The two Wakefield stations.

edwin_m · 14 Sep 2019

Senex said:
What, you mean a string of slow, flat junctions just like the route created between Manchester Piccadilly and Salford Crescent / Salford Central? I thought a love of slow, flat junctions was very much a British speciality.
I wonder how much faster the route into Wakefield Kirkgate from Hare Park could be made. Once away from Kirkgate, it is the curve to Westgate that is the original route and probably potentially just as well aligned into Westgate as the WR&G line.

Well, we could have had something similar though less severe in Wakefield if the London and XC trains and the Doncaster stoppers were tangling with the various local and freight services through Kirkgate. Although the Eastern Region of the time developed some fast layouts on constrained sites elsewhere, the curve east of Kirkgate looks to be below 300m radius at its tightest point and getting a decent speed there would have been a massive realignment.

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Spartacus · 15 Sep 2019

61653 HTAFC said:
A rebuild which makes transferring to buses a bit of a pain in the proverbial! Only the City Circular serves Westgate station now.

I think the rebuild has been a bit of a fail in regards to convenience in general really. It might only be 2 or 3 minutes extra from the centre now, but it all adds up. For anyone coming from the West it's made a situation that wasn't great even worse: I'd hoped that the old Westgate or western entrance might have been reopened with the rebuild to improve things, but sadly not.

infobleep · 15 Sep 2019

61653 HTAFC said:
To be pedantic for a moment, West Byfleet serves the town of the same name, rather than the western half of Byfleet (which is a separate place). Weirdly the post-town for the housing immediately on the "up" side of the railway is Addlestone, despite the station and actual town of the same name being some distance away and on a different route!

I hadn't realised there was a place called Away Byfleet.

Post towns purely exist for the delivery of mails by Royal Mail. So it is possible to have a post town of Addlestone that is within the geographical town of West Byfleet! I can't say if that is the case here though as I've not checked but I've found similar things elsewhere.

Meerkat · 15 Sep 2019

Post towns are irrelevant now aren’t they, replaced by the postcode?

30907 · 15 Sep 2019

Meerkat said:
Post towns are irrelevant now aren’t they, replaced by the postcode?

Indeed, but Cononley, KEIGHLEY, West Yorkshire (as Royal Mail insisted) was odd for a village in North Yorkshire.

Class 170101 · 15 Sep 2019

30907 said:
Short answer is yes - most obviously if one is the "central" station. I'm struggling to find examples where there are two "town" stations of fairly equal status (as opposed to suburbia and the biggest cities): Canterbury E and W.

Didn't Canterbury East lose its status as the main station when HS1 opened? Its been suggested that the West Station became busier due to direct services to HS1 unlike at Canterbury East

xotGD · 15 Sep 2019

Wigan's two stations meet the criterion. One getting intercity services, the other getting Pacers.

yorkie · 15 Sep 2019

Class 170101 said:
Didn't Canterbury East lose its status as the main station when HS1 opened? Its been suggested that the West Station became busier due to direct services to HS1 unlike at Canterbury East

yes that's my understanding too

The two Wakefield stations.

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