Low-Cost, Speedy Solutions to West-Facing Capacity in Manchester

[Mathew S]

Inspired by a discussion on the Northern Timetable Changes May 2019 thread, in particular this post:

I wonder if something could be done with the up through line at Salford Crescent for this sort of thing. Build a platform and access to the booking hall and then the through line should be able to cope with one or two terminating trains per hour, given the southbound TPE services will be the only through trains to utilise it.

I wondered what relatively speedy ideas/thoughts there might be to improve the west-facing capacity for running trains into Manchester, without spending a fortune?
With the drive for everything that runs into There is only one west-facing bay platform in the city currently (Pl 5 at Oxford Road), so everything has to run as through services. Piccadilly 13 & 14, and platforms 3-6 at Victoria are creaking at the seems.
Would a third platform at Salford Crescent be a viable option? What other options exist, short of massively expensive projects like remodelling the lines through Ox Road and Piccadilly?

 

[SeanG]

Poor connectivity at Salford Crescent.
I would suggest putting West facing bays on the site of Manchester Exchange and to move the current stabling sidings further west

 

[Eccles1983]

Reinstate redbank sidings and use them.

Their is sufficient space, and not much actual work needs doing to install 1/2 tracks with crossovers.

Have a covered walkway from the end of platform 6 to it. Voila 2 new bay platforms.

Or the other side of the arena - a short bay platform again fed from p6.

 

[Philip]

Poor connectivity at Salford Crescent.
I would suggest putting West facing bays on the site of Manchester Exchange and to move the current stabling sidings further west

How? Even having a couple of the Victoria services terminating at Salford would still leave a regular service from there onwards and into the city centre, with about 3 to the Castlefield corridor and about 5 to Victoria.

I would look at the Wigan-Stalybridge first of all; cut this back to Salford and then run the Preston-Victoria service through to Stalybridge instead.

 

[Bletchleyite]

How? Even having a couple of the Victoria services terminating at Salford would still leave a regular service from there onwards and into the city centre, with about 3 to the Castlefield corridor and about 5 to Victoria.

An extra unnecessary change of train. It falls into the bracket of the suggestions to terminate HS2 trains at Rathole-in-the-Sticks, sorry, OOC.

It would be, as others have said, relatively easy to add terminating capacity at Victoria, as there is quite a lot of undeveloped land to its west side. Or as an alternative, just don't terminate trains at Victoria, run them through to somewhere.

 

[Chester1]

Restoring the short section of viaduct to allow Victoria to Piccadilly via Phillips Park would probably be significantly cheaper than platforms 15 and 16 and improve connectivity. It would need wiring or limited to DMUs. Could another 2-3tph be squeezed into the low numbered platforms?

There is sufficient demand east of Victoria to run more services. Wiring to Stalybridge is important. A single track link alongside the ELR to a new Heywood station would provide another option for terminating trains from the west.

 

[edwin_m]

What space is actually left on the Exchange site since re-development started?

 

[Mathew S]

What space is actually left on the Exchange site since re-development started?

None, unless you were to take over the Q-park car park, which is immediately to the south of the reversing sidings.
There is a small amount of space (probably enough for a small bay platform, as already mentioned above) to the north of the railway, abutting the arena, above the Irwell.

 

[Ken H]

I would ban trains that dont have 1/3 and 2/3 doors from the Deansgate-Piccadilly section in the rush hours. Trains with just end doors just take too long in platforms. With drivers opening doors station dwell times should be less. No 2 car trains either.

 

[Altfish]

Restoring the short section of viaduct to allow Victoria to Piccadilly via Phillips Park would probably be significantly cheaper than platforms 15 and 16 and improve connectivity. It would need wiring or limited to DMUs. Could another 2-3tph be squeezed into the low numbered platforms?
.

I'm not understanding how that will solve the platform 15/16 issue??

 

[Ken H]

I'm not understanding how that will solve the platform 15/16 issue??

Run trains through Vic, then round to low numbered platforms at Picc. So Wigan - Salford Cresc - Vic - Picc. Chnage at Salford cresc or Picc for Deansgate/Oxford road

 

[Chester1]

I'm not understanding how that will solve the platform 15/16 issue??

Run trains through Vic, then round to low numbered platforms at Picc. So Wigan - Salford Cresc - Vic - Picc. Chnage at Salford cresc or Picc for Deansgate/Oxford road

Yes. I think it would only be financially justified if existing platform capacity became available rather than needing extensions or a new platform e.g. if the tram-train scheme comes to fruition.

I don't see the problem with running trains through the city centre when the stock is suitable. There isn't a need for west facing platforms at Victoria although keeping 6 rather than 4 through platforms would have been considerably better.

 

[Mogster]

I don't see the problem with running trains through the city centre when the stock is suitable.

And it just happens to be where most people want to go...

 

[Bletchleyite]

Run trains through Vic, then round to low numbered platforms at Picc. So Wigan - Salford Cresc - Vic - Picc. Chnage at Salford cresc or Picc for Deansgate/Oxford road

There's really no need to do that - just don't terminate trains in central Manchester, join them to the ones from the other side. Then through 4 platforms at Vic you effectively have the capacity for something in the order of 60tph[1] each way, which you're never going to reach.

[1] I know you won't actually reach that.

 

[YorkshireBear]

There's really no need to do that - just don't terminate trains in central Manchester, join them to the ones from the other side. Then through 4 platforms at Vic you effectively have the capacity for something in the order of 60tph[1] each way, which you're never going to reach.

[1] I know you won't actually reach that.

Absolutely, I have always found this quite efficient in some of the German cities I have visited where the S-Bahn and RB/RE trains don't seem to terminate in the large central stations and instead run through them effectively joining up two services that would terminate. Berlin and Koln come to mind as two examples. Also gives better connectivity as it gives these trains the opportunity to stop at all/some of the city stations.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Absolutely, I have always found this quite efficient in some of the German cities I have visited where the S-Bahn and RB/RE trains don't seem to terminate in the large central stations and instead run through them effectively joining up two services that would terminate. Berlin and Koln come to mind as two examples. Also gives better connectivity as it gives these trains the opportunity to stop at all/some of the city stations.

True.

One issue with this is that a lot of the west side of Vic is wired, and a lot of the east side isn't. If we're talking about spending on infrastructure, however, there is a very obvious solution to that. In the meantime, there's MasterCard, well, the use of it to purchase some Class 769s

 

[Ken H]

Absolutely, I have always found this quite efficient in some of the German cities I have visited where the S-Bahn and RB/RE trains don't seem to terminate in the large central stations and instead run through them effectively joining up two services that would terminate. Berlin and Koln come to mind as two examples. Also gives better connectivity as it gives these trains the opportunity to stop at all/some of the city stations.

Berlin has its stations in a nice straight line. Ortbanhof, Freidrichstrasse, Alexsanderplatz, hautbanhof and Zoo.
All important stations. So a cross city service pattern makes sense.
I always enjoy a trip along the Stadtbahn. But remember it has a dark cold war histiry.

 

[Greybeard33]

There's really no need to do that - just don't terminate trains in central Manchester, join them to the ones from the other side. Then through 4 platforms at Vic you effectively have the capacity for something in the order of 60tph[1] each way, which you're never going to reach.

The problem with this is the effect on punctuality performance. We have ended up with unhappy "marriages of convenience" like Southport to Blackburn via Atherton, Rochdale and Todmorden, and Southport to Leeds via Atherton, Rochdale and Brighouse. Hardly anyone uses these long, slow services from end to end, but they export delays from one side of Manchester to the other.

Most passengers from the likes of Southport, Burnley and Halifax would prefer a more reliable service to Manchester with good onward connections. While the cross-city market would be better served by a shorter S-Bahn type service such as Wigan to Rochdale. Unfortunately the infrastructure we have is unable to support both.

 

[tbtc]

The problem with this is the effect on punctuality performance. We have ended up with unhappy "marriages of convenience" like Southport to Blackburn via Atherton, Rochdale and Hebden Bridge, and Southport to Leeds via Atherton, Rochdale and Brighouse. Hardly anyone uses these long, slow services from end to end, but they export delays from one side of Manchester to the other.

Most passengers from the likes of Southport, Burnley and Halifax would prefer a more reliable service to Manchester with good onward connections. While the cross-city market would be better served by a shorter S-Bahn type service such as Wigan to Rochdale. Unfortunately the infrastructure we have is unable to support both.

Apologies for repeating myself, but, rather than the fascination with lots of hourly links (e.g. giving the Calder Valley direct services to Southport, Liverpool, Chester and Manchester Airport) we'd be a lot better just matching services across Manchester based on demand/frequency/electrification.

So, for example, Calder Valley into Manchester is going to be about four services per hour (mainly from Bradford but inc one via Brighouse) - that matches roughly with the "Southport via Atherton" and "Blackburn via Bolton" corridors - all unnelectrified.

All Warrington Central services (that don't terminate at Oxford Road) through to unnelectrified places beyond Stockport (all other Stockport services to terminate in the main shed at Piccadilly), all Preston services through to Manchester Airport, all "Wigan via Bolton" services through to Victoria... that way you tidy up the map, can replace several badly co-ordinated two coach trains per hour with (say) four longer trains per hour.

Most Chat Moss services can probably match up with most Stalybridge services, that kind of thing.

Of course you'll have criticism about the fact that there's no through service from (say) Stockport to Bolton (or extreme examples like Cleethorpes to the Airport) but, rather than spend yet more big sums on additional infrastructure around Manchester, maybe we could recognise that we have sufficient lines to cope with demand into central Manchester (we just don't have sufficient capacity to fill our lines with lots of two coach trains for the sake of maintaining through services from everywhere to everywhere - the obsession with trying to please everyone means poor co-ordination, too many short services and a timetable that falls down whenever one branch sneezes.

 

[LOL The Irony]

I would ban trains that dont have 1/3 and 2/3 doors from the Deansgate-Piccadilly section in the rush hours. Trains with just end doors just take too long in platforms. With drivers opening doors station dwell times should be less. No 2 car trains either.

And the Random Unit Generator?

 

[Altfish]

Run trains through Vic, then round to low numbered platforms at Picc. So Wigan - Salford Cresc - Vic - Picc. Chnage at Salford cresc or Picc for Deansgate/Oxford road

But most of the trains going through 13/14 do not terminate at Piccadilly, they are going to...
Airport, Norwich, Crewe, Hazel Grove, Alderley Edge
Additionally freight is going to Crewe BH; Southampton, Felixstowe; etc.

So you are adding 15 minutes (?) plus a reversal for those services. (I assume the freight does not reverse)

 

[Chester1]

But most of the trains going through 13/14 do not terminate at Piccadilly, they are going to...
Airport, Norwich, Crewe, Hazel Grove, Alderley Edge
Additionally freight is going to Crewe BH; Southampton, Felixstowe; etc.

So you are adding 15 minutes (?) plus a reversal for those services. (I assume the freight does not reverse)

I don't know about Ken H's views but when I made the suggestion I was just thinking of it being used to divert the Llandudno service. It would be a place for termination of new services and services that currently terminate at Victoria 3-6.

The current service level for Piccadilly 13 and 14 could be made to work better but certainly cannot support future demand for services. A move towards 4-6 coach services seems to be the only current plausible option. Lengthening some smaller platforms at smaller stations to support 6 coach trains would be much cheaper than Piccadilly 15 and 16. Retaining and doubling up 323s would be a good standard for local EMU services through Castlefield and could fit onto platforms at Oxford Road (and Salford Crescent).

 

[LOL The Irony]

My simple, quick and free idea is to terminate the Liverpool - Norwich service at Piccadilly until 15 & 16 are built. There are 12 bays to play with.

 

[Peter Kelford]

I would terminate west facing services at Stockport or even Manchester Airport

 

[Mathew S]

I would terminate west facing services at Stockport or even Manchester Airport

But there isn't the through capacity to do it is there, that's the point. If the services can't get from the west through Manchester to those places they can't terminate there.

 

[Peter Kelford]

Just to the west of Salford Central, there's a large piece of empty land...

 

[Ken H]

in the beginning there was the word. and the word was 4 trains an hour from Picc through platforms from Altrincham. 1 to crewe, 1 to Alderley Edge and 2 on the styal line. Lots of Cl 304;s And some Oxford Road - Liverpool via Warrington locals

Then someone thought of rerouting transpennine to Piccadilly. Including one that traversed the entire Piccadilly throat to get to Liverpool via Warrington.

Then they built the Windsor link so channeling more through Oxford Road. The built the Hazel Grove chord to bring the Norwich - Liverpool trains in.

And they wondered why it over crowded now.

Poor old Victoria - sad and forgotten

Do most people going to Manchester care if they end up at Picc or Vic?

So now they are sending stuff through Victoria again.

 

[LOL The Irony]

Do most people going to Manchester care if they end up at Picc or Vic?

Piccadilly is better for people wanting to get to the City Center.

 

[Ken H]

Piccadilly is better for people wanting to get to the City Center.

isnt the arndale equidistant?

 

[LOL The Irony]

isnt the arndale equidistant?

It is IIRC but I find there's more things on the Piccadilly side.