There was a thread in January, but it was closed:
It's not a great reflection on the industry as a whole if a timetable which has been in development for years still has "significant issues", bearing in mind there was a consultation on it in 2021. It goes back even further if you include the wrangling between ORR, NR, DfT and long distance TOCs - note not freight - over East Coast Mainline access getting on for a decade ago!
I see the ECML recast has been mentioned in the Budget today… so it’s a case of Government vs Industry on this then.
What about May 2025?
To iron out the issues, or get a kicking by the FOCs if they try and remove their paths via Part J?
I thought that the planned third path each hour for LNER between York and Newcastle for an additional Kings Cross to Newcastle service is at the expense of TPE and XC so there is no increase in the number of paths taken by passenger trains on this section of the East Coast Mainline. I thought that between Peterborough and Doncaster freight trains have paths via Spalding which was the point of the Werrington dive under. Is the lack of available paths between Doncaster and York? If not where on the East Coast Mainline is the lack of paths for the proposed additional third LNER train each hour from Kings Cross to Newcastle? Could the hourly XC Reading to York train (I understand it will be hourly again from May 2025) which currently runs on the ECML between Doncaster and York be diverted via Pontefract Baghill? It would probably be better for this XC train always to terminate at York and leave TPE with two paths an hour between York and Newcastle. As they are saving tens of billions of pounds by not extending HS2 from Birmingham to Leeds they should use some of the money saved to create more capacity on the East Coast Mainline as there is clearly still not enough capacity on the ECML.
Its not just the ECML where the issues are. I believe a new Northern service is ploughing through some freight paths.
But I think binning XC off York to Newcastle and replacing it with TPE doesn’t reflect where people actually want to travel to, according to the recently published origin/destination data.
is there a link to this data?
The ORR have published the raw origin/destination flow data on their Open Data site but it's available below (among other places):
Politics are the issue as well as the ever present "move freight out of the way". May 18 was different, on paper it worked but lots of people knew that was a disaster waiting to happen but were over ruled. This timetable hasn't even got to the point where it even works on paper.
It’s also the same as the ‘end game’ 2020 timetable in the 2015 application, eg it still includes a Sunderland extension, and we know that’s going to be withdrawn. I think Glasgow and Stirling are also being binned according to recent discussions.
Only one in every two of the XC Reading to York trains will be extended to Newcastle when the hourly service is restored as XC will only have 1.5 paths per hour York to Newcastle. The former five extensions a day Reading to Southampton are not being reinstated. All the hourly XC Plymouth-Bristol-Birmingham-Derby-Sheffield-Leeds-York-Newcastle-Edinburgh trains will continue to run. Which passengers would be missing out if all the XC Reading to York trains terminate at York?
Well, having read the TAA again, that limitation is not really made clear at all, they just refer to services on the “Reading/Newcastle corridor” being mostly hourly.
On the other hand those extensions are not mentioned at all so I’d definitely read them as not happening.
