Controversial railway opinions (without a firm foundation in logic..)

HSTEd said:

Well their operating costs could be pared back by rationalisation in that case.

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Maybe, but could you pare costs back enough?

gabrielhj07 said:

Not to mention the gauge

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That's why I mentioned Talgo. They are experienced in producing carriages that use the tried and tested Talgo RD gauge changing system. An approximately 376 metre long train would take about 1.5 mins to change using the gauge changing shed.

AlastairFraser said:

That's why I mentioned Talgo. They are experienced in producing carriages that use the tried and tested Talgo RD gauge changing system. An approximately 376 metre long train would take about 1.5 mins to change using the gauge changing shed.

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I wonder if the gauge changing system could be built into the ship

py_megapixel said:

I wonder if the gauge changing system could be built into the ship

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Unlikely - lot of complex mechanics involved, and the electricals may be too exposed to operate on a ship.

HSTEd said:

Construction of a self contained Shinkansen/Metro hybrid running London Waterloo-Clapham Junction-Gatwick Airport-Brighton-Littlehampton-Portsmouth-Southampton-Bournemouth-Dorchester-Exeter would be a good idea.
10+ 400m 3.38m wide trains per hour, running a single stopping pattern.

It would be ~15 minutes faster than the fastest train from London to Southampton and Exeter and absolutely crush the journey times on all other destinations.

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I love this one - lets make it happen!!!!

eldomtom2 said:

Maybe, but could you pare costs back enough?

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Well I make it a net reduction in twelve trains per hour (8 Victoria and 8 Thameslink to 4) at Gatwick Airport for the Brighton main line.

You probably axe the Weymouth fasts and run only an all shacks on that line (west of Southampton). Same for the Portsmouth Direct Line.
The "Portsmouth indirect line" almost certainly loses the London trains between Eastleigh and Fareham. Probably ends up an Eastleigh-Portsmouth affair

Id say a net reduction of sixteen trains per hour into the classic London termini/Thameslink is certainly achievable. Likely more if route simplification allows methods of operating that are currently impractical. Remaining trains would also get shorter and/or simpler to operate.

That's something like the entire off peak service out of the Southern side of Victoria! Rationalisation would likely allow quite a bit of track and S&C to go although a lot more work would be needed to find out what.

They should have solved mobile signal a decade ago and forced Network Rail to allow any MNO to use their assets to do it

Gigabit said:

They should have solved mobile signal a decade ago and forced Network Rail to allow any MNO to use their assets to do it

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Username checks out. I agree with this - on board WiFi doesn’t cut it, and it’s not technically complicated to resolve this issue. Could be pricey, though.

I ran some estimates for a South Coast Shinkansen, stopping all stations:
This assumes 60 seconds of dwell at all stations, using exemplar stations on the Tokaido-Sanyo Shinkansen with similar spacings to the spacings here. Top speed is effectively ~285-300km/h as a result.

Clearly the Brighton Main line is the main beneficiary, especially for Brighton. Gatwick is less spectacular but given that this would be ~10tph at this running time, it almost certainly thrashes the Gatwick Express et al. This likely means major service reductions are practical, for example, from the 8tph to each of Thameslink and Victoria to 4tph to Thameslink. Which would be a net saving of 12. Presumably you'd rejigg everything to use up the 4tph but the details of a total recast of services to the south coast is out of scope at this time.

Arun Valley line is probably reduced to a shuttle between Littlehampton and the Airport, and the Coastways take on new importance for moving passengers to the Shinkansen stations. Gatwick Airport and Brighton have 60% of entries/exits on the BML south of East Croydon.

By the time we get to Portsmouth we have a ~30 minute advantage, which is going to kill the Portsmouth indirect service by Eastleigh, and probably cut the overall frequency on the Portsmouth Direct Line by one (for two remaining tph).
So that's now a net saving of 14.
Moving onto Southampton the journey time saving is only 6 minutes, although 10tph vs 3 fast tph means that I would expect virtually everyone to switch regardless. I reckon you could probably cut it to two fast-ish trains per hour to Southampton for a reduction of one. Noone is going to take the SWML for London-Bournemouth because the journey time advantage is crushing again.

So I would make that a net reduction of 15 trains per hour into London. Mostly on theBrighton Main Line but I think significant cuts elsewhere are achievable.

A lot of traffic at the likes of Winchester or Petersfield is likely to end up in a situation where optimum routings will vary wildly based on the time of the hour. If the southbound train is coming soon it will be faster to double back over the Shinkansen, whereas if the northbound train arrives earlier it will be faster to head direct. That rather challenges the simplistic frequency estimate but its really hard to do a better analysis without properly designing a timetable.

15 trains per hour is roughly equivalent to the off-peak service out of the Southern side of Victoria, so scrubbing that much demand is likely to allow major changes in central London.
Would be a very expensive ~210km long line to build, but even using Series 800 Shinkansen seating (2+2 and 1.1m of seat pitch!) would still allow 10+tph of 1100 seats and plenty of standing room. Each seat width and the gangway width could each be ~13.8cm greater than in the Class 800.

HSTEd said:

Clearly the Brighton Main line is the main beneficiary, especially for Brighton. Gatwick is less spectacular but given that this would be ~10tph at this running time, it almost certainly thrashes the Gatwick Express et al. This likely means major service reductions are practical, for example, from the 8tph to each of Thameslink and Victoria to 4tph to Thameslink. Which would be a net saving of 12.

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But the 16tph on the Brighton Main Line are not there just for Gatwick, Brighton and, err, Littlehampton. They are there to serve all the intermediate stations too. I can well imagine the views of the good folk of Redhill, Three Bridges and Haywards Heath to name but three being told they are losing a majority of their service and / or extended journey times because someone has built s highspeed line in their back yard.

Bald Rick said:

But the 16tph on the Brighton Main Line are not there just for Gatwick, Brighton and, err, Littlehampton. They are there to serve all the intermediate stations too. I can well imagine the views of the good folk of Redhill, Three Bridges and Haywards Heath to name but three being told they are losing a majority of their service and / or extended journey times because someone has built s highspeed line in their back yard.

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Redhill I don't think particularly suffers much at all under this scheme, it goes from 4tph Thameslink and 2tph to Victoria now to.... 4tph Thameslink and 2tph to Victoria!
I think the trains may get somewhat slower but as far as I know all Thameslink trains through London Bridge for the BML are non stop to Norwood Junction already.
I think each Thameslink train probably ends up picking up one stop each, at either Merstham or Coulsdon North.

Three Bridges goes from its current 10tph (2 Victoria and 8 Thameslink) to 6tph (2 Gatwick Airport and 4 Thameslink). But at the same time the expansion of its journey times will be contained by the short change time at Gatwick Airport onto the Shinkansen. Of course given how Gatwick Airport and Three Bridges are so close together a lot of passengers will probably defect to Gatwick Airport rather than Three Bridges.

Haywards Heath is the biggest "loser" of the three to be sure. 10 trains per hour to 4 in each direction and its a lot further from a Shinkansen station than Three Bridges et al.
6 Victoria and 4 Thameslink to 4 Thameslink. Probably around 21 minutes to Brighton and 16 minutes to Gatwick Airport.

Average wait time of 3 minutes plus 10 minute change deficit (I think 10 minutes is probably generous and 5too short) would be about 13 minutes. Effective journey time would be 49 minutes via Gatwick Airport . That is generally comparable to the journey time achieved now. Therefore the primary loss is going from an average wait for a train of 3 minutes to 7.5 minutes. So they lose about 5-6 minutes in total time assuming schotastic timetables with random arrivals.

So in short, they do seem to lose out, but I doubt these losses are really catastrophic, and given that pretty much everyone on the Coastways would be way better off than now changing at Littlehampton or Brighton, I don't think the service cut is indefensible even if it is "radical".

EDIT:
Do I get some sort of prize if I propose extending the GWR Gatwick terminator to Brighton and then transferring it to XC? Somewhat more seriously doing that would partially mitigate the Haywards Heath issue by clawing back ~2.5 minutes of average wait time by going from 4tph to 6tph.

Since some of the above is not that controversial, here is one I have been thinking about a while.

There are very few true Intercity services in the UK, the possible exceptions being the limited stop Scotland to London by Avanti and LNER. Otherwise, trains regularly have stops 20 minutes or less apart. It would make sense to focus stock accordingly and concentrate on capacity rather than the "Intercity" features of the stock.

To put this into context, I do not think there are any true Intercity services from either Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, Cardiff, Bristol, Southampton or Leeds (and by extension the places that serve them like Swansea, the South West).

In this sense I think the Norwich trains show a better solution than keep pushing for the end door vestibuled stock with huge catering areas.

Topological said:

Since some of the above is not that controversial, here is one I have been thinking about a while.

There are very few true Intercity services in the UK, the possible exceptions being the limited stop Scotland to London by Avanti and LNER. Otherwise, trains regularly have stops 20 minutes or less apart. It would make sense to focus stock accordingly and concentrate on capacity rather than the "Intercity" features of the stock.

To put this into context, I do not think there are any true Intercity services from either Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, Cardiff, Bristol, Southampton or Leeds (and by extension the places that serve them like Swansea, the South West).

In this sense I think the Norwich trains show a better solution than keep pushing for the end door vestibuled stock with huge catering areas.

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I think it’s difficult to argue the long distance XC routes aren’t intercity, but I broadly agree with you otherwise.

m0ffy said:

I think it’s difficult to argue the long distance XC routes aren’t intercity, but I broadly agree with you otherwise.

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I would argue that they look even less intercity that something like London - Leeds! They're long distance of course they are but if the metric being applied is time between stops then XC are the worst offender by far of the intercity operators.

Topological said:

There are very few true Intercity services in the UK, the possible exceptions being the limited stop Scotland to London by Avanti and LNER. Otherwise, trains regularly have stops 20 minutes or less apart. It would make sense to focus stock accordingly and concentrate on capacity rather than the "Intercity" features of the stock.

To put this into context, I do not think there are any true Intercity services from either Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, Cardiff, Bristol, Southampton or Leeds (and by extension the places that serve them like Swansea, the South West).

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That really depends on whether you think that "Inter City" (invented in the UK, of course) means an airline-on-wheels, just connecting London with a very few other favoured provincial locations. Lots of other people (like me) would disagree entirely, seeing it as a network providing connectivity between as many of the country's economic centres as practicable.

Next, you will be proposing that places like Coventry, Preston or Salisbury should lose their fast services just so that longer-distance London trains can whistle through.
To suggest that a place as densely populated as the UK should not use its railways to serve the cities scattered across the whole country would just continue the trend of focussing all economic activity in London, leaving the rest of us living in a wasteland.

The "XC is inadequate" argument is down to our failure to provide proper local and inter-regional services (and the infrastructure to run them) "below" or in parallel with the necessary IC network.

AndrewE said:

That really depends on whether you think that "Inter City" (invented in the UK, of course) means an airline-on-wheels, just connecting London with a very few other favoured provincial locations. Lots of other people (like me) would disagree entirely, seeing it as providing connectivity between as many of the country's economic centres as practicable.

Next, you will be proposing that places like Coventry, Preston or Salisbury should lose their fast services just so that longer-distance London trains can whistle through.
To suggest that a place as densely populated as the UK should not use its railways to serve the cities scattered across the whole country would just continue the trend of focussing all economic activity in London, leaving the rest of us living in a wasteland.

The "XC is inadequate" argument is down to our failure to provide proper local and inter-regional services (and the infrastructure to run them) "below" or in parallel with the necessary IC network.

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Notwithstanding the fact that this is the "Controversial Railway Opinions Without a Firm Foundation in Logic", you will need to say where I have said any of the services should be slowed down or have stops inserted. I also do not argue to regulating trains so that the London to Scotland get any additional priority to that which they are currently afforded in pathing.

I am purely saying that we have a habit in the UK of assuming that a regional train is in fact Intercity. The definition that makes many services Intercity would also make the Milford Haven to Manchester Piccadilly Intercity, but no one is about to argue that the Milford Haven to Manchester needs a buffet and end doors.

So please do not make any more false claims about what I am saying there. I am merely arguing that we should be focused on capacity on our trains rather than thinking the services I mentioned are something more romantically superior than they are.

ainsworth74 said:

I would argue that they look even less intercity that something like London - Leeds! They're long distance of course they are but if the metric being applied is time between stops then XC are the worst offender by far of the intercity operators.

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Ah yes, good point!

ainsworth74 said:

I would argue that they look even less intercity that something like London - Leeds! They're long distance of course they are but if the metric being applied is time between stops then XC are the worst offender by far of the intercity operators.

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I thought I'd have a look at an example of the time between stops:
1115 Leeds to Kings Cross: 186 miles, 4 intermediate stops, 2h15m, average 27m between stops
1111 Leeds to Bristol: 203 miles, 7 intermediate stops, 3h20m, average 25m between stops. Rising to 29m when Wakefield Westgate is cut.
So not so different to the Leeds to London service.

I'm not at all convinced a service should stop being classed as "intercity" because it stops around every half hour, particularly when it's stopping at very major cities like Sheffield and Birmingham along the way.

HSTEd said:

Redhill I don't think particularly suffers much at all under this scheme, it goes from 4tph Thameslink and 2tph to Victoria now to.... 4tph Thameslink and 2tph to Victoria!
I think the trains may get somewhat slower but as far as I know all Thameslink trains through London Bridge for the BML are non stop to Norwood Junction already.
I think each Thameslink train probably ends up picking up one stop each, at either Merstham or Coulsdon North.

Three Bridges goes from its current 10tph (2 Victoria and 8 Thameslink) to 6tph (2 Gatwick Airport and 4 Thameslink). But at the same time the expansion of its journey times will be contained by the short change time at Gatwick Airport onto the Shinkansen. Of course given how Gatwick Airport and Three Bridges are so close together a lot of passengers will probably defect to Gatwick Airport rather than Three Bridges.

Haywards Heath is the biggest "loser" of the three to be sure. 10 trains per hour to 4 in each direction and its a lot further from a Shinkansen station than Three Bridges et al.
6 Victoria and 4 Thameslink to 4 Thameslink. Probably around 21 minutes to Brighton and 16 minutes to Gatwick Airport.

Average wait time of 3 minutes plus 10 minute change deficit (I think 10 minutes is probably generous and 5too short) would be about 13 minutes. Effective journey time would be 49 minutes via Gatwick Airport . That is generally comparable to the journey time achieved now. Therefore the primary loss is going from an average wait for a train of 3 minutes to 7.5 minutes. So they lose about 5-6 minutes in total time assuming schotastic timetables with random arrivals.

So in short, they do seem to lose out, but I doubt these losses are really catastrophic, and given that pretty much everyone on the Coastways would be way better off than now changing at Littlehampton or Brighton, I don't think the service cut is indefensible even if it is "radical".

EDIT:
Do I get some sort of prize if I propose extending the GWR Gatwick terminator to Brighton and then transferring it to XC? Somewhat more seriously doing that would partially mitigate the Haywards Heath issue by clawing back ~2.5 minutes of average wait time by going from 4tph to 6tph.

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I'm not sure that it would feel like that much of a reduction. Whilst going from a train every 6 minutes to one every 15 would be an extra 9 minutes between services, due starters that's not all that much extra time and the fact that the trains would likely have more available seats would mean that in the peak (and maybe even at times of disruption) you could almost always just get the next train rather than potentially having to let some go past because they are so full.

I've previously commuted by train from a station just after a station with much faster services, even with fairly small populations (2 stains with less than 10,000 and the next one being 50,000) the trains in the peaks, even with 3tph or more, were full and standing upon leaving the third station.

Likewise I've worked somewhere with 4tph (off peak) and you never felt like you needed to time your departure from the office all that acutely to get the train to go to a meeting (you'd know that you needed the xx:15 or xx:30 at a push, but you'd leave about xx:05 but it wouldn't be a disaster if you left at xx:20). Even at 10tph it's not going to be much better.

However as you highlight in your edit, there's them potential to have new services to new places which might actually benefit a wider group of people.

duffield said:

I'm not at all convinced a service should stop being classed as "intercity" because it stops around every half hour, particularly when it's stopping at very major cities like Sheffield and Birmingham along the way.

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Agree. But, to take things much further and in the spirit of this thread, any service which links two or more cities should be designated Inter-City and provided with appropriate rolling stock, to include First Class and catering; Which includes the trains stopping in Manchester and Salford!

Falcon1200 said:

Agree. But, to take things much further and in the spirit of this thread, any service which links two or more cities should be designated Inter-City and provided with appropriate rolling stock, to include First Class and catering; Which includes the trains stopping in Manchester and Salford!

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I agree (goes away to start up a campaign to reopen the line to St Asaph ... Just need another curry to link it to...)

Falcon1200 said:

Agree. But, to take things much further and in the spirit of this thread, any service which links two or more cities should be designated Inter-City and provided with appropriate rolling stock, to include First Class and catering; Which includes the trains stopping in Manchester and Salford!

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Presumably with passengers able to enjoy a full pass of the complimentary catering service in between...

I do not know what the definition of Intercity really is, but I suspect it is more because a long time ago the train was considered an "Express" rather than a local train and then the BR Intercity brand evolved for those trains.

Continuing the controversy a little, perhaps it is more right to say the definition of "Intercity" should not be related to the service on board, rather the need for capacity should dictate that services we may have associated with "Intercity" services are only available on a very low number of routes. Though in that case we would need a new branding for those routes.

Falcon1200 said:

Agree. But, to take things much further and in the spirit of this thread, any service which links two or more cities should be designated Inter-City and provided with appropriate rolling stock, to include First Class and catering; Which includes the trains stopping in Manchester and Salford!

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Even the District Line which links two, the Cities of Westminster and London?

It doesn't make sense to have InterCity style long distance services linking every pair of cities. The concept is a service level for long distance trains.

duffield said:

I thought I'd have a look at an example of the time between stops:
1115 Leeds to Kings Cross: 186 miles, 4 intermediate stops, 2h15m, average 27m between stops
1111 Leeds to Bristol: 203 miles, 7 intermediate stops, 3h20m, average 25m between stops. Rising to 29m when Wakefield Westgate is cut.
So not so different to the Leeds to London service.

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Yes closer than I'd imagined!

duffield said:

I'm not at all convinced a service should stop being classed as "intercity" because it stops around every half hour, particularly when it's stopping at very major cities like Sheffield and Birmingham along the way.

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Oh absolutely agreed on that point. I definitely think that there's more to the definition than just the time between stops.

Bletchleyite said:

Even the District Line which links two, the Cities of Westminster and London?

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Absolutely! It's a travesty that there's no buffet on the S-Stock.

ainsworth74 said:

Absolutely! It's a travesty that there's no buffet on the S-Stock.

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To be fair the seats are better than on the 80x doing the long distance runs out of Kings X and Paddington!

Just imagine though if the Pullman service got switched from the 17:03 onto the 17:06 District Line from Westminster...

Topological said:

Since some of the above is not that controversial, here is one I have been thinking about a while.

There are very few true Intercity services in the UK, the possible exceptions being the limited stop Scotland to London by Avanti and LNER. Otherwise, trains regularly have stops 20 minutes or less apart. It would make sense to focus stock accordingly and concentrate on capacity rather than the "Intercity" features of the stock.

To put this into context, I do not think there are any true Intercity services from either Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, Cardiff, Bristol, Southampton or Leeds (and by extension the places that serve them like Swansea, the South West).

In this sense I think the Norwich trains show a better solution than keep pushing for the end door vestibuled stock with huge catering areas.

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Are there now no direct, non-stop services between Manchester and London, and if not, when was the last one and who ran it?

Howardh said:

Are there now no direct, non-stop services between Manchester and London, and if not, when was the last one and who ran it?

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Has there ever been non-stop services between Manchester and London?

ainsworth74 said:

Has there ever been non-stop services between Manchester and London?

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Seem to recall way-back-then, maybe 70's? Probably after electrification, but I have a feeling yes and that my old man has done that journey for work. Needs conformation though!!

An old thread might help! https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/history-of-services-from-euston-to-manchester-routings.257391/

ainsworth74 said:

Has there ever been non-stop services between Manchester and London?

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Well if we consider "Manchester" to be Greater Manchester then yes, the Midland Pullman ran non-stop from Cheadle Heath to St Pancras. Obviously Greater Manchester didn't exist yet though.
I don't think I know of any "Real" Manchester-London non stop trains.