Nottingham-Grantham-Skegness potential

[70014IronDuke]

nb - taken from this thread

https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/trivia-fewest-passengers-per-station-call.169853/

The Skegness line halts either serve school children, have a limited general flow or are basically historical leftovers.

Netherfield - little appetite for improvement due to poor road access and no disabled access but does have a number of people using it either in the peaks or for leisure flows (it's not unusual to pick up large groups heading for a day out in Skegness in the summer on the 0845 off Nottingham for example.as there's a well timed return train leaving Skegness at 1814).

Radcliffe - has had some improvements but has a comparatively good bus service so usage isn't great.

Elton and Orston - one or two occasional users. Not particularly well located and remote. Nearest feature of interest is an Indian restaurant. One of the few stations I know where it's totally forbidden to stop in the dark if the lighting fails in case you fall and hurt yourself and nobody finds you (I kid you not).

Ancaster - primarily school kids to Sleaford. Some commuters to Grantham and further afield.

Rauceby - school kids to Sleaford.

Swineshead - school kids to Sleaford.

Hubbert's Bridge - limited use to/from Boston and Sleaford, a small handful of school kids (much less than the other stations) and a few regular leisure passengers from Boston.

Thorpe Culvert and Havenhouse - there's very little at either. There's a couple of sporadic users at Thorpe Culvert but often they buy tickets to Wainfleet anyway - they often cycle to one of the other depending on time. Havenhouse has one or two farms nearby. The use can be described as occasional campers or people heading into Skegness if the car is off the road or similar.

Netherfield, Radcliffe, Ancaster and Rauceby could potentially do well out of a decent service (urban traffic issues could see a sensibly priced train picking up traffic at the first two, and there's significant housing growth at the latter two).

Swineshead - everyone drives. Schoolkids are catered for at the appropriate time of day.
Hubbert's Bridge - nothing much to build on. Stopping trains towards Sleaford cause big traffic problems owing to the level crossing.
Thorpe Culvert, Havenhouse, Elton and Orston - nothing much there any more.

A very interesting assessment.

Concentrating on the four highlighted as potentially worthy of a better service, what would you suggest? Additional stops? Obviously inserting these in current trains would make the overall service less attractive - and if traffic built up - does the current stock have the capacity for any significant increase in passenger flows?

Is there line capacity for additional trains if the stock could be found?

I see that ORR figures indicate a four-fold plus increase in pax at Rauceby in recent years, from 2,400 just a couple of years back to nearly 11,000 in 2016-17. OK, that's hardly earth shattering - but it's from just seven trains per day (four up, three down), with nowt on Sundays.

Perhaps the greatest claim for additional stops should be Bottesford in any case. It's second only to Bingham as the busiest station on the route (bar the biggies) with only half the service from much of the day and it still drums up 65,000 a year.

And the Sunday service is miserable. EMT has introduced some earlier trains of late, but they only stop at Bingham.

 

[gordonthemoron]

when I lived in Radcliffe in the 80s and 90s, the service was much better and there was a considerable number of users for the peak trains into/out of Nottingham. However, as it says above, TrentBarton have considerably upped their game

 

[xc170]

The whole route is like a time capsule once you get past Grantham, quite an interesting route really.

Only done the route in peak summer when it was standing room only given the amount of holiday makers Skegness attracts (no idea why!), I'm planning to do it again in Jan/Feb time to see what it's like out of season...

 

[Bald Rick]

Being a former resident of the Vale, and occasional victim of the A52 at peak time (many years ago, it must be worse now), I always thought that the stations between Grantham and Nottingham would be a good opportunity for a half hourly service in the peaks. Except Elton and Orston, obviously.

 

[thatapanydude]

I wouldn't mind a later service between Grantham and Nottingham around 11pm ish to cater for commuters coming from London via KGX. As the last connection at 9:50pm to Nottingham only gives you 5 mins leeway for any delays on the LNER connection.

 

[700007]

Somewhat related to this line, does anyone else think that a London King's Cross - Grantham - Nottingham service would be a success? Run by one of the open access operators on the ECML or LNER. With only stops at Stevenage, Grantham and Nottingham?

Tickets via Grantham are considerably cheaper and having a direct train with one operator will surely be able to make it even more cheaper to travel London to Nottingham, rivalling the fairly pricy (whilst I can understand why it is priced high, it just isn't value for money) East Midlands Trains service from London St Pancras.

Best journey times with those stops could take about 1h 40m which is pretty much exactly the same as the EMT service. Remove stops and I can imagine it would be a few minutes quicker. Would improve and encourage more people to use the line as well.

If the train was a regular (like every 2 hours) service and provided a once or twice a day service to and from Bingham, it would make the numbers go up I can only imagine?

Crayonista moment over.

 

[edwin_m]

This one comes up from time to time but it strikes me as a waste of ECML capacity. The existing service would still have to run to serve Leicester, and in the long term HS2 will take some of the Nottingham passengers. So trying to build up a third route to Nottingham is just wasting resources.

 

[Bald Rick]

Somewhat related to this line, does anyone else think that a London King's Cross - Grantham - Nottingham service would be a success? Run by one of the open access operators on the ECML or LNER. With only stops at Stevenage, Grantham and Nottingham?

Tickets via Grantham are considerably cheaper and having a direct train with one operator will surely be able to make it even more cheaper to travel London to Nottingham, rivalling the fairly pricy (whilst I can understand why it is priced high, it just isn't value for money) East Midlands Trains service from London St Pancras.

Best journey times with those stops could take about 1h 40m which is pretty much exactly the same as the EMT service. Remove stops and I can imagine it would be a few minutes quicker. Would improve and encourage more people to use the line as well.

If the train was a regular (like every 2 hours) service and provided a once or twice a day service to and from Bingham, it would make the numbers go up I can only imagine?

Crayonista moment over.

It wouldn’t be permitted, as it would fail the ‘abstractive’ test.

 

[70014IronDuke]

Somewhat related to this line, does anyone else think that a London King's Cross - Grantham - Nottingham service would be a success? Run by one of the open access operators on the ECML or LNER. With only stops at Stevenage, Grantham and Nottingham?

Tickets via Grantham are considerably cheaper and having a direct train with one operator will surely be able to make it even more cheaper to travel London to Nottingham, rivalling the fairly pricy (whilst I can understand why it is priced high, it just isn't value for money) East Midlands Trains service from London St Pancras.
...

By how much, do you know? Any idea how many/percentage of Notts-London passengers take the Grantham route?

Going back to the original topic - if we take out the summer seaside traffic to Skeggie - how much is this service merely two different local ones joined up, ie most traffic Skeggie-Boston-Sleaford-Grantham - empty train and then Grantham-small stations-Nottingham, or is through traffic of significants?

And does Skeggie generate much traffic outside the summer peak?