Could the Harrogate Line be split?

[geordieblue]

The Harrogate Line is something of an oddity, in that it has two distinctly operated sections. Leeds-Harrogate is predominantly (though not completely) urban, with double track and a 3tph all stations service, and a total usage of around 4.4 million (Burley Park-Harrogate inclusive). However, the more rural section east of Harrogate only has 1tph beyond Knaresborough, with a total usage of only around 800k if journeys from Harrogate are discounted, whilst much of the track is only single.
As such, could the section south of Harrogate to Leeds be converted to light rail, ending through trains from the York direction to Leeds? Whilst this would inconvenience passengers on the eastern leg, as a change would be required to access Leeds, it could allow a far higher tph service from Leeds to Harrogate (6tph all stations?) and would be considerably easier to electrify, as no significant track works would be required.
Whilst this is obviously unlikely to happen - a). because light rail schemes in this country are fairly rare, and b) because the amount of fuss generated by a relatively small number of passengers on the Harrogate-York section would be politically toxic - could it make sense to convert the southern stretch of this line to a metro operation between Leeds and Harrogate?

 

[ASharpe]

Conversion to light rail between Leeds and Harrogate would be a retrograde step. We should be seeing more direct services to London and intermediate locations.

I really don't think the demand exists for 6tph to Harrogate from Leeds. Maybe in the future with fully automatic operation (E.g. DLR) it might work but I'm not sure that's suitable for a rural line.

However I would say I find the line between Leeds and York painfully slow and if it could be speeded up to introduce new journey opportunities between Harrogate and Leeds via York then maybe some investment should be made.

 

[geordieblue]

Conversion to light rail between Leeds and Harrogate would be a retrograde step. We should be seeing more direct services to London and intermediate locations.

In fairness, could you not run a Harrogate-London service via York instead of Leeds with a similar or better journey time? (I'm fairly certain that the capacity doesn't exist, but in terms of rail geography it might be just as good an option as running via Leeds).

 

[HSTEd]

In fairness, could you not run a Harrogate-London service via York instead of Leeds with a similar or better journey time? (I'm fairly certain that the capacity doesn't exist, but in terms of rail geography it might be just as good an option as running via Leeds).

Post HS2 you could probably get better travel times given (I believe) the lack of any means for classic compatible trains to reach the line to Harrogate at Leeds.
Which means any train to Harrogate would have to be on the MML from Chesterfield, or go via York.

 

[37424]

In fairness, could you not run a Harrogate-London service via York instead of Leeds with a similar or better journey time? (I'm fairly certain that the capacity doesn't exist, but in terms of rail geography it might be just as good an option as running via Leeds).

Well I guess it could run via York assuming the capacity existed or the line upgraded but I don't see a great deal of benefit converting the Leeds section to light rail, the original timetable plan was meant to be 4 tph not 3 which should be good enough for the forseeable.

Light Rail is only worth considering in my view if you are going to have a major Light rail network in Leeds and if that was the case I would prefer it to be more Sheffield style than Manchester style in mainly developing new lines rather than taking over existing ones at this stage.

 

[30907]

Part of the problem is that the urbanisation is in two chunks - Leeds suburban and Harrogate-Knaresborough with a substantial rural chunk in between - so not classic light rail/metro territory anyway and Harrogate not the obvious terminus for it.

 

[Neptune]

It's only 2tph all stops between Leeds & Harrogate with an additional hourly express (Horsforth & Hornbeam Park only) and the 2 hourly LNER from London. From either December 2020 or May 2021 the Knaresborough turnback service will be extended to York creating a half hourly stopping service throughout.

The line runs perfectly well as it is and the signalling upgrade a few years back and service uplift over the last year have improved things greatly with more service and signalling upgrades to come.

It is a misnomer that people only use the whole route from beyond Harrogate to access Leeds. There are plenty of people who use the service the other way from Horsforth to go to York avoiding changing at Leeds. Nobody in the right mind travels the full length of the route from Leeds to York or vice-versa but plenty use it to go substantial distances across the Harrogate divide being suggested. Why complicate things that work well just because the Leeds to York time is deemed to be too long.

For me the best thing for this route would be electrification but it isn't as simple as people think. Yes it plugs in at either end but there is Bramhope Tunnel (as well as others) to consider and several viaducts.

It seems to me to be yet another case of looking for a solution to a problem that doesn't exist.

 

[YorksLad12]

This was suggested about 10 years ago, and WYPTE were broadly in favour; what they really wanted was full electrification, and came up with a £96m scheme to stave off a suggestion by Harrogate Chamber who I think wanted what is now class 230 stock to run. One of those things I proofread back in the day but probably never kept a copy of

Am I right in thinking that there are long sections between Horsforth and Harrogate that limit the number of trains that can be run? Fixing that (with or without full or partial electrification (not that there's that many commuter bi-modes about)) would be a better solution.

The line runs perfectly well as it is and the signalling upgrade a few years back and service uplift over the last year have improved things greatly with more service and signalling upgrades to come.

Agreed. Until the Airport station and service come along... then all bets are off

 

[Mollman]

There was talk of electrification bid in 2013, a better OHLE proposal rather than the loony 3rd/4th rail plan using D Stock.
https://www.railforums.co.uk/thread...ctrification-bid-launched-in-harrogate.91038/

 

[JKF]

If you were doing a tram-train solution, there would be the possibility of partially routing it on the course of the old line from Leeds, going through the Yorkshire Showground, creating a ‘loop’ in the town with a few more stops.

If electrification is done to a similar standard to the Ilkley/Skipton lines it would be a step change for line users, when the 333 units came in it was a massive improvement and led to more people moving out of Leeds to Shipley/Saltaire etc. knowing they had a fast comfortable commute to Leeds (where the station is very well sited). There’s also the possibility of linking to other schemes such as the airport link (which probably doesn’t have a direct rail solution due to topography), and reopening to Otley (although I think most recent proposals have involved coming at that problem from the Yeadon direction as the formation is less obstructed).

I think some of the hold-ups in improving the line have been down to it crossing the county boundary, with authorities not wanting to invest to improve the lot of people outside of their territory. Something we’ve seen elsewhere (such as Portishead!).

 

[4-SUB 4732]

Let's be honest, splitting the route would work.

Consider:
- Half-hourly all-stopping service from Leeds to Harrogate.
- Half-hourly semi-fast service from Leeds to Knaresborough (Burley Park, Headingley, Horsforth, Harrogate, Starbeck, Knaresborough).

Based on this, you've got a half-hourly turnaround at Harrogate; the option of re-instating the north end bay with a connection from the north to allow an hourly shuttle from York, and then you've got a two-hourly Harrogate via York from London.

Easy...

 

[Neptune]

Let's be honest, splitting the route would work.

Consider:
- Half-hourly all-stopping service from Leeds to Harrogate.
- Half-hourly semi-fast service from Leeds to Knaresborough (Burley Park, Headingley, Horsforth, Harrogate, Starbeck, Knaresborough).

Based on this, you've got a half-hourly turnaround at Harrogate; the option of re-instating the north end bay with a connection from the north to allow an hourly shuttle from York, and then you've got a two-hourly Harrogate via York from London.

Easy...

And more costly due to extra crews being required.
And inconvenient for those making through journeys.
Why try and fix something that isn’t broken.

 

[bluenoxid]

I don’t see splitting the route being that beneficial.

Conversion to a primarily light rail operation would certainly be an option that would be interesting to look at as well as redirecting the London train so that it runs via York instead of Leeds. I don’t know what additional capacity the Harrogate-York capacity enhancement brings.

 

[4-SUB 4732]

And more costly due to extra crews being required.
And inconvenient for those making through journeys.
Why try and fix something that isn’t broken.

You say that, but in reality the three stations between Knaresborough and York represent a whole 160,000 journeys A YEAR. That’s about 3,000 journeys a week; which in the context of a service operating from 0700-2200 (hourly) 7 days a week (so 16tpd, 112tpw) is 27 people per train, average. On a two car unit, dedicated to a small shuttle between Harrogate (north end bay) and York, that’s sufficient. Most journeys are probably to York, Knaresborough and Harrogate anyway; so if you can completely turn it around and have a two car running just York - Harrogate, you’ve then got an option to capacity match Harrogate and Knaresborough to Leeds with appropriately-sized three and four car trains.

Indeed, the services could be timed roughly to project forward as the two-car shuttles to Hull which I believe are slated to go hourly via Sherburn. This would be a sensible use of a few 150s during a day.

Anyway, no doubt this will all get shot down...

 

[Neptune]

You say that, but in reality the three stations between Knaresborough and York represent a whole 160,000 journeys A YEAR. That’s about 3,000 journeys a week; which in the context of a service operating from 0700-2200 (hourly) 7 days a week (so 16tpd, 112tpw) is 27 people per train, average. On a two car unit, dedicated to a small shuttle between Harrogate (north end bay) and York, that’s sufficient. Most journeys are probably to York, Knaresborough and Harrogate anyway; so if you can completely turn it around and have a two car running just York - Harrogate, you’ve then got an option to capacity match Harrogate and Knaresborough to Leeds with appropriately-sized three and four car trains.

Indeed, the services could be timed roughly to project forward as the two-car shuttles to Hull which I believe are slated to go hourly via Sherburn. This would be a sensible use of a few 150s during a day.

Anyway, no doubt this will all get shot down...

It’s not a case of shooting down, it’s a case of being realistic and understanding the right service for your target audience.

I work this line regularly and at the 3 intermediate stations there are a lot of passengers travelling beyond Harrogate, especially to Hornbeam Park, Horsforth, Headingley & Burley Park, not just Leeds as most assume. There is also a lot of eduction, commuter and tourist traffic heading the other way from North Leeds to York.

There are many speculative threads on here suggesting joining services up but this one is suggesting splitting up a well used through service on a single route and from what I can tell its due to the end to end journey time which is very rarely, if ever done.

This is a pretty well run route which is about to be enhanced for the greater good. Why would anyone want to ruin it by splitting it in half giving an inferior service to the many who use it.

 

[DB]

Having used that line a lot over the years, I don't really think t would make sense to split it as that would remove a number of direct journeys to no real advantage.

There could well be suppressed demand between Harrogate and York - people don't use the train because it's slow, they are only hourly and they stop everywhere, adding to the time. This is largely down to the infrastructure - a lot of it is still dignalled with semaphores, there are multiple boxes (including a number of gate boxes), plus two single-line sections worked by tokens, meaning that if a train in one direction is late off one of those it delays the train in the other direction (they are timetabled close together). Without substantial spending on the line, this isn't gong to change though.

 

[tbtc]

Feels like, if the line was only Leeds - Knaresborough then it'd have been electrified years ago, possibly at the same time as the Leeds - Ilkley/Shipley lines - it'd have been a shortish simple route that could interwork with the current 333-operated routes going out of the low numbered platforms at Leeds towards Armley. You could run fully electric trains on London services etc. Fast accelerating EMUs could allow new stations (e.g. near Headingley Stadium).

However, the existence of rural section east of Knaresborough makes things more complicated - electrification would mean the additional costs required for the quiet section ("twenty seven passengers per train" etc).

Personally, I'd be fine with four (longer, electrified) trains per hour on the Leeds - Knottingley section (two fast, two slow), with one shortish DMU doing a Harrogate - York shuttle. Connections should be fine at Harrogate, given the frequency on the Horsforth side.

Obviously there are some people who travel from east of Knaresborough to south/west of Harrogate (I've done so myself a couple of times), but the two halves of the route are very different and I feel that the "one size fits all" approach means that passengers on the Horsforth side are missing out on improvements for the sake of retaining a through service for the handful of people travelling long distance.

 

[DB]

Feels like, if the line was only Leeds - Knaresborough then it'd have been electrified years ago, possibly at the same time as the Leeds - Ilkley/Shipley lines - it'd have been a shortish simple route that could interwork with the current 333-operated routes going out of the low numbered platforms at Leeds towards Armley. You could run fully electric trains on London services etc. Fast accelerating EMUs could allow new stations (e.g. near Headingley Stadium).

However, the existence of rural section east of Knaresborough makes things more complicated - electrification would mean the additional costs required for the quiet section ("twenty seven passengers per train" etc).

Personally, I'd be fine with four (longer, electrified) trains per hour on the Leeds - Knottingley section (two fast, two slow), with one shortish DMU doing a Harrogate - York shuttle. Connections should be fine at Harrogate, given the frequency on the Horsforth side.

Obviously there are some people who travel from east of Knaresborough to south/west of Harrogate (I've done so myself a couple of times), but the two halves of the route are very different and I feel that the "one size fits all" approach means that passengers on the Horsforth side are missing out on improvements for the sake of retaining a through service for the handful of people travelling long distance.

They could electrify Leeds to Harrogate - that would mean that at least half the trains could be EMUs. Similar to Skipton really, where the commuter services are EMUs and those going beyong Skipton are diesel.

There is a long tunnel and two substantial viaducts between Leeds and Harrogate though (Crimple viaduct is one of the the largest in Yorkshire), which complicates it to an extent.

 

[SCH117X]

IME pre lockdown Harrogate-York trains are often standing room only; there is no obvious alternate transport aside from going via Wetherby on a bus that changes route number en route.

Splitting the route in a far more drastic finish was one of a number of nutty ideas pot forward years ago by a former Harrogate Councillor who suggested Leeds-Starbeck be electrified, the line closed at the level crossing removing that road traffic problem, a narrow gauge railway run from the otherside of level crossing to Knaresborough and normal train thereafter.

Harrogate Council are backing in their new Local Plan a new settlement in the Hammerton/Cattal area which should dramatically increase custom at those stations (or a new replacement).

 

[YorksLad12]

Feels like, if the line was only Leeds - Knaresborough then it'd have been electrified years ago, possibly at the same time as the Leeds - Ilkley/Shipley lines - it'd have been a shortish simple route that could interwork with the current 333-operated routes going out of the low numbered platforms at Leeds towards Armley. You could run fully electric trains on London services etc. Fast accelerating EMUs could allow new stations (e.g. near Headingley Stadium).

Not really. There's only three minutes between Burley Park and Headingley and not much free space to build a station, except possibly just north-west of the (very narrow) St Michael's Lane bridge.

 

[GTR fail]

In fairness, could you not run a Harrogate-London service via York instead of Leeds with a similar or better journey time? (I'm fairly certain that the capacity doesn't exist, but in terms of rail geography it might be just as good an option as running via Leeds).

I was surprised that LNER did not think of this originally actually as firstly it could be an extension of the existing 2 hourly kings cross to York stopper (probably with a couple of the stops omitted to speed up journey times), secondly it would take the line from York to Harrogate which has significantly less use than the Leeds to Harrogate section, and thirdly and most importantly it would get rid of the need for the train to reverse at Leeds

 

[DB]

I was surprised that LNER did not think of this originally actually as firstly it could be an extension of the existing 2 hourly kings cross to York stopper (probably with a couple of the stops omitted to speed up journey times), secondly it would take the line from York to Harrogate which has significantly less use than the Leeds to Harrogate section, and thirdly and most importantly it would get rid of the need for the train to reverse at Leeds

The line between York and Harrogate is realy not suitable for this tpe of traffic.

 

[37424]

I was surprised that LNER did not think of this originally actually as firstly it could be an extension of the existing 2 hourly kings cross to York stopper (probably with a couple of the stops omitted to speed up journey times), secondly it would take the line from York to Harrogate which has significantly less use than the Leeds to Harrogate section, and thirdly and most importantly it would get rid of the need for the train to reverse at Leeds

There is limited capacity between York and Harrogate so it makes sense to run it between Leeds and Harrogate along with capacity an IET offers. In the full proposed IET timetable most of the Harrogate trains will be routed via the Selby line so there wont be any need to reverse.

A Heavy rail solution is in my view more suited to this line with 4 tph Leeds - Harrogate and 2tph to York should be good enough.

Leeds to York via Harrogate has always seemed to me to be a good candidate for electrification it being a fairly self contained route but of course when you are competing against many other schemes especially at Network Fail prices.

 

[SCH117X]

One of the previous ECML operators did a propose KX-York-Harrogate service

 

[tbtc]

They could electrify Leeds to Harrogate - that would mean that at least half the trains could be EMUs. Similar to Skipton really, where the commuter services are EMUs and those going beyong Skipton are diesel

I've argued on other threads that it was a waste of a scarce Aire Valley path to have a thirty metre Pacer running from Skipton to Leeds (albeit now upgraded to Sprinters)

But if you are going to look into electrification of a line then you want as much bang for your buck as possible - if you are only going to do it to allow half of the DMUs (and half of the diesel pollution) to be replaced by greener EMUs then the scheme isn't going to have such an attractive business case and will therefore get passed over (hence my personal feeling that the eastern end of the route is holding the western side back). As I said above, I think that it would have been electrified thirty years ago if it was only a line from Leeds to Knaresborough.

 

[DB]

I've argued on other threads that it was a waste of a scarce Aire Valley path to have a thirty metre Pacer running from Skipton to Leeds (albeit now upgraded to Sprinters)

But if you are going to look into electrification of a line then you want as much bang for your buck as possible - if you are only going to do it to allow half of the DMUs (and half of the diesel pollution) to be replaced by greener EMUs then the scheme isn't going to have such an attractive business case and will therefore get passed over (hence my personal feeling that the eastern end of the route is holding the western side back). As I said above, I think that it would have been electrified thirty years ago if it was only a line from Leeds to Knaresborough.

The main demand is Harrogate to Leeds though (with a significant demand from the Leeds suburban stations too), so it would still be well worth doing - if it worked as well as the triangle lines then frequencies could be increased, and thereby also the proportion of electric trains.

 

[geordieblue]

Why would anyone want to ruin it by splitting it in half giving an inferior service to the many who use it.

The service would be far superior for stations Leeds-Harrogate and splitting could potentially give a better service York-Harrogate, up to 2tph with targeted infrastructure improvements (made easier by the lack of need to timetable around the Leeds north western throat). Whilst the range of destinations would be inferior (but probably not to a hugely detrimental degree), the frequency of service would be much better.

 

[NoMorePacers]

Putting trams in could work from Leeds City Centre to Horsforth, but if done on the existing alignment (mostly) then it'd still require the train to go to Leeds, which would make the whole ordeal rather pointless.

Beyond Horsforth the distance between stops seems too great for a tram (6 miles between Horsforth and Weeton for example) and additionally there doesn't seem to be a tram model currently operating in the UK that can achieve the 60mph speeds on the line, plus converting heavy rail lines to trams would only be properly beneficial in rare cases (only one I can think of that would work is Manchester-Rose Hill via Reddish North).

 

[DB]

Putting trams in could work from Leeds City Centre to Horsforth, but if done on the existing alignment (mostly) then it'd still require the train to go to Leeds, which would make the whole ordeal rather pointless.

Beyond Horsforth the distance between stops seems too great for a tram (6 miles between Horsforth and Weeton for example), plus converting heavy rail lines to trams would only be properly beneficial in rare cases (only one I can think of that would work is Manchester-Rose Hill via Reddish North).

Leeds could really do with trams, but I can't think of any existing heavy-rail lines which should go over to them - Harrogate is too far, and the line is all rural once past Horsforth so not much potential for extra stops.

The former Cross Gates to Wetherby line, or as much as remains unobstructed, might be a suitable route for a tram line, if they could find a suitable way of getting it into the city centre (sharing the heavy rail alignment wouldn't work as it's very well-used already).

 

[David Goddard]

Ideal candidate for electrification as far as Harrogate.
Therefore if this was wired it could then be operated by a fleet of Flirt type bi-mode trains (class 75x) which can work under the wires as far as Harrogate (4tph), then on diesel from there to Knaresborough (2tph) and York (1 or 2 tph)
The Azumas can then work to Harrogate on electric all the way, avoiding any issues if an 801 had to be subbed.
Infill to York can follow at a later date.

Love the speculative ideas threads, great having the freedom to suggest things (workable or not) without getting shot down by others