EMR and Liverpool-Norwich (from Dec 2021)

[Aictos]

At one point there was planning for a second Norwich-Cambridge each hour. I'm not sure if that has been abandoned entirely now that there is more capacity on the existing service.

Additionally I think there were once plans for the Birmingham-Leicester cross-countries to be extended to Cambridge/Stansted. Again, not sure what status they are now at.

Maybe those are two ideas, and there isn't a decision which is better yet? Or maybe something more exciting is in the works

2tph linking Cambridge and Norwich as the two county capitals would be good investment. As to extending the Leicester service to Cambridge, I rather they first extend to Peterborough then look at extending to Cambridge.

Leicester-Birmingham service through to/from Cambridge every other hour was planned for December 2008 if I remeber correctly. They even made it in to the timetables but never ran after the 2008 financial crisis put paid to that and it's not been progressed since. The paths were crap as they had to fit around the existing freight and the extra platforms at Peterborough hadn't been built.

As the extra platforms have now been built at Peterborough, it shouldn't be a issue anymore should it? As you've got platforms 4 to 7 to use.

If there's an extra path for passenger vice freight then getting Cambridge-Peterborough up to half hourly would be a good use for it.

I would offer a slight amendment to that, I think getting Greater Anglia to upgrade their service from 1t2ph to 1tph would be a better use of resources as Cambridge can still be reached by the 1tph operated by XC or use connections and change at Ely.

As to Northern if they did take on the Nottingham to Liverpool route then it would make far better use of their Class 170s then using them on stopping services to Harrogate even though personally I would rather see the Class 158s move from York to Blackpool to join the EMR Class 158s and have the 3 car Class 170s work York to Blackpool.

 

[Jamesrob637]

I think you’re both getting confused. I travelled on this service daily from Manchester Oxford Road to Liverpool South Parkway and the 19:42 EMR service was always a 2 car 158. If you’re referring to the 19:46 Northern stopping service to Liverpool via Warrington, that was always a 3 car 195.

Oh 19:42:then but yes it should be 4-car from Monday as per post #12.

 

[Juanjo]

Norwich to Liverpool services were always massively busy between Nottingham-Sheffield and marginally less so Shf-Manchester. Obviously, there's some been relief between Nottingham-Sheffield with Northern's Nottingham-Leeds services, while Shf-Manchester has local stoppers and a more regular TPx service. But Norwich-Nottingham was never that busy and there are multiple options for Manchester-Liverpool.
I'm sure some passengers will be inconvenienced by splitting the service, but if it improves the Nottm-Shf-Manchester stretches, most passengers will be a lot happier.