Routing Hereford services into Snow Hill would be a massive step backwards. The existing 90 minute end to end journey time would be extended and services would become more overcrowded (especially at peak times). Although I supose there could still be one or two New Street - Hereford trains in each paeak with Snow Hill trains terminating at Worcester or Malvern.
And is there really a need for an hourly service at Ashchurch? London Midland introduced a two hourly Gloucester - Worcester shuttle service in December 2008 to fill the gaps in First Great Westerns two hourly Worcester - Bristol service. This was withdrwan after 12months due to low passenger numbers.
And it soesn't address the problems at Bromsgrove. In fact, there will be fewer trains at Bromsgrove in the peaks if they are diverted via Stourbridge, although (as stated above), there could still be one or two Hereford - New Street services in the peaks. I assume the new Birmingham - Gloucester service will be opperate using 2 and 3 car 170's, so as long as 4 car units are not used, this could lead to a slight increase in the number of trains calling at Bromsgrove in the peaks.
But it does not address a key problem. There will still only be one train per hour from Worcester to New Street in the off peak period, and this will now call at Shrub Hill instead of Forgate Street. There is desperate need for a second hourly off peak service from Worcester to Birmingham. This can be done using existing rolling stock and on existing infrastructure using the 170's that are stabled at Tysley during the day. The proposals in the draft RUS are for a half hourly Tamworth - Worcester cross city service with hourly extensions to Hereford. This can't come into effect untill a bay platform and crossover are consturcted at Tamworth and the Water Orton area is re-modeld. But it is perfectly possible within the existing timetable, al-be-it with some tight 6 minute turnaround times at New Street, for a half houtly New Street - Worcester service to start opperating in December 2012. It could even opperate alongside the new Gloucester - Worcester - Birmingham service, with one train an hour running through Shrub Hill and one terminating at Forgate Street. But I guess that would require extra rolling stock because the 170's I mentioned earlier will probably need to be used for the Gloucester service.
But as I already mentioned, there is little demand for a hourly Worcester - Gloucester service, so these units could be put to better use on a half hourly New Street - Worcester service with Hereford trains continuing to opperate in and out of New Street. Ashchurch can have an hourly service to Birmingham just by providing a stop in the Nottingham - Cardiff service and this service can stop at Bromsgorve as well to provide a 3tph off peak service once issues regarding turnaround times at Cardiff have been resolved. And all this can be done regardless of wheather or not the cross city line extension to Bromsgrove goes ahead.
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Speculatively, yeah I guess any additional 172 vehicles would only replace any 150s that LM were otherwise looking to retain.
It would be nice if 172s could be passed for the Bedford-Bletchley line, as they could then be used on that route and on the Coventry-Nuneaton shuttle and replace all of LMs' 153s. Using a 172 on Bedford-Bletchley would also be helpful for the ECS move up the WCML at weekends, being able to reach 100mph rather than a maximum of 75.
The Bedford-Bletchley route is really daft anyway from a stock point of view: A diesel shuttle service that requires a massively lengthy ECS move over one of Britains' fastest main lines every weekend to return the stock to Tyseley, and has no relation to the deployment of the rest of the LM 150/153 fleet at all. It really needs electrifying ASAP.
Additionally, on the subject of Chiltern taking over the Snow Hill local lines, is anyone else amused by the thought of a 153 in Chiltern livery?
They could use the extra 172's to replace the 170's and 153-170 combi's on the Chase Line. This would release one or two 153's to FGW or Northern and three 2 car and one 3 car 170 for use on the new Tamworth - Worcester - Hereford cross city service once that starts opperating.
Also, does anyone know exactly how many EMU's LM will need for the cross city line once Redditch and Bromsgrove start getting 3tph. And there are still 6 trains on the cross city line ariving at New Street in the morning high peak that are still formed of 3 coaches (4 starting at Longbridge, 1 at Four Oaks and 1 at Lichfield City). In my opinion thses urgently need to be lengthened to 6 coaches, although the draft RUS says there is no business case for extra units on the cross city line north of Birmingham in the morning peak. Will all these rolling stock requirements be met by the 17 323's being transfered to LM from Northern in 2014, or will there still be 3 car trains on the cross city in the long term?
