Hold the front page! Trans Pennine is not my neck of the woods and I know this is slightly off-topic, but is there no regular service between Halifax and Wakefield Kirkgate? How do people travel between Halifax and Lincoln, Sheffield and Doncaster?
Grand Central directly link Halifax with Wakefield 4 times per day. At other times, they're probably the most poorly-linked of any of the "council seat" settlements in West Yorkshire, requiring travel via Leeds.
Thanks. I appreciate your comments. Blame it on cabin fever. Guess we're all under a lot of pressure at the moment.
Thank you for that. I'm appalled and astonished. Halifax and Wakefield are substantial towns and I'd have thought a Lincoln to Halifax and Bradford service via Doncaster and Wakefield Kirkgate would be well patronised. A Nottingham and Sheffield service might do well too.
Yes: apologies.
I'd say heavy rail is most unlikely for any Spen Valley development, as although the old alignment is mostly unobstructed and has no old road crossings I'm aware of, in Heckmondwike a small new estate has been constructed either side of and very close to the railway, including an access road right across the old trackbed. Developers have otherwise at least retained a wide clear route through that estate, currently used by NCN66 which extends the length of the old alignment, and might be able to coexist to some extent with a lighter solution such as a predominantly single track light rail or a busway, although would need some considerable reconstruction itself and possible diversion in places. If tram-train vehicles were used on a light rail branch, they might be able to get into Bradford city centre via the existing heavy rail route from a junction at Low Moor.
I doubt the next phase of the upgrade will involve much if anything outside the existing footprint of the railway. Dynamic loops at Batley would be useful, and by relocating the station to the bridge carrying Soothill Lane over the railway these could be accommodated within existing railway land. Anything involving new or reopened alignments would be dealt with as a separate project, but if some sort of "reversing Beeching" thing forms part of a post-Corona stimulus package there might be some potential.
Cabin fever thoughts.
The Pennine Way starts at Edale station and finishes on the Scottish border, so by that definition Newcastle-Carlisle is also a Transpennine route.Sheffield to Manchester via Edale only barely crosses the Pennines too...
Liverpool to Edinburgh does cross the Pennines, as it runs via Diggle.
True, I was thinking of the group of services that runs via Preston which is Manchester to Glasgow/Edinburgh and Liverpool to Glasgow only.
They were some of the former Scottish West Coast routes taken out of the Cross Country portfolio weren't they? Maybe they don't sit well with TP if you concentrate on the 'Pennineness' of them, but on the other hand as part of a kind of 'Northern Cross Country', they make more sense. Lends weight to the idea of combining TP with XC perhaps?
Perhaps the TP routes which parallel but do not cross the Pennines should be renamed the Cispennine express?
Very good!
I will thanks! I was thinking of the TPE route via WCML
I will thanks! I was thinking of the TPE route via WCML
We also seem to have got into the habit of calling trains that don't actually go that fast 'Express' in the UK. A la....
- Stansted Express (just slow)
- Gatwick Express (couple of mins quicker than normal Southern service)
- Transpennine Express (slower than LNER and Avanti on routes it shares)
They should really be called 'not that fast but misses a few stops and sounds better with express in the title'
Meanwhile the genuine express services don't have Express in the title.
