East West Mainline interchanges

[richieb1971]

Forders Sidings are already used as loops today. I've seen a freight there in the past 5 years. Might have been RHTT not sure. Its the umpteen sidings in there that don't get used. Its quite a big place.

What EWR has not done and what some people on here don't seem to realize that is that MKC was made part of EWR because its a big city. Yet the same priority has not been put in place for MKC from the East as it is the West just because no curve exists at the current time. I don't see people from Oxford crying out for a link to MKC I just see EWR wanting it to make it more sellable since the track bed already exists. Had it been the other way around it would have been Bedford and Cambridge that got the nod and Oxford side would be left with the weaker link. If MKC is that important to the whole project it should be looked at more from the East.


With the freight connections all being on the WCML, it kind of creates its own problems there as well. As far as EWR is concerned, the current outline of the routes and where the freight terminals are, along with MKC being a bit further north than the main EWR trunk route is all a bit miss miss miss. Perhaps more emphasis needs to be put on building infrastructure on the route as right now its a barren 2 line stretch for much of it.

 

[William3000]

It has, but given the importance of MK in the whole thing, I think no direct service to MKC from the Cambridge side will just be throwing away revenue, possibly to the point of rendering building that side not worth it at all.

I will personally benefit from it being as it is currently planned, but the line and region will not benefit as much without direct service to MKC.

Indeed, I think Milton Keynes is likely to be the key interchange destination from the east as it provides best interchange facilities to the West Midlands/North West.

 

[AlbertBeale]

It's only ever 4, but the pre COVID distribution of times was worse - it's pretty much a nice even 20 minute frequency southbound at the moment.

Northbound they are quite clustered, xx17 but then xx40 and xx49, which is in effect only half hourly as the latter two are close together. The northbound Southern is normally xx55, which would help a bit.

But if you're talking people commuting to CMK from the Marston Vale and Bedford, a change means they just use the car or bus. That only wouldn't be the case if it was cross platform, which it can't be, it'll be down, up and back down, quite a faff.

Surely interchanging from a Bedford to Bletchley service terminating at Bletchley (I presume some services - perhaps the all-station ones? - will still do that, in addition to the EWR Bedford-Oxford ones) will be a bit less of a faff than changing from the new EWR platforms up on the viaduct?

I accept that, ideally, a curve would be built to allow some services to run from Bedford to MKC without changing. However, if the capacity to run extra trains from Bletchley to MKC is limited, and most of that capacity would be needed to allow some of the Oxford and Aylesbury trains to run to MKC, then a lack of opportunity to run very much from Bedford and the east to MKC anyway makes the extra curve less worth while. There's also the point that anything using such a curve wouldn't be able to stop at Bletchley as well - so swings and roundabouts.

 

[richieb1971]

Why is Oxford more important than Cambridge? Just wondering why Oxford and Mkc are married and Cambridge is divorced.

 

[bspahh]

Why is Oxford more important than Cambridge? Just wondering why Oxford and Mkc are married and Cambridge is divorced.

The route from Bletchley to Oxford stayed intact enough to get a budget to get it rebuilt from the politicians.
The route to Cambridge has been lost, with the M11 and guided bus way in the way. It doesn't have a budget, the chance of government funding has dropped following Brexit and Covid, and it has to rely on picking up funding from house building. Nimbys might well be able to block it from happening.

 

[edwin_m]

Why is Oxford more important than Cambridge? Just wondering why Oxford and Mkc are married and Cambridge is divorced.

MK to Oxford is 29 miles, MK to Cambridge is 47 (road distances from web search). Passenger demand tends to follow a "gravity model", so other things being equal the amount of travel between places with the same population will be less if they are further apart.

 

[A0]

You might want to revise your view. That is bridge H6, Child's Way, viewed from the North. To the left you can see a portal carrying OHLE for four tracks. Next to it is a single mast serving a fifth track which already goes through the centre span of bridge H6. This clip from Open Railway Map shows the track layout here. Tracks 3 and 5 are the WCML fasts. Track 4 serves the turnback platform P5 at MKC.

View attachment 109679

So what you claim would be impossibly expensive has already been done. Which makes me think that your other assertions might be less than robust too.

I think you need to reread my post a bit more carefully.

I never said which bridge the picture was of. What I *did* say was "MK station - the only possible expansion would be on the west side i.e. between the station and the A5, however, the railway and the A5 are not on the same level - this image from Google Maps gives an idea of the difference and that spare 'gap' is the embankment down to the A5, so you'd need *alot* of earthworks"

Which since the station is between H5 and H6 (if anything is slightly closer to H6), means my statement is perfectly valid. The railway *is* at a higher lever *and* what's left of the gap between the railway and the road is an embankment.

The issue is not about what has already been done, it's about whether or not more could be put in there and since the railway is at a higher level, the embankment would need to be addressed which would not be cheap or easy. This Google Maps sat image shows how much space is left along there.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 3 Feb 2022 ==

Indeed, I think Milton Keynes is likely to be the key interchange destination from the east as it provides best interchange facilities to the West Midlands/North West.

Rubbish.

From Cambridge or the ECML such links already exist either direct or with a single change at Ely or Peterborough.

From Oxford there are already direct links to the West Mids and North West.

So basically you're talking about Bedford, that's it.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 3 Feb 2022 ==

MK to Oxford is 29 miles, MK to Cambridge is 47 (road distances from web search). Passenger demand tends to follow a "gravity model", so other things being equal the amount of travel between places with the same population will be less if they are further apart.

The above, and historically Milton Keynes was part of Bucks - Bucks, Oxford and Berkshire are geographically "Thames Valley", you've got services like the police which cover these areas as one.

I would argue the road links to the west have always been better than those to the east of MK, in part due to the wider range of destinations that way.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 3 Feb 2022 ==

The route from Bletchley to Oxford stayed intact enough, to get a budget to get it rebuilt from the politicians.
The route to Cambridge has been lost, with the M11 and guided bus way in the way. It doesn't have a budget, the chance of government funding has dropped, following Brexit and Covid, and it has to rely on picking up funding from house building. Nimbys might well be able to block it from happening.

BIB - you can add to that (and done long before either of those) was the rebuilding of Sandy station to allow the ECML to be 4 track through Sandy. That took out the old Cambridge line formation as well.

Details: http://disused-stations.org.uk/s/sandy/index.shtml

"The GN station was considerably rebuilt in the early 1970s to give a 4-track layout throughout (previously there was a short 2-track section through the station itself). There are now platforms on the slow lines only. The Down Slow serves the GNR Down platform and the Down Fast is on the original alignment of the Up line. The Up GNR/Westbound LNW platform has been completely demolished to accommodate the Up Fast and the Up Slow; the new Up platform is approximately on the site of the LNWR alignment (possibly extending back onto the old LNW Eastbound platform). There is no trace whatsoever of the old LNW station. "

 

[DarloRich]

So now let's take a look at the centre of MK, who the major employers are there and how that fits - you've got CMK shopping centre, so you can discount that, MK Council - again can be discounted. Network Rail - nope, their other sites are London, Derby etc. BP, Santander, Sainsburys Argos - not sure any of those are ticking the box.

There is a massive new Santander building going up next to the NR building in MK. There is significant inward travel to those and other central sites. The issue is that many of those people live out on the Oxford> Buckingham side of MK and have little option but to drive. EWR should be picking those people up as far as possible.

There are also lots of people coming in form the Bedford side but they also have no public transport option really. The critical issue for me is how much housing goes up along the vale. That could change the demand for services into MK. Even with that i still think a reversal at Bletchley is the easiest way to facilitate that service!

No doubt EWR improves connectivity between MK and the Thames Valley - for which there has long been a demand and is quite weak. But is there and has there ever been a similar demand for eastward connectivity to Bedford or Cambridge ? Nope. Not at all.

See Marston Vale development. A more reliable service, a faster service and an easier change all help make the journey more attractive.

The people I worked with who travelled in from the Bedford area wouldn't have used the train *even if it ran to MKC* because most of them lived outside Bedford itself so would have taken them longer just to get to the centre of Bedford.

Bedford yes - Marston Vale villages have a train but don't use because of the above. At present it is easier for most to drive

for a good chunk of the industry in MK, Bletchley station is actually better sited. I mentioned the OU upthread, but the same goes for Kingston, Caldecotte, Bleak Hall. Event the hospital is 50/50. And if there were 5 tph between MK and Bletchley (as I think there normally would be) any connection time would be minimal.

But the main employers ARE situated near MK station. People who work in the industrial units aren't getting the train to work. Use Red Bull as an example. There are 2 people who regularly use Bow Brickhill which is adjacent to thier HQ/factory.

Sorry - I don't accept that a change is the deciding factor (regardless of whether it's cross platform or not).

it is one of the issues putting people off using the existing Marston Vale service. The users group have highlighted this in thier research several times. It isn't as big as speed, reliability, comfort & accessibility at Bletchley (P6) but IS a highlighted issue.

The change at Bletchley (for MK) & reliability are the real limiting factors on demand for the existing service.

 

[A0]

There is a massive new Santander building going up next to the NR building in MK. There is significant inward travel to those and other central sites. The issue is that many of those people live out on the Oxford> Buckingham side of MK and have little option but to drive. EWR should be picking those people up as far as possible.

Going a little OT - but to address each point.

That "massive" new Santander building is a consolidation - and will lead to the closure of other offices they already have in MK. That said it's also tied up to flexible working arrangements as well, so I wouldn't expect it to be full https://www.santander.co.uk/about-s...antander-makes-milton-keynes-new-headquarters

Those living to the west of MK actually do have a public transport option - the X5 covers Bicester and Buckingham (the latter the train won't serve) and the X60 Buckingham - MK.

The train, by comparison will only serve Winslow which is little more than a village before getting to Bicester.

There are also lots of people coming in form the Bedford side but they also have no public transport option really. The critical issue for me is how much housing goes up along the vale. That could change the demand for services into MK. Even with that i still think a reversal at Bletchley is the easiest way to facilitate that service!

Apart from the X5 running between MK and Bedford hourly. And any development along the Vale i.e. east of the M1 going towards Bedford, is likely to have a bigger impact on the demands at Flitwick for London bound trains than anything going to MK.

Bedford yes - Marston Vale villages have a train but don't use because of the above. At present it is easier for most to drive

Easier, quicker, cheaper, more convenient especially if your final destination isn't within 1/4 mile of CMK station. Which a direct train still won't address.

But the main employers ARE situated near MK station. People who work in the industrial units aren't getting the train to work. Use Red Bull as an example. There are 2 people who regularly use Bow Brickhill which is adjacent to thier HQ/factory.

*Some* of the main employers - probably less than 50% - you've got VW, Mercedes, Scania all out at Blakelands / Willan Park, you've got the hospital at Eaglestone (pretty much equidistant to Bletchley as well as MKC), you've got the OU and other offices at Kents Hill (further still from CMK), you've got Caldecotte Lake (all next to Bow Brickhill station) and you've got Kingston. Arguing people who work in "industrial units" aren't getting the train to work but inferring that "office workers" ought to be is somewhat discriminatory don't you think ?

it is one of the issues putting people off using the existing Marston Vale service. The users group have highlighted this in thier research several times. It isn't as big as speed, reliability, comfort & accessibility at Bletchley (P6) but IS a highlighted issue.

Sorry - first world problem - travelling into pretty much every major city results in the need to change somewhere to get to your final destination. And that's a complaint by the current users, not a reason cited by those who don't use it.

All of the above still ignores the fact that the vast majority of those who *work in Milton Keynes live in Milton Keynes* - so they will still drive whatever. So why should those who are travelling from further out be forced onto the train just because it suits the outlook of a few people ?

The reality is train use is still well down pre Covid. Office utilisation is well down pre-Covid. Most major employers have introduced flexible working contracts - I changed job in November last year and was offered 2 options a full Work From Home contract or a Hybrid 2/3 days home / office split. No option of 100% office - they simply aren't offering it.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I think there is a very good chance - an almost certainty - that EWR will kill off the X5 in its current form. It would not surprise me to see it become an extension of the S5 from Bicester to Buckingham once an hour (but not beyond), and possibly a Bedford-MK service, but I doubt the whole thing will survive as a through service (even from Bedford) due to the likely near-complete loss of through traffic. The new 905 is possibly also questionable once the Cambridge leg is built.

Which will be a blow to Buckingham, of course.

So why should those who are travelling from further out be forced onto the train just because it suits the outlook of a few people ?

As to this, I wonder once again why you are posting to a rail forum at all? Nobody is being "forced" onto the train. We're talking about making it attractive so they choose it, which won't be the case if they have to change at Bletchley.

If we are building a railway (or heavily upgrading one), it is a given that we want to motivate people to use it.

Views that EWR (in its entirety, or just the Cambridge bit which is a rather bigger undertaking than the Oxford bit) should not be built at all are probably for another thread.

 

[A0]

I think there is a very good chance - an almost certainty - that EWR will kill off the X5 in its current form. It would not surprise me to see it become an extension of the S5 from Bicester to Buckingham once an hour (but not beyond), and possibly a Bedford-MK service, but I doubt the whole thing will survive as a through service (even from Bedford) due to the likely near-complete loss of through traffic. The new 905 is possibly also questionable once the Cambridge leg is built.

Which will be a blow to Buckingham, of course.

I suspect Buckingham will retain a direct link to MK and a direct link to Oxford - I suspect relatively few are travelling further than that, so not sure the loss of the link would be a "blow to Buckingham". Losing something few use isn't really a loss.

As to this, I wonder once again why you are posting to a rail forum at all? Nobody is being "forced" onto the train. We're talking about making it attractive so they choose it, which won't be the case if they have to change at Bletchley.

Because the subtext to all of this is, from some people, we don't want people driving into MK - yet when the overwhelming majority of people travelling into Central MK are doing so from within Milton Keynes itself means that actually EWR won't make a jot of a difference to that. And that assumes MK Central is the main traffic destination - yet for a high proportion of the jobs in MK, that's not the case.

And if we're saying the first world problem of changing train is the deal breaker, then sorry, tough. It certainly doesn't justify the expenditure to fix that problem.

If we are building a railway (or heavily upgrading one), it is a given that we want to motivate people to use it.

Views that EWR (in its entirety, or just the Cambridge bit which is a rather bigger undertaking than the Oxford bit) should not be built at all are probably for another thread.

The Oxford bit will get built and probably reasonably well used, because there has long been, for various reasons, demand to travel towards the Thames Valley from MK.

There isn't the same demand to travel to / from MK from places further east than Bedford - partly because there isn't much between Bedford and Cambridge, partly because there aren't the "links" (such as shared services etc) between Cambs and MK that there are between MK and Oxford / Reading.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Because the subtext to all of this is, from some people, we don't want people driving into MK - yet when the overwhelming majority of people travelling into Central MK are doing so from within Milton Keynes itself means that actually EWR won't make a jot of a difference to that. And that assumes MK Central is the main traffic destination - yet for a high proportion of the jobs in MK, that's not the case.

No. The subtext is "we are spending a fortune upgrading and wholly rebuilding a railway, entirely from scratch once we get towards Cambridge, but we won't make a relatively small investment which will improve the utility of that railway and so get more people to use it".

If this expensive new-build/upgraded railway isn't going to try to remove some car journeys, what is it even for? The "social need" argument (i.e. non-car owners) can be done using buses far more cheaply, indeed it is done by buses now.

I could understand the argument that we should not build Bedford-Cambridge and should close the financial basket case that is the Marston Vale. But if you are going to build it and upgrade the Marston Vale at a huge capital cost, why would you save a relatively small amount (in terms of the whole project) and do a half-job?

The plan I've seen is three trains per hour from Cambridge terminating at Bletchley potentially plus a MV stopper. Who's going to use them if they don't go to the main traffic sink of the area?

 

[A0]

The plan I've seen is three trains per hour from Cambridge terminating at Bletchley potentially plus a MV stopper. Who's going to use them if they don't go to the main traffic sink of the area?

Anyone who doesn't mind changing trains (which is quite alot of people), plus anyone who's destination is Kingston, Caldecotte, Bletchley, Eaglestone, Kents Hill all of which gain pretty much nothing going to MK as opposed to getting a cab / bus from Bletchley ?

 

[Bletchleyite]

Anyone who doesn't mind changing trains (which is quite alot of people), plus anyone who's destination is Kingston, Caldecotte, Bletchley, Eaglestone, Kents Hill all of which gain pretty much nothing going to MK as opposed to getting a cab / bus from Bletchley ?

If it was that many people, the Marston Vale wouldn't essentially be exclusively used by locals and schoolkids. People usually prefer trains over buses, but the X5 gets far more custom. That to me says something.

You basically hardly ever see anyone changing to/from it. @DarloRich is probably one of the very few who will.

 

[richieb1971]

I do agree with Bletchleyite that a huge sum of money is going into this and it ticks only a few boxes.
For the sake of 200-300 metres of track here and there people make it sound like it will doom the whole project.

People here are so quick to say why we won't or don't do something.

Lets not forget if a 2nd track gets put between Fenny Stratford and Bletchley it requires a great big bridge spanning across roads. Thats not cheap either and probably not really required if you spread the timetable out a bit.
It seems there is a money tree to shake, but the ideas are all coming from the project leaders based on number of services rather than the routes of services.

 

[Bletchleyite]

It's not that it'll doom the project. It's just that if you are going to do a massive project like that costing huge sums of money, not looking for how you can do relatively small things for relatively large gains is bordering on negligent.

 

[A0]

I do agree with Bletchleyite that a huge sum of money is going into this and it ticks only a few boxes.
For the sake of 200-300 metres of track here and there people make it sound like it will doom the whole project.

People here are so quick to say why we won't or don't do something.

Lets not forget if a 2nd track gets put between Fenny Stratford and Bletchley it requires a great big bridge spanning across roads. Thats not cheap either and probably not really required if you spread the timetable out a bit.
It seems there is a money tree to shake, but the ideas are all coming from the project leaders based on number of services rather than the routes of services.

But it isn't just "200-300 metres of track" - it would be a bit more than that, plus a flyover (just to provide a comparison, the Hitchin flyover which was *much* more simple, was away from a built up area and required no demolition works cost ~ £50m and that was 10 years ago and that also had a benefits case behind it as well), plus potentially more platform space and additional running lines to / from Central MK. That's before you include the signalling changes which would be needed, electrification (because the lines probably wouldn't be separated and therefore would also be available for other WCML traffic).

The alternative is run to Bletchley and people change train - cost, pretty much zero and happens up and down the network every day.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 3 Feb 2022 ==

If it was that many people, the Marston Vale wouldn't essentially be exclusively used by locals and schoolkids. People usually prefer trains over buses, but the X5 gets far more custom. That to me says something.

The X5 picks up and drops off at other - it doesn't just drop you off in the "town centre". Perhaps that's a reason for it's better use ?

 

[richieb1971]

The alternative is run to Bletchley and people change train - cost, pretty much zero and happens up and down the network every day.

I have minimal interest in a northern curve at Bletchley for passenger services, although it would be nice.
I am more interested in the freight prospects and tying down the land required to make future connections possible. In this area I see EWR as totally inadequate. It will be a nice minimalistic railway though. The greatest prize for me is Bicester Village and Oxford connections. I suppose Cambridge offers great connections to the East. EWR is right in the heart of the country and will most likely be the most important railway built in the past 100 years north of London outside of HS2. The scope for it rests on speculation of use by passengers. When in fact you could make it a rail powerhouse of options and possibility. Sorry I am over ambitious and live in la la land.

 

[A0]

I have minimal interest in a northern curve at Bletchley for passenger services, although it would be nice.
I am more interested in the freight prospects and tying down the land required to make future connections possible. In this area I see EWR as totally inadequate. It will be a nice minimalistic railway though. The greatest prize for me is Bicester Village and Oxford connections. I suppose Cambridge offers great connections to the East. EWR is right in the heart of the country and will most likely be the most important railway built in the past 100 years north of London outside of HS2. The scope for it rests on speculation of use by passengers. When in fact you could make it a rail powerhouse of options and possibility. Sorry I am over ambitious and live in la la land.

What "freight prospects" ?

What freight flows do you foresee EWR covering?

 

[richieb1971]

What "freight prospects" ?

What freight flows do you foresee EWR covering?

Lets not think about freight flows. Think about 80-100 miles of track with zero freight connections at all. I mean ZERO! Perhaps Calvert. Perhaps a railway of this magnitude should have a freight terminal on it.
What happens if this railway gets built and it transports 200 people a day? Its hardly going to be on the news as a success story.

 

[A0]

Lets not think about freight flows. Think about 80-100 miles of track with zero freight connections at all. I mean ZERO! Perhaps Calvert. Perhaps a railway of this magnitude should have a freight terminal on it.
What happens if this railway gets built and it transports 200 people a day? Its hardly going to be on the news as a success story.

Calvert's in the middle of nowhere, sorry but it is.

Look at the freight terminals which are or have been built: Dirft (next to A5 and M2, easy access to M6), Northampton Gateway (next to M1 Junc 15), East Mids Gateway (next to East Mids Airport and M1) and so it goes on.

You can't build a freight terminal in the middle of nowhere with no onward connectivity from the railway line.

And freight flows, much as you don't want to talk about them, are the thing you need to understand to in turn understand if the line has any freight potential.

There are no shortage of lines with no freight terminal on them - how about the Settle & Carlisle for starters?

 

[jfowkes]

The only places on EWR that I can see could conceivably have a freight connection are the warehousing/logistics at Ridgmont and Marsh Leys.

 

[A0]

The only places on EWR that I can see could conceivably have a freight connection are the warehousing/logistics at Ridgmont and Marsh Leys.

You won't at Marsh Leys - if you want a rail link on a logistics park it needs to be part of the original design. Those Marsh Leys sheds are about 15 years old. The Argos one used to be 2 man home delivery items e.g. white goods, sofas, beds, furniture etc - so not really suited to rail distribution apart from the items which arrive from the far east.

 

[The Planner]

Lets not think about freight flows. Think about 80-100 miles of track with zero freight connections at all. I mean ZERO! Perhaps Calvert. Perhaps a railway of this magnitude should have a freight terminal on it.
What happens if this railway gets built and it transports 200 people a day? Its hardly going to be on the news as a success story.

The freight connections, if viable, would come later as they are third party speculations. I don't get why one would be there from the start.

 

[richieb1971]

I did not mean Calvert to become a depot. Just meant its used to put spoil/waste in the ground at the moment. So technically ewr would be a freight route for that location. But nowhere else.

As for future prospects there is none as the connectivity is really weak. Any freight from the east is much better sent on pre existing routes, makes EWR look weak. Not even as a secondary diversionary route.

 

[A0]

I did not mean Calvert to become a depot. Just meant its used to put spoil/waste in the ground at the moment. So technically ewr would be a freight route for that location. But nowhere else.

As for future prospects there is none as the connectivity is really weak. Any freight from the east is much better sent on pre existing routes, makes EWR look weak. Not even as a secondary diversionary route.

Avoiding the question.

So what *would* you put in and *what* do you think that would provide.

It's worth remembering the "original" Oxford - Cambridge line didn't have connections onto the ECML at Sandy and only limited connectivity at Bedford - access to Bedford Midland was through a link on the Bedford - Hitchin line.

 

[jfowkes]

It's also worth remembering here that the only freight plan that has involved EWR in any concrete way to date was the Electric Spine project, which of course can still happen with the planned infrastructure, lack of electrification notwithstanding.

And lack of electrification is a far bigger issue for EWR than lack of arbitrary curves for imaginary freight.

 

[Pigeon]

If it was that many people, the Marston Vale wouldn't essentially be exclusively used by locals and schoolkids. People usually prefer trains over buses, but the X5 gets far more custom. That to me says something.

You basically hardly ever see anyone changing to/from it. @DarloRich is probably one of the very few who will.

I tried it once, during a period of temporary carlessness in the bubble-car days.

It was awful. Trundle interminably along the Marston Vale with a 40mph line speed which we barely got near anyway due to stopping at every lamp-post, piss around for ages at Bletchley waiting for a connection, saunter down the WCML in a manner suggesting that the elastic band had broken, then shiver outside work for half an hour waiting for the boss to turn up with the key. Same again backwards in the evening with a similar wait after work for the next train. It took a couple of hours or so as opposed to less than half an hour in the car, and it's not surprising that nobody did it if they weren't being forced to.

The problems were the slow journey and the gaps at the work end. Principal improvements needed were better service frequency in general to reduce the gaps, and faster Bedford-Bletchley services which then ran through northwards to speed up the journey itself. Both the faster running and the through running were needed; either on its own would provide some improvement but not enough of one. It would never be quicker than the car, but it could be made less outrageously slower by a useful amount.

I've just looked up the same journey now and it's a touch better here and a touch worse there, with the worse bigger than the better.

We may hope for EWR bringing some improvement in the Bedford-Bletchley leg, but without the through running to the north it'll still be crap.

Similar experience with journeys between Bedford or Cambridge and "Birmingham and beyond". The northabout route from Bedford via Leicester was never great: the MML section was fine, but there would be long waits to change at Leicester and a trundlebunny service between there and Birmingham, and it isn't exactly direct. Going MV/WCML seemed to have potential to be better, but in practice there was not much in it, and the "change at Bletchley then again immediately afterwards at MK" bit was a lot of the reason why. I did both at different times and never found much reason to choose one over the other. Of course these days too the northabout route is significantly worse, because when I was doing it nearly everything for the MML north stopped at Bedford whereas now practically nothing does.

From Cambridge there was of course no choice but it was trundlebunny all the way and a circuitous way to boot; a decent service via EWR and a reasonable change to the WCML would have been an attractive alternative, but rather less so with it being crippled in the same way as the Bedford journey above.

I don't personally have call to do those journeys any more but other people do, and I still find the memory of them a specific cause to deplore a design that fails to consider any destination off the route itself except London, in addition to the more general reasons of having long been disgruntled by the excessive difficulty of train journeys that aren't to/from London or somewhere on the direct route to it, and similar long-standing disagreement with the tendency to consider railway lines as isolated entities entire in themselves instead of as integral parts of a network. Which are both particularly relevant in the case of a newly-created route that is indeed filling in one of the missing circular threads in the spider's web and connecting six radial threads, which it is particularly inappropriate to conceptually isolate so as to consider in the same kind of way as a radial thread.

I've never seen the route as the kind of line that would have a great mass of people HERE who all want to go THERE and little more than dribs and drabs on top of that. It's being considered in that way because it's easier to meet some arbitrary target by concentrating a given amount of handwaving effort on a small number of large made-up figures than a large number of small ones, but it doesn't really fit. Looking at the way it runs and the kind of towns it connects, it's clearly the sort of route that will have a far less skewed distribution of journeys, with both a wider selection of "most popular" ones but not so overwhelmingly predominant, and a wider degree of relevance to other journeys each of which individually may only be undertaken by a few people a year but which are of such great possible variety that collectively they add up to a fair chunk. Especially with the overall size of the project, it is not useful to insist that every individual point and signal has to specifically justify its existence by reference to a particular approved forecast of a particular large-scale usage.

 

[A0]

I tried it once, during a period of temporary carlessness in the bubble-car days.

It was awful. Trundle interminably along the Marston Vale with a 40mph line speed which we barely got near anyway due to stopping at every lamp-post, piss around for ages at Bletchley waiting for a connection, saunter down the WCML in a manner suggesting that the elastic band had broken, then shiver outside work for half an hour waiting for the boss to turn up with the key. Same again backwards in the evening with a similar wait after work for the next train. It took a couple of hours or so as opposed to less than half an hour in the car, and it's not surprising that nobody did it if they weren't being forced to.

The problems were the slow journey and the gaps at the work end. Principal improvements needed were better service frequency in general to reduce the gaps, and faster Bedford-Bletchley services which then ran through northwards to speed up the journey itself. Both the faster running and the through running were needed; either on its own would provide some improvement but not enough of one. It would never be quicker than the car, but it could be made less outrageously slower by a useful amount.

I've just looked up the same journey now and it's a touch better here and a touch worse there, with the worse bigger than the better.

We may hope for EWR bringing some improvement in the Bedford-Bletchley leg, but without the through running to the north it'll still be crap.

Similar experience with journeys between Bedford or Cambridge and "Birmingham and beyond". The northabout route from Bedford via Leicester was never great: the MML section was fine, but there would be long waits to change at Leicester and a trundlebunny service between there and Birmingham, and it isn't exactly direct. Going MV/WCML seemed to have potential to be better, but in practice there was not much in it, and the "change at Bletchley then again immediately afterwards at MK" bit was a lot of the reason why. I did both at different times and never found much reason to choose one over the other. Of course these days too the northabout route is significantly worse, because when I was doing it nearly everything for the MML north stopped at Bedford whereas now practically nothing does.

From Cambridge there was of course no choice but it was trundlebunny all the way and a circuitous way to boot; a decent service via EWR and a reasonable change to the WCML would have been an attractive alternative, but rather less so with it being crippled in the same way as the Bedford journey above.

I don't personally have call to do those journeys any more but other people do, and I still find the memory of them a specific cause to deplore a design that fails to consider any destination off the route itself except London, in addition to the more general reasons of having long been disgruntled by the excessive difficulty of train journeys that aren't to/from London or somewhere on the direct route to it, and similar long-standing disagreement with the tendency to consider railway lines as isolated entities entire in themselves instead of as integral parts of a network. Which are both particularly relevant in the case of a newly-created route that is indeed filling in one of the missing circular threads in the spider's web and connecting six radial threads, which it is particularly inappropriate to conceptually isolate so as to consider in the same kind of way as a radial thread.

I've never seen the route as the kind of line that would have a great mass of people HERE who all want to go THERE and little more than dribs and drabs on top of that. It's being considered in that way because it's easier to meet some arbitrary target by concentrating a given amount of handwaving effort on a small number of large made-up figures than a large number of small ones, but it doesn't really fit. Looking at the way it runs and the kind of towns it connects, it's clearly the sort of route that will have a far less skewed distribution of journeys, with both a wider selection of "most popular" ones but not so overwhelmingly predominant, and a wider degree of relevance to other journeys each of which individually may only be undertaken by a few people a year but which are of such great possible variety that collectively they add up to a fair chunk. Especially with the overall size of the project, it is not useful to insist that every individual point and signal has to specifically justify its existence by reference to a particular approved forecast of a particular large-scale usage.

To be fair the Bubble cars were 20 or more years ago.

But the slow journey time is in large part due to the number of station stops over a relatively short journey - and even electrification and higher lines speed would only have a limited impact, to demonstrate:

Marston Vale is 16 miles and has 10 intermediate stops, the journey takes 42 mins so achieves an average speed of ~ 23 mph.

The GN mainline between Welwyn Garden City and Finsbury Park is 17 miles and has 11 intermediate stops for a inner suburban service with a journey time of 36 minutes an average speed of ~ 28 mph, so even if you wired the Marston Vale and put 'high performance' EMUs (which the 717s are in terms of acceleration) you'd even then only get a journey time of about 34-35 minutes. And the usage of the MV simply doesn't justify that kind of investment. If you went for "older" EMUs then the performance improvement would be less.

To provide a "limited" stop service across the MV is already being proposed by EWR and is already proving controversial - so what's the answer ?

 

[mr_jrt]

TBF, I don't think the limited-stop service is proving controversial, it's the station relocations and consolodations that are. With the planned infrastructure they are intrinsically linked, but they don't have to be. Putting the removed freight loops back in and enhancing them to passenger-grade (and in all likelihood, extending them into dyanmic loops) would give some scope for overtaking. It would be ludicrous gold-plating, but it would be ideal to have loops or through lines at every station. At the very least I wish they'd leave passive provision for them when rebuilding any stations, but that was clearly never on the cards.