ECML - keep it simple?

[Bamford]

Does the 18tph include allowance for a given number of services calling at Welwyn North?

ISTR it was stated somewhere that a Welwyn North call essentially costs one extra path. In the peaks presumably there’s going to be 4tph calling at Welwyn North in the peak flow direction, as today, made up of 2tph KX to Cambridge stopping service and 2tph KX to Letchworth, Baldock or wherever they end up.

4tph is somewhat lavish for Welwyn North IMO, especially considering the potential impact it has on other services, particularly during disruption. 2tph non-stop to London is pretty lavish for a small station, and TBH I’d support removing this *if* it would allow paths to be used more beneficially elsewhere. It seems to be a political throwback to the fact that Welwyn North has had 4tph in the past, which it didn’t really need then, and still doesn’t need.

Totally agree on this and have seen this stated before.

Would seem an obvious win for GBR, the additional revenue from the extras must be pretty slim compared with being able to get another path in.

Serious consideration should be taken to whether Welwyn North could go down to 1tph or even relocating to the south side of the viaduct where it could be on a four track section of the railway. Would be very interesting to know how many people would be put off from using rail, potentially not many if the majority drive to the station already.

I suspect this hasn't been looked at as closing stations is too hard politically, even if it's the right thing for the railway. Won't have helped that the local MP was for a long time the transport secretary!

 

[stevieinselby]

Another thought, we seem to have pretty much given up on the idea of trains dividing en-route to serve to different end points on a common spine, although we do drop off half the train en-route, as with Harrogate sending just 5 cars onwards and leaving 5 at Leeds. I know the issue is through gangways, which are pretty much a no at speeds greater than 100/110, but if a 10 car 125/140mph unit could divide and carry on limited to 100/110mph to its end point in a lot of cases that would work as the last bit is usually on lower speed lines.

There are a few places that splitting/joining does still happen, including the Cambrian, West Highland and Arun Valley lines, and the Caterham/Tattenham Corner branches, to name but 4. The biggest problem with it is the risk of poor punctuality or reliability spreading across the network. It isn't too much of a problem with splitting trains (other than making sure all passengers are in the right part of the train, which is more of a problem if you don't have gangways), but when joining trains you need both portions to arrive at the joining station on time. If either one of them is late then the whole train is late and more people are delayed, with the usual consequent knock-on delays propagating further ... but with the added complication that the inbound portion that did arrive on time is now clogging up a platform while it waits for its mate. That's less of a problem at somewhere like Crianlarich where it is the only train coming through, but if you had trains joining at somewhere like Doncaster, you can't really afford to have one of the four through platforms taken out of use for half an hour because Grand Central's train out of Bradford is running late so the Sunderland portion is sitting in platform 1 waiting for it.

 

[mike57]

Could we have 10 car 80x running Edinburgh to Leeds that then split for Manchester*/Birmingham*?

Split it at York, and send Birmingham portion via Doncaster... Almost 30 mins saved on York and points north to Sheffield and points south.

 

[Brubulus]

Totally agree on this and have seen this stated before.

Would seem an obvious win for GBR, the additional revenue from the extras must be pretty slim compared with being able to get another path in.

Serious consideration should be taken to whether Welwyn North could go down to 1tph or even relocating to the south side of the viaduct where it could be on a four track section of the railway. Would be very interesting to know how many people would be put off from using rail, potentially not many if the majority drive to the station already.

I suspect this hasn't been looked at as closing stations is too hard politically, even if it's the right thing for the railway. Won't have helped that the local MP was for a long time the transport secretary!

It's fine for Welwyn North to have 2tph, however giving it 4tph does seem like a poor use of capacity. The Letchworth peak extras do appear to effectively be a political sop to Welwyn North and Knebworth, would be interesting to know how full they are.

Split it at York, and send Birmingham portion via Doncaster... Almost 30 mins saved on York and points north to Sheffield and points south.

5 cars between Leeds and Birmingham - with an 80x it might just about be fine, off peak. During the peaks it would not be the best idea.

 

[35B]

It's fine for Welwyn North to have 2tph, however giving it 4tph does seem like a poor use of capacity. The Letchworth peak extras do appear to effectively be a political sop to Welwyn North and Knebworth, would be interesting to know how full they are.

Knebworth is on the 4 track section, so a red herring. Welwyn North has been reported as having significant usage within walking distance and a glance at the map will show why moving Welwyn North south of the viaduct might not be much of an answer.

I write as someone who's regularly been held up through that section, and sees that bottleneck as serious unfinished business.

 

[bramling]

It's fine for Welwyn North to have 2tph, however giving it 4tph does seem like a poor use of capacity. The Letchworth peak extras do appear to effectively be a political sop to Welwyn North and Knebworth, would be interesting to know how full they are.

I agree 2tph is reasonable for Welwyn North, 4tph is excessive.

Regarding the Letchworth extras, pre-Covid they were heavily used especially by Hitchin passengers. I’m not so sure nowadays, given that there’s a lot of people in Hitchin who claim it’s still too much of an affront to their lifestyle to have to commute to work.

The Welwyn North calls were and are a total sop, simply there because Welwyn North has had fast services to London in the past, which in turn only arose because they had 4tph in the past - there was originally a 2tph King’s Cross to Letchworth peak extra service which called at places like New Barnet, which got cut back to Welwyn Garden City, and replaced by extra Royston services which resulted in random Welwyn North and Knebworth calls appearing.

 

[mike57]

I write as someone who's regularly been held up through that section, and sees that bottleneck as serious unfinished business.

In an ideal world you would have 4 tracks, but the cost and complexity of that pretty much rules it out to my mind. I assume that any proper 4 track all the way solution would cost many £Billions, Surely Welwyn North could be 4 tracked through the station, would that help.

 

[Topological]

Split it at York, and send Birmingham portion via Doncaster... Almost 30 mins saved on York and points north to Sheffield and points south.

You could really, though my thinking was that splitting at Leeds offers more capacity on Leeds to Scotland. The via Leeds also coming from the fact that the current CrossCountry Scotland runs via Leeds.

We often think about trains from London splitting, but there is no reason why paths on the northern sections cannot be saved by splitting trains that do not go to London.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 12 Jun 2025 ==

It's fine for Welwyn North to have 2tph, however giving it 4tph does seem like a poor use of capacity. The Letchworth peak extras do appear to effectively be a political sop to Welwyn North and Knebworth, would be interesting to know how full they are.
5 cars between Leeds and Birmingham - with an 80x it might just about be fine, off peak. During the peaks it would not be the best idea.

Agree a 5-car 80x is not ideal out of Leeds on a peak, but it is better than a single Voyager.

There needs to be better provision between Leeds and Sheffield in general, but that is too far from the ECML for this thread.

 

[35B]

In an ideal world you would have 4 tracks, but the cost and complexity of that pretty much rules it out to my mind. I assume that any proper 4 track all the way solution would cost many £Billions, Surely Welwyn North could be 4 tracked through the station, would that help.

The issue is the gap between tunnel and viaduct; it seems to be either all or nothing on that stretch.

 

[Bald Rick]

Surely Welwyn North could be 4 tracked through the station, would that help.

It wouldn’t help, in fact it would make things worse. This has been explained on a recent thread.

 

[Hadders]

Previous discussion from a few years ago, including a speculative idea to build a new station at Bessemer Road for use in the peaks!

Digswell Viaduct build a bypass tunnel?

Does Welwyn North not have 4tph stopping in the peak-flow direction? Or at least, it did! Possibly, in which case my numbers are wrong! The morning peak is less of an issue as the long distance service hasn’t warmed up by then. Evening peak is tricky. There’s about 400 houses in the area...

www.railforums.co.uk

 

[Magdalia]

I come late to this discussion. The 2 track section at Welwyn means that the ECML can't be simple, whether Welwyn North station is there or not.

replaced by extra Royston services which resulted in random Welwyn North and Knebworth calls appearing.

These date from the May 2009 timetable change, when FCC finally got their hands on some class 321s and the peak Cambridge/King Lynn trains could go 12 car. But at that time, of stations on the branch, only Royston on the up had a 12 car platform, hence the need for the extra Royston services.

There were not very many random calls. On the down 1650 Peterborough and 1823 Royston called at Welwyn North, 1714 and 1844 Peterborough called at Knebworth. On the up 0644 and 0743 ex Royston called at Knebworth, 0734 ex Royston called at Welwyn North.

The consistent extra 2tph calls I think only came in with the Baldock starters/terminators in the original 2018 Thameslink timetable.

The Welwyn North calls were and are a total sop

These were sops to Letchworth and Baldock passengers, not Knebworth and Welwyn North passengers. The Knebworth and Welwyn North calls are to fill up the trains.

It all changes again in December 2025. The first/last stop Welwyn North trains run through to/from Cambridge, it is the stoppers that terminate/start at Letchworth, apart from one in each direction that are through to/from Royston. This gives Cambridge a 6tph peak service with no overtaking.

But that does mean that GN/Thameslink do have 12tph for about 0700-0900 arrivals at Kings Cross/St Pancras, and about 1630-1830 for departures.

 

[RailWonderer]

It wouldn’t help, in fact it would make things worse. This has been explained on a recent thread.

But what about four tracking as soon as the tunnel ends rather than only on the approach to Knebworth, would this help reduce the bottleneck?

 

[Magdalia]

But what about four tracking as soon as the tunnel ends rather than only on the approach to Knebworth, would this help reduce the bottleneck?

It is 60 chains from the tunnel to the current junction, which has 70mph turnouts. Not all of that would be available for adding extra tracks.

The junction was moved as part of electrification, previously it was closer to the tunnel. I suspect that the junction was moved to increase the turnout speed

 

[Bald Rick]

But what about four tracking as soon as the tunnel ends rather than only on the approach to Knebworth, would this help reduce the bottleneck?

The junction was moved as part of electrification, previously it was closer to the tunnel. I suspect that the junction was moved to increase the turnout speed

Moving the turnouts closer to the tunnel means reducing their speed, and that means it takes longer to clear the junction. They are located where they are for a reason.

 

[Mitchell Hurd]

Many passengers would be against this; through trains are very popular. GC and HT have grown the market.

There are many reasons why passengers dislike changing; one of them is that connections generally speaking do not wait (though there are some exceptions), along with numerous other reasons.

Yep, and I can sense an uproar if LNER withdrew from Aberdeen and Inverness. Plus the Azumas are the highest capacity trains in normal service up there!

 

[Acfb]

As I alluded to in another thread, the WCML has a relatively simple intercity service with a clockface pattern and aside from North Wales is all operated using long trains. There are other services that use part of it, but this is true of the InterCity type service that uses the core congested section.

The ECML by contrast seems to be turning into a copy of Castlefield, with hourly (or less frequent) trains from everywhere to everywhere, except that one of the everywheres is London.

I'm not sure this is a positive thing.

Would we be better going back to basics and simplifying this to just 4tph Kings Cross to Leeds and 4tph Kings Cross to Edinburgh, all operated using 9 or 10 car 80x formations, and binning off all the random extensions and 5 car sets? I can't help but think we would - this would make it much more similar to the WCML.

I suppose extensions from Leeds and Edinburgh with full length trains aren't particularly harmful unless they're causing disruption, but do we really need the complexity of the Grand Centrals a few times of day to anywhere and everywhere, the LNER Lincoln and Lumo's 5 car service?

I'd note this thread is less about who is operating the random occasional short trains and more the fact that the pattern is complex. If Lumo went to an hourly ten-car as one of the four the objection as far as this thread would thus be removed.

I've wondered about train lengths, definitely XC which should all be doubled up and Lumo as well which I think should be allowed to have 9 or 10 carriages unless it's power supply/lack of rolling stock rather than DfT restrictions restricting them. I don't really use the ECML that much but I think maybe the East Lothian commuter stations should all have been built/extended to service 8 carriage trains at least.

I dont necessarily think the North Berwick really needs 2tph off peak for example before any proper infrastructure upgrades etc as I think 1tph 8 carriage trains off peak would suffice. If I go to places on the North Berwick Line I prefer the bus anyway as the time saving isn't as great with TPE to East Linton/Dunbar.

It would probably make sense to have TPE 802 sets in 7/8 car formations instead of 5 and have a properly 2 hourly Edinburgh-Newcastle Service as well.

I also think most of the Scotrail Dunbar services should be binned apart from the peak and Mon-Sat late evening ones as they have stupid fares compared to the subsidised TPE services.