How would a national regular interval timetable be planned?

[S&CLER]

Everyone who has looked at this idea seems to agree that it would have to start from a core of Bristol to Sheffield. My suggestion is that a half-hourly Bristol-Sheffield frequency from about 06:00 to 20:00 should call only at Bristol Parkway, Cheltenham, New Street and Derby. Alternative trains should continue to Leeds (and Bradford) and York/the north east. The Yorks should run either via Doncaster or Pontefract but please not via Leeds except early in the morning, late at night and early on Sunday mornings.

The WCML would have to be planned around New Street, with secondary hubs at Crewe, Preston and Manchester. Two tph from the WCML (not necessarily just Manchester) should continue south from New Street, one to Bristol (and beyond) and the other to the Thames Valley. Another train each hour should run from Thames valley stations to Sheffield and the northeast. The basic idea is at least 2 fast tph of sensible length, i.e. 8 cars, from New Street in all 4 directions. This would be overlaid by Cardiff-Nottingham semi-fasts, as now.

The Midland line would be timetabled around Derby and/or Sheffield. The ECML timetable would need to be planned backwards and forwards from York. East Anglia would pivot around hourly connections at Peterborough to Cambridge, Ipswich and Norwich.

The Southern is more problematic, but would probably have to start with Thameslink, which in turn needs to interact with the Midland.

A few self-contained TOCS, e.g. Merseyrail and C2C, and to a lesser extent Chiltern, could continue broadly as now.

Of course this would take about 10 years to introduce, since it would need infrastructure improvements on or adjoining the core routes, e.g. redoubling Droitwich-Stoke Works, the Camp Hill chords at Birmingham, maybe rebuilding Burton with 2 side platforms and centre through roads.

The other principle that ought to apply is that services should be planned as pairs of trains, up and down, with no unbalanced workings if at all possible and no services with through trains in only one direction (e.g. the ill-fated Ormskirk-Blackpool and Colne 3-legged diagrams).

I look forward to being shot down in flames.

 

[Ianno87]

We already basically have one on most main routes....?

Start introducing two-hourly variations (like CrossCountry was until 2008) then you lose capacity at key nodes like Birmingham.Nrw Street.

 

[The Planner]

You couldn't do it without monstrous amounts of infrastructure around the country and even then it would be pretty much fixed for ever as the implications of altering something would be massive, whereas the pretty much regular regional stuff is there now. To centre everything around XC would be bonkers anyway.

 

[AndrewE]

You couldn't do it without monstrous amounts of infrastructure around the country and even then it would be pretty much fixed for ever as the implications of altering something would be massive, whereas the pretty much regular regional stuff is there now. To centre everything around XC would be bonkers anyway.

That's rather a London-centred perspective! Given that most of the main lines have termini in London it doesn't really matter what actual times trains come and go from them (apart from the convenience of clockface timetables.) Given that XC crosses all the main lines at important nodes I agree that it seems sensible to start with the non-London spine.
However it would be nice to have some infrastructure improvements to put the radial main lines back onto easily-remembered departure times.

 

[The Planner]

That's rather a London-centred perspective! Given that most of the main lines have termini in London it doesn't really matter what actual times trains come and go from them (apart from the convenience of clockface timetables.) Given that XC crosses all the main lines at important nodes I agree that it seems sensible to start with the non-London spine.
However it would be nice to have some infrastructure improvements to put the radial main lines back onto easily-remembered departure times.

It isn't London centric at all, for example the suggestion is that the WCML would need to be centred on New St, it wouldn't as Rugby is still the pivot point. If you build it around XC then the timetable has to be built around New St, Standish, Westerleigh, Derby, Sheffield, Cheadle Hulme etc...

 

[tasky]

What would the actual advantage of a pure national interval clockface timetable be? It's not immediately obvious that it would be better than a hybrid system where we try to be regular on major routes but allow a bit of flexibility as well to serve more destinations

 

[Bletchleyite]

What would the actual advantage of a pure national interval clockface timetable be? It's not immediately obvious that it would be better than a hybrid system where we try to be regular on major routes but allow a bit of flexibility as well to serve more destinations

Simplicity, and ease of understanding, as well as (if you go for the full "Taktfahrplan" concept rather than simply regular interval) connections being timed to meet connections based on providing connectivity.

 

[Meerkat]

Simplicity, and ease of understanding, as well as (if you go for the full "Taktfahrplan" concept rather than simply regular interval) connections being timed to meet connections based on providing connectivity.

Does simplicity matter anymore as most users will look at their phones?
And surely connections just require some desire to do it rather than standard hourly plans?
It seems to me to be a ‘nice to have’ if you have a system with spare capacity.

 

[yorkie]

That's rather a London-centred perspective!...

No. It's a sensible, rational, accurate perspective from someone with a lot of relevant experience in this field.

 

[Bletchleyite]

No. It's a sensible, rational, accurate perspective from someone with a lot of relevant experience in this field.

Arguably any such plan should be centred around WCML and ECML InterCity services and London commuter services more generally, as these carry the most passengers.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Does simplicity matter anymore as most users will look at their phones?

Yes, because it's nice to look at your phone and see "Oh, my train home is at 25 past every hour until 25 past midnight" rather than having to replan each time your plans change.

It is true that journey planners and mobile phones reduce the need for clockface timetables, and it's probably also true that InterCity services where most people are on Advances don't necessarily gain from them as much (ironic, then, that the WCML IC service is fully clockface other than at the extreme start/end of the day), but that doesn't take the benefits of them away entirely.

And surely connections just require some desire to do it rather than standard hourly plans?

It's simpler to plan that using a standard hour, though.

 

[MarkyT]

Speed and frequency matter as much as planned connections. On XC for instance, the half-hourly frequencies on most major links in the core network during the day ensure a maximum connectional wait into and out of other services of 30 minutes. It's a little frustrating for a seasoned traveller when it's over 20 minutes, but at large complex hubs like Birmingham NS that's not unreasonable for an average customer to transfer and perhaps buy a decent coffee and a magazine en route. People always think Switzerland when talking takt, and they did invent the concept to be fair, after previously having a very complex and seemingly arbritrary timetable (that nevertheless had good connections at its heart), but remember the entire country is smaller than the former Southern Region, and the major three-city triangle around which the hourly takt cycle was based was already tantalising close to the sub-hour travelling time, so a little investment in modest speed cutoffs was sufficient to make the change. Some interchanges at the major hubs are a little tight though for inexperienced passengers however, and contrary to perceptions they won't wait for stragglers, and it's not a universal panacea, as long connectional waits at some smaller junctions still apply. 40 minutes I remember somewhere out in the North East of the country on one journey. Regular clockface departures are very important for memorability regardless of mobile information services which are also extremely important today for realtime updates and replanning. The two work together to help make rail and other public transport a viable competitor to private motoring.

 

[hexagon789]

Everyone who has looked at this idea seems to agree that it would have to start from a core of Bristol to Sheffield. My suggestion is that a half-hourly Bristol-Sheffield frequency from about 06:00 to 20:00 should call only at Bristol Parkway, Cheltenham, New Street and Derby. Alternative trains should continue to Leeds (and Bradford) and York/the north east. The Yorks should run either via Doncaster or Pontefract but please not via Leeds except early in the morning, late at night and early on Sunday mornings.

The WCML would have to be planned around New Street, with secondary hubs at Crewe, Preston and Manchester. Two tph from the WCML (not necessarily just Manchester) should continue south from New Street, one to Bristol (and beyond) and the other to the Thames Valley. Another train each hour should run from Thames valley stations to Sheffield and the northeast. The basic idea is at least 2 fast tph of sensible length, i.e. 8 cars, from New Street in all 4 directions. This would be overlaid by Cardiff-Nottingham semi-fasts, as now.

The Midland line would be timetabled around Derby and/or Sheffield. The ECML timetable would need to be planned backwards and forwards from York. East Anglia would pivot around hourly connections at Peterborough to Cambridge, Ipswich and Norwich.

The Southern is more problematic, but would probably have to start with Thameslink, which in turn needs to interact with the Midland.

A few self-contained TOCS, e.g. Merseyrail and C2C, and to a lesser extent Chiltern, could continue broadly as now.

Of course this would take about 10 years to introduce, since it would need infrastructure improvements on or adjoining the core routes, e.g. redoubling Droitwich-Stoke Works, the Camp Hill chords at Birmingham, maybe rebuilding Burton with 2 side platforms and centre through roads.

The other principle that ought to apply is that services should be planned as pairs of trains, up and down, with no unbalanced workings if at all possible and no services with through trains in only one direction (e.g. the ill-fated Ormskirk-Blackpool and Colne 3-legged diagrams).

I look forward to being shot down in flames.

BR looked at it in the early 1980s, but each region effectively said that while they supported it in principle, their 'best' trains had to leave at the traditional times. The Flying Scotsman at 1000 and so on.

Various other disagreements led to it never being adopted nationally though ScotRail adopted a fairly regular interval timetable for internal workings from May 1982.

 

[Bletchleyite]

BR looked at it in the early 1980s, but each region effectively said that while they supported it in principle, their 'best' trains had to leave at the traditional times. The Flying Scotsman at 1000 and so on.

Various other disagreements led to it never being adopted nationally though ScotRail adopted a fairly regular interval timetable for internal workings from 1984.

Completely missing the point, of course, as in a Taktfahrplan you don't have a "best train", they are all the same. There is a train from X to Y calling at Z at N minutes past every hour from start to end of service. That said, it doesn't preclude naming services as DB did in the past.

 

[hexagon789]

Completely missing the point, of course, as in a Taktfahrplan you don't have a "best train", they are all the same. There is a train from X to Y calling at Z at N minutes past every hour from start to end of service. That said, it doesn't preclude naming services as DB did in the past.

Well exactly, the regions accepted that for a national timetable you might need the King's Cross-Edinburghs to leave at say XX:09 or something, but they weren't apparently willing to give up their 'best' trains.

I did post something along these lines in a previous thread, the information came from a book but I suspect it's one of no longer possess as I couldn't find the piece last time when I looked for it again

 

[The Planner]

Completely missing the point, of course, as in a Taktfahrplan you don't have a "best train", they are all the same. There is a train from X to Y calling at Z at N minutes past every hour from start to end of service. That said, it doesn't preclude naming services as DB did in the past.

Except most long distance TOCs have a flagship service which is worth a lot more cash to them which they would cling on to.

 

[tbtc]

I can see some merit in the OP's idea.

For example, at the moment there's an hourly Edinburgh - Plymouth service, leaving Waverley at around xx:08 and returning from Plymouth at around xx:27, taking around 8h40 (slightly slower northbound).

There's little chance of speeding this up because any line improvements on one stretch just mean you sit around longer at the next junction as you wait to join/cross the next main line. Spend money on the ECML and the XC service will end up with more of a dwell at York as it waits to slot into the existing arrangement of services towards Leeds. You can increase the line speed through Cheltenham but then sit outside Bristol Parkway for an extra few minutes because the existing GWR services would stop it from getting much further.

So some longer distance "cross country" journeys have uncompetitive journey times because XC are waiting five minutes here, seven minutes there... it all adds up.

I'm not saying you could shave half an hour off the Edinburgh - Plymouth journey (or that there are thousands of people traveling from Edinburgh to Plymouth), but it'd be interesting to see how the timetable would look if you gave XC first dibs on paths. Otherwise XC are always going to be the bridesmaids, needing fast accelerating 125mph stock to meet their current paths but with tedious dwells at several intermediate stations as they wait to transition from one TOC's territory into the next TOC's territory.

On one level, it doesn't matter too much if the other TOCs have to shift *all* of their services forward or back by five minutes (because they'd work just as well if *everything* was shifted by the same time), but the prestige of having your flagship service departing a central London station at xx:00 must be quite significant!

 

[Bletchleyite]

So some longer distance "cross country" journeys have uncompetitive journey times because XC are waiting five minutes here, seven minutes there... it all adds up.

Which they need to do, otherwise their punctuality is going to start looking like LNR's Liverpool-Euston services. Most countries with workable Taktfahrplaene have a lot of slack in their timetabling and infrastructure, and that is how it is workable. You can't have trains running 400 miles with 1 minute station stops all the way and have a workable Takt.

 

[JonathanH]

However, with XC, we have just seen a pretty significant time saving on the Reading to Newcastle service in some hours simply by having it leave Birmingham New Street two minutes earlier and get through Derby quicker. As a result it ends up in a completely different path from Doncaster with a materially quicker overall time.

Therefore, the right enhancement can result in a time saving.

The problem with the Edinburgh to Plymouth path is the number of difficult places it needs to thread through particularly Leeds.

 

[30907]

Back in 1974 (?) when Taktfahrplan Schweiz first got reported in Modern Railways, I started thinking on these lines, and likewise assumed that New Street would be the lynchpin (the cross-connecting pattern NW/NE-SE/SW had just been introduced - these days I think you would ignore that, with the increaae frequencies). Some slightly random thoughts:
1. Even without Taktfahrplan, there are hardly any sacrosanct times or stopping patterns (Gerry Fiennes moved the 10am from LST to 9.30 around 1953, the Cornish Riviera hasn't left at 10.30 for years...).
2. The mirror-image pattern conflicts with the preference of TOCs for interval departure times - I can see the argument both ways.
3. The Swiss (and possible German) models are based on - by modern UK standards - relatively low frequencies: for example there is only one non-stop Bern-Zurich an hour.
4. The infrastructure has to be right. Forget the new lines (though they do matter), the key centres have to be right. Bern was rebuilt in the mid 60s, Zurich had major work then (and more since).... in Germany the big problem is Cologne Hbf which is overloaded.

 

[tbtc]

Which they need to do, otherwise their punctuality is going to start looking like LNR's Liverpool-Euston services. Most countries with workable Taktfahrplaene have a lot of slack in their timetabling and infrastructure, and that is how it is workable. You can't have trains running 400 miles with 1 minute station stops all the way and have a workable Takt.

Nobody is arguing for station dwells of just one minute though.

However, as an example, the Edinburgh - Plymouth service waits almost fifteen minutes at Bristol - Reading to Newcastle services sit twelve minutes at Derby - there's a difference between "acceptable dwell times, with a couple of extra minutes thrown in for recovery" and "painfully long wait that makes train travel look uncompetitive".

We spend large sums of money shaving a minute here and a minute there off journey times but then have a timetable that doesn't translate those savings into faster journeys for passengers because they just end up sat ten minutes at the next station.

There's obviously got to be a balance between optimistic/pessimistic dwell times but I can certainly see the argument that centring the timetable on XC (or maybe starting with all TOCs based on fixed paths through New Street and working outwards from there?) would permit some decent improvements to be made (e.g. there's much moaning on here about thirteen minute wait at Wolves on the Glasgow - Euston services but there must be others around the country)

 

[dm1]

3. The Swiss (and possible German) models are based on - by modern UK standards - relatively low frequencies: for example there is only one non-stop Bern-Zurich an hour.

For correctness - there are two - departing at XX:02 and XX:32 of each hour.

There are another 5 journey possibilities that the journey planner suggests (although most of them don't save very much time compared to waiting for the next direct train, generally taking around 01:20 compared to 00:56.

4. The infrastructure has to be right. Forget the new lines (though they do matter), the key centres have to be right. Bern was rebuilt in the mid 60s, Zurich had major work then (and more since).... in Germany the big problem is Cologne Hbf which is overloaded.

That is very true. It is a sight to behold seeing the main trainshed in Zürich HB go from completely full to completely empty in the space of about 20 mins (before the XX:30 Takt takes over ). Most major British termini are undersized or overused compared to what would be needed to have a proper Taktplan there.

In Switzerland the general philosophy is to build the infrastructure that enables the service they want to run. In the UK for a variety of reasons (among them historical ones) it's more the other way around - the service is run that the infrastructure can support.

In Switzerland there is also a focus on reliability as opposed to trying to offer the shortest possible journey times (it is considered better to timetable a service to take 60 minutes that can be on time 95+% of the time than to timetable it to take 50 minutes and be late 20% of the time). 'Hot spares' are timetabled at key locations to take over if a train is significantly delayed (often the case for the international trains on their return journeys) in order to prevent delays from cascading where possible (this again means you not only need the extra trains and staff to do this, but also the platform capacity to allow the spare train and the delayed train to be platformed at the same time without getting in each others' way.

In the chase to offer as many services as possible while avoiding investing in the infrastructure, reliability has suffered considerably in the UK. I think within it's unrealistic to expect that to change in the near future - and I'm not sure the benefits of a Taktfahrplan would even be worth the effort . It only really makes sense when entire end-to-end journeys are synchronised, and without an integrated transport system that includes local public transport as well I doubt it's worth it.

 

[Romsey]

Various posters have hinted why the Swiss Takfahrplan works.
A quick summary and then think about our fragmented industry
1) Heavy investment. Zurich Hbf has been in a state of rebuilding ever since I first visited in 1980! There are many other schemes apart from the "glory" civil engineering of the base tunnels. A new line under Luzern making the Hbf a through station and new tunnels on the RhB and numerous double tracking and power supply upgrades, all with the aim of increased reliability.
2) Operating flexibility of one traction system.
3) Standby trains. When that section of new tunnel on the Rhine Valley route DB route to Basel collapsed, SBB stepped in within a couple of hours with standby trains to keep the standard pattern service running. They might have been an Re4/4 with EW11 ( the equivalent of mark 1's) instead of an ICE1 set, but there was a service at the booked time. BLS in the 1980's used to do something similar most days for late running from Italy.....
4) Government and the population largely believe in the system and the wider net of connecting buses, trams and ferries. Major schemes like the Lotschberg and Goitthard base tunnels had to get approval in cantonal and federation referendums.
5) Increasing traffic which was encouraged by a standard plan. ( Which is a considerable problem.) 50% discount cards are available to anyone who isn't entitled by reason of age, military service disability etc. Think what that does to the demand for commuting longer distances and weekend traffic.
6) Through ticketing onto tram and bus systems.

Now consider if our fractured railway and political system; how would they cope with these attitudes?

For light reading, this is the 2020 timetable in graphical form.
https://www.fahrplanfelder.ch/fileadmin/fap_pdf/Netzgrafik/Netzgrafik2020.pdf
With this, you don't need a timetable , printed or electronic.

PS Timetables in graphic form, complete with freight services....
https://www.fahrplanfelder.ch/en/archives/graphic-timetables.html

 

[Dr Day]

Some very valid points, particularly in relation to wider transport integration. Looking at it from a demand rather than a supply perspective however, would passengers prefer more trains when they actually need them, ie a variable (advertised) provision from say 1-4 tph depending on the time of day/day of week/season rather than a fixed provision every hour across the day? I fully appreciate there are major capacity and cost constraints preventing this in practice, but as we are in speculative ideas should we tailor supply more to demand rather than yield manage fares etc the other way around? If rail is serious about getting people out of cars then it needs to be able to compete on frequency, ie having more trains when more people want them rather than when it suits the railway to operate them.

 

[AndrewE]

Some very valid points, particularly in relation to wider transport integration. Looking at it from a demand rather than a supply perspective however, would passengers prefer more trains when they actually need them, ie a variable (advertised) provision from say 1-4 tph depending on the time of day/day of week/season rather than a fixed provision every hour across the day? I fully appreciate there are major capacity and cost constraints preventing this in practice, but as we are in speculative ideas should we tailor supply more to demand rather than yield manage fares etc the other way around? If rail is serious about getting people out of cars then it needs to be able to compete on frequency, ie having more trains when more people want them rather than when it suits the railway to operate them.

The Swiss diagram is brilliant, but obviously depends on an almost complete takt. There are rush-hour services on it in quite a few places though, shown by dot-and-dash lines, so they are not disallowed by the sysytem.

 

[tasky]

Yes, because it's nice to look at your phone and see "Oh, my train home is at 25 past every hour until 25 past midnight" rather than having to replan each time your plans change.

It is true that journey planners and mobile phones reduce the need for clockface timetables, and it's probably also true that InterCity services where most people are on Advances don't necessarily gain from them as much (ironic, then, that the WCML IC service is fully clockface other than at the extreme start/end of the day), but that doesn't take the benefits of them away entirely.



It's simpler to plan that using a standard hour, though.

Yes I do think timing for connections is a significant advantage and something countries like Switzerland with regular timetables get right – though it doesn't necessarily require (or follow from) a regular interval timetable (other factors like having a lot of padding in the timetable for reliability seem just as, if not more important).

I think you put it right on the journey planner issue that "it's nice" to be able to say trains are on a regular timetable... but I wouldn't go any further than "nice", and compromising on other things like capacity or variety of direct destinations, or different services in the peak, or directing large amounts of investment towards the end seems like going a bit too far to me.

 

[Indigo Soup]

On one level, it doesn't matter too much if the other TOCs have to shift *all* of their services forward or back by five minutes (because they'd work just as well if *everything* was shifted by the same time), but the prestige of having your flagship service departing a central London station at xx:00 must be quite significant!

Of course, the chances of the Takt lining up to allow all the London operators an xx:00 departure are slim to nil.

There are rush-hour services on it in quite a few places though, shown by dot-and-dash lines, so they are not disallowed by the sysytem.

Likewise I believe there's no theoretical difficulty in providing for 'prima donna' services to run outside the Taktfahrplan, though practical issues may say otherwise.

One of the other aspects of a Taktfahrplan is, as I understand it, giving up on having lots of direct trains to different destinations. By designing around reliable journey times and connections, capacity is enhanced on the bits that need long, frequent trains without dragging them near-empty around random branch lines. That would be a hard sell in Britain where people want direct trains because they don't believe the connection will actually work as advertised.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I think you put it right on the journey planner issue that "it's nice" to be able to say trains are on a regular timetable... but I wouldn't go any further than "nice", and compromising on other things like capacity or variety of direct destinations, or different services in the peak, or directing large amounts of investment towards the end seems like going a bit too far to me.

I would say that a reliable hourly or half-hourly connection is better than a few through trains per day on any given route. I don't for instance get the point of Blackpool Pendolinos, and nor in my observation do passengers as the things carry fresh air. People change at Preston for an hourly service, or Manchester for 3tph and cheaper fares.

Capacity is provided by running long enough trains. Until regional trains are 240m long or thereabouts, it's time to prioritise that over excessive frequencies and through trains from everywhere to everywhere (the flawed Northern model).

You can put peak extras in a Takt, you put them between the clockface trains. Or if you add them you can do what used to be the case at Euston 10 years ago or so and insert an extra half hourly all stations stopper and drop some stops from the half hourly longer distance stopper at peak hours. It's not quite Takt, but "my trains are at 24 and 54 except in the rush hour when it's 10 and 40" is still quite memorable.

 

[ChiefPlanner]

Almost an idealistic , "purist" context - and it has been looked at in some depth over the years for a British "concept" - this concept having been "sold" quite hard by those who were abroad. .

Have personally investigated the Swiss and Dutch practices with their planning people - the former is fairly straightforward , the latter slightly less so and they pointed out that to meet the "regular" headways in the "Randstadt" , you were moving pretty empty trains from the further points to make service in the busier sections. Yes , I know Holland is a fairly compact country. They have also continually improved their network with a degree of new multi-track sections and grade seperation that we can only dream of. Plus dedicated HS and freight routes.

So - it "can work" in certain cases , but the ability to target flows and trains can be limited.

A base "takt" for the ECML was drawn up , with improved services built on "bespoke" services where known extra business was available and resourcable. The latter , when run through established revenue generation models delivered much better financial returns for a "takt"

Having said that the LSWR got it right in 1916 with the "Riverside Electrics" , the SER in the Edwardian era and the SPT for Wales brought in for Arriva has lasted quite well (albeit with some subtle changes here and there)

 

[S&CLER]

Almost an idealistic , "purist" context - and it has been looked at in some depth over the years for a British "concept" - this concept having been "sold" quite hard by those who were abroad. .

Have personally investigated the Swiss and Dutch practices with their planning people - the former is fairly straightforward , the latter slightly less so and they pointed out that to meet the "regular" headways in the "Randstadt" , you were moving pretty empty trains from the further points to make service in the busier sections. Yes , I know Holland is a fairly compact country. They have also continually improved their network with a degree of new multi-track sections and grade separation that we can only dream of. Plus dedicated HS and freight routes.

So - it "can work" in certain cases , but the ability to target flows and trains can be limited.

A base "takt" for the ECML was drawn up , with improved services built on "bespoke" services where known extra business was available and resourcable. The latter , when run through established revenue generation models delivered much better financial returns for a "takt"

Having said that the LSWR got it right in 1916 with the "Riverside Electrics" , the SER in the Edwardian era and the SPT for Wales brought in for Arriva has lasted quite well (albeit with some subtle changes here and there)

The NS system (2739 route km in 1995, last figure I have easily to hand) is about the same size as the old Southern Region without the withered arm, but it has nothing like the complexities of South London to cope with. When I lived at 3 places in the Randstad (The Hague, Leiden and Gouda) at various times in the 1970s I read that the Dutch intercity system had been designed by taking the 50 (I think, figure may not be quite accurate) busiest stations and devising the most efficient pattern of fast, frequent, interconnecting links between them. Not only was the timetable itself very convenient, but the timetable book was also one of the best in Europe. Of course national timetable books are obsolete now. But living in a country where public transport was properly managed, and travelling every line of railway in it, left me with a feeling that a standard interval timetable could work in the UK.
Thanks for all your replies; I did say I expected to be shot down.