I also think direct services from the City Line to the Vale of Glamorgan would be useful as well! Using the Penarth Curve, that at the moment is mainly used by freight. Having said that, a few Sunday's ago when Cardiff City were playing, Arriva operated a Ninian Park to Barry Island service, which was very good! Could there be a possibility of running some of the trains from the Valleys to the Vale via the City Line? i.e. Merthyr/Aberdare/Treherbert - Pontypridd - Radyr - all stations on City Line - Grangetown (via Penarth Curve) and so on? Or realistically, is there much more demand on the line via Llandaff? Having two lines between Radyr and Cardiff I think is one HUGE advantage!
I can't see regular Penarth curve services ever being practical, given the sheer number of people that embark/disembark at Central or Queen St. It'd have to call at Central and reverse to make it viable for anything except football specials. On that note, I didn't know that Arriva were serving Ninian Park post-match again, having stopped because of the large crowds. Is this a change in policy, or a one-off?
The main plan for the City Line is to start running some services (Cardiff-Merthyr) fast to Radyr in between the current services. The single-track portion behind Canton Depot is being redoubled to accommodate this.
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so by the sounds of it, the plan is to create a similar set up to that at penryn then?
I'm not familiar with Penryn, but from it's Wikipedia page, I'd say no. The idea is more of overtaking than passing oncoming traffic. Here's the layout as I imagine it, in glorious ASCII-mation:
Code:
Current:
PLATFORM
-==========----------->Bay
/ \ /
-----/--==========--\-----/-->Central
PLATFORM /
Valleys<--------==========------/----
DISUSED
Redeveloped:
====--\
PLATFORM \
-==========----------->Bay
/ \ /
-----/--==========--\-----/-->Central
PLATFORM /
Valleys<-----\--==========--/---/----
\ /
-==========-
PLATFORM
The current topmost platform (3) is only actually used for the Bay shuttle service. The future crossovers at the Central end are pure conjecture on my part.