West Coast Main Line "not performing to consistently high level" as new access requests go in
“The
West Coast Main Line is currently not performing to a consistently high level and recovery from incidents is taking longer due to the successive flighting of trains on the Fast lines.”
That’s what
Network Rail has told the
Office of Rail and Road (ORR), in response to a request about WCML capacity.
NR maintains that nine paths on the route are “theoretical”, but are structured gaps to help recover performance.
In a letter to the ORR on February 4, NR’s Managing Director of North West & Central Jake Kelly and Capacity Planning Director System Operator Hannah Linford said performance issues are felt particularly in the Rugby area.
They said analysis set out last year “demonstrated the importance of ample recovery being available to absorb sub-threshold delays before locations where there are multiple services tightly flighted”.
NR detailed the train patterns immediately before the ‘firebreak’ paths, arguing that several of the preceding trains are more than three minutes late up to 60% of the time, and warning that filling some of these slots could cause “significant risk of reactionary delay” or reduce recovery time to prevent such knock-on effects.
NR also said that, on average, the 0700 Manchester Piccadilly-London Euston has been 6.7 minutes late into London Euston between the start of the December timetable change and January 27. This uses one of the Up ‘firebreak paths’.
The 0700 was the service which ORR initially said Avanti West Coast could only run as an empty carriage move after the timetable change,
before it then U-turned.
NR acknowledged that the majority of the cumulative 115 minutes of delay are due to NR. The 0700 has then caused 58 minutes of reactionary delay to other services, primarily others run by Avanti.
The letter comes as operators seek to run new services on the WCML.
Avanti West Coast has submitted bids to reinstate its off-peak Euston-Blackpool North return, the 1932 Chester-Euston, and to continue its Sundays-only 1753 Holyhead-Crewe service to London.
Like the 0700, these
had to be withdrawn in December at the behest of the ORR, which agreed with NR there was no room to accommodate them.
Some of these could use ‘firebreak’ paths.
Meanwhile, the Wrexham, Shropshire and Midlands Railway (
WSMR), which has also
applied for three firm rights and one contingent right to run services to Euston via Walsall, has also written to NR and the ORR.
In a letter dated March 20, Mobilisation Director Darren Horley said WSMR questioned why NR said its updated timetable would lead to conflicts that are “unlikely to be resolved or would have significant impact on other services”, saying the operator had “demonstrated multiple times this is not the case”.
Horley added: “We note that Network Rail has nevertheless allowed the introduction of a number of weekday freight paths utilising capacity on the Fast Lines out of Euston and in the Euston station throat, including in peak hours (notwithstanding that initial discussions with the freight operator suggests not all these slots will be used or could be accommodated on the slow lines if more train/traincrew resources were allocated).”
NR confirmed that
freight services for HS2 work will use the Down Fast until Willesden West London Junction, where they run onto the Up/Down relief lines.
“The path has been carefully planned to avoid crossing the West Coast Main Line before Wembley (Wembley Receptions 1-7), helping to prioritise the reliability of passenger services to and from Euston,” a spokesperson said.
Up services will use more of the Slow lines after joining the WCML from Harlesden Junction, crossing the Fast lines towards the HS2 site on the approach to Euston “where line speeds are slower and junction margins could be made to work far easier“.
Avanti is also applying to convert some of its additional Liverpool services from contingent to firm rights, amid NR concerns over power supply in the Weaver Junction area in Cheshire.
It is looking at potential workarounds such as Class 805 bi-mode units using diesel power, although it has insisted this can only be a temporary measure.
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