King's Cross post-Thameslink upgrade

[Lee505]

A question regarding the role of King's Cross following the completion of the Thameslink upgrade in 2018. With the current Cambridge/Peterborough-KX services diverted to run through St. Pancras (and on to the south of London) this will free up a lot of space at KX. How will this extra space be used? Will they simply add more services on Great Northern routes or more inter city services? There has been talk of increasing frequencies between London - Leeds/Newcastle/Edinburgh once the new East Coast franchise begins next year. The completion of the Thameslink upgrade would also correspond to the start of the IEP programme for the ECML so would make sense to maximise the extra capacity with more inter city services.

Any suggestions would be welcome.

 

[hotelmode]

A question regarding the role of King's Cross following the completion of the Thameslink upgrade in 2018. With the current Cambridge/Peterborough-KX services diverted to run through St. Pancras (and on to the south of London) this will free up a lot of space at KX. How will this extra space be used? Will they simply add more services on Great Northern routes or more inter city services? There has been talk of increasing frequencies between London - Leeds/Newcastle/Edinburgh once the new East Coast franchise begins next year. The completion of the Thameslink upgrade would also correspond to the start of the IEP programme for the ECML so would make sense to maximise the extra capacity with more inter city services.

Any suggestions would be welcome.

Does it do much apart from freeing up platform capacity at KX? North of gasworks tunnel it doesn't create any new capacity, especially at Welwyn viaduct.

 

[jopsuk]

I believe there's signalling work and timetable refinement to create more capacity at the viaduct- essential, as Cambridge gets two extra off-peak services an hour by 2018, all via Welwyn. Not sure if Peterborough gets more as well?

 

[philjo]

THere will still be a number of peak hour services to/from Kings Cross.

Not sure what the plans are for the Kings Lynn trains when they are operated by 377s - if these also become 12 car during the day they will have to use platforms 0-8 so it will the suburban 9-11 platforms what will not be used much off-peak - although GC or HT could use these as their trains are shorter.
probably also regular diversions each time there is a problem on the Moorgate branch as well!

 

[swt_passenger]

Post 'Thameslink' in 2018 there are also definite plans to increase services on the ECML. It is all covered in the last ECML franchise ITT, there's an initial Train Service Requirement (TSR1) and also TSR 2 by 2020 and following full Thameslink changes.

There's a closed thread about the ECML ITT here: http://www.railforums.co.uk/showthread.php?t=98239

There's some likelihood that GC will move to a fully 180 operated timetable, they could well find their home in what we currently refer to as the suburban platforms.