Platform 15 and 16 project at Manchester Piccadilly.

[Bantamzen]

Because, as we all know, whenever somewhere's connections need to be downgraded, then Liverpool's Yer Man !

Everyone on this thread seems to be of the opinion that links to the Castlefield corridor and Piccadilly are vital. Liverpool has already seen the service via the CLC downgraded because the TPE via Warrington Central has been replaced by a mich slower and extremely unreliable Northern service to Ringway. The service over Chat Moss has already been downgraded from a semi-fast to an all stops which remains much slower than the previous service, despite electrification.

All of this would matter less if Liverpool was allowed decent long-distance services of its own and more people could change at Lime Street or other stations around Liverpool, but thanks to the tablet of stone which provides that Manchester Must Be The Only Place In The North West Permitted Decent Long Distance Services, Piccadilly remains a major connecting point for large parts kf the Liverpool region.

As much as I feel for the good people of Liverpool and the wider Merseyside, is there a chance that we keep this thread on topic?

It seems to me, and observed by someone else recently that many of the problems are caused away from the Castlefield corridor but manifest themselves within it. So measures already proposed, along with some additional ones may well help ease the problems. Some of these include:

• Splitting the TPE stoppers at Huddersfield. This will aid recovery times considerably along the North TP, and stop fast / semi fasts getting stuck behind the them causing delays that mount up quickly, so that they arrive at Victoria & Castlefield in good time. Personally I'd go one step further and hand them back to Northern, serving all stops en route as an hourly service rather than skip-stopping & call at all stations between Stalybridge & Piccadilly.
• Longer dwell times at Manchester Aiport & Scarborough. Again an aid to recovering lost time on previous diagrams, but will also mean TPEs not having to terminate at Piccadilly or Oxford Road, meaning quicker passage through the corridor and not holding up services whilst paths are found to get short-terminated services out of the way. However I would go further & run TPE services through Oxford Road.
• More capacity on both TPE and Northern services. A real no brainer, more capacity means quicker dwell times and faster passage through the corridor.
• Splitting at least Crewe - Liverpool Northern services. As a recent addition to the route, is there really a need for it other than for operational reasons?
• Stopping crew changes at Oxford Road. This ought to be a fairly simple and obvious change to Northern's operations through the corridor, and free up platform capacity there to allow quicker movement of services.

Longer term the government must commit to improvement works such as P15/16 at Piccadilly, reconfiguring Oxford Road to four longer through platforms. Maybe also consider the long term future of Deansgate, could its requirement be handled via Oxford Road and some pedestrian connection? Digital signalling might also be an option, allowing more services into the corridor which will keep them moving.

One thing is clear to me though, all options that involve reducing the use of, or indeed effectively mothballing the Ordsall Chord are not desirable. The rumours of HS2b possibly not getting through, along with the growing reluctance for the Minister to sign off projects like P15/16, TP wiring etc should serve as a warning to all that the many proposed improvements to the infrastructure in this region are far from safe. Ditching a £700M project because its a bit difficult will send all the wrong messages to MPs up and down the land, especially those campaigning for improvements in their area. I could easily see a Chord abandonment being used as an excuse to cut off funding in the future, and/or divert funds elsewhere.

As I am all too keen on saying, be careful what you wish for!

 

[Senex]

One thing is clear to me though, all options that involve reducing the use of, or indeed effectively mothballing the Ordsall Chord are not desirable. The rumours of HS2b possibly not getting through, along with the growing reluctance for the Minister to sign off projects like P15/16, TP wiring etc should serve as a warning to all that the many proposed improvements to the infrastructure in this region are far from safe. Ditching a £700M project because its a bit difficult will send all the wrong messages to MPs up and down the land, especially those campaigning for improvements in their area. I could easily see a Chord abandonment being used as an excuse to cut off funding in the future, and/or divert funds elsewhere.

Whilst I agree with you completely that ditching the Ordsall Chord because it's difficult to use would send entirely the wrong message (even though I personally think the Chord was the wrong solution and has been done in a cheap way in any case), I'm not clear where the figure of £700 million project comes from. What does that cover? I thought the chord itself cost just £85 million.

 

[B&I]

As much as I feel for the good people of Liverpool and the wider Merseyside, is there a chance that we keep this thread on topic?

It seems to me, and observed by someone else recently that many of the problems are caused away from the Castlefield corridor but manifest themselves within it. So measures already proposed, along with some additional ones may well help ease the problems. Some of these include:

• Splitting the TPE stoppers at Huddersfield. This will aid recovery times considerably along the North TP, and stop fast / semi fasts getting stuck behind the them causing delays that mount up quickly, so that they arrive at Victoria & Castlefield in good time. Personally I'd go one step further and hand them back to Northern, serving all stops en route as an hourly service rather than skip-stopping & call at all stations between Stalybridge & Piccadilly.
• Longer dwell times at Manchester Aiport & Scarborough. Again an aid to recovering lost time on previous diagrams, but will also mean TPEs not having to terminate at Piccadilly or Oxford Road, meaning quicker passage through the corridor and not holding up services whilst paths are found to get short-terminated services out of the way. However I would go further & run TPE services through Oxford Road.
• More capacity on both TPE and Northern services. A real no brainer, more capacity means quicker dwell times and faster passage through the corridor.
• Splitting at least Crewe - Liverpool Northern services. As a recent addition to the route, is there really a need for it other than for operational reasons?
• Stopping crew changes at Oxford Road. This ought to be a fairly simple and obvious change to Northern's operations through the corridor, and free up platform capacity there to allow quicker movement of services.

Longer term the government must commit to improvement works such as P15/16 at Piccadilly, reconfiguring Oxford Road to four longer through platforms. Maybe also consider the long term future of Deansgate, could its requirement be handled via Oxford Road and some pedestrian connection? Digital signalling might also be an option, allowing more services into the corridor which will keep them moving.

One thing is clear to me though, all options that involve reducing the use of, or indeed effectively mothballing the Ordsall Chord are not desirable. The rumours of HS2b possibly not getting through, along with the growing reluctance for the Minister to sign off projects like P15/16, TP wiring etc should serve as a warning to all that the many proposed improvements to the infrastructure in this region are far from safe. Ditching a £700M project because its a bit difficult will send all the wrong messages to MPs up and down the land, especially those campaigning for improvements in their area. I could easily see a Chord abandonment being used as an excuse to cut off funding in the future, and/or divert funds elsewhere.

As I am all too keen on saying, be careful what you wish for!

Service quality to Liverpool, and in particular the Chat Moss line, is on topic, because we are discussing who.should benefit from the scarce resource of capacity on the Castlefield corridor, and I am arguing that a major city which is consistently deprived of its own long-distance services should not be further isolated from the services its population are forced to access via Manchester.

The Liverpool-Crewe via Manchester is idiotic, but it is important to remember what went before. Chat Moss used to have a semi-fast to Manchester Airport and a stopper to Victoria. These have effectively been merged into a stopper to Piccadilly, the airport and Crewe. Cutting this off cuts Chat Moss off from Piccadilly, despite that being crucial for onward connections south and east due to the lack of connections at the other end of the line.

Incidentally, bearing in mind that people are merrily proposing to cut the Chat Moss-Piccadilly service so TPE can continue to take 3 people an hour from Grimborough-on-Sea to Ringway, I have yet to see anyone even attempt to explain why servuces ro Piccadilly and the airport from medium-sized towns over 100 miles away are more important than those from a large city 35 miles away, and from the western siburbs of the airport's own conurbation. Why don't you propose cutting the Middlesbrough-Manchester Airport service back to Victoria ? After all, it's a fairly recent innovation.

As for the rest, I don't propose mothballing the Ordsall Chord, I propose using it more sensibly for local services and building a proper way of gerring long-distance trains across Manchester. But maybe it's right that we question how sensible some recent investment decisions have been, and whether the way rail infrastructure has been managed (and is proposed to be managed) around Manchester really benefits the travelling public as much as it should

 

[Bantamzen]

Whilst I agree with you completely that ditching the Ordsall Chord because it's difficult to use would send entirely the wrong message (even though I personally think the Chord was the wrong solution and has been done in a cheap way in any case), I'm not clear where the figure of £700 million project comes from. What does that cover? I thought the chord itself cost just £85 million.

You might be right about the cost, thinking about it the £700M might have been the cost of a wider project and not the Chord. But either way messages of failure are not what we want to send.

However, the Chord was only part of wider solution, which included the P15/16 project so in itself was not the wrong solution, more a partial solution wrongly left incomplete.

Service quality to Liverpool, and in particular the Chat Moss line, is on topic, because we are discussing who.should benefit from the scarce resource of capacity on the Castlefield corridor, and I am arguing that a major city which is consistently deprived of its own long-distance services should not be further isolated from the services its population are forced to access via Manchester.

The Liverpool-Crewe via Manchester is idiotic, but it is important to remember what went before. Chat Moss used to have a semi-fast to Manchester Airport and a stopper to Victoria. These have effectively been merged into a stopper to Piccadilly, the airport and Crewe. Cutting this off cuts Chat Moss off from Piccadilly, despite that being crucial for onward connections south and east due to the lack of connections at the other end of the line.

Incidentally, bearing in mind that people are merrily proposing to cut the Chat Moss-Piccadilly service so TPE can continue to take 3 people an hour from Grimborough-on-Sea to Ringway, I have yet to see anyone even attempt to explain why servuces ro Piccadilly and the airport from medium-sized towns over 100 miles away are more important than those from a large city 35 miles away, and from the western siburbs of the airport's own conurbation. Why don't you propose cutting the Middlesbrough-Manchester Airport service back to Victoria ? After all, it's a fairly recent innovation.

As for the rest, I don't propose mothballing the Ordsall Chord, I propose using it more sensibly for local services and building a proper way of gerring long-distance trains across Manchester. But maybe it's right that we question how sensible some recent investment decisions have been, and whether the way rail infrastructure has been managed (and is proposed to be managed) around Manchester really benefits the travelling public as much as it should

Areas such as West Yorkshire or the North East have only medium sized towns? Seriously? Sorry, but you seem to be adopting a position of "North West rails for North West people only". But let's put it another way, the owners of Manchester Airport are investing over a billion pounds into expanding their airport, with a view to increasing capacity by at least 50%. So that means 50% more passengers heading for the airport, and they will not be restricted to a large city 35 miles to the west. So ways of getting this additional traffic from their starting point to the airport are vital, and needed in advance of the capacity increase. Otherwise the existing infrastructure will simply have to soak this up, and doubtless cause even more misery for the good people of the North West. They are not going to stop because of delays through the Castlefield corridor, which frankly are far from insurmountable.

The Ordsall Chord is part of this, and as stated above was supposed to be part of a wider project to increase capacity through Manchester. Cutting it off for it's intended purpose will be political gold to those who opposed the scheme, as well as those looking to promote their ideas over those currently proposed for the North as a whole. It should have gone hand in hand with the P15/16 build, as well as wiring the North TP. That neither project has made it out of the Minister's in-tray is the real reason this debate is taking place, and that is where I would suggest you point your annoyance, not at people from across the Pennines daring to emerge from t'pit homes, leave t'whippet at home & use an airport serving destinations they want to go to.

 

[Halifaxlad]

I haven't followed this much, but I am finding capacity in Manchester quite interesting.

I do quite like the idea of running more services through, one of my idea's not so long ago was to run Transpennine trains via Huddersfield back through Vic and the Calder Valley on their return journey to Leeds and visa versa. So capacity along in this area is also important to me.

Anyway When viewing Google Maps the other day at something else, it did get me thinking: why not build a bridge?

Word of warning: I am also very crayonista!

 

[Sir Felix Pole]

I thought both 5 and 6 remained until the early 70s, although 6 was rarely used. It used to be used by the trains over the MSJ&AR that veered off at Timperley and went through Lymm and Warrington to Ditton, they finished in 63(?).
The conversion of the Altrincham line was not until 1971.

Prior to 1959/60 rebuild of Oxford Road the terminal platforms (the original MSJ & A station) were little used for passenger services, apart from the the infrequent push-pull steam services to Warrington LL and Ditton Jcn via Lymm. All Altrincham trains ran through to London Road (Piccadilly) from the 1890s onwards and CLC services, of course, ran into Central. The current platform 5 was included in the 1931 electrification scheme, however, and sometimes used for football / cricket EMU specials. At the start of the rebuild, MSJ & A electrics were cut back to Oxford Road to use Platform 5, and Platform 4 was made a terminal road for the new 25kV AC Crewe and Alderley Edge services. This permitted an easy interchange for passengers. The newly reconstructed platform 6, had a short active life until the end of the Lymm services in 1962, and little used thereafter.

In 1968 / 69 to facilitate the closure of Manchester Central and the diversion of Liverpool CLC services through to Piccadilly - Platform 6 was closed and the track into Platform 5 slewed across to allow Platform 4 to become a through road again. The MSJ & A was converted to 25kV AC in 1971 with through Altrincham to Crewe services, so Platform 5 was mainly used after that for Chester via Sale DMUs. There were further alterations in 1988 in connection with the Windsor Link. The Platform 6 structures remained in place for quite a while, going sometime in the 80s.

 

[B&I]

You might be right about the cost, thinking about it the £700M might have been the cost of a wider project and not the Chord. But either way messages of failure are not what we want to send.

However, the Chord was only part of wider solution, which included the P15/16 project so in itself was not the wrong solution, more a partial solution wrongly left incomplete.



Areas such as West Yorkshire or the North East have only medium sized towns? Seriously? Sorry, but you seem to be adopting a position of "North West rails for North West people only". But let's put it another way, the owners of Manchester Airport are investing over a billion pounds into expanding their airport, with a view to increasing capacity by at least 50%. So that means 50% more passengers heading for the airport, and they will not be restricted to a large city 35 miles to the west. So ways of getting this additional traffic from their starting point to the airport are vital, and needed in advance of the capacity increase. Otherwise the existing infrastructure will simply have to soak this up, and doubtless cause even more misery for the good people of the North West. They are not going to stop because of delays through the Castlefield corridor, which frankly are far from insurmountable.

The Ordsall Chord is part of this, and as stated above was supposed to be part of a wider project to increase capacity through Manchester. Cutting it off for it's intended purpose will be political gold to those who opposed the scheme, as well as those looking to promote their ideas over those currently proposed for the North as a whole. It should have gone hand in hand with the P15/16 build, as well as wiring the North TP. That neither project has made it out of the Minister's in-tray is the real reason this debate is taking place, and that is where I would suggest you point your annoyance, not at people from across the Pennines daring to emerge from t'pit homes, leave t'whippet at home & use an airport serving destinations they want to go to.

The medium-sized town I had in mind was Middlesbrough. Zorry Teeside.

Your thinking on all issues of rail development in the north of England is coloured by your very strange obsession with the importance of people east of the Pennines having a direct journey to the Pennines. This seems to be more important than people from west of the Pennines (including from Manchester's western suburbs) getring to the airport, or indeed people from.anywhere getting to any destination which isn't Manchester Airport.

I'm sure the millions of people stuck in creaking, overcrowded trains or on clogged roads in Oopnorthland will be glad to know how much of the relatively little spent on transport up here has gone on making it easier to get to the airport for their summer jollingtons, or on facilitating the truly vast flow of investors who can't wait to jump off their 767s at Ringway and hot foot it to the investment hotspots of the Tees Valley.

While Grayling is a berk, and the attitude towards the regions he embodies is a major reason for Britain's problems, he is not the only one responsible for the poor quality of the north's transport. The obsessive focus of local politicians on a handful of narrow objectives, and schemes like the Ordsall Chord which arise from this, are also responsible for us having a rail system which barely functions

 

[LOL The Irony]

Word of warning: I am also very crayonista!

Someone did the exact same idea a few weeks back.

 

[Bantamzen]

The medium-sized town I had in mind was Middlesbrough. Zorry Teeside.

Your thinking on all issues of rail development in the north of England is coloured by your very strange obsession with the importance of people east of the Pennines having a direct journey to the Pennines. This seems to be more important than people from west of the Pennines (including from Manchester's western suburbs) getring to the airport, or indeed people from.anywhere getting to any destination which isn't Manchester Airport.

I'm sure the millions of people stuck in creaking, overcrowded trains or on clogged roads in Oopnorthland will be glad to know how much of the relatively little spent on transport up here has gone on making it easier to get to the airport for their summer jollingtons, or on facilitating the truly vast flow of investors who can't wait to jump off their 767s at Ringway and hot foot it to the investment hotspots of the Tees Valley.

While Grayling is a berk, and the attitude towards the regions he embodies is a major reason for Britain's problems, he is not the only one responsible for the poor quality of the north's transport. The obsessive focus of local politicians on a handful of narrow objectives, and schemes like the Ordsall Chord which arise from this, are also responsible for us having a rail system which barely functions

As I have said previously, the issues in the Castlefield corridor should not require a complete meltdown of confidence in running a couple of extra services through it. There are potential fixes that don't require a huge recast, or worse still dial-back of the timetables. I'm not going over the reasoning again, its all up-thread for all to read and consider. And again, the Chord was only part of the overall solution, but sadly the only one that saw the cheque written.

Quite honestly you and I will never agree on the best way forward, and that's fair enough. It would be a boring place if everyone agreed with everything. But constantly picking little bits of the North of England to ask why they should have better connectivity is getting a little long in the tooth. Try to think of it in this context, those services pulling out of Teeside will also be connecting with the ECML & services from the North East. They then roll through West Yorkshire, with again more connections to many towns & cities before plying their way across the Pennines to annoy the good folk of Greater Manchester by daring to take some people to the airport. Its quite likely that these services and their East-of-Pennines connections serve at least as many people as their Western starting cousins. So its a numbers game, Manchester Airport does not just serve the North West, no matter how much some there would like to see less of the rabble from across the hills.

The trick is to strike the balance, which hasn't happened in this current timetable. But considering the problems in many parts, this can hardly come as surprise thanks to the utter cluster-you-know-what that was the rush job of the recast. With a little application, some calm heads & better planning there is no reason why the cities of Liverpool, Leeds, Newcastle and many other towns and cities can't have these connections.

 

[Boysteve]

Incidentally, bearing in mind that people are merrily proposing to cut the Chat Moss-Piccadilly service so TPE can continue to take 3 people an hour from Grimborough-on-Sea to Ringway, I have yet to see anyone even attempt to explain why servuces ro Piccadilly and the airport from medium-sized towns over 100 miles away are more important than those from a large city 35 miles away, and from the western siburbs of the airport's own conurbation. Why don't you propose cutting the Middlesbrough-Manchester Airport service back to Victoria ?

Personally I believe Liverpool deserves two services per hour to Manchester Airport. As you say it's a large city and less than 50 miles away, however you can make EXACTLY the same argument for Leeds and hence the two North TPEx per hour! However some forum members do not see this and instead focus on why both Middlesborough & Newcastle must have an hourly airport service. For me, where they go East of Leeds is less important but it does makes sense for them to serve 2 different routes. Send one to Hull instead if you like, it's cultural now!

 

[Mogster]

I haven't followed this much, but I am finding capacity in Manchester quite interesting.

I do quite like the idea of running more services through, one of my idea's not so long ago was to run Transpennine trains via Huddersfield back through Vic and the Calder Valley on their return journey to Leeds and visa versa. So capacity along in this area is also important to me.

Anyway When viewing Google Maps the other day at something else, it did get me thinking: why not build a bridge?

Word of warning: I am also very crayonista!


View attachment 54920

Wasn’t extending the track through the derelict Mayfield station and connecting it to Castlefield Viaduct one of the options looked at before NR decided on 15 & 16?

At a glance there’s a huge hotel in the way.

 

[urbophile]

Because, as we all know, whenever somewhere's connections need to be downgraded, then Liverpool's Yer Man !

Everyone on this thread seems to be of the opinion that links to the Castlefield corridor and Piccadilly are vital. Liverpool has already seen the service via the CLC downgraded because the TPE via Warrington Central has been replaced by a mich slower and extremely unreliable Northern service to Ringway. The service over Chat Moss has already been downgraded from a semi-fast to an all stops which remains much slower than the previous service, despite electrification.

All of this would matter less if Liverpool was allowed decent long-distance services of its own and more people could change at Lime Street or other stations around Liverpool, but thanks to the tablet of stone which provides that Manchester Must Be The Only Place In The North West Permitted Decent Long Distance Services, Piccadilly remains a major connecting point for large parts of the Liverpool region.

A mistake was prioritising the electrification of the Chat Moss line over the CLC (really both should have been done years ago) even though the latter has more intermediate stations; and the nonsense of electrifying the former only to run more diesel trains than electric over it. Not to mention rebuilding Newton le Willows station at great expense while leaving it with effectively a 1tph service from Liverpool (actually 2tph but one fast and one slow within minutes of each other).

 

[Ianno87]

Personally I believe Liverpool deserves two services per hour to Manchester Airport. As you say it's a large city and less than 50 miles away, however you can make EXACTLY the same argument for Leeds and hence the two North TPEx per hour! However some forum members do not see this and instead focus on why both Middlesborough & Newcastle must have an hourly airport service. For me, where they go East of Leeds is less important but it does makes sense for them to serve 2 different routes. Send one to Hull instead if you like, it's cultural now!

2tph to Liverpool just serves Liverpool (plus Warrington/St. Helens along the way)

2tph to Leeds (and beyond) serves Huddersfield, Leeds, York, plus Middlesbrough and/or Darlington, Durham and Newcastle.

 

[Killingworth]

2tph to Liverpool just serves Liverpool (plus Warrington/St. Helens along the way)

2tph to Leeds (and beyond) serves Huddersfield, Leeds, York, plus Middlesbrough and/or Darlington, Durham and Newcastle.

Aren't they also hoping to run on from Newcastle to Edinburgh?

 

[Greybeard33]

It seems to me, and observed by someone else recently that many of the problems are caused away from the Castlefield corridor but manifest themselves within it. So measures already proposed, along with some additional ones may well help ease the problems. Some of these include:

• Splitting the TPE stoppers at Huddersfield. This will aid recovery times considerably along the North TP, and stop fast / semi fasts getting stuck behind the them causing delays that mount up quickly, so that they arrive at Victoria & Castlefield in good time. Personally I'd go one step further and hand them back to Northern, serving all stops en route as an hourly service rather than skip-stopping & call at all stations between Stalybridge & Piccadilly.
• Longer dwell times at Manchester Aiport & Scarborough. Again an aid to recovering lost time on previous diagrams, but will also mean TPEs not having to terminate at Piccadilly or Oxford Road, meaning quicker passage through the corridor and not holding up services whilst paths are found to get short-terminated services out of the way. However I would go further & run TPE services through Oxford Road.
• More capacity on both TPE and Northern services. A real no brainer, more capacity means quicker dwell times and faster passage through the corridor.
• Splitting at least Crewe - Liverpool Northern services. As a recent addition to the route, is there really a need for it other than for operational reasons?
• Stopping crew changes at Oxford Road. This ought to be a fairly simple and obvious change to Northern's operations through the corridor, and free up platform capacity there to allow quicker movement of services.

Longer term the government must commit to improvement works such as P15/16 at Piccadilly, reconfiguring Oxford Road to four longer through platforms. Maybe also consider the long term future of Deansgate, could its requirement be handled via Oxford Road and some pedestrian connection? Digital signalling might also be an option, allowing more services into the corridor which will keep them moving.

One thing is clear to me though, all options that involve reducing the use of, or indeed effectively mothballing the Ordsall Chord are not desirable. The rumours of HS2b possibly not getting through, along with the growing reluctance for the Minister to sign off projects like P15/16, TP wiring etc should serve as a warning to all that the many proposed improvements to the infrastructure in this region are far from safe. Ditching a £700M project because its a bit difficult will send all the wrong messages to MPs up and down the land, especially those campaigning for improvements in their area. I could easily see a Chord abandonment being used as an excuse to cut off funding in the future, and/or divert funds elsewhere.

As I am all too keen on saying, be careful what you wish for!

I agree it is important to consider both short term mitigations (from the Dec 2018 or May 2019 timetable changes) and long term infrastructure improvements (such as P15/16 and Oxford Road reconfiguration). But the latter will realistically take several years to implement, even if the TWAO were to be signed off today. So I think we also need to focus on the medium term, from the Dec 2019 timetable change until P15/16 entry into service.

TPE's short term timetable mitigations, splitting the Leeds stopper and extended turnround times at the Airport, are only agreed between Dec 2018 and Dec 2019. After Dec 2019, the Train Service Planning paper for the 09 Oct Rail North Committee meeting, https://transportforthenorth.com/wp-content/uploads/Item-5-Train-Service-Planning.pdf, had this to say:

...the permanent implementation of split services and longer turnround times would require extra rolling stock and / or changes to the capacity metrics in the Franchise Agreement. As part of the service development work already underway, Transport for the North is beginning work with TPE to explore the timetable options available from December 2019, to improve performance and ensure that adequate passenger capacity is provided.

Clearly it is too late for TPE to order more 802s or Mk5A sets to be in service for Dec 2019, and it would be politically unacceptable to revert back to the current TPE North timetable in Dec 2019 (stopper through to Leeds and 10 minute turnrounds again). So I think this points to a major TPE North timetable recast in Dec 2019, maybe incorporating some of the many suggestions that have been offered upthread.

 

[faltskog36abba]

The reason for that is that the Castlefield corridor is where people want to go in Manchester. All the connections to the rest of the country are there, and between Piccadilly and Oxford Road most employment or other destinations are served, as opposed to the hole that is Victoria, closer to Strangeways than the Town Hall, with connections to a bunch of depressed mill towns (and now the North East).

With the disappearance of the Airport semi-fast with TPE switching to Chat Moss and providing connections to Victoria the demand for the other service will most likely be for Oxford Road and Piccadilly. This then has to run through to Crewe because of the lack of somewhere to terminate it at Piccadilly or the ability to run separate trains to the Airport. The bodge job of the timetable rewrite didn't help either.

Victoria is right next to the Manchester Arndale shopping centre, The Manchester Arena and the Printworks, Plus the Co operative insurance building, The football museum. That area of Manchester is absolutely rammed- especially on weekends for shopping/ nightlife. That is why Victoria Metrolink is the third most used on the network -people want to go there.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Victoria is right next to the Manchester Arndale shopping centre, The Manchester Arena and the Printworks, Plus the Co operative insurance building, The football museum. That area of Manchester is absolutely rammed- especially on weekends for shopping/ nightlife. That is why Victoria Metrolink is the third most used on the network -people want to go there.

This is very much something that has changed in the last 20-odd years. That side of the city, particularly pre-bomb, was a bit of a run-down wasteland.

 

[Meerkat]

Isn’t there a huge development planned for the area to the south of Mayfield?
Won’t that require 15/16 and maybe a new station entrance that the developers should be contributing to?

 

[edwin_m]

Wasn’t extending the track through the derelict Mayfield station and connecting it to Castlefield Viaduct one of the options looked at before NR decided on 15 & 16?

At a glance there’s a huge hotel in the way.

Indeed it was. The "crayon" sketch illustrates very well the amount of curvature it would introduce into the platforms. It would most likely cost much more to go through Mayfield as well as destroying a prime development site right next to the station.

A mistake was prioritising the electrification of the Chat Moss line over the CLC (really both should have been done years ago) even though the latter has more intermediate stations; and the nonsense of electrifying the former only to run more diesel trains than electric over it. Not to mention rebuilding Newton le Willows station at great expense while leaving it with effectively a 1tph service from Liverpool (actually 2tph but one fast and one slow within minutes of each other).

At the time electrification was authorised, TPE was expected to have straight electric trains and the routeing via Victoria had been agreed. So there was no option other than to run them via Chat Moss and electrify it. The Chat Moss has a lot of workings that continue onto electrified tracks beyond its limits, including freight, so electrifying it allows much more unit-mileage to be converted to electric than simply that which is run on the route itself. The CLC services by contrast are largely self-contained now that TPE no longer uses it, with the exception of the Norwich but that will have to stay diesel for the foreseeable future whatever happens. So while there's some case for electrifying the CLC, I'd suggst it is far weaker than that for the Chat Moss or indeed the Bolton route.

 

[urbophile]

So while there's some case for electrifying the CLC, I'd suggst it is far weaker than that for the Chat Moss or indeed the Bolton route.

Where else in Europe would a line between two major cities less than 60 km apart not be electrified?

 

[Bletchleyite]

Where else in Europe would a line between two major cities less than 60 km apart not be electrified?

I bet there's some secondary ones in Germany. But I actually think the case for the CLC is quite strong because of the large number of intermediate stations - the improved acceleration of an EMU would substantially speed up the service.

 

[notlob.divad]

A mistake was prioritising the electrification of the Chat Moss line over the CLC (really both should have been done years ago) even though the latter has more intermediate stations; and the nonsense of electrifying the former only to run more diesel trains than electric over it. Not to mention rebuilding Newton le Willows station at great expense while leaving it with effectively a 1tph service from Liverpool (actually 2tph but one fast and one slow within minutes of each other).

Chat Moss is only part of the 1830 line. West of Earlestown, there are equal numbers of Diesel and Electric. West of Huyton the Electrics outweigh the Diesels, 5 to 2. When TPE get their 802s this will improve to 6 to 1, becoming 6 to 2, if and when the Northern Connect - Liverpool <> Bradford starts.

Add in the Anglo Scots that have succesfully run via Chat Moss allowing the 350s to be introduced, and the potential Diversion routes that have now been created. WCML <> Liverpool and Manchester, via Earlestown. None of this could have been achieved via the CLC. the 1830 was definetly the right line to electrify first. IMO. I think the CLC should be top of the list for any future program.

 

[notlob.divad]

I am at a loss to see how services from the west can manage to utilise Mayfield,

Mayfield Siding. - The one parallel to Temperance Street.

The fact that people need to stoop to nitpicking the omission of a single word from my post, shows me that the points I am making are valid. Much as it might pain some people on here.

I am not suggesting mothballing the chord. Neither its it North West Rails for North West people. The suggestion is, similar to B&I that in lieu of 15/16 (until it is built, and possibly even afterwards, a proper cross commuter service should be front and centre with regards to the Castlefield corridor. Services which travel through fewer pinch points and thus are less likely to be delayed / more likely to be able to recover.

Express TPE North services would only stop at Victoria. Where passengers who need the airport would be able to change onto the local services.

It would leave only the Scotland service and the Liverpool Norwich as the only services with end door stock, thus helping with the dwell times.

I have already suggested Chester via Warrington Bank Quay as a western terminus for 1 of the TPE (in lieu of the Northern Connect service). The main aim being to put Warrington back on the TPE map. The 2nd could be Bolton - Preston - Blackpool giving Bolton a direct cross pennine service, however that is merely a suggestion.

 

[transmanche]

Aren't they also hoping to run on from Newcastle to Edinburgh?

I believe it's the Liverpool to Newcastle service that's eventually going to be extended to Edinburgh.

Not that it'll be designed for through passengers as the journey time would not be competitive (and the future Liverpool-Scotland via WCML service will fulfil that role anyway) but to provide an extra service from Yorkshire to Edinburgh.

 

[Killingworth]

I believe it's the Liverpool to Newcastle service that's eventually going to be extended to Edinburgh.

Not that it'll be designed for through passengers as the journey time would not be competitive (and the future Liverpool-Scotland via WCML service will fulfil that role anyway) but to provide an extra service from Yorkshire to Edinburgh.

And it may end up spoiling the present fastest service from Sheffield to Newcastle by XC. Leeds and West Yorkshire aren't all of Yorkshire. (Sounds a bit like Manchester v. Liverpool) Whatever gets changed has adverse effects somewhere for someone.

 

[Accura]

I bet there's some secondary ones in Germany. But I actually think the case for the CLC is quite strong because of the large number of intermediate stations - the improved acceleration of an EMU would substantially speed up the service.

I'd like to think this would lead to service improvement. Faster acceleration could lead to more stopping services on the line, eliminating the pathetic 2 hourly service at a few of the stations on the route.

 

[Halifaxlad]

Personally I believe Liverpool deserves two services per hour to Manchester Airport. As you say it's a large city and less than 50 miles away, however you can make EXACTLY the same argument for Leeds and hence the two North TPEx per hour! However some forum members do not see this and instead focus on why both Middlesborough & Newcastle must have an hourly airport service. For me, where they go East of Leeds is less important but it does makes sense for them to serve 2 different routes. Send one to Hull instead if you like, it's cultural now!

I think Middlesborough and

Wasn’t extending the track through the derelict Mayfield station and connecting it to Castlefield Viaduct one of the options looked at before NR decided on 15 & 16?

At a glance there’s a huge hotel in the way.

Im from Yorkshire.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

The fact that people need to stoop to nitpicking the omission of a single word from my post, shows me that the points I am making are valid. Much as it might pain some people on here.

If you were to take a little more care in what you say when making your postings, noting the fact that when Mayfield is stated in postings that one normally equates this to the name carried by the former Mayfield station, rather than the name of a siding which is better known by a different name, then you would not leave yourself open to postings of query.

 

[fowler9]

The CLC route which is the one I normally use is an absolute disaster at the minute. From what I can tell the TPE services using the Ordsall Cord aren't currently a blinding success either. Obviously I will focus on what effects me the most and that is the CLC Northern service being almost unusable for commutes as it is that unreliable. I also wouldn't use Northerns direct link from Liverpool to Manchester Airport if I had a flight to catch or job to get to at the moment. My local train service is a mess because of various TOCs focusing on a relatively small number of people crossing the Pennines for long haul flights from Manchester Airport.

 

[Norb]

Other than the aforementioned Mayfield Loop, and Longsight Excursion Platform, where else is used to turn trains using 13/14 as terminus at Piccadilly?