This line has always been an achillles heel of any long distance service that has attempted to use it. I believe that to have been the case with early Operation Princess XC services. Every single time I travelled south from Manchester to Reading at that time the hourly through train from Glasgow lost double figure minutes between Bolton and Piccadilly and that then led to yet more time lost as paths across subsequent junctions further south were missed on the way home. Of course Railtrack's bone headed 'regulation strategy' of the time didn't help with its 'miss your slot and you're back of the queue' approach no matter what the downstream consequences of that decision. So perhaps one of Haines' comments hints at an approach that might have some merit which is to exploit the traffic management elements of 'digital' to enable better real time planning, i.e. an intelligent regulating strategy with a back channel to the cab via C-DAS to instruct some approaching trains to ease up or even hurry a bit where that's possible to coincide with a dynamically created real time path through the area. That doesn't require the full ERTMS/ATO fitment on all or most stock but implies a bit of extra pathing margin added downstream and is likely to result in some effects and possible interventions required at other junctions as well. I believe the new infrastructure AND better planning tools are required to enable better real time regulation of the kind of traffic mix that the DfT has forced TOCs and NR to try and run through the area, without supporting the infrastructure authority's original assertion that additional work is required to achieve that.
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