North Wales Coast Timetable - Dog’s Breakfast.

Llandudno said:

Fingers crossed they can simply the timetable with clock face frequencies and the London trains on top.

Even Northern have for the most part managed a clock face timetable on Chester to Leeds services, with the exception of the silly Ellesmere Port services, which really should be a single class 153 shuttling all day between Ellesmere Port and Helsby.

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Really should be Merseyrail, or be closed as it barely serves anything.

I've long thought the timetable needs looking at, especially if you're going against the flow so to speak, for example, if you want to go on morning services further west than Llandudno Junction, there's only 4 trains before 10am, one of them departs Chester 09.59, & 2 trains depart Chester before 07.30am.

Going the other way is just as annoying, after the last 13.58 VT from Holyhead, there are only 7 more departures of the day with the last one being 20.30, i've fels there could be at least Holyhead-Chester if not Crewe at 22.00 or 22.30

Bletchleyite said:

But the problem is that as soon as a single train during the main service day deviates from the standard pattern the entire benefit of it disappears. The key benefit is that you don't have to look at a timetable - in my youth, for instance, trains from Aughton Park to Ormskirk were at 09, 24, 39, 54 on a weekday. I even still remember that. No timetable needed.

There is no point in a Takt whatsoever if, give or take "overlaying" extra peak services with no change to the base pattern at all, it is not 100% consistent. You can maybe get away with it being 10, 25, 40, 55 in one hour, but if you put it at 07, 22, 37, 52 people are going to start missing trains.

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I'm not totally convinced of the philosophy of not changing the off-peak 'Takt' in the peak. For instance, imagine there's demand for 2 trains an hour off peak but 3 in the peak. Say the off-peak departures are at xx43 and xx13. In the peak, do you keep the xx43/xx13 and have an additional xx28 or xx58 (creating an irregular frequency, and also, if several lines do it, perhaps creating a pathing nightmare) or do you switch to a different, peak 'Takt' and run the services at xx43, xx03 and xx23 between say 1643 and 1843?

If all commuter lines out of a given terminal switch to a separate, 'peak Takt' which is different to off-peak but with a consistent step-up in frequency (so all 30-min lines become 20-min, all 15-min lines 10-min, all hourlies become 40-min) then it would presumably be relatively easy to do as long as there are paths. The Southern in BR days seemed to adopt this philosophy - whereas now the prevailing approach on SWR and Southern (but not South Eastern) is to add a few peak extras to the off peak service.

nickw1 said:

I'm not totally convinced of the philosophy of not changing the off-peak 'Takt' in the peak. For instance, imagine there's demand for 2 trains an hour off peak but 3 in the peak. Say the off-peak departures are at xx43 and xx13. In the peak, do you keep the xx43/xx13 and have an additional xx28 or xx58 (creating an irregular frequency, and also, if several lines do it, perhaps creating a pathing nightmare) or do you switch to a different, peak 'Takt' and run the services at xx43, xx03 and xx23 between say 1643 and 1843?

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A textbook Taktfahrplan is about more than just a clockface timetable, though a clockface timetable is a good thing on its own and is a major part of a Takt. The other part of it is connectivity - and for that you need compatible service intervals. So, if you want things to connect, you can EITHER choose a pattern of 5-10-20-60-120 minutes between trains on particular lines (the principle being that the 120s will connect with something on every line, while the 5s will connect with the other 5s etc) OR you can choose 5-10-30-60-120, OR you can choose 5-15-30-60-120. Basically, each interval has to be divisible by the previous one for it to work properly. (If you can't justify a 2 hourly interval in a Takt you have to start questioning if you need the service at all, though if you're going to do a semi-irregular service on something like the Far North or Conwy Valley it does at least help connecting with other things if the "minutes past the hour" in the hours served are the same).

The trouble with saying you're going to have Euston-Manchester at 00 and 30 off peak and at 00, 20 and 40 between 1600 and 1900, say, is that those trains don't reach Manchester until much later, so your 1840 from Euston is going to reach Manchester at about 2040, well into the time when Manchester has gone back down to half-hourly on its key lines - so it misconnects.

Therefore, no, you can't do that, or at least not if you're going to do it properly. Peak extras in a Takt have to be overlaid on the base frequency without change to it.

The best thing to do to provided added capacity in a Takt is to extend train lengths - but if you can't, just put an extra on, perhaps even give it a train category that signifies that it is that and is basically a point to point service - DB, for instance, often used to put extras on as "D" rather than "IC"/"ICE", and SBB tend to put them on as REs on lines where everything else is S/IR/IC(N).

cle said:

If there was growth, could there be aspiration for hourly services out of Birmingham to at least Wrexham and Chester? Perhaps alternating along the North Wales route. A lot more useful than more services to Cardiff, if there was a choice.

Another consideration might be the new Liverpool-Chester Halton services, and where they would continue. Or indeed, if there was a faster second tph if they proved popular, acting as more of an express to North Wales (no Frodsham, Runcorn etc)

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Would the best approach be perhaps to divert the Cardiff-Holyhead to start back from Crewe instead, replacing the Crewe-Chester shuttle? Cardiff-Holyhead seems a very strange route to me - do many people in North Wales actually go to and from Cardiff as a matter of course? That way, you'd get two connections an hour at Crewe which could be used from all points south, but wouldn't be using up any extra paths on the WCML or in the Birmingham area. Basically like the old 37-hauled services used to do in the nineties. You'd also have an option from Crewe which, as it starts there, wouldn't be subject to the vagaries of delays on the southern WCML.

nickw1 said:

Would the best approach be perhaps to divert the Cardiff-Holyhead to start back from Crewe instead, replacing the Crewe-Chester shuttle? Cardiff-Holyhead seems a very strange route to me - do many people in North Wales actually go to and from Cardiff as a matter of course? That way, you'd get two connections an hour at Crewe which could be used from all points south, but wouldn't be using up any extra paths on the WCML or in the Birmingham area. Basically like the old 37-hauled services used to do in the nineties. You'd also have an option from Crewe which, as it starts there, wouldn't be subject to the vagaries of delays on the southern WCML.

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Cardiff - Holyhead is a Welsh Assembly Govt political aspiration. Changing to Crewe would make more sense (at least perhaps alternately) but won't happen any time soon.

nickw1 said:

Would the best approach be perhaps to divert the Cardiff-Holyhead to start back from Crewe instead, replacing the Crewe-Chester shuttle? Cardiff-Holyhead seems a very strange route to me - do many people in North Wales actually go to and from Cardiff as a matter of course? That way, you'd get two connections an hour at Crewe which could be used from all points south, but wouldn't be using up any extra paths on the WCML or in the Birmingham area. Basically like the old 37-hauled services used to do in the nineties. You'd also have an option from Crewe which, as it starts there, wouldn't be subject to the vagaries of delays on the southern WCML.

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The North-South service is competing for the business of people who would otherwise drive for several hours to get to Cardiff. Many of these will be going for meetings (hence the first class provision), but there's also some leisure travel with people moving to the big city for work, and coming home to visit family and friends. I've been in both of these categories over the years. And as @The Prisoner points out, there is a political element to providing a service between north and south.

There's a potential market for travel to Cardiff for sports events, but ATW made little effort to promote their services: they'd often sent the loco-hauled rake down as barely-advertised extra express, mainly to help with dispersion of crowds heading back north to Cwmbran, Pontpool, etc after the event. Perhaps TfW will make a better show of it once they've got their rolling stock issues sorted. (Friday evening rugby matches seem to have become a thing of the past: there was no chance of getting a train back up north after such a late kick-off.)

With an hourly Crewe-Cardiff service (in the form of Manchester-South Wales), I'm not sure that there's enough demand to further increase that service at the expense of losing through services from the North Wales Coast. The planned Liverpool-Wrexham-Cardiff service (which will combine with Holyhead-Cardiff to give a roughly hourly service from Chester/Wrexham to Cardiff) is specifically designed to improve connectivity between Merseyside and North East Wales; diverting that to Crewe instead of Liverpool won't help with that goal either.

As a further consideration, going Crewe-Shrewsbury direct takes 30 minutes fast (or 50 on the stopper). Going via Chester is going to take roughly 1hr15m. If you had half-hourly departures from Shrewsbury, a 10:00 departure via Chester would reach Crewe 15 minutes later than a direct train leaving at 10:30. The benefits in terms of overall journey times with connections would probably be limited.

Agreed that Crewe-Chester shuttle could be a useful link for the connections at Crewe - faster to Manchester and Birmingham too.

I thought I read about a second Manchester-Cardiff per hour - faster and more inter city in nature, is that happening?

cle said:

I thought I read about a second Manchester-Cardiff per hour - faster and more inter city in nature, is that happening?

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I've not seen anything written about it. The announcements last year were definitely based on 2tph Cardiff-Shrewsbury, but only one would continue to Manchester, the other would alternate between Holyhead and Liverpool (via Wrexham). I think the Cardiff-Manchesters are due to be sped up by shifting some station calls to the Liverpool services.

On the North Wales Coast, the franchise tender documents also asked for faster services in general (such as North Wales - Manchester), so to achieve that I think that the Bangor-Manchester will become semi-fast east of Llandudno Jn, with the Llandudno-Liverpool service becoming the stopper.

cle said:

I thought I read about a second Manchester-Cardiff per hour - faster and more inter city in nature, is that happening?

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No plans in the franchise for it and very hard to see how it could be done anyway - it's hard enough as it is to timetable one train an hour each way across the WCML on the flat at Crewe, and it's not much better from there up to Manchester, especially through Stockport.

South of Shrewsbury there will already be 2 trains per hour so there isn't much space for more there either.

As Krus Aragon has stated however, there should be an opportunity to speed up the Manchester services South of Shrewsbury, with other services taking the intermediate stops down the Marches. They are also due to become 5 car services including 1st class as far as Swansea, which is in itself a big improvement that would provide plenty of capacity for years to come.

Perhaps that was what I was thinking about - the sped up, longer Manchester services, with other new services taking the calls.

Is there capacity for a second tph from Liverpool, if ever needed (current plan is to split/alternate) - just to provide a terminus on the England side, but could add capacity down the Marches or along the top. There is always Crewe too.

The DfT/WG agreement on cross-border services limits TfW Crewe-Manchester to 1tph (also I think Chester-Manchester* and Shrewsbury-Birmingham).
Partly that's because of congestion between Stockport and Piccadilly.
That might change when HS2b arrives.
Chester-Manchester involves Castlefield and its problems (unless diverted to Victoria, which gives you a different set of problems).
Northern still haven't delivered their promised Bradford-Airport/Liverpool services, and there could yet be a bun-fight over Airport access.

*beyond the existing peak extra

cle said:

Is there capacity for a second tph from Liverpool, if ever needed (current plan is to split/alternate) - just to provide a terminus on the England side, but could add capacity down the Marches or along the top. There is always Crewe too.

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I don't know if there's room for 2tph between Liverpool Lime St and Chester, but given that there was only 0tph a matter of months ago, and the current 1tph hasn't been extended beyond Chester yet I think it might be a bit early to be seeking paths for 2tph.

In the current plan, there will be an hourly service from Liverpool to Shrewsbury (via Wrexham) once the new stock arrives, dividing at Chester to serve both Llandudno and Shrewsbury. While only alternate trains (0.5tph) will continue to Cardiff, there will likely be a reasonable connection for the other service with the other 1.5tph between Shrewsbury and Cardiff.

krus_aragon said:

I don't know if there's room for 2tph between Liverpool Lime St and Chester, but given that there was only 0tph a matter of months ago, and the current 1tph hasn't been extended beyond Chester yet I think it might be a bit early to be seeking paths for 2tph.

In the current plan, there will be an hourly service from Liverpool to Shrewsbury (via Wrexham) once the new stock arrives, dividing at Chester to serve both Llandudno and Shrewsbury. While only alternate trains (0.5tph) will continue to Cardiff, there will likely be a reasonable connection for the other service with the other 1.5tph between Shrewsbury and Cardiff.

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This arrangement will give a minimum of 4 coaches between Liverpool and Chester though, which as stated earlier is far better than zero coaches per hour 12 months ago!

Llandudno said:

This arrangement will give a minimum of 4 coaches between Liverpool and Chester though, which as stated earlier is far better than zero coaches per hour 12 months ago!

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Zero coaches?
I thought Liverpool to Chester had been 1/2 hourly for several decades now?

HamworthyGoods said:

Zero coaches?
I thought Liverpool to Chester had been 1/2 hourly for several decades now?

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They are talking about Tranport for Wales services between Liverpool and Chester not Merseyrail.

Merseyrail currently have a service every 15 minutes during the daytime with 3 cars

It used to be every half hour and 6 cars but not decades ago , just a few years ago.

krus_aragon said:

I've not seen anything written about it. The announcements last year were definitely based on 2tph Cardiff-Shrewsbury, but only one would continue to Manchester, the other would alternate between Holyhead and Liverpool (via Wrexham). I think the Cardiff-Manchesters are due to be sped up by shifting some station calls to the Liverpool services.

On the North Wales Coast, the franchise tender documents also asked for faster services in general (such as North Wales - Manchester), so to achieve that I think that the Bangor-Manchester will become semi-fast east of Llandudno Jn, with the Llandudno-Liverpool service becoming the stopper.

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That’s correct.

The Llandudno to Liverpool combines with the Cardiff/Shrewsbury to Liverpool at Chester.

There is only one path from Chester to Liverpool but this will be 4 coaches.