Derby to Nottingham future journey times

[ashworth]

BBC East Midlands Today lunchtime news had post HS2 extended journey times between Derby and Nottingham as its headline story.

It was stated in the broadcast that some journey times between the two cities will be extended by up to 14 minutes as routes such as Nottingham to Matlock will be diverted to serve the new HS2 station at Toton. This doesn't just affect people travelling solely between those two cities but may also greatly extend journey times on any journeys which involve travelling between the two cities. Nottingham to destinations via Stoke and Crewe, Derby to Lincoln, Grantham, Skegness and East Anglia could be longer journey times. It also mentioned in the report that the Liverpool to Norwich service will also be diverted via Toton adding approx 6 minutes to journey times.

Journey times between Derby and Nottingham have never been that good because of the slow trundle half way along the route around Trent Junction. It doesn't seem any faster now than it was 40 years ago when I used the route regularly to travel to college in Derby on an old DMU!

Many people, in other threads, have discussed at great length, how the HS2 station at Toton is not going to deliver very much shorter journey times to London from the centres of Nottingham and Derby. By the time you have travelled on slow routes from Derby or Nottingham to Toton and allowed for connection times it will be quicker and more convenient to use the MML. I know that there are benefits for travellers in parts of Nottingham and Derby who have easy road access to Toton. But this is not good news if journey times to many other destinations are going to be extended because of the need to run via Toton.

 

[TheDavibob]

Comes from page 72 of this document:

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploa...628529/CS866_D_Assumptions_Report_PFM_7.1.pdf

Adds more fuel to the uselessness of Toton as a compromise, really.

 

[edwin_m]

Comes from page 72 of this document:

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploa...628529/CS866_D_Assumptions_Report_PFM_7.1.pdf

Adds more fuel to the uselessness of Toton as a compromise, really.

Thanks for the link.

I note that there are no changes to the XC service groups (p67-68) that provide two out of the current three Derby-Nottingham trains each hour. One of these takes 20-21min non-stop, probably the fastest ever though not dramatically faster than 40 years ago - but it could lose another minute or two after Derby re-modelling. Even so Nottingham to Birmingham is very slow overall and with Toton about 20min from Curzon Street I think a lot of people would change there instead. Several errors noted on the XC map and whoever put the service table together thinks XC run via Market Harborough...

Ignoring odd workings at the ends of the day, changes to current EMT services are diversion of the Liverpool-Norwich (+6min) and Matlock-Nottingham (+14min), plus new services Leicester via Toton to both Derby and Nottingham (one of these might be a diverted Leicester-Lincoln). This gives Toton 3TPH Nottingham and 2TPH Derby by my reckoning. The diagram for Northern shows 2TPH Nottingham to Leeds, which suggests it would be better to divert one of those via Toton instead of the Liverpool-Norwich as HS2 will provide alternative fast connections from Nottingham to Sheffield and Leeds but does nothing for travel to Manchester or Liverpool.

Interestingly, but off-topic, the EMT diagram shows both London-Leicester fast trains each hour going to Nottingham rather than Derby or Sheffield. It would be interesting to see what split the modelling predicts for London-Nottingham journeys between these and the Toton route.

But of course this is only a set of assumptions for demand modelling, not a service proposal as such.

 

[Bevan Price]

Trent Barton buses will be the only people happy about slower trains between Derby & Nottingham.

OT - The referenced document contains seating capacities for various types of trains (Pages 55 to 58)
No pacers, 153 or 155s in the list, which is no surprise. But what are Class 176 - an early proposed name for the 195s ?
And one oddity - Six coach 390s - is that a new idea? Maybe increase some 9 coach sets to 11 coaches, and leave a residue of short-formation 390s ????

.

 

[deltic]

Initial proposals were for additional emu shuttle services operating from Derby, Nottingham and Leicester serving Toton. With MML electrification put on hold and in an effort to reduce costs the talk is now how to rejuggle existing services to serve Toton. How a local 2-car DMU is going to cope with 2-300 passengers alighting from a HS2 service wanting to go on to Nottingham will be interesting to observe.

Midlands Connect desired train specification serving Toton is shown below and consists of new classic compatible services from Leicester to the north, some shuttle services from Nottingham and Derby, new classic services from Leicester to Crewe and LOndon to Manchester as well as diversion of stopping services eg Leicester to Lincoln and Nottingham and Norwich to Liverpool

 

[TheManOnThe172]

What are the odds that there will be funding for the extra sets needed to maintain current frequencies with the extended journey times?