West Northamptonshire Rail Action Plan

[SargeNpton]

Anything further north like Leicester would IMHO be better served by sending more northbound trains up the trent valley during the week, upgrading the line through Long Buckby to make it faster and being smarter with connection times. You could probably knock half an hour off many journeys that way and negate the need to reopen the old line.

Just about impossible to upgrade any of the Northampton Loop to make it faster. With major freight depots south of Northampton and at DIRFT, the number of extra paths for passenger trains would be limited.

 

[zwk500]

Just about impossible to upgrade any of the Northampton Loop to make it faster. With major freight depots south of Northampton and at DIRFT, the number of extra paths for passenger trains would be limited.

Not to mention the lack of capacity into Euston itself.

 

[AlastairFraser]

May I gently point out that the reason the London & Birmingham sought authorisation for a route from Blisworth to Peterborough (not actually opened until it had become LNWR) was to get in first on the London - York (and other "East Coast Route' destinations). It was built hastily and cheaply along the river valley and didn't really serve any intermediate settlements - the LNWR station at Wellingborough was in Little Irchester, not Wellingborough - and wasn't intended to. As has been said already, people choosing settlement locations back into the Iron Age were clever enough to choose hilltops rather than river valleys meaning a steep climb to get home after you had alighted at the station.

Sorry for the delay in replying.
I see your point about some settlements being in the wrong place for the rail alignment itself, but light rail has the ability to divert off the trackbed if need be.

Each of the 4 buses an hour goes via a different route to serve settlements between the two towns, using a combination of the original A45 (now A4500), by-roads and the A45 'Nene Valley Way'. It also diverts to serve Northampton College, which generates a great deal of passengers. So it would be a complex tram network.
Northamptonshire is far from flat (think Watford Gap) and, for instance, a tram route following the A4500 between Great Billing and Earls Barton would encounter some steep sided valleys (and pass 'The World's End')
Northamptonshire has had an intense and well used bus network since motor buses came about. Another busy route was (not so much now) connected towns along the A6; unfortunately the Midland Railway built too far West to serve that market South of Kettering..

It would be complex, I agree, but definitely something worth looking into with the housing growth in that area and potential for far more.
Buses have their uses, but the local road network will reach saturation at some point and some of those routes like the A45 are strategic links between motorways, so will be very expensive to replace or widen.

 

[70014IronDuke]

Let's do a mileage sum on this.

31 Oxford-Bletchley
20 Bletchley-Northampton
12 Northampton-Wellingborough
25 Wellingborough-Manton
22 Manton-Peterborough
45 Peterborough-Cambridge

Total mileage 155, twice as far as the route via Bedford.

Yes, I allowed myself to run away with the argument(s) and ruin both.

What I should have said was: I think the closure of Northampton - Wellingboro was a tragic loss, and should have been kept back in 64.

Not for a mere Northampton - Wellingboro shuttle, but for a Northampton - Corby service, or, possibly, a Class 2 service to Leicester, allowing Desborough and Kibworth and possibly Wigston Magna to stay open. (But I would prefer Corby myself. And that's v much on topic for this thread.)

Fast forward to the 1990s and talk of Oxford-Cambridge.

This would have developed into an argument that rather than Oxford - Cambridge, a better option would be an East-West route Oxford - M Keynes - Northampton - Wellingboro - Corby - Manton - Peterboro and probably then Ely and Norwich.

This would definitely be sub-optimal for Oxford - Cambridge, and obviously would not be able to serve the Tempsford - Cambridge line as proposed today. But this serves Bedford and nothing but a commuter section from Tempsford into Cambridge. (And Wixams park, at some stage, we hope. But that was far away into the future in 1995.)

A route via Manton, however, though still somewhat indirect, links far larger populations than Bedford and the Tempsford corridor.

 

[Farigiraf]

Anything further north like Leicester would IMHO be better served by sending more northbound trains up the trent valley during the week, upgrading the line through Long Buckby to make it faster and being smarter with connection times. You could probably knock half an hour off many journeys that way and negate the need to reopen the old line.

Post-HS2 phase 2A, there'll certainly be capacity to increase the Trent Valley stoppers to half-hourly and improve connectivity from Northampton. I appreciate that it's not for a long while, but it's still more likely to happen than a new railway in the area so it's some light at the end of the tunnel. In the meantime, the dreadfully slow X7 could also be improved, or complemented by a new M1 express route.

I've been in this town for a while now and it is quite annoying just how expensive, slow and inconvenient the train service is to many UK destinations unless going towards London.

A 250k population town on a loop line off a 4-track intercity railway (that has 95% of the long-distance London traffic from Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool and Glasgow) which also happens to be just 20-30 minutes from the next 2-300k population town (Coventry or MK) is a rare but incredibly unfortunate position to be in.

It's similar to some of the large cities in the Rhine-Ruhr with similar populations, which have to make do with just a commuter rail connection to the nearest long-distance rail station because otherwise the intercity train would become just another regional stopper. E.g. Duisburg (population of 500,000) is skipped by most ICE trains because of capacity contraints, and because there's an equally busy stop 20 mins away in either direction. It shows one of the drawbacks of large swathes of urban sprawl in one patch of the country, instead of balanced population growth nationwide.

There's no case for stopping long-distance trains at Watford and MK and Northampton and Coventry, even if the catchment justifies it, as then you limit the speed and frequency of longer-distance services. But that's exactly why these long-distance trains to Manchester/Scotland/Liverpool etc have to be diverted off this railway. A frequent network of semifast trains post-HS2 is really the best Northampton's likely to get on a national connectivity level, but it's still much better than what there is now.

 

[Austriantrain]

It's similar to some of the large cities in the Rhine-Ruhr with similar populations, which have to make do with just a commuter rail connection to the nearest long-distance rail station because otherwise the intercity train would become just another regional stopper. E.g. Duisburg (population of 500,000) is skipped by most ICE trains because of capacity contraints, and because there's an equally busy stop 20 mins away in either direction.

The timetable tells me that most ICE trains do actually stop in Duisburg.

Not comparable to Northampton of course, since Duisburg is not on a loop.

 

[The exile]

The timetable tells me that most ICE trains do actually stop in Duisburg.

Not comparable to Northampton of course, since Duisburg is not on a loop.

A better analogy would be the number of east - west IC/E stoppers at Oberhausen, Gelsenkirchen or Herne.

 

[Farigiraf]

The timetable tells me that most ICE trains do actually stop in Duisburg.

It appears the station's closed at the moment for major works which is why it's being skipped - in that case Gelsenkirchen/Herne/Leverkusen etc. are indeed more accurate parallels.