I would also agree that repopening the 6km (2km west+4km east) Greenfield-Oldham-Middleton Jn line to heavy rail would be a good move when GMPTE start panicking and finally realise Metrolink can't cope with their poxy little trams on the Oldham loop service.
They havn't realised for any of the other routes yet...
Eg, Alt'ham, Bury.
And no matter how many times I explain how its possible to convert the Alt'ham metrolink line back to heavy rail, no-one actually seems to understand what I'm typing and says it's impossible.
All it would need would be a bridge over Bridgewater Way and the CLC lines, junctioned into the metrolink line at Panoma, and to make space for an interchange station at Cornbrook, if it's even needed, a new bridge over the quays with some new platforms for the Metrolink so that where the Metrolink currently is at Cornbrook would be converted to Heavy Rail, would allow a few nice things to happen...
Alt'ham - Manchester currently 10 trams per hour, could become 10 TRAINS per hour, 3, 4, 6 or 8 carrage 319s or 323s.
Alt'ham would once again have express services into Manchester, with the possible addition of some 4 track sections on the route, this could see anything up to 16tph peak into Manchester from Alt'ham
Mid Cheshire Line, guess what, it takes 10mins less to get into Manchester again from the Mid Cheshire Line. And we can up the amount of tph on the route. These would form some of the express diagrams.
Oh and theres another route, showing massive growth, about to loose a service or two, yeah, you guessed it. The Cheshire Lines Comitee route through Warrington Central. This can keep the current 2tph express thats come through Piccadilly, both from Stockport, either Buxton or the Hope Valley. And to add into the mix, have an extra 2 tph all stations and 2tph semi fasts terminating in Manchester.
Now, lets see where else would see an improvement...
MediaCity UK would be able to have significantly more trams
East Didsbury and the Airport the same
There would be a nice diversionary route available from Crewe to Manchester
Crewe - Sandbatch - Middlewitch - Greenbank - Alt'ham - Manchester.
Theres going to be a lot of work going on at Piccadilly soon, that could come in handy...
Oh, it would also free up (indirectly) paths at Piccadilly aswell, fright could enter Manchester for Trafford Park via Alt'ham, avoiding Manchester, reverse just east of cornbrook and then be in Trafford Park, granted it would be a bit of a faf, but it it gets desprate, a siding could be provided for it to happen.
Not to mention aswell all them stoppers currently terminating at Oxford Road wouldn't need to any more, so that platform could even be closed to alow Platforms 1 and 4 to be extended westwards to be able to fit 8 car units into Oxford Road, Wow, this solves a lot of problems doesn't it?
And where is it all these new trains would terminate, oh in a rather old peice of land with 6 platforms available of course, plenty for a sustained 16tph with two or three kinds of stock...
OK Rant over...
Middleton Jcn - Oldham - Greenfield would be very helpful indeed,
Oh and as a PS, while I'm on the topic of service improvments for Warrington, how about 2tph
Manchester - (Sale / Stockport) - Lymm - Warrington - Liverpool S Parkway - Liverpool L St.