Leeds to London East Coast

Hi there,

I am wondering why the Leeds to London route is primarily served on the east coast route and not the midland mainline?

Going back Leeds used to be served by both to some degree, but the East coast route is quicker. If we had had the ultimate beeching plan there wouldn't have even been a Midland Line and Nottingham and Sheffield would have been served by the east coast.

It's faster, the track is electrified (so East Coast makes more sense as they use electric trains- East Midlands Trains/midland mainline don't) and it is essentially a spur from the East Coast Mainline running from Doncaster to York.

East Midland Trains/Midland Mainline only served Leeds as some of their trains are maintained there, hence why most of their Leeds services are early morning or late at night as that is when they are leaving or returning to the depot.

Iskra said:

It's faster, the track is electrified (so East Coast makes more sense as they use electric trains- East Midlands Trains/midland mainline don't) and it is essentially a spur from the East Coast Mainline running from Doncaster to York.

East Midland Trains/Midland Mainline only served Leeds as some of their trains are maintained there, hence why most of their Leeds services are early morning or late at night as that is when they are leaving or returning to the depot.

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While that's true BR took the decision to focus Leeds services on the East coast many years before electrification.

47802 said:

Going back Leeds used to be served by both to some degree, but the East coast route is quicker. If we had had the ultimate beeching plan there wouldn't have even been a Midland Line and Nottingham and Sheffield would have been served by the east coast.

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Historically, the Midland Railways goal was Glasgow and Edinburgh not using the East or West Coast routes. When the S&C was opened in 1874 they were able to run to Carlisle then Glasgow St Enoch via G&SW and Edinburgh via the Waverley route. Normanton became the principal interchange station for West Yorkshire enabling Anglo-Scottish trains to bypass Leeds using the Whitehall curve.

London St Pancras-Bradford trains including an overnight sleeping car train continued to serve Leeds Wellington Street reversing there until 1966 when through Bradford trains were withdrawn at the same time as Wellington Street trains were diverted to Leeds City together with trains from Leeds Central.

As a footnote, the Midland Railway was the first railway company into York.

If Midland Mainline had served Leeds better Northern wouldn't have started their Leeds to Nottingham route.

GrimsbyPacer said:

If Midland Mainline had served Leeds better Northern wouldn't have started their Leeds to Nottingham route.

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What do you base that on? I couldn't imagine they would extend St Pancras-Nottingham services to Leeds as it would make much more sense to extend them on from the Sheffield via Derby services, both from an attractive time and operational convenience point of view. Northern's service has given Dronfield its first hourly service in god only knows how long and allowed the Liverpool-Norwich to save time and focus on longer-distance custom by omitting Langley Mill, if you were covering this by what was essentially an inter-city service how would you accommodate those? Also, bearing in mind that as far as I know EMT's slack fleet for MML operations consists of something like one HST that acts as a hot spare how would you accommodate such a huge stretching of the fleet, that would, as a totally wild guess, for an hourly service extension require three more units?

The nine-car 222s were obtained with exactly that purpose in mind, weren't they? It was the DfT's decision (or whatever they were called then) not to go ahead with it and for Northern to run it instead, not MML's.

Tomnick said:

The nine-car 222s were obtained with exactly that purpose in mind, weren't they? It was the DfT's decision (or whatever they were called then) not to go ahead with it and for Northern to run it instead, not MML's.

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Absolutely correct. At the time of ordering the 222s a preliminary yes to the service via Barnsley was given and by the time they were delivered the decision had changed to umming and ahhhing. Eventually a no was given and a new home was sought for the units until it was finally decided they would stay with MML

shedman said:

Absolutely correct. At the time of ordering the 222s a preliminary yes to the service via Barnsley was given and by the time they were delivered the decision had changed to umming and ahhhing. Eventually a no was given and a new home was sought for the units until it was finally decided they would stay with MML

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And that's why the 222s are such a load of mix-n-match units with too much first class in some sets etc. as they were re-arranged into 5s and 7s to suit the service pattern forced upon them by the NO to the all-day Leeds service.

shedman said:

Absolutely correct. At the time of ordering the 222s a preliminary yes to the service via Barnsley was given and by the time they were delivered the decision had changed to umming and ahhhing. Eventually a no was given and a new home was sought for the units until it was finally decided they would stay with MML

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The Barnsley service started in 170 days, not long after the units were delivered.

EDIT: Oops, just realised you said VIA Barnsley. I had no idea the all-day Leeds services were planned to operate on that route, though I suppose it makes sense as there were no Northern expresses in those days!