Who are the people who would be using the Leicester to Nottingham, but would feel so upset about stopping at the Ivanhoe line stations?
The benefit of removing East Midlands Parkway is that it reduces the demand on the line from those who live closer to the ECML and therefore need to be encouraged to use that line whilst the MML is severely short of capacity.
350/2 or 360s? Or is this meant to be on top of the connect services? I’m not sure you actually meant to put Leeds, but it’s actually quite hard for EMR to provide extra capacity to feed ECML services at Grantham. They do their best during the weekend MML closures but you can see why it’s like fighting a losing battle. ideally you’d want as many captive carriages as you can shuttling between Nottingham and Grantham, but instead the extra carriages spend most of their time away from where they’re needed working to Norwich and Skegness. I don’t think there’s capacity at Grantham for any extra services (even if you temporarily brought p3 back) due to the single line into the station area.
But you could have East Midlands Parkway in both of the trains that terminate north of London. No need to close it and no reason for anyone to drive there to go to London.
While that is an interesting idea, it doesn't save anything relative to simply running a Leicester to Nottingham shuttle, because the current CrossCountry layover at Leicester is about 25 minutes and the running time to Nottingham and back couldn't really be done in one hour and 25 minutes.
Grantham P4 isn't permissive so you can't attach and detach there. The connections are mostly in and out of the Norwich service, so that now gets strengthened. You can't run a shuttle to Grantham using displaced 222s if there's an MML block because they require 7mins to turn around in the platform and there's no path and platform that accomodates that parameter at Grantham or Nottingham.
I think you’d have a significant amount of opposition to simply removing the Ivanhoe stops - and you’ve justified why not to remove them (although I do acknowledge that you also wrote why to remove them before the text I highlighted in bold).
Today's 10:08 does Leicester to Nottingham in 33 minutes with stops at Loughborough, East Midlands Parkway and Beeston. So that would work and allow a 20 minute turn around at Nottingham.
Why do you hate the people of Nottingham?
I don't think its tenable to operate diesel capable trains south of Kettering in this situation.
It’s mostly true but not always. The IETs aren’t premium trains, they were built to a cost and have quality issues. early 2000s European Bombardier stock was rock solid.
Furthermore, there are not many spare Welsh 150s. The only spare ones are off lease and would need a C6 overhaul.
I have just become aware of this through reading Modern Railways. Isn't London to Stirling electrified throughout? Who signed off on using DMUs, especially at the expense of scheduled services on another route? Couldn't refurbished 350s do the Stirling runs instead? I think they would accelerate faster than a 222 so would there be that much difference overall?
How has that been allowed to happen? Big exams are driven by date or mileage. When the deadline is reached, the work needs to be done. Perhaps EMR was hoping that they would be gone before the drop dead dates/mileages?
They were rubbish 25 years ago. I have fond memories of them screeching to a halt from 125 mph and then sitting there for varying lengths of time whilst the driver reset things to clear the fault.As was proved last time EMR pressed derelict 180s into service after they’d been languishing in sidings.
Don't forget all those three car Central Trains 150s. A 150/2 car in the middle of a 150/1.I think a half 156 half 158 combo did happen once and you might be right it was Central Trains, using two halves of accident damaged units. There might also have been a combo of half a 156 and a 153 but my memory is hazy. I've not seen any others aside from making 3 car 158s out of 2 car ones which several TOCs have done over the years. 2 ever isn't often (I didn't say never).
Thanks. I will take a look now.
Those still exist, 150003 to 150008
The Mk3 sets are avaliable, but I don't think the 43s are, they appear to be between Colas, Nigeria and Mexico.
My guess would be they are still considering options and this is just one of them. The question would be then how many 170s they would need (quite a lot - some doubling up required if not to leave people behind at peak times) and what local services would be butchered to supply them.
You could do that for 5 units + 4 units + 4 units, so 22 units in total given the use of double sets. Could just about work but would be tight and would require incredibly tight turnarounds and not all Sheffield and Nottingham services could be double operated.
It wouldn't work. The fleet will be 22 sets once the five for Lumo go, so you're basically at 100% utilisation. No fleet can do that.
How many compliant coaches do each of those operators have available for mainline service?
Or EMR forced to take said voyagers.irrespective I suspect he’ll will freeze over before anyone other then us picks up the tab.