What Would You Do About It?

[Bevan Price]

What would you do about problems such as solve the New St capacity problems, ECML congestion or Manchester Piccadilly p13/14?

First quick thoughts. Given unlimited funds (so it will never happen...), for Manchester, I would:
1 Reopen Manchester Central to Matlock/Derby. Divert all Liverpool - Nottingham / Norwich services via this route. All CLC locals also diverted to Manchester Central.
2. Divert Trans Pennine Liverpool - North East services via St. Helens Junction & Manchester Victoria. Manchester - Hull services also diverted to Manchester Victoria, maybe with some running to/from Blackpool, replacing existing Northern services between Manchester & Blackpool.
3. Introduce a Liverpool - Warrington Central - Manchester Piccadilly - Sheffield - Hull service, replacing missing parts of previous 2 changes (and taking path of existing Sheffield - Hull semi-fasts)
4. Run all Manchester Airport - Blackpool services as portions of Scottish/Barrow or Windermere services, portions being attached or detached at Preston.

5. Increased number of trains at Manchester Victoria might make it necessary to replace that gloomy object above Platforms 4 to 6, to make room for 2 extra through platforms.

Bevan

 

[tbtc]

New Street: Don't terminate anything at New Street, it wastes platforms. Tie up other services like Euston - New Street - Carlisle - Glasgow, or Stansted - Leicester - New Street - Walsall (possibly tying a "short" route on one side to a "long" trip on the other side to avoid the reliability issues you had with the old Central Trains Grimsby - Aberystwyth (etc) routes

Could you build a spur at Smethwick to run certain Wolves services to Snow Hill/ Moor street instead? Sending the Shrewsbury services to Snow Hill would free up a couple of departures an hour plus allow the WMSR route to be built upon (such as the ATW proposal to link Aberystwyth to London)

ECML: Stop running short trains and stop open access operators with irregular paths (if you want to have open access then allow one path an hour south of Doncaster - they can always split/ join at Donny, but must fit into a clockface timetable

Manchester: Stop the idea of giving everywhere in the north of England a link to Manchester Airport. This would allow a lot of services to go to Victoria (e.g. all Bolton/ Wigan/ Huddersfield/ Eccles). Whilst the "connections" at Piccadilly are a good thing, there's not room for everything. When the Oldham trams (which free up a number of paths at Victoria) start running, there'll be a tram from Victoria to Piccadilly every few minutes.

 

[IanXC]

Birmingham -

Non Infrastructure dependent:
- route all the LM Hereford services to Snow Hill rather than New Street, via Kidderminster (removes terminating trains from New St too - removes services from the congested Cross City line)

Currently planned Chord to enable Camp Hill line services to Moor Street:
- possibility of routing LM Hereford services this way to still include Bromsgrove and University
- XC Cardiff services to Moor Street (if these were broken from the Nottingham leg)

Additional Chord for accessing the Camp Hill line in the other direction:
- Move all XC Turbostar services out of New Street, with them using Moor Street instead

Chord at Smethwick Galton Bridge would allow:
- All ATW services to be directed to Snow Hill - is there room to create a couple of bays at the country end of Snow Hill that could be used for these services?

Between Moor Street and the proposed chord with the camp hill line there formation for 4 tracks, and the bay platforms at Moor Street are at the same side of the alignment as the currently planned Camp Hill chord. If frequencies stayed the same:

1tph to Stanstead
1tph to Leicester
1tph to Cardiff
2tph to Nottingham
3tph Local services on the Camp Hill Line

and Chilterns trains proposed to terminate at Moor Street, 50% of Birmingham services... seem to be 2per hour so 1tph to terminate at Moor Street?

The question is could the 3 terminating platforms at Moor Street cope with 9tph. I have absolutely no idea on this! Although given New Street achieves 3.54 trains per hour per platform it doesnt seem crazy, but im sure theres someone out there who knows!

 

[The Planner]

Birmingham - Non Infrastructure dependent:
- route all the LM Hereford services to Snow Hill rather than New Street, via Kidderminster (removes terminating trains from New St too - removes services from the congested Cross City line)

Only works if Bromsgrove gets electrified and re-built (which is planned), otherwise it loses its services. It would increase the journey time too as it would catch the every 10 minute stopping service on the Snow Hills. It would remove 2 services an hour off the Cross City that's all.

Currently planned Chord to enable Camp Hill line services to Moor Street:
- possibility of routing LM Hereford services this way to still include Bromsgrove and University
- XC Cardiff services to Moor Street (if these were broken from the Nottingham leg)

How can they serve University ?? the Camp Hills break off at Kings Norton.
What you want is the Herefords to carry on to Tamworth with a new turnback facility there.

Additional Chord for accessing the Camp Hill line in the other direction:
- Move all XC Turbostar services out of New Street, with them using Moor Street instead

You are then actually making changing at Birmingham more difficult with this, what was a platform change at New St now involves the walk between the stations.

Chord at Smethwick Galton Bridge would allow:
- All ATW services to be directed to Snow Hill - is there room to create a couple of bays at the country end of Snow Hill that could be used for these services?

ATW are better off as they are going to International. It would be one hell of a chord at Smethwick too, it would need a bridge on a rising gradient over the canal, not the cheapest. You would probably find people on ATW services changing at Wolves to get to New St instead of trekking across town again.

 

[GingerSte]

I take it you mean Hitchin, where they are planning to bring the construction material in by road when there is a perfectly good railway available, although it's still a good idea. At Welwyn, separating out the fast lines and building a viaduct/tunnel combination that's good for 155 mph would be a good idea, allowing any future IC250 equivalent the possibility of 155 all the way from Hatfield.

Sorry I did mean Hitchin. I got confused.

As far as the viaduct/tunnel combo at Welwyn is concerned, I imagine it would be on the slow lines (I think the existing viaduct is on the fast lines) so a 155mph line speed would not be needed.

Plus
Rebuild the down slow Peterborough-Helpston Jcn
Extra bore at Stoke Tunnel, thus four tracks all the way to Grantham.

Are 4 tracks needed north of Peterborough? I can understand it south of there, due to the stoppers. I would have thought north of Peterborough wouldn't be a priority though, even with the freight.

Or a rearranged diveunder at the site of the old Barkston Jcn

Possibly. Where is this? I couldn't find any trace of it on multimap.

Better done to the south at Black Carr, to take up Leeds services over the fast lines, with two new platforms between Doncaster station and the Plant (currently rusty sidings)

Donny is a tough one. Ideally I would want to separate all of the flows, but don't want it to turn into a mess. Going with your plan for a second, I would do the following:-
Platform 1 (existing) used for Goole services etc.
Platform 3 (existing) used for up fasts on ECML from York
(Keep through tracks for non-stoppers)
Platform 4 (existing) used for down fasts to York (and beyond)
Platform 8 (existing) used for trains to Sheffield
Platform 9 (new through) used for trains from Sheffield
Platform 10 (new through) used for Leeds->London
Platform 11 (new bay) used for Leeds-Doncaster
Platform 12 (new through) used for London->Leeds
You would then end up with Leeds-London and Doncaster-Sheffield trains crossing paths south of the station. It also restricts Goole type services from going to Sheffield, as they would have to cross just about everything. I realise this is not an ideal situation, but I don't know what is.

I'd be considering Harrogate-Ripon-Northallerton as well, providing a KX-Donny-Ulleskelf-Tadcaster-Wetherby-Harrogate-Ripon-Northallerton-Sunderland route.

There are two problems with Harrogate-Ripon-Northallerton. Firstly, there's a lot of mileage of new track there, for not a lot of benefit (the population of Ripon is only 16,000). Secondly, I don't see a good way of getting the railway anywhere close to the city centre. Then again it has been a while since I was last there.

I'd consider a Swindon-style solution, with platforms on the up freight line (not repeating the mistake of building on top of the down loop, which they did there)

Possibly. I've never been to Swindon and don't know the layout. I'll look into it.

Metro extension or heavy rail? If we're considering Metro extensions, how about St James'-Metrocentre

Dealer's choice. I don't know. Giving Consett good links to Newcastle and Durham would be a good thing though.

Add
Morpeth avoiding line
Quadruple as far as the south of that
Divert Chathill services to Alnwick, increase to half-hourly
Consider Metro extensions onto the Blyth and Tyne, with an additional line direct to the old east bays at Newcastle Central

Newcastle and beyond aren't my strong point, although if you could see your way clear to getting me a train to Lindisfarne that would be brilliant!

Now onto my plan for the East Midlands, which involves building HS2 on the alignment of the old GCR London Extension and reopening the Woodhead Tunnel. This absorbs a lot of MML traffic, and allows EMT to add stops to their services south of Leicester, thus increasing the local service, and hopefully reopening the stations between Bedford and Kettering. All important stations (Nottingham Victoria, Sheffield Victoria, Manchester Wherever and Leeds City) would have two dedicated international platforms for cross-channel operators, fully sealed and with check-in facilities. The Woodhead route would modify traffic patterns into Manchester Piccadilly, where several flyovers would sort it out more effectively. A pity it's impossible to reopen Manchester Central. It would also allow Virgin to divert one Manchester express per hour to Glasgow and XC to send some traffic to Liverpool (access to HS2 between Brackley and Sheffield would compensate for this).

I did have a fairly wacky plan once. There's a disused viaduct leading it's way into Leeds City Centre. I think it took trains from Huddersfield. The end of it could be accessed from the Leeds-Wakefield line.

My plan was to (assuming any new high speed line would come from around there), put the high speed services onto this viaduct (they would be slowing down to terminate at Leeds anyway). The viaduct would then be raised at the Leeds Station end, similar to the one carrying Aston-bound trains from Birmingham New Street. The HS line would then go over the Leeds western approach and onto new platforms over the car park. Access to the platforms would be from the new concourse where McD's and Starbucks are currently located. Unfortunately, I can't imagine trains carrying on from there, so it would have to be a dead end for a spur, rather than a through line.

 

[telstarbox]

Manchester: Stop the idea of giving everywhere in the north of England a link to Manchester Airport. This would allow a lot of services to go to Victoria (e.g. all Bolton/ Wigan/ Huddersfield/ Eccles). Whilst the "connections" at Piccadilly are a good thing, there's not room for everything. When the Oldham trams (which free up a number of paths at Victoria) start running, there'll be a tram from Victoria to Piccadilly every few minutes.

Indeed - there are already nine services per hour off-peak from Manchester Piccadilly to the Airport, and that's before you think about buses from all over Manchester.

Passengers in the south-east manage to get to Heathrow fine with a tube/Heathrow Express connection, and Gatwick, Luton and Stansted are all only on one main route each - so why can't there just be a shuttle service from Piccadilly to the Airport instead of direct services from Cleethorpes, Sheffield, York, Leeds, etc?
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---
and forgot to mention Newcastle, Liverpool, Barrow, Chester, Blackpool...

 

[tbtc]

Indeed - there are already nine services per hour off-peak from Manchester Piccadilly to the Airport, and that's before you think about buses from all over Manchester.

Passengers in the south-east manage to get to Heathrow fine with a tube/Heathrow Express connection, and Gatwick, Luton and Stansted are all only on one main route each - so why can't there just be a shuttle service from Piccadilly to the Airport instead of direct services from Cleethorpes, Sheffield, York, Leeds, etc?
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---
and forgot to mention Newcastle, Liverpool, Barrow, Chester, Blackpool...

Very good point about the London airports. A frequent service to Luton/ Stansted etc is sufficient, they don't try to link to them from every conurbation.

A shuttle service to the Airport would suffice, and allow a lot of other links across Manchester instead

 

[Invincibles]

How many problems would removing the links to the airport through platforms 13/14 actually alleviate given the services would still need to terminate at Piccadilly to get the connections that people are talking about.

Personally I can see an argument for stopping having the North East to Manchester Airport trains running beyond Piccadilly as these have to cross the entire station approach at some point.

Cleethorpes to the Airport is a grey area because it approaches from Stockport and the train has already had to get to the west side to use platform 4 at Stockport. As such it could arguably continue to the airport as it does now. However the return working needs to do some crossing so I am uncertain.

Ultimately dedicated platforms, check in and a regular shuttle would be brilliant but it is unlikely to happen. 11 and 12 could be used relatively easily I think (it would take some trains out of 10 and so the odd train that uses 11 or 12 could go into 10 instead).