Platform 15 and 16 project at Manchester Piccadilly.

edwin_m · 31 May 2018

jayah said:
Well perhaps they need to look at joining and splitting trains then. Running a maxed out 13/14 for 16 hours a day if the trains are carrying 100 passengers is daft, if that is actually what happens. Given how crowded TPE is, I suspect what is actually needed is an end to 2/3 car trains even off peak.

Getting the people into the right portion at Piccadilly and the actual split/join elsewhere would probably cause more delay than avoided by reducing the number of workings. Especially as anything longer than about 6 cars trails into the other half of the platform past the signal and reduces the capacity.

dggar said:
When did you last see an EMT train at Oxford road with just 2 coaches during normal working hours?

Several are routinely short-formed at present due to PRM mods to units, as discussed on another thread. I do however recall a journey on a Friday evening a few years back (but since they were lengthened) when the previous train was cancelled and the next one was a 2-car. I had about a square foot of space in the back cab.

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Bletchleyite · 31 May 2018

edwin_m said:
Several are routinely short-formed at present due to PRM mods to units, as discussed on another thread. I do however recall a journey on a Friday evening a few years back (but since they were lengthened) when the previous train was cancelled and the next one was a 2-car. I had about a square foot of space in the back cab.

Welcome back to how the service was in the 1990s!

Domh245 · 31 May 2018

edwin_m said:
Several are routinely short-formed at present due to PRM mods to units, as discussed on another thread. I do however recall a journey on a Friday evening a few years back (but since they were lengthened) when the previous train was cancelled and the next one was a 2-car. I had about a square foot of space in the back cab.

I had a similar journey on a midday departure from Nottingham to Manchester last October - the second unit didn't appear at Nottingham and it was fairly cosy (I discovered that 158 luggage racks aren't particularly comfy to sit on or lean against) but from Sheffield onwards it was properly rammed - and that was without the previous train being cancelled.

ainsworth74 · 31 May 2018

dggar said:
When did you last see an EMT train at Oxford road with just 2 coaches during normal working hours?

Monday morning just gone.

Altfish · 31 May 2018

dggar said:
When did you last see an EMT train at Oxford road with just 2 coaches during normal working hours?

They are rare, but not unknown. I am a regular traveller on the 0754 from Stockport to Nottingham and I would say that about 1 in 50 times it was a two coach train. The excuse was always a mechanical failure. It is certainly diagrammed for 4-coaches.

hibtastic · 31 May 2018

ainsworth74 said:
Monday morning just gone.

Yes and there were at least two occasions last week as well.

Idon'tKnow · 31 May 2018

Lucky me, the only time I've travelled on EMT on the hope valley line, it was 6 carriages (3 158s). It was about a year ago now on the 0820 from Chesterfield to Liverpool. (Starts @nottingham at 0746). Even with 6 carriages, there were still few empty seats! 2 carriages must be horrible!

jayah · 31 May 2018

Bletchleyite said:
I can't see any case for operating any 2-car train over the Castlefield line whatsoever. 2-car trains are for branch lines. If there's only demand for 2 cars (other than late evening and similar) portion-work or operate quality planned connections.

I'll give TPE an exception on their 3-car trains because demand (including suppressed demand) will easily fill 5 - just wait and see when they get them. I'm still betting the 5-car trains will all end up 6 or 7-car by the franchise end if it can be afforded - and if it can't they'll be just as rammed as the 185s are now.

5 cars is already less than the 6 they run in the peak. These tiny trains wasting scarce track capacity are a disease.

transmanche · 31 May 2018

jayah said:
5 cars is already less than the 6 they run in the peak. These tiny trains wasting scarce track capacity are a disease.

The number of carriages isn't really relevant. The number of people they carry is.

5x26m carriages on a Class 802 Nova 1 has a capacity of 342 passengers versus 6x23m carriages on a doubled-up Class 185 which has a capacity of 338.

jayah · 31 May 2018

transmanche said:
The number of carriages isn't really relevant. The number of people they carry is.

5x26m carriages on a Class 802 Nova 1 has a capacity of 342 passengers versus 6x23m carriages on a doubled-up Class 185 which has a capacity of 338.

Still a lot less than 8 carriages, which is what a peak train should have.

Killingworth · 31 May 2018

dggar said:
When did you last see an EMT train at Oxford road with just 2 coaches during normal working hours?

Saturday afternoon 5th May that I caught at Stockport at about 16.55. The 16.38 departure on Wednesday 23rd May from Oxford Road was formed of just 2 carriages and passengers reported exactly the scenario related in my previous post. I don't often use that route myself but experienced this on Friday, 21st February, 2014 when I had difficuty getting into the train at all and had to stand all the way to Sheffield. Regular users say it has improved recently with Class 153s sometimes employed to back up a 158. 156s are sometimes working in tandem or backing up a 158.

jayah · 31 May 2018

Killingworth said:
Saturday afternoon 5th May that I caught at Stockport at about 16.55. The 16.38 departure on Wednesday 23rd May from Oxford Road was formed of just 2 carriages and passengers reported exactly the scenario related in my previous post. I don't often use that route myself but experienced this on Friday, 21st February, 2014 when I had difficuty getting into the train at all and had to stand all the way to Sheffield. Regular users say it has improved recently with Class 153s sometimes employed to back up a 158. 156s are sometimes working in tandem or backing up a 158.

1752 Liverpool was 2 cars this evening according to their Twitter.

transmanche · 31 May 2018

jayah said:
Still a lot less than 8 carriages, which is what a peak train should have.

Still a lot more than the three carriages which most trains have - even in peak time.

TPE services from Manchester to Newcastle will increase from 1 x 185 an hour (169 pax) a couple of years ago to 2 x 185 an hour (368 pax) today to 2 x Nova 1 an hour (684 pax).

I don't care about the number of carriages. I do care that capacity will increase from 169 pax/hour to 684 pax/hour.

jayah · 31 May 2018

transmanche said:
Still a lot more than the three carriages which most trains have - even in peak time.

They simply should not have 3 cars in the peak. These tiny trains clogging the arteries of the railway are a disease.

Bletchleyite · 31 May 2018

jayah said:
They simply should not have 3 cars in the peak. These tiny trains clogging the arteries of the railway are a disease.

I agree. If demand only requires a short train, portion-work it, splitting and joining at a station far enough out that if one bit is delayed the delay doesn't block things up.

rebmcr · 1 Jun 2018

transmanche said:
The number of carriages isn't really relevant. The number of people they carry is.

5x26m carriages on a Class 802 Nova 1 has a capacity of 342 passengers versus 6x23m carriages on a doubled-up Class 185 which has a capacity of 338.

jayah said:
Still a lot less than 8 carriages, which is what a peak train should have.

8 carriages of what? The only regular 8-carriage services are London-based where nearly everything is 20m.

7 carriages of 23m stock is longer than 8 carriages of 20m stock — basing your arguments on carriage count alone is foolish.

YorkshireBear · 1 Jun 2018

rebmcr said:
8 carriages of what? The only regular 8-carriage services are London-based where nearly everything is 20m.

7 carriages of 23m stock is longer than 8 carriages of 20m stock — basing your arguments on carriage count alone is foolish.

Also lost space with cabs, extra disabled toilets, and the carriage connections. All adds up.

___________________

What I would be interested to know is was any work done to look at grade separation of any of the junctions around Manchester as part of these works? When you look at how quickly DB get trains in and out of say Cologne you look and the vast majority of the junctions are grade separated in some way, removing all conflicts. Seems to me even removing conflicts at 1 of them would be helpful. I sense the cost would be too great to justify in this country but hopefully the amount of grade separation going on down south might one day infect up north.

30907 · 1 Jun 2018

YorkshireBear said:
Also lost space with cabs, extra disabled toilets, and the carriage connections. All adds up.

___________________

What I would be interested to know is was any work done to look at grade separation of any of the junctions around Manchester as part of these works? When you look at how quickly DB get trains in and out of say Cologne you look and the vast majority of the junctions are grade separated in some way, removing all conflicts. Seems to me even removing conflicts at 1 of them would be helpful. I sense the cost would be too great to justify in this country but hopefully the amount of grade separation going on down south might one day infect up north.

Don't know if anything was considered, but I would have thought it unlikely.
Slade Lane Jn has been talked about on and off for decades.
The only other remotely feasible one would be Ordsall Lane Jn, by running the ex LNWR lines from Salford Central at a higher level and demolishing a few overbridges. Enormously costly, enormously disruptive.
There's a redundant viaduct at Deansgate but I can't see how to connect it to Oxford Road.

Unfortunately, the UK has never had a Prussian-style Ministry of Defence determined to eliminate conflicting movements and termini to speed up troop trains.

jayah · 1 Jun 2018

rebmcr said:
8 carriages of what? The only regular 8-carriage services are London-based where nearly everything is 20m.

7 carriages of 23m stock is longer than 8 carriages of 20m stock — basing your arguments on carriage count alone is foolish.

8x20 is longer than just about everything using Plat 13/14 at Piccadilly by some margin.

Ianno87 · 1 Jun 2018

YorkshireBear said:
Also lost space with cabs, extra disabled toilets, and the carriage connections. All adds up.

___________________

What I would be interested to know is was any work done to look at grade separation of any of the junctions around Manchester as part of these works? When you look at how quickly DB get trains in and out of say Cologne you look and the vast majority of the junctions are grade separated in some way, removing all conflicts. Seems to me even removing conflicts at 1 of them would be helpful. I sense the cost would be too great to justify in this country but hopefully the amount of grade separation going on down south might one day infect up north.

The junction complexes around Köln, Hamburg, Frankfurt etc. take up *huge* swathes of land. If the UK had been on the ball with developing its railways in the post-war rebuilding that would've been the golden opportunity for places like Manchester. An opportunity almost certainly now lost forever.

The only flyover half-seriously looked at around Manchester in recent history was Ardwick - but Ordsall Chord won that battle.

Bletchleyite · 1 Jun 2018

TBH Ardwick would have solved that problem better as it would have avoided cramming more trains onto the Castlefield line.

snowball · 1 Jun 2018

YorkshireBear said:
What I would be interested to know is was any work done to look at grade separation of any of the junctions around Manchester as part of these works?

Joseph Locke has several times mentioned (in the NW electrification threads etc) studies that were done about grade separation of various junctions close to central Manchester and Salford. (And also Euxton).

Ianno87 · 1 Jun 2018

Bletchleyite said:
TBH Ardwick would have solved that problem better as it would have avoided cramming more trains onto the Castlefield line.

Trouble is, it didn't solve the problem of the reversals/conflicting moves into/out of Piccadilly main shed to reach the Airport, and not as good as the diversion via Victoria for bringing down the Manchester<>Leeds journey time.

HSTEd · 2 Jun 2018

Dumping Manchester to Leeds passengers into Victoria to shorten the journey time is a little disengenous to be honest.
The onward transport options from Victoria are significantly inferior and it is not the station that people associate with the city.

It's like when Greater Anglia decided that central london was actually Tottenham Hale so that they could claim a shorter journey time for the Stansted Express

Altfish · 2 Jun 2018

HSTEd said:
Dumping Manchester to Leeds passengers into Victoria to shorten the journey time is a little disengenous to be honest.
The onward transport options from Victoria are significantly inferior and it is not the station that people associate with the city.

Don't at least 50% of them continue to Piccadilly now?
Although I do agree Victoria is not as handy

ajdunlop · 2 Jun 2018

It’s very handy if your making onward directions to the west and north and if it could be made to work goin around the chord gives you options.

B&I · 2 Jun 2018

Altfish said:
Don't at least 50% of them continue to Piccadilly now?
Although I do agree Victoria is not as handy

Depends where you're going. Victoria and Piccadilly (and Oxford Road, and Salford Central) are all on the fringes of a rather big city centre. Each has its own set of different onward local rail connections, and each is Metrolinked with fairly easy access to all other Metrolink services even if they don't go to the station in question.

B&I · 2 Jun 2018

Ianno87 said:
The junction complexes around Köln, Hamburg, Frankfurt etc. take up *huge* swathes of land. If the UK had been on the ball with developing its railways in the post-war rebuilding that would've been the golden opportunity for places like Manchester. An opportunity almost certainly now lost forever.

The only flyover half-seriously looked at around Manchester in recent history was Ardwick - but Ordsall Chord won that battle.

Quite. And we continue to build on every available inch of land right up to our railways. Had railway development proceeded in line with slum clearance and war damage repair in Manchester, one option would have been my personal obsession of filtering all long distance services into a gigantic central through station based on an expanded Victoria-Exchange, with above-ground approach lines through Ardwick to the Stockport and Guide Bridge lines, and the eastern fringes of Salford to the CLC lines.

Bletchleyite · 2 Jun 2018

B&I said:
Quite. And we continue to build on every available inch of land right up to our railways. Had railway development proceeded in line with slum clearance and war damage repair in Manchester, one option would have been my personal obsession of filtering all long distance services into a gigantic central through station based on an expanded Victoria-Exchange, with above-ground approach lines through Ardwick to the Stockport and Guide Bridge lines, and the eastern fringes of Salford to the CLC lines.

That could have been done up to the mid 90s had there been the will. The Northern Quarter was bleak and almost abandoned.

HSTEd · 2 Jun 2018

The only way we are getting anything like that is underground Stuttgart 21 esque works.

Which might have been worth it but there was never any money for it.

Platform 15 and 16 project at Manchester Piccadilly.

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