Before any wires go up they'll have to alter the various bridges first, some have been quite thickly re-lined, especially Plantation bridge near Staveley which 185s have a speed restriction passing under from the Burneside direction..
With regard to my question earlier about whether a lighter unit would allow a more frequent service, is this restriction applied only to 185s? (of course, nothing other than 185s is scheduled to use the branch anyway).
I note that according to FTPE's timetable, the journey time on the branch with stops at all shacks is 19mins, meaning the a realistic 'out-and-back' should be do-able with 185s in 45mins.
Regardless of wires, even if the various speed restrictions were lifted I can't see the service being increased (at least without the awkwardness of a non-clockface timetable) without using more than one unit, which of course means a loop. With any marginal scheme such as this, you'd have to look at adding as much benefit with as little cost as possible- so, do you place your loop at Burneside or Staveley stations (trains will be slowing to call anyway, but you have to provide a second (or extended
a la Penrhyn) with the associated accessibility provisions), or at the 'halfway point' along the branch (which I guesstimate to be just West of Staveley) where trains will be travelling faster and a delay to one will in turn delay the other? In any case I suppose you'd need to make the loop the same length as the platform at Windermere (plus tailing locomotive) to allow charters to continue to access the branch without throwing the regular service completely out as with the Newquay branch on summer saturdays!
