A Simpler LNER 2023(?) Timetable

[Manutd1999]

Following the news that the ECML recast for summer 2022 has been delayed until at least 2023, I wonder if there is an opportunity to try and simplify the proposed timetable?

LNER proposed this basic pattern for the original 2022 consultation. Times are the departures from Kings Cross.

XX03 Peterborough, Newark, Doncaster, York, Darlington/Durham, Newcastle, Alnmouth/Berwick, Edinburgh + extensions to Aberdeen/Inverness
XX10 Peterborough, Grantham, Doncaster, Wakefield, Leeds + extensions to Harrogate (1p2h)
XX30 York, Newcastle, Edinburgh
XX33 Stevenage, Grantham, York, Northallerton, Darlington, Durham, Newcastle
XX40 Stevenage, Newark, Doncaster, Wakefield, Leeds
XX47 Peterborough, Retford, Doncaster, York
or
XX47 Peterborough, Grantham, Newark, Lincoln

There were aspirations to extend the XX47 to Middlesborough and add an extra Leeds service every 2 hours, presumably sharing a path with the open access operators.

The timetable achieves a reasonable balance between long-distance services and connectivity, but the result is a complex, two-hourly pattern. However, I think this could be adjusted to a more consistent hourly pattern relatively easily. Something like this:

- The XX03 calls at both Darlington and Durham each hour.
- Cut the 3rd hourly Newcastle service (XX33) to instead terminate at Newark, with extensions to Lincoln.
- The XX47 'stopper' operates to York each hour.This could still be extended to Middlesborough as planned.

XX03 Peterborough, Newark, Doncaster, York, Darlington, Durham, Newcastle, Berwick/Alnmouth, Edinburgh + extensions to Aberdeen/Inverness
XX10 Peterborough, Grantham, Doncaster, Wakefield, Leeds + extensions to Harrogate/Bradford (1p2h)
XX30 York, Newcastle, Edinburgh
XX33 Stevenage, Grantham, Newark + extensions to Lincoln
XX40 Stevenage, Peterborough, Doncaster, Wakefield, Leeds
XX47 Peterborough, Retford, Doncaster, York + extensions to Middlesborough

A few of the winners and losers:

+ All major stations get a consistent hourly service, compared to the proposed 2-hourly pattern.
+ The vast majority of connectivity is maintained.
+ Paths are consistent each hour, which could give some extra flexibility for other services north of Doncaster.
+ Some units are probably saved by terminating the XX33 at Newark rather than Newcastle (?)

- Newcastle doesn't gain the 3rd hourly service. However, is this really needed? Leeds/Sheffield/Nottingham etc all manage with 2ph to London.
- Northallerton loses service to London, although it is still served by TPE and/or XC with connections at York.
- Grantham loses service to York and Newcastle, but still has connections at Doncaster and Leeds.

I would also scrap plans for an extra Leeds train every 2-hours (via Hambleton). It seems like an added complication for minimal benefit. The Bradford and Harrogate extensions could be achieved using the existing 2ph service. This would also leave 2x spare paths for open access operators each hour, giving room to grow these services as required (e.g. hourly Hull, or extra 'Luma' trains to Edinburgh).

 

[HST43257]

Agreed NCL doesn't need 3tph. If they're so precious about it, then extend the York terminator there for at least 2.5tph

 

[HamworthyGoods]

Northallerton loosing direct trains to London is going to go down like even more of a lead ballon than cutting the frequency at Berwick from hourly to 2 hourly. Like Berwick the catchment area served by Northallerton is large and quite affluent.

 

[JonathanH]

I've never quite understood what the problem is with the current timetable and the somewhat sensible 00, 03, 06, 30, 33 flighted departure times from Kings Cross together with the first stops at York, Peterborough, Stevenage, Peterborough and Stevenage.

 

[HST43257]

I'd like to see

xx00 Edb fast, first stop York
xx03 Lds, first stop Peterborough
xx06 Ncl/Gmb, first stop Stevenage
xx30 Bdi/Sun/Hul/Mbr, first stop Doncaster
xx33 Edb semi, first stop Peterborough
xx36 Lds, first stop Stevenage


At first, the xx30 would be GC 1tp2h with 180s (eventually 5 car IET Bimodes). Splitting at Donny for bdi and sun - using less ecml south paths but providing a better service. Hul+Mbr are more complicated. Would like to find a way for Hull and Mbr to share the xx30 on the non GC hours in order to give everyone a 1tp2h service. Find a way to run Hul+Mbr together to Donny before going separate ways. Complicated, but trying to get as good a service to as many places as possible.

 

[JKF]

Weren’t they wanting to do 3tph to Leeds a few years ago, possibly in conjunction with wiring east of Neville hill so services could run in a loop via Hambleton Jn rather than terminate in the station? What happened to that aspiration, if it was ever serious?

 

[Bald Rick]

All very interesting. Three questions:

How do these timetables work southbound?
Where do the Open Acess services go?
How do they fit in with Thameslink, and the various other services at Doncaster, York, and Newcastle?

There’s an awful lot more to the ECML timetable than LNER.

 

[Bristol LHS]

Northallerton loosing direct trains to London is going to go down like even more of a lead ballon than cutting the frequency at Berwick from hourly to 2 hourly. Like Berwick the catchment area served by Northallerton is large and quite affluent.

Also the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s constituency, so perhaps not one to mess with too much…

 

[Ianno87]

All very interesting. Three questions:

How do these timetables work southbound?
Where do the Open Acess services go?
How do they fit in with Thameslink, and the various other services at Doncaster, York, and Newcastle?

There’s an awful lot more to the ECML timetable than LNER.

The OP seems to clash all over the place with the Ely/King's Lynn departures from King's Cross, for one.

 

[HamworthyGoods]

The OP seems to clash all over the place with the Ely/King's Lynn departures from King's Cross, for one.

Clashing yes if you take current King’s Lynn departures and proposed LNER departures (it’s the xx10 and xx40) I suspect you are on about.

The OP’s suggestion was merely it seems still taking the revised xx10 and xx40 LNER departure times from King’s Cross and tweaking calling pattern / destination. In May 2023 the GTR departure times for Lynn were planned to be changed.

 

[YorksLad12]

I've never quite understood what the problem is with the current timetable and the somewhat sensible 00, 03, 06, 30, 33 flighted departure times from Kings Cross together with the first stops at York, Peterborough, Stevenage, Peterborough and Stevenage.

I agree, in the sense that the current departure times remain the same throughout the day rather than what was propsed earlier in the year where the evening peak departures varied from the norm quite a bit. But the aspiration was to make use of the various infrastructure improvements to reduce journey times. Leeds-London was supposed to come down to a regular 2 hours.

One casualty of the now-abandoned 2022 plan is the 2230h-ish London departure towards Leeds, which has been a gap in the timetable for as long as I can remember (and I'm quite old now). It would be good if that could be introduced for those of us who have to rush for the 2133 or hang around for the 2330 after an event in London.

 

[4-SUB 4732]

The LNER timetable, along with that of XC, TPE (etc) is a shambles. Can’t even do Northallerton to Thirsk every hour.

The people who devised this timetable should be genuinely ashamed of the state of it.

 

[Ianno87]

The people who devised this timetable should be genuinely ashamed of the state of it.

*Or*

This is the practical reality and consequences of the number of trains trying to be accommodated. Other things have to give with a finite level of capacity.

Even the best planners in the world can't bend the laws of physics.

 

[4-SUB 4732]

*Or*

This is the practical reality and consequences of the number of trains trying to be accommodated. Other things have to give with a finite level of capacity.

Even the best planners in the world can't bend the laws of physics.

No. I flatly refuse to accept this.

That the most basic principles of train planning such as providing a standard hourly service have gone in the bin to the point where Northallerton doesn’t always get a stop from Middlesbrough, and where LNER have to choose between Darlington and Durham, is a nonsense.

They clearly didn’t try hard enough and didn’t have the bottle to do more radical or sensible things, depending on how you view it.

Being an apologist for a sector of the industry that is struggling to even offer timings within a reasonable period isn’t a good look either!

 

[Ianno87]

No. I flatly refuse to accept this.

That the most basic principles of train planning such as providing a standard hourly service have gone in the bin to the point where Northallerton doesn’t always get a stop from Middlesbrough, and where LNER have to choose between Darlington and Durham, is a nonsense.

They clearly didn’t try hard enough and didn’t have the bottle to do more radical or sensible things, depending on how you view it.

Being an apologist for a sector of the industry that is struggling to even offer timings within a reasonable period isn’t a good look either!

OK, please provide your alternative, compliant and validated timetable solution to back up these claims.

What have you cracked that teams of skilled, experienced planners, haven't?

What "radical" and "sensible" things** should they have tried and can you prove they will work? What trade offs to they bring?

**A bit contradictory, but let's ignore that for now.

 

[4-SUB 4732]

OK, please provide your alternative, compliant and validated timetable solution to back up these claims.

What have you cracked that teams of skilled, experienced planners, haven't?

I don’t need to, I haven’t hashed it up.

But it’s always good to see some folk turn up to say it’s so easy to judge. For those of us who have to deal with the every day realities of this, it’s very different.

The timetable should be rewritten; although the biggest insult is the “consultation” that produces no material change and people are being lumped with it anyway. Transparent yet opaque.

 

[Ianno87]

I don’t need to, I haven’t hashed it up.

You could just say "I don't know".

 

[4-SUB 4732]

You could just say "I don't know".

Do you even work on the railway? Please, let us know what your expertise is to be able to preach...

 

[Bald Rick]

Do you even work on the railway? Please, let us know what your expertise is to be able to preach...

I wouldn’t say @Ianno87 is the best train planner I’ve ever met, but he’s in the top one.

 

[HamworthyGoods]

They clearly didn’t try hard enough and didn’t have the bottle to do more radical or sensible things, depending on how you view it.

This is actually quite offensive to those of us who work in the planning parts of the railway industry.

Has it not occurred to you that this is akin to trying to fit a quart in a pint pot. A service calling at Darlington for exampe due to the crossing moves costs more time in a schedule meaning the train will be later in that hour passing through Northallerton which unfortunately squeezes out a stop there etc.

The alternating calling pattern was one of those ‘radical’ solutions to try and fit all the aspirations in.

I’m not sure what other radical solutions you propose when the network capacity is only finite.

The timetable should be rewritten; although the biggest insult is the “consultation” that produces no material change and people are being lumped with it anyway. Transparent yet opaque.

Have you not noticed there’s been a pandemic which due to the Covid impact on train crew resource has required far more timetable changes per year than usual.

There’s no additional planning resource so those they are have been like many industries been working considerable harder to try and deliver the required output. Likewise planning teams haven’t been immune from Covid related sickness.

The delays in delivery of that timetable to the end user due to these reasons is no different to the lack of certain products in supermarkets etc where Covid has disrupted normal processes.

 

[Manutd1999]

Northallerton loosing direct trains to London is going to go down like even more of a lead ballon than cutting the frequency at Berwick from hourly to 2 hourly. Like Berwick the catchment area served by Northallerton is large and quite affluent.

It could be possible to give Northallerton 1p2h as part of the extensions to Middlesborough. Ideally this would also call at Thirsk, but it would depend on pathing north of York.

The OP seems to clash all over the place with the Ely/King's Lynn departures from King's Cross, for one.

The departure times were taken from the recent consultation. I presume the plan is to re-cast the rest of the ECML times accordingly. My proposed changes don't alter the departure times or the first calling point so I think it should be do-able, at least at the King's Cross end.

 

[tbtc]

The LNER timetable, along with that of XC, TPE (etc) is a shambles. Can’t even do Northallerton to Thirsk every hour.

The people who devised this timetable should be genuinely ashamed of the state of it.

We've a situation on the ECML where the are no "local" services on the line from Peterborough to Drem (other than the Newcastle - Cramlington - Morpeth stopper), which means that longer distance services (LNER, XC, TPE) have to pick up stations at local towns, despite being "InterCity" services

Hence the mess at Reston where we're going to have to disrupt long distance passengers by stopping at a village station that'll likely have tiny passenger numbers, because there's nothing else to stop there

If we are going to have six passenger trains per hour from York to Newcastle (2x LNER, 2x XC, 2x TPE) plus the GC/ TPE services to Teesside, plus any freight - and three or four passenger trains per hour from Newcastle to Edinburgh (plus the Morpeth and North Berwick stoppers plus any freight) then we need to either keep everything moving at roughly the same speed (i.e. broadly the same number of stops between York and Newcastle and broadly the same number of stops between Newcastle and Edinburgh)

The alternative is to have lots of stops dumped on one service, which then needs to sit in loops to be overtaken (given that it needs to be in the loop a few minutes before the service behind it overtakes it, and then only leaves the loop from a standing start a few minutes after the fast service has cleared that section of the main line), which adds quite a time penalty

So we have lots of examples like Newark to Retford or Northallerton to Darlington or Alnmouth to Berwick where there aren't many services (or, the services that there are aren't regular/ clock face), and there are stations like Chester le Street/ Cramlington that don't have a great service into the "big city" that they are in the commuter zone for.

There are complaints, e.g. the LNER proposals that saw nothing from Newark to Retford (to try to keep everything moving at roughly the same speed, rather than one service making multiple stops in a short section of route and getting caught up by the service behind)

But how many people are wanting to travel from Retford to Newark or Northallerton to Thirsk each hour, compared to the number of passengers on an AngloScottish service that you are slowing down to serve both towns? Is a five minute penalty for five hundred people each hour a price worth paying to permit five people each hour with a direct service? (I'm picking numbers out of thin air here, but there has to be a trade off, some point at which you say that the benefits of giving these local journeys aren't enough to justify the cost of disrupting the long distance journeys of several more people?

What's the solution for making Northallerton to Thirsk hourly though? Trim at least one service per hour from the York - Newcastle corridor (and slow another one down by making it make multiple stops between York and Newcastle)? Same with the service south of Doncaster to give Retford a clock face service to Doncaster and Newark? And north of Newcastle, for the various towns that don't have a direct hourly service to the next town?

Unless we move all of the long distance high speed stuff off onto a new alignment (e.g. HS2), we'll have to make some tough decisions over how to serve all of the different local markets on the route - I don't think that there's any "shame" attached to the planners - they are doing their best with the finite capacity available on the line, the competing demands for faster long distance services (e.g. First and LNER both want to provide Edinburgh - London journey times that can compete with planes, but how do you do that if Edinburgh - London trains are having to slow down to wait behind a train that is stopping at several intermediate towns?). LNER/ XC/ TPE will make nice noises about the importance of all passengers but they know that the bigger revenue comes from competing on fast journeys between cities, rather than markets like Berwick to Alnmouth.

 

[Manutd1999]

Could it be possible to remove the LNER 'stopper', and instead run 3x 'local' all-station stoppers?

Peterborough - Doncaster
York - Newcastle
Newcastle - Edinburgh (similar to what is already proposed by TPE to serve Reston, but hourly instead of 5pd)


The LNER and open-access services could then all skip-stop. Something like this:

Peterborough, Doncaster, York, Darlington, Durham, Newcastle, Berwick/Alnmouth, Edinburgh
York, Newcastle, Edinburgh
Peterborough, Doncaster, Leeds
Stevenage, Doncaster, Leeds
Grantham, Selby, Brough, Hull
Newark, Lincoln / West Yorkshire
Retford, York, Northallerton, Middlesborough/Sunderland

 

[HST43257]

Could it be possible to remove the LNER 'stopper', and instead run 3x 'local' all-station stoppers?

Peterborough - Doncaster
York - Newcastle
Newcastle - Edinburgh (similar to what is already proposed by TPE to serve Reston, but hourly instead of 5pd)


The LNER and open-access services could then all skip-stop. Something like this:

Peterborough, Doncaster, York, Darlington, Durham, Newcastle, Berwick/Alnmouth, Edinburgh
York, Newcastle, Edinburgh
Peterborough, Doncaster, Leeds
Stevenage, Doncaster, Leeds
Grantham, Selby, Brough, Hull
Newark, Lincoln / West Yorkshire
Retford, York, Northallerton, Middlesborough/Sunderland

The issue is that this restricts the amount of places between pbo and don that get services to places - for example Grantham loses its Leeds service in your idea. Intermediate calls are there for both directions and we need to avoid being completely London centric

 

[JonathanH]

Could it be possible to remove the LNER 'stopper', and instead run 3x 'local' all-station stoppers?

Peterborough - Doncaster
York - Newcastle
Newcastle - Edinburgh (similar to what is already proposed by TPE to serve Reston, but hourly instead of 5pd)

Not really - there would not be enough passengers solely for a local train to make it viable without also carrying longer distance passengers.

Case in point with the Trent Valley - many years ago a 153 was enough to carry the passengers between intermediate stations - a better service was possible when it linked up to Crewe and London - it just is how it is.

 

[4-SUB 4732]

This is actually quite offensive to those of us who work in the planning parts of the railway industry.

Has it not occurred to you that this is akin to trying to fit a quart in a pint pot. A service calling at Darlington for exampe due to the crossing moves costs more time in a schedule meaning the train will be later in that hour passing through Northallerton which unfortunately squeezes out a stop there etc.

The alternating calling pattern was one of those ‘radical’ solutions to try and fit all the aspirations in.

I’m not sure what other radical solutions you propose when the network capacity is only finite.



Have you not noticed there’s been a pandemic which due to the Covid impact on train crew resource has required far more timetable changes per year than usual.

There’s no additional planning resource so those they are have been like many industries been working considerable harder to try and deliver the required output. Likewise planning teams haven’t been immune from Covid related sickness.

The delays in delivery of that timetable to the end user due to these reasons is no different to the lack of certain products in supermarkets etc where Covid has disrupted normal processes.

One can only apologise for ‘offence’. For those of us who regularly have to attempt to overcome the issues arising from the subsequent errors you can imagine there is no love lost; not that any one person, department or company gets anything personally. It’s just frustrating.

But what is intriguing is that you suggest Darlington is a major failure point. For years it has run 2 x LNER, 2 x XC, 2 x TPE, and then however many Northern. At certain periods you then overlay other random bits like Middlesbrough <> Newcastle via Darlo and Durham; or an extra NCL from London. Plus freight. Darlington can actually work quite nicely if most or all stop there, which used to be the reality.

The critical thing is that this timetable is bad. People are trying to say it’s the best they can do but based on what I’m hearing from both WNXX and RailForums, it seems abundantly obvious that there is a lack of resource. If people aren’t in offices together they’re not collaborating and doing better. I think your comment “planning teams haven’t been immune” or words of the sort confirms that there hasn’t been enough resource to deliver a good timetable: offence taken if you must.

A timetable that doesn’t produce regular calling points, where a little old person can’t do their shopping in Northallerton and guarantee to get back to Thirsk every hour (and so on) is not good enough. Heads should be banged together and if that doesn’t work, heads should roll.

Clinging to the emotion of the situation by saying it’s offensive to challenge the wisdom of the planners who by rights don’t work in the real railway (hence improper dwell times, lack of pathing or performance allowances) and view it on a “it works on paper” basis without asking how it impacts the customer is wrong. If you can’t deal with a bit of criticism, you should probably ask to move jobs.

We've a situation on the ECML where the are no "local" services on the line from Peterborough to Drem (other than the Newcastle - Cramlington - Morpeth stopper), which means that longer distance services (LNER, XC, TPE) have to pick up stations at local towns, despite being "InterCity" services

Hence the mess at Reston where we're going to have to disrupt long distance passengers by stopping at a village station that'll likely have tiny passenger numbers, because there's nothing else to stop there

If we are going to have six passenger trains per hour from York to Newcastle (2x LNER, 2x XC, 2x TPE) plus the GC/ TPE services to Teesside, plus any freight - and three or four passenger trains per hour from Newcastle to Edinburgh (plus the Morpeth and North Berwick stoppers plus any freight) then we need to either keep everything moving at roughly the same speed (i.e. broadly the same number of stops between York and Newcastle and broadly the same number of stops between Newcastle and Edinburgh)

The alternative is to have lots of stops dumped on one service, which then needs to sit in loops to be overtaken (given that it needs to be in the loop a few minutes before the service behind it overtakes it, and then only leaves the loop from a standing start a few minutes after the fast service has cleared that section of the main line), which adds quite a time penalty

So we have lots of examples like Newark to Retford or Northallerton to Darlington or Alnmouth to Berwick where there aren't many services (or, the services that there are aren't regular/ clock face), and there are stations like Chester le Street/ Cramlington that don't have a great service into the "big city" that they are in the commuter zone for.

There are complaints, e.g. the LNER proposals that saw nothing from Newark to Retford (to try to keep everything moving at roughly the same speed, rather than one service making multiple stops in a short section of route and getting caught up by the service behind)

But how many people are wanting to travel from Retford to Newark or Northallerton to Thirsk each hour, compared to the number of passengers on an AngloScottish service that you are slowing down to serve both towns? Is a five minute penalty for five hundred people each hour a price worth paying to permit five people each hour with a direct service? (I'm picking numbers out of thin air here, but there has to be a trade off, some point at which you say that the benefits of giving these local journeys aren't enough to justify the cost of disrupting the long distance journeys of several more people?

What's the solution for making Northallerton to Thirsk hourly though? Trim at least one service per hour from the York - Newcastle corridor (and slow another one down by making it make multiple stops between York and Newcastle)? Same with the service south of Doncaster to give Retford a clock face service to Doncaster and Newark? And north of Newcastle, for the various towns that don't have a direct hourly service to the next town?

Unless we move all of the long distance high speed stuff off onto a new alignment (e.g. HS2), we'll have to make some tough decisions over how to serve all of the different local markets on the route - I don't think that there's any "shame" attached to the planners - they are doing their best with the finite capacity available on the line, the competing demands for faster long distance services (e.g. First and LNER both want to provide Edinburgh - London journey times that can compete with planes, but how do you do that if Edinburgh - London trains are having to slow down to wait behind a train that is stopping at several intermediate towns?). LNER/ XC/ TPE will make nice noises about the importance of all passengers but they know that the bigger revenue comes from competing on fast journeys between cities, rather than markets like Berwick to Alnmouth.

The best solution, which was supposed to work, was for an XC Newcastle to only go to York.

That would have worked, and could have had a ‘shorter’ train on that; allowing the Scotland via Leeds to be suitably longer. Anyway, the reality is that you’re looking at a ‘cap’ of 4tph between Darlington and Newcastle and quite frankly that is absolutely sufficient. The situation with TPE doing Reston and running to Edinburgh is more complex as it is an absolute must for IEPs to get to Craigentinny for maintenance. The train crew establishment was also designed to run Edinburgh hourly so with 5tpd it should be more resilient anyway.

What we do have to do, however, is ask the questions that passengers want asked and answered. How do I get to X; how often can I do it; have you understood my priorities; if I’m changing trains is it easy; are the trains I’m getting on nice and long so I’m more likely to get a seat. We could have done so well with this timetable change but instead we’ve really ruined it for a lot of the public and when they’re the ones buying the tickets, we need to serve them.

 

[Bald Rick]

If you can’t deal with a bit of criticism, you should probably ask to move jobs.

Equally, if you dish criticism out you need to be prepared to a) listen to explanations, and, b) wear the trousers and apply for jobs in the teams concerned, so you can show them how it should be done.

 

[4-SUB 4732]

We've a situation on the ECML where the are no "local" services on the line from Peterborough to Drem (other than the Newcastle - Cramlington - Morpeth stopper), which means that longer distance services (LNER, XC, TPE) have to pick up stations at local towns, despite being "InterCity" services

Hence the mess at Reston where we're going to have to disrupt long distance passengers by stopping at a village station that'll likely have tiny passenger numbers, because there's nothing else to stop there

If we are going to have six passenger trains per hour from York to Newcastle (2x LNER, 2x XC, 2x TPE) plus the GC/ TPE services to Teesside, plus any freight - and three or four passenger trains per hour from Newcastle to Edinburgh (plus the Morpeth and North Berwick stoppers plus any freight) then we need to either keep everything moving at roughly the same speed (i.e. broadly the same number of stops between York and Newcastle and broadly the same number of stops between Newcastle and Edinburgh)

The alternative is to have lots of stops dumped on one service, which then needs to sit in loops to be overtaken (given that it needs to be in the loop a few minutes before the service behind it overtakes it, and then only leaves the loop from a standing start a few minutes after the fast service has cleared that section of the main line), which adds quite a time penalty

So we have lots of examples like Newark to Retford or Northallerton to Darlington or Alnmouth to Berwick where there aren't many services (or, the services that there are aren't regular/ clock face), and there are stations like Chester le Street/ Cramlington that don't have a great service into the "big city" that they are in the commuter zone for.

There are complaints, e.g. the LNER proposals that saw nothing from Newark to Retford (to try to keep everything moving at roughly the same speed, rather than one service making multiple stops in a short section of route and getting caught up by the service behind)

But how many people are wanting to travel from Retford to Newark or Northallerton to Thirsk each hour, compared to the number of passengers on an AngloScottish service that you are slowing down to serve both towns? Is a five minute penalty for five hundred people each hour a price worth paying to permit five people each hour with a direct service? (I'm picking numbers out of thin air here, but there has to be a trade off, some point at which you say that the benefits of giving these local journeys aren't enough to justify the cost of disrupting the long distance journeys of several more people?

What's the solution for making Northallerton to Thirsk hourly though? Trim at least one service per hour from the York - Newcastle corridor (and slow another one down by making it make multiple stops between York and Newcastle)? Same with the service south of Doncaster to give Retford a clock face service to Doncaster and Newark? And north of Newcastle, for the various towns that don't have a direct hourly service to the next town?

Unless we move all of the long distance high speed stuff off onto a new alignment (e.g. HS2), we'll have to make some tough decisions over how to serve all of the different local markets on the route - I don't think that there's any "shame" attached to the planners - they are doing their best with the finite capacity available on the line, the competing demands for faster long distance services (e.g. First and LNER both want to provide Edinburgh - London journey times that can compete with planes, but how do you do that if Edinburgh - London trains are having to slow down to wait behind a train that is stopping at several intermediate towns?). LNER/ XC/ TPE will make nice noises about the importance of all passengers but they know that the bigger revenue comes from competing on fast journeys between cities, rather than markets like Berwick to Alnmouth.

It’s interesting you mention Newark to Retford, or Durham to Chester, or Grantham to Newark and the possibility of ‘dumping’ stops into one train.

I would actually support the idea of LNER supplying a ‘stopper’ (well, they already mostly do) between London and Newcastle. The fact is that at the very least, on the ‘one stop’ flows (Grantham to Newark and Newark to Retford (and to some extent Retford to Doncaster due to geographical proximity)) are really important as the least you can do is give an hourly service between. Even if you have something like KGX-SVG-GRA-NNG-DON and then a KGX-PBO-NNG-RET-DON and a final one that does PBO-GRA (that’s EMR really) then you’ve got people their one stop leaps.

If we assume in this timetable it’s the XX30 from KGX that runs fast, a quick fag packet calculation suggests the XX06 path (or XX09 or XX10) stopping at Stevenage, Posh, Grantham, Newark, Retford and Donny then York, you could then route it on the slow lines from Skelton to Longlands to give an organic overtake by the XX30 express (so the passenger feels they’re moving!) and allowing a perfectly good same platform change at York onto the Scotland so all those stations can do an easy switch. That way, you’ve got two paths that run nice and tight between York and Newcastle and then, hopefully, you generate a ‘flight’ and allow a fifth freedom freight path for 60 or 75mph traffic at least between Longlands and Tyne Yard to regulate.

Equally, if you dish criticism out you need to be prepared to a) listen to explanations, and, b) wear the trousers and apply for jobs in the teams concerned, so you can show them how it should be done.

Make train planning a lovely, shift-based role with loads of banked rest days and time to explore the network and I’ll do it. Oh, and make it pay as well as footplates. Until then, no thanks. But planners need to have the ability to listen to frontline colleagues and understand what is being reported back isn’t for the sake of ruining someone’s day and doing them down but making things better. They’re not the ones getting the moans and groans when the train pulls up late (again) because of a regular pathing failure that works on paper but in the real world fails.

But attitudes such as yours entrench the divide.

Not really - there would not be enough passengers solely for a local train to make it viable without also carrying longer distance passengers.

Case in point with the Trent Valley - many years ago a 153 was enough to carry the passengers between intermediate stations - a better service was possible when it linked up to Crewe and London - it just is how it is.

Is very much the correct answer. Innovation and customer-focused changes work.

 

[Bald Rick]

They’re not the ones getting the moans and groans when the train pulls up late (again) because of a regular pathing failure that works on paper but in the real world fails.

Fair point - but what has that got to with setting a service specification?

And, genuinely, if you can work out the ECML so that it pleases everyone, there several of us who would be delighted to know about it. The conundrum has defeated the very best train planners for three years, so if you have the answer, they will be all ears.

 

[4-SUB 4732]

Fair point - but what has that got to with setting a service specification?

Seriously? So, they sit in an office and just go with an easy option or put something together, but then can’t be told when we know there’s going to be suitable complaint and possibly even a modal shift away from rail as a result of what they’re doing?