locations, and the railways and transport haven't necessarily caught up.
The other issue is ticketing and the potential if your connecting train is delayed. If ticketing were like airlines (i.e. if you buy a connecting ticket then there's no financial loss for delays in any of the flights) then it would be fine, however people are often confused and concerned about if and when a ticket is valid if you miss a connection.
You’d have a job doing a Liskeard connection with luggage in 5 minutes!
bahnause
Member
Since the comparison with Switzerland has come up a few times here, I would like to make a few comments. Perhaps some of the differences can be explained, maybe some things are not possible without a lot of automation. Basically, the question as to whether a connection can be held and for how long has to be answered when creating the timetable. Depending on the location and network utilization, this will result in a value for how long train A can wait for train B. An intervention by the signaller is therefore only necessary in the event of deviations from the programmed default values (let's call it “divine intervention”). As everything is connected and already highly automated, such decisions are generally known throughout the network and are also included in the customer information. Depending on the extent of the delay, the train route is also rescheduled to the final destination. This may prevent the delayed train from being able to reduce the delay, but other trains are less affected and the information for the rest of the journey is reliable as conflicts (no platform, slower train ahead) can be solved in advance. Alternative arrangements are also planned for long-distance and international services. It has already been determined at what delay a train will run behind another train in a new slot and/or has to be canceled. Other measures can also be preplanned (e.g. if train A is more than 15min late, the delayed unit A is left standing, unit B which should run 30 minutes later takes over the service of A and later A takes over the service of B).
A dense network with regular “compatible” trains is easier to stabilise than one with individual direct connections from different TOC. Compatible in this case because rolling stock and personnel can be exchanged relatively flexibly. SOB can run replacement trains for SBB at short notice, SBB for Thurbo and so on. Rolling stock from the Zurich - Lucerne route can be replaced by rolling stock from the Zurich - Basel route if necessary.
Unfortunately a somewhat older film from an operations center, but since High German is spoken, you can use the automatic translation for the subtitles:
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An example would be yesterday evening when I took the 20:30 Hull Trains service from Kings Cross to Doncaster, followed by the 22:15 Northern service to Sheffield. Had everything been on time, I would have had a 9-minute connection. However, the train arrived in Doncaster 7 minutes late. The Northern train was held at the platform for just a minute, leaving me with only 3 minutes to transfer.
To be fair, we arrived at platform 4, and the connecting train was waiting on platform 5 on the same island. However, platform 5 was a bay platform to the rear of the train. Perhaps if I were a regular commuter at Doncaster, I might have made it, but with just 3 minutes, I narrowly missed it. The next train to Sheffield was 10 minutes later but was a stopper, adding over 30 minutes to my total journey time.
2030 Hull Trains Kings Cross to Doncaster: https://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/service/gb-nr:C45796/2025-02-21/detailed#allox_id=0
2215 Northern Doncaster to Sheffield: https://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/service/gb-nr:W46210/2025-02-21/detailed#allox_id=0
Howardh
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I'll introduce Bolton to you, coming back from London you arrive at Piccadilly - then there are (I think) 3 trains/hr from Picc to Bolton, and one of them is three-coach (to Barrow) rather than six. The service from Piccadilly is poor (and, yes, I get the Castlefield Corridor) yet trains could continue from London direct to Bolton!!
Luckily Wigan North western is an option, but then again the train frequency back to Bolton is quite low (not sure if 2 or 3tph) so either way there can be a lot of hanging around especially if one is cancelled.
And to add injury to insult - a Transpennine Express goes through Piccadilly from the airport and stops at Bolton - put pax aren't allowed to alight!! At very least that should be allowed off-peak.
So, yes, to me a direct service from Bolton would matter greatly, could knock at least 20-30 mins off the journey; Avanti use the route as a diversion so I'm sure it's possible. It appears Rochdale might get a direct service in future, so why not us??
Luckily Wigan North western is an option, but then again the train frequency back to Bolton is quite low (not sure if 2 or 3tph) so either way there can be a lot of hanging around especially if one is cancelled.
And to add injury to insult - a Transpennine Express goes through Piccadilly from the airport and stops at Bolton - put pax aren't allowed to alight!! At very least that should be allowed off-peak.
So, yes, to me a direct service from Bolton would matter greatly, could knock at least 20-30 mins off the journey; Avanti use the route as a diversion so I'm sure it's possible. It appears Rochdale might get a direct service in future, so why not us??
Could they?
Which existing services through Castlefield would you remove to enable this, and where would you get the Rolling stock from?
Howardh
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It's a speculation thread! Yes they could, finding space and stock is another matter! But if Transpennine Express can run through trains from the Airport to Glasgow and Edinburgh via Bolton, then it's a question as to why not London? And when Avanti divert, there's room for those diversions too. As for removing trains, the new configuration in the next few years at Oxford Road should allow more to pass through - if not then isn't that a total waste of time and money?
I suppose I should just be grateful we can get to the airport direct.
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