Given the above quoted reduction in frequency (and hence capacity) on this corridor, EMT should at least have done the decent thing and compensated for this by way of making the hourly St Pancas - Nottingham stopper a HST instead of a short formed Meridian, especially as there are plenty of HST sets lying around idle in the sidings at Cricklewood for most of the day once these units have done their peak southbound run into London.
The HSTs could not keep to time on the Nottingham stopper because of their slow acceleration when compared to the Meridians (as has already been said above).
What makes the situation even more absurd is the fact that EMT's original 'excuse' for the delay in introducing the Corby service was that they were waiting for the four car Meridian sets to be transferred from Hull Trains.
However, once they had acquired all these sets, they are now hardly ever used on the far less busy off peak Corby workings, which usually gets the five car Meridians.
The 4-car Meridian sets were cascaded from Hull Trains to free up capacity in the 222/0 fleet so the Corby services could be accomodated in the diagrams. But their transfer was delayed by poor reliability of the Adelantes that replaced them at HT.
Instead, increasingly I have noticed that many of the hourly off peak Nottingham stoppers (as well as the second hourly Sheffield services) have been downgraded to a four car Meridian, which makes the reduction in frequency/capacity on this Luton-Bedford-Kettering-Leicester corridor even more acute than it was when it was reduced to a once hourly five car Meridian.
The Meridians that work the Sheffield semi-fast and Nottingham semi-fast services interwork with each other like this: London - Sheffield - London - Nottingham - London - Sheffield ... and so on. Therefore if a 4-car unit works a Sheffield service, in the same diagram it will also visit Nottingham.
Tbh Nottingham's "fast" service isn't all that fast these days anyway since it has gone from a 222 with 1 stop to a HST with 2 and I don't agree that a call at Luton is necessary. Without the Corby farce it would have 2tph northbound but no Corby "deserves" an hourly direct train :roll:
The situation is even more of a farce than you describe it: the Nottingham fasts call at Market Harborough (of all places), not Luton because the people of Market Harborough didn't want their service downgrading from a half hourly service to only the hourly Nottingham stopper.
What about a half hourly shuttle from Corby to Kettering using a 158? Then, the Nottingham 'fast' could actually be fast, Leicester would get 5tph and one of Nottingham or Derby would get 3tph to London.
That might be do-able if they were prepared to sacrifice the padding in the fast Nottingham service. But the so-called "fast" Nottingham would then have four stops versus just one a few years ago, and it wasn't particularly fast even then. I guess things may change in the December timetable recast, though I don't think this changes the basic service pattern.
The December recast accelerates the service (4 minutes from the STP - NOT fast service) and doesn't change the actual service pattern. And it ruins the easy to remember pattern of STP departures. Currently it is XX:00 to Corby, XX:15 to Nottingham, XX:25 to Sheffield, XX:30 to Nottingham and XX:55 to Sheffield.
In December it will be XX:00 Corby, XX:1
4 Nottingham, XX:25 Sheffield, XX:
28 Nottingham and XX:5
7 to Sheffield (an example hour was published in the April 2013 Modern Railways).
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I do think that the situation is a little silly with the hourly HST from Nottingham only stopping at Market Harborough (to give it a fast service to London I believe). If it stopped at Kettering, then with some minor rejig, it could connect quite well with the Corby stopper, opening up a whole host of other journey opportunities. Added to that, quite often the HST gets to St Pancake early and has to wait for a platform anyway if it gets a clear run.
No idea how feasible all these things are regarding paths, etc.
The hourly Nottingham HST calls at Market Harborough to negate the fact that the semi fast Derby service no longer calls there. Originally (i.e. in the DfT's draft December 2008 timetable) Market Harborough would only have had an hourly Nottingham stopper. This was because what is now the Nottingham HST, would have been a five car Meridian and would have detached from the semi-fast Derby service at Leicester (so Leicester would only have had 3tph to London). The fast Sheffield would have kept the HSTs.
I think your proposal would work, because the Corby service is often overtaken by the fast HST between Kettering North Jn and Kettering station anyway.
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