HS2 frequency to remain at 18 trains per hour confirms minister

[edwin_m]

It takes a heavy diesel freight about 25min from Tebay to Shap. So if there is an HS2 service every 30min, even if all other services are concentrated in one of the 30min intervals, the freight probably doesn't quite have enough time to get from loop to loop. The current timetable puts all passenger services within a 20min period so the freight window is just about large enough to manage services such as this one.

One solution might be to insist on, and probably subsidize, the freight companies to use electric locos. Unfortunately this seems to be impossible under current legislation, so unless that can be changed we will be stuck with an uneven interval for HS2 Scotland services and for all trains overall on the northern WCML. Extra loops would be of little benefit as a train starting on the upgrade is going to be crawling all the way to the next loop.

Any Oxenholme-Penrith passengers can be catered for by stopping the Manchester-Scotland at both in some hours.

 

[Ianno87]

Any Oxenholme-Penrith passengers can be catered for by stopping the Manchester-Scotland at both in some hours.

Precisely. If you're in that part of the world, as long as there's one (maybe two) opportunities to travel per hour at *roughly* the same time each hour, that will do.

 

[Bletchleyite]

It takes a heavy diesel freight about 25min from Tebay to Shap. So if there is an HS2 service every 30min, even if all other services are concentrated in one of the 30min intervals, the freight probably doesn't quite have enough time to get from loop to loop. The current timetable puts all passenger services within a 20min period so the freight window is just about large enough to manage services such as this one.

Another thing the Swiss do is to design the infrastructure for the service, rather than cobble together a poor service on inadequate infrastructure.

In any case, if diesel hauled freight is too slow over Tebay, speed it up! Ban the use of diesels and have them add a powerful, modern electric or two for the WCML stretch. We should be moving to ban diesel under the wires entirely anyway.

 

[Ianno87]

Another thing the Swiss do is to design the infrastructure for the service, rather than cobble together a poor service on inadequate infrastructure.

In any case, if diesel hauled freight is too slow over Tebay, speed it up! Ban the use of diesels and have them add a powerful, modern electric or two for the WCML stretch. We should be moving to ban diesel under the wires entirely anyway.

As much as I agree with you that is the right solution, there is simply no mechanism to make that happen other than the goodness of the hearts of the freight operators (who'd have to sccept a hit on their own bottom lines).

Even so, freight and passenger are still going to have a hefty speed difference over the fells.

 

[si404]

one of the costs of a Takt is that you can't have "crack expresses" to show off about

But we're not discussing "crack expresses", we're talking about expresses - on a regular twice-hourly pattern. Crack expresses are expresses beyond the normal express service - eg the peak-only Paddington-Bath-Bristol first-stop Chippenham. This is just normal express service.

If the Swiss Takt can have trains (IC1, IC8) run non-stop through Olten (despite it being a major interchange station) and so run non-stop Zurich-Bern, then we can surely run trains non-stop the similar distance Preston-Carlisle, skipping Lancaster, Oxenholme and Penrith?

 

[London Trains]

If the Swiss Takt can have trains (IC1, IC8) run non-stop through Olten (despite it being a major interchange station) and so run non-stop Zurich-Bern, then we can surely run trains non-stop the similar distance Preston-Carlisle, skipping Lancaster, Oxenholme and Penrith?

Well for starters i dont think Zurich and Bern can be compared to Preston and Carlisle.

Lancaster and Preston are very similar sized cities, with the difference in station usage probably because Preston has more services to Manchester, services to Blackpool etc. Oxenholme and Penrith are reasonably sized tourist destinations and the current setup with services alternating them works reasonably well.

 

[edwin_m]

Another thing the Swiss do is to design the infrastructure for the service, rather than cobble together a poor service on inadequate infrastructure.

In any case, if diesel hauled freight is too slow over Tebay, speed it up! Ban the use of diesels and have them add a powerful, modern electric or two for the WCML stretch. We should be moving to ban diesel under the wires entirely anyway.

As indeed I suggested in the part of my post you didn't quote (and also proposed via a corporate submission to the National Infrastructure Commission review). Any infrastructure solution to achieve the equivalent WCML capacity is likely to cost much more than if the government was to buy a batch of electric locos and give them to the freight companies.

 

[si404]

Well for starters i dont think Zurich and Bern can be compared to Preston and Carlisle.

Sure, the link between the capital (of a similar size to Preston) and the largest city (of a similar size to Liverpool) of a country are much more important.

But, at the same time, Olten (while serving an urban area about the size of Lancaster) is also much more important than the intermediate stops on the WCML - it the 8th busiest station in Switzerland with 74k/day (average - 83k per working day) - 27 million passengers a year (more than Edinburgh Waverley and 90% of the figures for Leeds or Manchester Piccadilly).

Really the skipping of Olten is more akin to the Bristol Parkway-London Paddington non-stop services skipping Reading than Preston-Carlisle non-stop skipping Lancaster (though this conversation has focused on the relatively-low trafficked Oxenholme and Penrith rather than Lancaster).

Lancaster and Preston are very similar sized cities

Only if you do city proper, ie districts, with Preston being fairly tightly drawn, Lancaster's being effectively the whole of North Lancs (and Carlisle being the biggest area for a city in the country).

Preston: 323,537 (urban area), 143,135 (district), 122,719 (town proper)
Lancaster: 101,669 (urban area), 146,038 (district), 52,234 (town proper)
Carlisle: 78,314 (urban area), 108,400 (district), 75,306 (town proper)

(Urban area figures from http://www.citypopulation.de/en/uk/cities/englandua/, the rest from what wikipedia is saying)

 

[Bletchleyite]

Well for starters i dont think Zurich and Bern can be compared to Preston and Carlisle.

Lancaster and Preston are very similar sized cities, with the difference in station usage probably because Preston has more services to Manchester, services to Blackpool etc. Oxenholme and Penrith are reasonably sized tourist destinations and the current setup with services alternating them works reasonably well.

Preston actually has a smaller population (only by a few thousand, though) - I think people get the impression that Preston is much larger because it's far, far less dense - Lancaster is pretty much entirely tightly packed two up two down terraces other than a few of the very new estates, whereas Preston is much more spread out with a lot of 1930s semis and the likes, even the terraces are larger and more spread out.

Both of course have universities, though I don't know which is bigger. And, yes, Preston offers more connections - indeed in many ways it's a bit more like a second Crewe than a station that gets all its traffic from its hinterland. It's also a traditional staff changeover point.

 

[si404]

I think people get the impression that Preston is much larger because it's far, far less dense

Or perhaps it is because people don't tend to lump in Morecambe and Heysham into Lancaster, even though they are in both the urban area and city population figures that make Lancaster seem bigger than it actually is? And people tend to include the suburbs south of the Ribble as Preston, even though they don't get added to town-proper or city population figures.

I think most people wouldn't include Chorley and Leyland as 'Preston' for the same reason as they wouldn't include Morecambe as 'Lancaster'. So the 323,537 figure is perhaps a bit excessive. However, Preston-proper, which doesn't even include suburbs like Penwortham (not in the city) or Lea (in the city), is 20% bigger than the Lancaster urban area, of which Lancaster is about half.

 

[cle]

Zurich cannot be compared to Liverpool. Insane. Population means nothing, versus economy. Why do people on this forum get so hung up on population figures correlating with demand? Zurich would be more in line with Amsterdam.

Preston is clearly a much bigger draw than Lancaster for various reasons. But nor is it anything close to Berne - Switzerland's second busiest station.

 

[HSTEd]

As indeed I suggested in the part of my post you didn't quote (and also proposed via a corporate submission to the National Infrastructure Commission review). Any infrastructure solution to achieve the equivalent WCML capacity is likely to cost much more than if the government was to buy a batch of electric locos and give them to the freight companies.

How much would it cost for bankers that served any and all freight trains that requested it?

 

[Ianno87]

How much would it cost for bankers that served any and all freight trains that requested it?

Bankers don't necessarily solve the problem as you still need loop space to attach then, won't add greatly to the speed that trains can attack the gradients, and they consume more paths to send them back light engine!

 

[HSTEd]

Bankers don't necessarily solve the problem as you still need loop space to attach then

Aren't there loops at the bottom and top of Shap already?

, won't add greatly to the speed that trains can attack the gradients

Given the low speed that diesel freights attain up the slope anyway, the banker could easily be something silly like an IORE in performance terms.
11MW and 1200kN (starting to 32km/h) is probably going to move the train quite fast!

and they consume more paths to send them back light engine!

Well.... shouldnt the same number of freights flow in each direction?
So with a stock of locos waiting at top and bottom, if path maximising is your only concern, light engine moves should be unecessary./

 

[Ianno87]

Aren't there loops at the bottom and top of Shap already?

Yes, but becomes a problem when multiple freights per hour are trying to use them.

Given the low speed that diesel freights attain up the slope anyway, the banker could easily be something silly like an IORE in performance terms.
11MW and 1200kN (starting to 32km/h) is probably going to move the train quite fast!

If anything it's worse to re-start a train from the bottom of the bank after attaching an engine than just give it a flying run straight through on a single loco.

Well.... shouldnt the same number of freights flow in each direction?
So with a stock of locos waiting at top and bottom, if path maximising is your only concern, light engine moves should be unecessary./

But every train has to stop. Limited loops and adds significantly to freight journey times to do so in both directions, with trains having to weave out and back into the passenger service repeated.

 

[HSTEd]

If anything it's worse to re-start a train from the bottom of the bank after attaching an engine than just give it a flying run straight through on a single loco.

If it takes 25 minutes for a freight to cover the ~14km between Tebay and Shap...... it is exceptionally unlikely that this is actually true if you are comparing a low power diesel wtih a "running start" with a modern electric locomotive that has almost comical amounts of tractive effort. That is an average speed of under 35km/h!

A single IoRE twin-unit has as many horsepower as going on 5 Class 66s at rail.
And the IoRE is an old locomotive built for 16.7Hz operation.

If a modern design was built for 50Hz operation we would probably be looking ike the performance of a pair of HXD3Bs, so going on 20 traction megawatts (nearly nine Class 66s!) and a comparable tractive effort (to the IoRE) with a top speed of 75mph.

Such a unit would produce as much tractive effort as a starting Class 66s does, at 75mph!
The train would rapidly accelerate to 75mph and ascend the slope like that.

But every train has to stop. Limited loops and adds significantly to freight journey times to do so in both directions, with trains having to weave out and back into the passenger service repeated.

If freight journey times are happy to spend half an hour crawling this tiny distance then the time to stop, couple and uncouple and then ascend the slope in a small fraction of the tiem will be worth it.

A freight train ascending Shap apparently consumes on order of eight passenger paths.
This utterly intolerable.

We might ahve to build a new line to Scotland so a handful of freight trains can be operated like its the 1950s.

 

[si404]

Population means nothing, versus economy. Why do people on this forum get so hung up on population figures correlating with demand?

I used it because size was the comparator being used by the OP:

Well for starters i dont think Zurich and Bern can be compared to Preston and Carlisle.

Lancaster and Preston are very similar sized cities

----

Preston is clearly a much bigger draw than Lancaster for various reasons. But nor is it anything close to Berne - Switzerland's second busiest station.

True, but when did I suggest it was as big a draw? All I suggested was that it was as big a city.

I even said that this fast trains skipping a major interchange station was more akin to the GWR services skipping Reading - ie a service linking two core cities running straight through one of the busiest stations and important interchange on the network - than skipping Lancaster.

Yes, we're looking at Zurich and Bern as being much more important than Preston and Carlisle, but Olten is also much more important than Lancaster. Yes, my Zurich-Bern example links #1 and #2 stations, but it skips #8.

And, of course we're looking at trains running between London and Scotland that happen to stop at Preston as it's halfway and is a big interchange, and Carlisle because it's a useful place to split/join. Arguably Preston is more akin to Olten (and so lucky to be served by the London-Scotland service) and the other stops are IR stops en route.

---

But anyway, we're tripping over the analogy (myself included), and not seeing the wood for the trees: doctrinal pushes for 'Takt' on the WCML need not forgo trains running non-stop from Preston to Carlisle, because Switzerland themselves run expresses that skip far more important stops!

 

[cle]

I think talking about size is directly referencing demand (why else mention it?) - in this context. But agreed you didn't raise the Swiss cities, did not say it began witht you, but that they weren't in any way comparable.

Preston is definitely more of an Olten! So is Crewe really... the WCML to Glasgow doesn't really stop anywhere that critical, vs York and Newcastle. Which is likely one of the reasons why it is less patronized.

 

[mmh]

If freight over Shap really is such a problem, why not run it all overnight, or if that's impractical build a third track for freight. In the scheme of the HS2 budget it can't be that expensive...

However, I'm unconvinced why HS2 must run to a perfect clock face timetable when at the same time it's being argued that HS2 should be reservation only. I think there's a bit of a conflict between those two views, and I'm not sure them being the way somewhere abroad or not should have that much influence on what's done here. They're not trying to put 18tph between Wigan and Carlisle.

 

[Ianno87]

If freight journey times are happy to spend half an hour crawling this tiny distance then the time to stop, couple and uncouple and then ascend the slope in a small fraction of the tiem will be worth it.

No, it's stop, couple, then wait 45 minutes for the next decent path, travel, stop again, de-couple, wait another 45 minutes, then go again....

If freight over Shap really is such a problem, why not run it all overnight, or if that's impractical build a third track for freight. In the scheme of the HS2 budget it can't be that expensive...

A huge leap that building a third track through some of the most challenging terrain in Britain and through two national parks is "practical".

 

[Ianno87]

A freight train ascending Shap apparently consumes on order of eight passenger paths.
This utterly intolerable.

Sticking an extra loco on might mean they "only" consume six.

 

[London Trains]

I'd 4 track from Preston to Oxenholme (2 tracks HS2/Avanti/TPE, 2 tracks Northern/freight) then build a 2 track, straight, deep level tunnel from Oxenholme to Penrith, and 4 track Penrith to Carlisle (2 tracks HS2/Avanti/TPE, 2 tracks freight) The current bendy, hilly route via Shap will be freight only. The passenger services will be much faster through the new tunnel and the frequency could also be much higher. The 4 tracked sections may take slightly different routes to the classic routes to smooth out the kinks for 125mph running without tilt.

 

[CW2]

Several conflicting elements at play here:
FOCs have firm contractual rights to run their services both day and night. You can't bunch everything up until 22:00 then start a slow-speed overnight railway: where would all the loaded trains be stacked awaiting there turn?
Putting mega-powerful electric traction onto the uphill freights might cause problems with the OLE, given that the supply in the hilly sections is a long way from any power source. It's at the end of the electric string, so the power supply is a bit fragile.
If you improve the infrastructure to speed up the passenger services, you consume more capacity, and may catch up the preceding freight service sooner.
Maybe a Shap Base Tunnel and Beattock Base Tunnel is the long-term answer, but I struggle to think how that might be justified / afforded.

 

[Nym]

Or could one not just upgrade the line via Settle and run freight that way instead?

Loose all the single track sections, 2 track with loops and modern signalling and make use of Ribblehead properly?

 

[CW2]

Or could one not just upgrade the line via Settle and run freight that way instead?
Loose all the single track sections, 2 track with loops and modern signalling and make use of Ribblehead properly?

Much of the traffic on the WCML is containerised, which would require gauge clearance. Given the number of bridges and tunnels on the S&C, that would be both difficult and expensive to achieve.

 

[miami]

How about the line via Whitehaven?

 

[The Planner]

How about the line via Whitehaven?

Gauge is even worse on that, as well as taking an inordinate amount of time. Lots of absolute block signalling too. In other words, not a goer.

 

[Ianno87]

Gauge is even worse on that, as well as taking an inordinate amount of time. Lots of absolute block signalling too. In other words, not a goer.

And single lines.

Other than all those things, it's perfect.

 

[158756]

Several conflicting elements at play here:
FOCs have firm contractual rights to run their services both day and night. You can't bunch everything up until 22:00 then start a slow-speed overnight railway: where would all the loaded trains be stacked awaiting there turn?

Looking at RTT over the past week, we're talking about around 3 trains in each direction during the day - most already runs at night. That level of traffic shouldn't be dictating the whole timetable. If we can find however many billions for HS2 it can't be impossible to provide sufficient incentive for the freight operators to give up the paths, or to find space to park three trains somewhere along the WCML.

Alternatively - Settle to Carlisle might have gauging issues, but with coal gone it's practically redundant in it's current state, a huge length of track prone to needing expensive repairs, existing almost solely for a lightly loaded DMU every few hours. If not to take freight away from Shap, what else can it be used for?

 

[Ianno87]

Looking at RTT over the past week, we're talking about around 3 trains in each direction during the day - most already runs at night. That level of traffic shouldn't be dictating the whole timetable. If we can find however many billions for HS2 it can't be impossible to provide sufficient incentive for the freight operators to give up the paths, or to find space to park three trains somewhere along the WCML.

Alternatively - Settle to Carlisle might have gauging issues, but with coal gone it's practically redundant in it's current state, a huge length of track prone to needing expensive repairs, existing almost solely for a lightly loaded DMU every few hours. If not to take freight away from Shap, what else can it be used for?

1) Current (Covid) traffic is not representive of normal demand, nor requirements for 30- odd years' time

2) There is simply no regulatory or commercial mechanism for the "incentives" of which you speak

3) Parking trains in loops is not capacity. It is wasteful and inefficient. Often slowing into the loop and restarting again costs more capacity than just keeping the train moving.

4) Sendimg stuff via the S&C costs money in extra time and mileage. Who is paying and via what mechanism?