They aren't just there to move passenger trains out of the way after failures.
Or they may to operate services to the likes of Sunderland and/or Middlesbrough.
Thunderbirds will still have a need for all operators
I personally also thought that Sunderland may get a boost, or of course the upcoming Cleethorpes service. (Note that I am speculating, this isn't confirmed by anyone at LNER.)
No, but a train with passengers on is a more pressing issue than one with containers on due to the risk of passengers detraining themselves. The TOC/FOC’s all have an agreement to send the nearest loco to the rescue, and this would pretty much always be less urgent when it’s not a passenger train involved, so I suspect this arrangement will be found adequate now that the passenger trains can all take care of themselves.
The LNER chairman has said they are for London-West Riding/York services. I think that statement is quite definitive.
More Bradford services to compete with GC possibly? (This is purely me speculating, this isn't confirmed by anyone at LNER.)
Sunderland won’t have the capacity. Metro will be increasing to 6 trains per hour in the next few years and Northern plan (or had planned) to increase to 2 trains per hour.
Middlesbrough would be an extension of existing York stoppers so would presumably fit under that category.
Unless they follow GC's route.
Sunderland is due to loose its LNER service from Dec 2024
It’s happening in December.
The capacity issue also affects the south end of Sunderland station and the fact that the Metro services cross the mainline heading towards South Hylton. The GC and Northern services are already factored into the 6tph Metro uplift.
At the moment it sits in a fast to/from York path! From memory when the original IEP timetable was mooted by VTEC way back in the 2015 sort of time frame the idea was that the Middlesbrough's would be 1tp2h fast to/from York alternating with the fast London - York - Newcastle - Edinburgh service. Of course events have marched on significantly since then but they aren't currently the extension of a York stopper.
hopefully with tri mode LNER will now offer an on demand Fenny Stratford > Darlington service ( subject to alteration as per national league fixtures)
A fixed ten-car set would be overkill for Huddersfield, and won't fit in the station for a good few years yet.hopefully with tri mode LNER will now offer an on demand Fenny Stratford > Darlington service ( subject to alteration as per national league fixtures)
I suspect any extra Boro services will have to be an extension of the York stoppers as I cant see any other practical option. These seem ideal trains to extend LNER services perhaps offering more services to Boro, Bradford, Harrogate, Cleethorpes, Huddersfield etc as extension of existing terminating services.
That was original plan to extend the York stoppers to Boro.hopefully with tri mode LNER will now offer an on demand Fenny Stratford > Darlington service ( subject to alteration as per national league fixtures)
I suspect any extra Boro services will have to be an extension of the York stoppers as I cant see any other practical option. These seem ideal trains to extend LNER services perhaps offering more services to Boro, Bradford, Harrogate, Cleethorpes, Huddersfield etc as extension of existing terminating services.
Does Sunderland directly need it with the 1tpd LNER and 6tpd GC? Probably not. But GC is cancelling numerous services due to reliability issues with the 180s and I would argue that places that the service would stop at definitely do need the capacity, such as Darlington and the service could stop elsewhere like Newark.
Firstly GC don’t stop at Darlington so not really relevant here. Secondly you cannot plan a timetable on the proviso that another company may have some cancellations. As a planner trust me on that one, especially as we are talking a minimum 5 years in the future so unless you have a crystal ball can you tell me that GC will still be having unit problems?
I never said that GC stops at Darlington, I said that Darlington could do with more trains to London and LNER to Sunderland could be faster than GC is meaning that they could be more competitive.
Would it not have been sensible to find this out before the government ordered a large fleet of half-length units?
Does it sit as a fast from York?
Darlington has 2tph to London. The same as Leeds which with all due respect has a much larger population and has far more incoming traffic from London too.
Both need more trains to London.
