Hypothetical - Oldham loop line replacement route

[PR1Berske]

I meant some proper investment to sort out the Castlefield Corridor and expand Manchester Victoria station.

Unless you have access to a new site for the Arena, I assure you that Victoria is not going to be expanded.

"Sorting out" Castlefield is a good number of generations in the making, and a good number of generations yet to come in the realisation of any solution.

 

[Purple Orange]

Metrolink provides a decent frequency though a tunnel under manchester avoiding the streets would allow a greater frequency of trams.

Exactly. If the tunnel is built, I expect that the CLC (if converted) plus the ex-heavy rail lines from Altrincham & East Didsbury would use the tunnel. They would then flow on to Glossop, Rose Hill & Bury. Tram-trains might also run on the Altrincham, Bury & East Didsbury lines but those would run on to the city centre on-street lines rather than through the tunnel.

Potential light rail metro lines that could feed in to a tunnel:

• Warrington
• Glossop & Hadfield
• Atherton
• East Didsbury
• Altrincham
• Rose Hill

The remaining lines would see the tram-trains because they will share tracks with metro trains, i.e. metro trains run from East Didsbury, but between Chorlton & Cornbrook, tram-trains would also run on the line because in Wythenshawe and the city centre they would be using on-street lines.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 4 Apr 2021 ==

Unless you have access to a new site for the Arena, I assure you that Victoria is not going to be expanded.

"Sorting out" Castlefield is a good number of generations in the making, and a good number of generations yet to come in the realisation of any solution.

A new arena is being built, but the existing arena will stay.

 

[edwin_m]

Getting back to the original topic, I always thought it was a shame the Ashton-Oldham and Oldham-Greenfield lines were closed. If properly linked rather than retaining the pre-1923 service patterns, these could have formed a loop off the Transpennine main line. Semi-fasts could then run via Oldham and perhaps be overtaken by fasts via Stalybridge. The same could have been done with a route via Failsworth instead of Ashton, but that was always more suburban and slower trains would have been a problem.

Unfortunately both routes are now thoroughly lost, the most obvious problem being the housing estate between Lydgate Tunnel and Greenfield.

 

[Jorge Da Silva]

Getting back to the original topic, I always thought it was a shame the Ashton-Oldham and Oldham-Greenfield lines were closed. If properly linked rather than retaining the pre-1923 service patterns, these could have formed a loop off the Transpennine main line. Semi-fasts could then run via Oldham and perhaps be overtaken by fasts via Stalybridge. The same could have been done with a route via Failsworth instead of Ashton, but that was always more suburban and slower trains would have been a problem.

Unfortunately both routes are now thoroughly lost, the most obvious problem being the housing estate between Lydgate Tunnel and Greenfield.

Though both routes have been mentioned for potential reopening under Metrolink