Future Conwy Valley services

[krus_aragon]

In this scenario, I'm looking at what possible service improvements could be made to rail services down the Conwy Valley to Blaenau Ffestiniog, once TfW take delivery of all their new rolling stock. For the benefit of any readers that aren't very familiar with the route, here's a quick summary:

• Single track from Llandudno Junction (LLJ) to Blaenau Ffestiniog, with a passing loop at North Llanrwst. Tokens are exchanged at North Llanrwst and LLJ.
  
• Three-hourly service, currently operated by a single Class 150 unit
  
• Most stations on the line are request stops
• End-to-end journeys are currently timetabled for roughly 1 hour. North Llanrwst is 20 minutes south of LLJ.
• Every service (except the first few of the day) runs through to/from Llandudno Town, with a ~10 minute layover at LLJ each way for connections with the mainline.

In BR days, there had been some interworking with a Llandudno-Holyhead stopping service. (That service was replaced with by other long-distance services.) But with the current desire for clockface timetables, an inconveniently located passing loop, and an (understandable) desire to keep through services to Llandudno Town, there's little that could be done without spending significant amounts of money.

Under the current public timetable, the quickest service from LLJ to Blaenau and back (with request stops) operates in two hours and two minutes (1633-1835). If this could be tightened up to below two hours, it would be possible to operate a two-hourly service between LLJ and Blaenau with the same resources, but at the cost of losing the through operation to Llandudno Town.

When the new Civity DMUs are all introduced into service, they will be used on the Conwy Valley as well as mainline services. This hasn't been the case before (with a mix of 158 and 175s on the mainline).

In the current timetable, Manchester-Llandudno services have a long layover at Llandudno, during which they shuttle to LLJ and back. This service will be replaced with a Liverpool-Llandudno service once the new DMUs arrive, but I expect there will still be a similar layover at the Llandudno end.

So here's the big idea: There will be an hourly shuttle from LLJ to Town, courtesy of the Liverpool (nee Manchester) terminators. This will be operated with the same Civity rolling stock as the Conwy Valley. So if the round trip LLJ-BFF-LLJ could be reduced to less than two hours, it could be interworked with the Liverpool-Llandudno services to give a service every two hours between Blaenau Ffestiniog and Llandudno Town, rather than every three.

The Llandudno shuttle would continue working to LLJ and back in the intervening hours. There'd be a net loss of roughly three services each way between Town and LLJ, a relatively small price compared to two extra services to Blaenau and back.

Token exchange at LLJ could be a bit of a problem. At the moment, trains from Blaenau are usually routed to platform 4 at LLJ (over the bridge), as this route doesn't conflict with any services from the Chester direction (heading for platform 3). But as the token would need to be passed on to another unit immediately, it would probably be more advantageous to diagram it for platform 3 instead, with the southbound unit sat nearby on platform 1. (This would still need more time to be clawed back than if the same unit were to shuttle back down with the token.) There'd also be the risk of a late-running northbound service delaying a southbound service, which could take a long time to recover from.

Any observations on this idea, or alternative suggestions, would be very welcome.

 

[Bletchleyite]

An interesting idea. Even if it required a pointless trip to Llandudno and back you might well actually get some takers for a direct Liverpool-Conwy Valley service, too (and for those going from the Valley to Chester etc).

I would agree that getting the Valley to clockface 2-hourly would seriously improve its viability, though the other way to achieve this would be to truncate most journeys at Betws and run a bus to Blaenau.

 

[adrock1976]

I did have a go at doing a North Wales clock face timetable which also incorporated the Blaenau Ffestiniog branch.

I got this to every 2 hours Llandudno - Blaenau, with the trains passing at North Llanrwst. When the train from Blaenau arrives at Llandudno, it would form a shuttle to the Junction and back to Llandudno in the opposite hour. The Liverpool (formerly Manchester via Warrington BQ) would not interwork with anything else so as to have a robust timetable.

 

[mmh]

I was thinking you'd probably want a pre-planned emergency timetable for when (not if!) the line is flooded if it was interworked, but perhaps there's enough platform capacity at Llandudno to just stable for a long time?

 

[Bletchleyite]

I was thinking you'd probably want a pre-planned emergency timetable for when (not if!) the line is flooded if it was interworked, but perhaps there's enough platform capacity at Llandudno to just stable for a long time?

Yeah, 3 bays for a service requiring only 1 I think? Worst case you could dump it in the sidings at LLJ.

 

[krus_aragon]

I was thinking you'd probably want a pre-planned emergency timetable for when (not if!) the line is flooded if it was interworked, but perhaps there's enough platform capacity at Llandudno to just stable for a long time?

In the event that the Conwy Valley was completely closed, and you weren't concerned about units sticking to diagrams, you could just run the ex-Liverpool trains to LLJ and back (as they do now) before operating the next Liverpool service, and stash the extra unit in one of Llandudno's three bay platforms. Actually, come to think of it, you could even preserve the diagrams by having the unit that would have gone LLD-LLJ-BFF-LLJ-LLD operate LLD-LLJ-LLD (returning immediately) and then sit in a bay platform at LLD until it's back on diagram for its run to Liverpool.

As there'd still only be one unit on the Conwy Valley branch at any time, you just need to stable one unit, whichever way round you do it.

 

[krus_aragon]

An interesting idea. Even if it required a pointless trip to Llandudno and back you might well actually get some takers for a direct Liverpool-Conwy Valley service, too (and for those going from the Valley to Chester etc).

I would agree that getting the Valley to clockface 2-hourly would seriously improve its viability, though the other way to achieve this would be to truncate most journeys at Betws and run a bus to Blaenau.

That's an interesting approach, given that the current bus service between Betws and Blaenau is under threat of cutbacks. It's currently down to three buses a day, with the operator wanting to reduce this to one(!) in order to operate the service with just one bus.

 

[Bletchleyite]

That's an interesting approach, given that the current bus service between Betws and Blaenau is under threat of cutbacks. It's currently down to three buses a day, with the operator wanting to reduce this to one(!) in order to operate the service with just one bus.

The 2-hourly-ish bus south of Betws was only viable when the train didn't accept concessionary passes. It was pointless duplication, really. Prior to that there were only a couple of round trips tendered by the Council to plug gaps in the train service (and with ticket interavailability).

This would be a railway contracted bus taking railway tickets and awaiting connections. It's not my preferred option, though, as I'm no great fan of closing things, least of all a line that beautiful.

 

[krus_aragon]

I did have a go at doing a North Wales clock face timetable which also incorporated the Blaenau Ffestiniog branch.

I got this to every 2 hours Llandudno - Blaenau, with the trains passing at North Llanrwst. When the train from Blaenau arrives at Llandudno, it would form a shuttle to the Junction and back to Llandudno in the opposite hour. The Liverpool (formerly Manchester via Warrington BQ) would not interwork with anything else so as to have a robust timetable.

That'd be more robust, at the expense of requiring an extra unit. One problem I forsee with that approach is that because every service passes at North Llanrwst, there wouldn't be any paths available for railtours or engineering trains. The latter could run overnight, but for the former, you'd have to run the railtour in the path of a service train (and accept National Rail tickets).

 

[30907]

That'd be more robust, at the expense of requiring an extra unit. One problem I forsee with that approach is that because every service passes at North Llanrwst, there wouldn't be any paths available for railtours or engineering trains. The latter could run overnight, but for the former, you'd have to run the railtour in the path of a service train (and accept National Rail tickets).

Are there any time-sensitive local traffic flows to cater for (other than Round Robins!), if so a perfect Taktfahrplan may not be ideal.
How often are there railtours, and could they run one way during the 40min layover at Blaenau, presuming there is a token instrument there and the unit can be shunted to and from the loop? Or is that too tight?

 

[Bletchleyite]

Are there any time-sensitive local traffic flows to cater for (other than Round Robins!), if so a perfect Taktfahrplan may not be ideal.

I don't know if there is a "school train", but at present it certainly caters very *badly* for anyone wanting to commute to the Junction or Llandudno to work.

How often are there railtours, and could they run one way during the 40min layover at Blaenau, presuming there is a token instrument there and the unit can be shunted to and from the loop? Or is that too tight?

TBH I don't care if railtours were to be banned or be Sunday only - the passenger service has to take priority.

 

[krus_aragon]

Are there any time-sensitive local traffic flows to cater for (other than Round Robins!), if so a perfect Taktfahrplan may not be ideal.

Over the years, the Conwy Valley and Ffestiniog timetables have sought to offer good connections at Blaenau, which they manage with reasonable success to this day. If the Conwy Valley timetable were to change, I'm sure the Ffestiniog would want to adapt as best as they could.

The first northbound train of the day is timed to connect with the first train to Holyhead (and an eastbound service) before returning south to Blaenau. I've known the Holyhead service to be held for passengers wanting to make that connection.

For the rest of the day, the service hangs about in LLJ for ten minutes each way, as the timetable's so slack. The morning services connect with the hourly service to/from Holyhead, but this pattern breaks in the afternoon (probably due to Arriva's rejigging of the clockface timetable to serve evening peak flows, and accomodate the loco-hauled set). But with service frequencies increasing to 3tph eastbound and 2tph westbound at LLJ, I don't think that connections there will be troublesome.

There isn't any significant rail traffic to the secondary school in Llanrwst: when there was talk of cuts to afternoon bus services, parents were aghast, picturing schoolkids walking home to Blaenau over the Crimea Pass. They clearly didn't consider the current train service to be relevant. (The train passes through Llanrwst at 0909 northbound, but at 1530 it's heading north again: useless for a return journey.)

How often are there railtours, and could they run one way during the 40min layover at Blaenau, presuming there is a token instrument there and the unit can be shunted to and from the loop? Or is that too tight?

There are perhaps four railtours a year. Following the idea of two units running a two-hourly service and passing at North Llanrwst, a southbound unit leaving Llanrwst would need to be back in under two hours. The current timetable indicates 40 minutes there and 40 minutes back, leaving a 40 minute layover. Even if a non-stopping railtour could run Llanrwst to Blaenau in less than 40 minutes, the service train would need to shunt to the loop at Blaenau before the token could be released for the railtour to proceed onto the single line. You'd then have a railtour arriving at the platform when the service train needs to shunt out of the loop to re-enter service. With the current signalling arrangement, there's no way I can see to make this work.

TBH I don't care if railtours were to be banned or be Sunday only - the passenger service has to take priority.

That's an interesting thought: limiting them to Sundays only could be a viable approach. I don't think banning them altogether would be very popular: the Cambrian has already been lost to railtours since the ERTMS installation (the promised mobile kit has yet to be developed).

 

[Bletchleyite]

Over the years, the Conwy Valley and Ffestiniog timetables have sought to offer good connections at Blaenau, which they manage with reasonable success to this day.

I'm sure I recall a discussion on here which said that the FfR had got so bored of irate passengers who missed it at Blaenau that they are now not pursuing connections, which is a shame. There is certainly one that misses by about 5 minutes.

 

[Harbornite]

the Cambrian has already been lost to railtours

No it hasn't.

 

[krus_aragon]

No it hasn't.

I'm happy to be corrected, but I thought that only one railtour has gone down there (hauled by Network Rail's 97/3s) since the introduction of ERTMS eight years ago. There certainly aren't any steam-hauled excursions there any more.

 

[Meerkat]

If you start bustitution on part of the line won’t the obvious call be for bustitution for the whole line?
Which would be faster? and cheaper, especially if you factor in the repeated post flood repairs.

 

[Harbornite]

I'm happy to be corrected, but I thought that only one railtour has gone down there (hauled by Network Rail's 97/3s) since the introduction of ERTMS eight years ago. There certainly aren't any steam-hauled excursions there any more.

Steam no, but there's been more than one tour down there with 97/3s, the most recent was in 2017.