TfW recast - service suggestions

[4-SUB 4732]

Not reading massively into everything so far, I had a good peak at capacity available and found that you could:
- Offer a two-hourly Cardiff to Holyhead 'Premier' service, which from Newport would only call at Cwmbran, Abergavenny, Hereford, Shrewsbury and Wrexham to Chester.
- Use the 'other' two-hourly slot for a Cardiff to Liverpool service, which from Newport would call Cwmbran, Pontypool, Abergavenny, Hereford, Ludlow, Shrewsbury and all stations to Chester.
- Slotting a path in behind the Holyhead 'Premier' at Shrewsbury for a two-hourly Shrewsbury to Liverpool service, therefore giving hourly Shrewsbury to Liverpool via Wrexham and hourly service to local stops between Shrewsbury and Chester. It also offers a same-platform interchange meaning effectively an hourly Cardiff / Newport to Gobowen / Chirk (etc.) service.
- An hourly Milford / Carmarthen to Manchester (as now) calling all stations Newport - Shrewsbury (except Pontypool). North of Shrewsbury calling only at Wem, Whitchurch and Nantwich into Crewe.
- A two-hourly Carmarthen to Crewe via Llanelli, Llandrindod Wells and Shrewsbury service calling at all local stations between Carmarthen and Llanelli, with a four-hourly 'all stations' service interweaving with a four-hourly 'semi-fast' service (only way to make it work, but equally giving roughly two-hourly service to Pontarddulais, Pantyffynon, Llandybie, Ammanford, Llandeilo, Llandovery, Llanwrtyd, Builth, Llandrindod Wells and Knighton.).

So, with your two-hourly 'premier' path from Holyhead to Cardiff, you could quite easily offer a consequential two-hourly Holyhead to Crewe (using the path for Avanti West Coast, even?), the standard hourly Llandudno to Manchester via Warrington and then an hourly Bangor to Chester 'stopper' service, perhaps. In addition, the standard two-hourly Blaenau is to Llandudno Junction only (53-56 minute journey times so self-contained into the branch explicitly). To finish, to service 'small stations', there's a two-hourly "every lamp post" (think Rhosneigr etc) Holyhead to Llandudno via Llandudno Junction (journey time 70 minutes) with a fill-in Llandudno Junction shuttle, meaning an hourly service to Deganwy. This would be two units on two diagrams (four hour circuits).

I think what this demonstrates is a small bit of 'out of the box thinking' actually gives you all the services you desire, at a seemingly very low additional cost. Problems:
- Blaenau doesn't get a through service to Llandudno (town): Simply time trains to have very short interchanges at Llandudno Junction.
- Not enough 'Premier' sets for the Holyhead service (probably needs 5 sets): Let's be honest, there's enough stock out there to make 6 sets if needed.
- No direct service from Llandudno to Liverpool and vice versa: Well, admittedly it's not pretty but again just interchange people at decent times.

 

[4-SUB 4732]

Not reading massively into everything so far, I had a good peak at capacity available and found that you could:
- Offer a two-hourly Cardiff to Holyhead 'Premier' service, which from Newport would only call at Cwmbran, Abergavenny, Hereford, Shrewsbury and Wrexham to Chester.
- Use the 'other' two-hourly slot for a Cardiff to Liverpool service, which from Newport would call Cwmbran, Pontypool, Abergavenny, Hereford, Ludlow, Shrewsbury and all stations to Chester.
- Slotting a path in behind the Holyhead 'Premier' at Shrewsbury for a two-hourly Shrewsbury to Liverpool service, therefore giving hourly Shrewsbury to Liverpool via Wrexham and hourly service to local stops between Shrewsbury and Chester. It also offers a same-platform interchange meaning effectively an hourly Cardiff / Newport to Gobowen / Chirk (etc.) service.
- An hourly Milford / Carmarthen to Manchester (as now) calling all stations Newport - Shrewsbury (except Pontypool). North of Shrewsbury calling only at Wem, Whitchurch and Nantwich into Crewe.
- A two-hourly Carmarthen to Crewe via Llanelli, Llandrindod Wells and Shrewsbury service calling at all local stations between Carmarthen and Llanelli, with a four-hourly 'all stations' service interweaving with a four-hourly 'semi-fast' service (only way to make it work, but equally giving roughly two-hourly service to Pontarddulais, Pantyffynon, Llandybie, Ammanford, Llandeilo, Llandovery, Llanwrtyd, Builth, Llandrindod Wells and Knighton.).

So, with your two-hourly 'premier' path from Holyhead to Cardiff, you could quite easily offer a consequential two-hourly Holyhead to Crewe (using the path for Avanti West Coast, even?), the standard hourly Llandudno to Manchester via Warrington and then an hourly Bangor to Chester 'stopper' service, perhaps. In addition, the standard two-hourly Blaenau is to Llandudno Junction only (53-56 minute journey times so self-contained into the branch explicitly). To finish, to service 'small stations', there's a two-hourly "every lamp post" (think Rhosneigr etc) Holyhead to Llandudno via Llandudno Junction (journey time 70 minutes) with a fill-in Llandudno Junction shuttle, meaning an hourly service to Deganwy. This would be two units on two diagrams (four hour circuits).

I think what this demonstrates is a small bit of 'out of the box thinking' actually gives you all the services you desire, at a seemingly very low additional cost. Problems:
- Blaenau doesn't get a through service to Llandudno (town): Simply time trains to have very short interchanges at Llandudno Junction.
- Not enough 'Premier' sets for the Holyhead service (probably needs 5 sets): Let's be honest, there's enough stock out there to make 6 sets if needed.
- No direct service from Llandudno to Liverpool and vice versa: Well, admittedly it's not pretty but again just interchange people at decent times.

Forgot to mention a standard hourly Abersytwyth - Birmingham path...

 

[6Gman]

You could either build a siding, or reverse it down the Heart of Wales line and use that as an ad-hoc siding

I have a feeling that keeping within the manning agreement (e.g. hours of continuous work, Physical Needs Breaks etc) would be a challenge.

 

[TheWalrus]

I quote:
In my view unless the service on a line is in excess of 0.5tph (1tp2h) all trains should call at all stations.

Therefore lines like Wick, Conwy Valley etc should be all-stations (request if appropriate) stoppers throughout. Basically, the minimum service at any given station should either be 0.5tph (averaged over the operating day) or all trains that pass that station in passenger service, whichever is lower. If that cannot be justified, get rid.

So on the HOWL all trains should call at all stations (as I recall they do). On the Marches and similar lines, the smaller stations need to receive a minimum of 0.5tph.

I also quote from your post:
“Any station not justifying that should be closed.”
So realistically how many stations on HOWL would actually justify the cost and time penalty of calling trains 1tp2h? So my quote of you wouldn’t have many stations left, was referring to this and if you were to take this approach, you would probably close most of the stations.

 

[Esker-pades]

I also quote from your post:
“Any station not justifying that should be closed.”
So realistically how many stations on HOWL would actually justify the cost and time penalty of calling trains 1tp2h? So my quote of you wouldn’t have many stations left, was referring to this and if you were to take this approach, you would probably close most of the stations.

To note, there are a number of stations that trains have to stop at anyway to operate the crossings. That's why places like Ffairfach are request northbound, but mandatory southbound.

What counts as justifying 1tp2h? Going by patronage is possibly problematic given that the current sparse service could supress demand.

Once those two are decided, you're not actually going to be left with many to close.

 

[krus_aragon]

Not reading massively into everything so far, I had a good peak at capacity available and found that you could:
- Offer a two-hourly Cardiff to Holyhead 'Premier' service, which from Newport would only call at Cwmbran, Abergavenny, Hereford, Shrewsbury and Wrexham to Chester.
- Use the 'other' two-hourly slot for a Cardiff to Liverpool service, which from Newport would call Cwmbran, Pontypool, Abergavenny, Hereford, Ludlow, Shrewsbury and all stations to Chester.
- Slotting a path in behind the Holyhead 'Premier' at Shrewsbury for a two-hourly Shrewsbury to Liverpool service, therefore giving hourly Shrewsbury to Liverpool via Wrexham and hourly service to local stops between Shrewsbury and Chester. It also offers a same-platform interchange meaning effectively an hourly Cardiff / Newport to Gobowen / Chirk (etc.) service.

...

So, with your two-hourly 'premier' path from Holyhead to Cardiff, you could quite easily offer a consequential two-hourly Holyhead to Crewe (using the path for Avanti West Coast, even?), the standard hourly Llandudno to Manchester via Warrington and then an hourly Bangor to Chester 'stopper' service, perhaps. In addition, the standard two-hourly Blaenau is to Llandudno Junction only (53-56 minute journey times so self-contained into the branch explicitly). To finish, to service 'small stations', there's a two-hourly "every lamp post" (think Rhosneigr etc) Holyhead to Llandudno via Llandudno Junction (journey time 70 minutes) with a fill-in Llandudno Junction shuttle, meaning an hourly service to Deganwy. This would be two units on two diagrams (four hour circuits).

A lot of that sounds similar to the example timetable I posted up-thread, with the exception that I tried to stick rigidly to what TfW have announced they're going to do and/or what's in the Train Service Requirements (so Holyhead-Birmingham continues, Llandudno-Liverpool exists, and Manchester trains run to Bangor).

I'm particularly taken by the fact that where I tried hard not to have Shrewsbury-Liverpool trains flighted with Holyhead trains through Wrexham, you've sought it out as being a good idea.

If you were to swap the Holyhead-Birmingham for a Holyhead-Crewe (which I'm not that averse to, myself: start the Birmingham service from Chester instead), you probably wouldn't want to use the empty Avani paths, as Avanti still need them between Chester and Crewe!

 

[krus_aragon]

(quoting in a different thread to avoid topic drift in the original)

"new all-stop commuter services to complement faster long distance services running on an upgraded, electrified mainline". Some joined up thinking going on here; NOT. I expect additional Chester-Llandudno/Holyhead stoppers would need to be overtaken by fast trains and Network Rail recently removed at least one location where that could have happened (in one direction anyway)

You can still get a lot done with the current infrastructure. And everything in that announcement is stuff that we've already been told, more or less.

Current non-stop services between Llandudno Jn and Chester (e.g 1736 ex-LLJ) take 40 minutes; an all-stops service needs an extra 12. As current planned services only go as far as 4tph east of Llandudno Jn (including the AWC path), that can be diagrammed by sending the stoppers out just after the fast or semi-fast services. See my example timetable upthread for an implementation of this with one stopper and three semi-fasts.

When experimenting with the above timetable, I found Llandudno Junction was nicely situated for letting an express Euston service pass an all-stops train from Holyhead, when leaving Holyhead 20 minutes apart (which is pretty much what you need to leave anyway, given the long block between Valley and Gaerwen). Heading down toward Holyhead, the stopper would need to be held at LLJ until ~10 minutes after the express service left, to give it time to clear the long section before the stopper got there.

Looking further into the future, if we see real metro-style frequencies at the eastern end of the NWCL, services may turn back at Rhyl rather than run through to Llandudno Jn. While that can now be done from either platform, the only way for trains to pass it during its turnaround time (without shunting) would be for them to miss Rhyl, running through on the down line.

 

[algytaylor]

Thinking about a North-East Wales Metro, I'd go for an ambitious program:
Shrewsbury to Chester via Wrexham line:
- 1tph Liverpool to Shrewsbury/Cardiff
- 1tph Holyhead to Birmingham/Cardiff
- 2tph Crewe to Chester/Wrexham Central (terminate at General until they upgrade the line to allow it!)

Borderlands line:
- 2tph Wrexham Central to Liverpool
- 2tph Shotton to Liverpool (electrify line to Shotton)

North Wales Coast
- 1tph Holyhead to Birmingham/Cardiff (noted above - stop at Shotton)
- 1tph Bangor to Manchester
- 1tph Llandudno to Manchester (stop at Shotton)
- 1tph Llandudno to Liverpool

This should provide at least 4tph at Wrexham General, Wrexham Central, Shotton, Flint, Prestatyn & Rhyl. Chirk, Ruabon, and Gobowen get 3tph. Stations on the Borderlands line between Shotton and Wrexham General get 2tph. Stations get high frequency services to the nearest major stations and direct trains to major interchange points further afield - like Birmingham New Street, Manchester Piccadilly, or Crewe.

 

[4-SUB 4732]

Nice idea but not going to happen

 

[algytaylor]

Nice idea but not going to happen

Out of interest, which bit's unworkable? It's all stuff I've vaguely had cheese dreams about in the past and thought ought to be possible ... (Hehe)

 

[krus_aragon]

Out of interest, which bit's unworkable? It's all stuff I've vaguely had cheese dreams about in the past and thought ought to be possible ... (Hehe)

The stumbling blocks I see are:

• Funding to electrify to Shotton, plus provision of turnback facility
• Only one hourly path to Manchester is currently permitted by the DfT (plus you're sending more trains towards the mess around Castlefield)
• I don't think 4tph (plus freight and AWC one-a-day services) is quite doable with the current single-line section between Chester and Wrexham
  
• Turning back trains from the north at either Wrexham station will require layout changes (unless you send them over the level crossing at Croes Newydd, twice!)

It'd need a fair bit of money spent, more than just a recast.

(p.s. I couldn't spot where the third TPH for Chirk-Gobowen was in your plans.)

 

[anthony263]

Heart of walesline I think really should be 2 hourly.
It does have some very good scenery and a better frequency would attract more passengers especially say between Ammanford and Swansea and llandrindod to Shrewsbury.

 

[Llanigraham]

Heart of walesline I think really should be 2 hourly.
It does have some very good scenery and a better frequency would attract more passengers especially say between Ammanford and Swansea and llandrindod to Shrewsbury.

Whilst I would agree that there is a passneger draw form Ammanford into Swansea, from my experience people from Llan'dod are more drawn, socally and economically, towards Hereford than Shrewsbury.

 

[4-SUB 4732]

Heart of walesline I think really should be 2 hourly.
It does have some very good scenery and a better frequency would attract more passengers especially say between Ammanford and Swansea and llandrindod to Shrewsbury.

Scenery doesn’t pay the bills. The important bit is whether you can actually encourage modal shift. At least a clock face / regular timetable would sort it.