Given that you have to wonder why there have now been two abortive attempts to revamp the timetable especially the most recent attempt. My guess is the current timetable will now stay until Trans Pennine Upgrade is completed.
I made the very same point last month, post #119, that the 2016 list of infrastructure changes, (including for example at Woodwalton), had not all been completed, but I think it got lost in the general discussion.
Thats a long way away, a solution or variant will be found before then.
beggars belief why they ever embarked on a 2nd major rewrite then when that is an underlying issue. looks like the current arrangement will be perpetuated for many years yet despite all the hype. Would be better now that LNER give the units they would have used for the third train to Newcastle to Lumo so they can run double sets and increase capacity that way.
Why would LNER give units to a private company?
Was this included in the initial plans to enable 8ph fast services? If it was and DfT just ignored it, then it's not really Network Rail's fault.
LNER is owned by the DfT, and the policy of Transport Secretary Mark Harper is to promote Open Access operations.
The Kings Cross station work itself wasn’t part of the original list of required upgrades, oddly enough. I posted the list of pre-requisite projects in post #119:
OK would have to be a sub lease but this is only short term way of boosting demand. It also improves LNERs bottom line although i suspect First dont pay as much per unit as the poor deal that DafT negotiated.
If LNER had a comfortable enough stock situation to do that, they would not still have a small fleet of IC225s.
There is no spare units. The trains they will use to run the additional Newcastle service is by utilising the stand by spares they have now incase of unit fault. They would have been increasing the use of what they have now.
Exactly this^^
So the Dec 24 timetable had another potential flaw in its deliverability!
Yes! There should be at least 7 Azuma spares per day now, new diagrams for Dec 24 had 2 spare Azuma.
So LNER are presumably having to pay for those units, as long as Hitachi deliver them, so if the enhanced timetable is now parked for sometime they ought sub-lease them to the other operators on the route so they can lengthen trains and increase capacity that way. Of course they wont i know because they don't want more competition as it risks revenue abstraction but that doesn't help the passenger.
Wouldn't sub-leasing require an amendment to the IEP contract?
