If 20% of train services are to be cut due to the change in usage patterns, what would you cut?

[waverley47]

*Post 1/2, criteria for cutting a service*


So, I'm going to throw in my two cents. Firstly, some base facts:

1. Transport use this year is hovering at about 35% of last year.

2. Long distance commuting has been the worst hit sector, followed by short distance commuting then leisure.

Now some assumptions:

1. This is temporary. Over time (and it may be a while) the numbers of passengers will gradually move up again. The number of commuters may never recover, and there may be more long distance travel, or it may be more evenly distributed throughout the day, but overall we will be looking at recovered numbers soon. *This is not the thread to discuss this; the question was how to save money short term, not how to redistribute capacity in the long term to deal with it.

2. HS2 gets built, at least to Manchester. God knows what happens with Leeds/NPR, but it will have some degree of HS link built to it.

3. No cutting and changing individual trains. If a place has less than 1tph, don't cut the service. It's a slippery slope to closure by stealth, and it disproportionately affects rural areas. No cutting the first or last trains, as 185 and yorksrob said, it disproportionately affects the usefulness of a service.

4. Some trains, as TheHam points out, were crush loaded.

Indeed, the other thing to be aware of is that in some services, even if they saw a 30% fall in passenger numbers would still not be enough to actually shorten trains.

For example a train with a loading of 120% would then be 84% full. Whilst that could be shortened from 12 to 8 coaches that would make it 124% loaded.

If we cut capacity of some routes, nothing much changes, but everyone can get a seat. Instead, we're cutting 1/5 of trains on some routes.

5. When we cut a service, the path stays there. It can be reactivated in the future. This isn't, as I said, a long term restructuring, instead it's a short term budget squeeze. We cut some trains for a few years, then put them back and rewrite the timetable in a few years when we understand how passenger numbers are planning out in the long term.

*See post 2 for list of services to get the axe*

**Also I'm fully aware this is very 'Reshaping of British Railways' esq, but I'm deciding to run with it.

 

[dk1]

Scrapping would be silly, it's a well-used route. It could indeed perhaps go into Avanti, though, or indeed back into XC, it's a bad fit for TPE, being the only truly InterCity route they have.

Wasn't it part of Virgin West Coast anyway until around 2007 albeit with a vastly inferior frequency & before that Cross Country under BR & the pre-Voyager days of Virgin XC? The late 90s saw the likes of Brighton-Glasgow via Manchester & the 158s (158747 springs to mind) on Manchester Airport-Scotland services that Virgin refused to lend their name to.

 

[Bletchleyite]

3. No cutting and changing individual trains. If a place has less than 1tph, don't cut the service. It's a slippery slope to closure by stealth, and it disproportionately affects rural areas.

I don't necessarily agree with that. There are quite a lot of rural lines which have a timetable that is just based on how often one DMU can rag up and down the line with minimum crew breaks. That isn't a sensible way to plan a timetable. There are a number of routes where taking one or two round trips out, but retiming the others to be actually useful for the reasons people might use the line, would actually provide an improved (yet cheaper) service.

While it's been suspended fully again due to difficulty staffing it, that's what they did with the Marston Vale's residual DMU service for the past few months. The gaps were being filled with buses, but literally nobody was using them, while a few people were using the trains as provided. The Far North Line is also being looked at on this sort of basis, and the Conwy Valley is another that could benefit from a better-thought-through approach - as things are it doesn't provide a commuter-timed or school-timed service to Llandudno at all.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 28 Dec 2020 ==

Wasn't it part of Virgin West Coast anyway until around 2007 albeit with a vastly inferior frequency & before that Cross Country under BR & the pre-Voyager days of Virgin XC? The late 90s saw the likes of Brighton-Glasgow via Manchester & the 158s (158747 springs to mind) on Manchester Airport-Scotland services that Virgin refused to lend their name to.

It's never been part of West Coast (though an inter-regional London-Manchester-Scotland service was part of one of the post-HS2 proposals and may actually be a good replacement, particularly if London-Manchester/Brum are recast to 2tph permanently so there are enough spare Pendolinos to do it). It was part of XC for as long as XC has existed as an entity (as part of a through service from the South, or those couple-of-times-a-day 158s), before being moved to TPE.

In the pre-98 timetable it was just a few a day (I think two "proper trains" and two 158s) but then Virgin decided to divert all the XCs through Manchester, which upped it to close to 2-hourly. Prior to that about half went up the WCML between Stafford and Preston.

Initially when it went to TPE it replaced the then two-hourly Windermeres, then things have been chopped, changed and added to along the way to bring it to where it is.

I don't think the Airport part of it is important, because only really Penrith would lose out if that part of the service went. Oxenholme and places south have alternatives to the Airport (Barrows and Windermeres), and Carlisle and places north can fly from Glasgow or Edinburgh instead, and will probably choose to do that. Rather it's a terminus of convenience that could be easily got rid of if it was to be connected to something coming from the south.

 

[dk1]

I don't necessarily agree with that. There are quite a lot of rural lines which have a timetable that is just based on how often one DMU can rag up and down the line with minimum crew breaks. That isn't a sensible way to plan a timetable. There are a number of routes where taking one or two round trips out, but retiming the others to be actually useful for the reasons people might use the line, would actually provide an improved (yet cheaper) service.

While it's been suspended fully again due to difficulty staffing it, that's what they did with the Marston Vale's residual DMU service for the past few months. The gaps were being filled with buses, but literally nobody was using them, while a few people were using the trains as provided. The Far North Line is also being looked at on this sort of basis, and the Conwy Valley is another that could benefit from a better-thought-through approach - as things are it doesn't provide a commuter-timed or school-timed service to Llandudno at all.

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It's never been part of West Coast (though an inter-regional London-Manchester-Scotland service was part of one of the post-HS2 proposals and may actually be a good replacement, particularly if London-Manchester/Brum are recast to 2tph permanently so there are enough spare Pendolinos to do it). It was part of XC for as long as XC has existed as an entity (as part of a through service from the South, or those couple-of-times-a-day 158s), before being moved to TPE.

In the pre-98 timetable it was just a few a day (I think two "proper trains" and two 158s) but then Virgin decided to divert all the XCs through Manchester, which upped it to close to 2-hourly. Prior to that about half went up the WCML between Stafford and Preston.

Initially when it went to TPE it replaced the then two-hourly Windermeres, then things have been chopped, changed and added to along the way to bring it to where it is.

I don't think the Airport part of it is important, because only really Penrith would lose out if that part of the service went. Oxenholme and places south have alternatives to the Airport (Barrows and Windermeres), and Carlisle and places north can fly from Glasgow or Edinburgh instead, and will probably choose to do that. Rather it's a terminus of convenience that could be easily got rid of if it was to be connected to something coming from the south.

I think you'll find it was part of VWC using Voyagers as I remember it after XC was lost & stopped running over the WCML. It went to TPx much later.

 

[JonathanH]

TPE from Glasgow / Edinburgh to Manchester just duplicates the Avanti service north of Preston and the Northern service from Preston to Manchester which has a lot more capacity now than it did when 150s and 156s were used. I think it would be a pretty easy route to cull on the grounds of duplication.

I think you'll find it was part of VWC using Voyagers as I remember it after XC was lost & stopped running over the WCML. It went to TPx much later.

No, it went to TPE using 185s from the Winter 2007 timetable. There was a period where it was run as a standalone Voyager service, distinct from the services from south of Manchester but still as XC within Virgin Trains.

Rather it's a terminus of convenience that could be easily got rid of if it was to be connected to something coming from the south.

Running Pendolinos through platforms 13 and 14 at Piccadilly might contravene some of your other principles but I would run the second Scotland train from Euston through Birmingham and Manchester to Scotland as part of a 5tph Euston service - 1tph Birmingham, 1tph Manchester via Stoke, 1tph Glasgow via Trent Valley, 1tph Liverpool and 1tph Euston - Birmingham - Manchester - Edinburgh - there might be an argument for combining the Birmingham and Liverpool service into one train but maybe that is going too far.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I think you'll find it was part of VWC using Voyagers as I remember it after XC was lost & stopped running over the WCML. It went to TPx much later.

No, that's Birmingham-Scotland, not Manchester. Manchester-Scotland has never been Virgin West Coast, other than very occasional diversions of London/Birmingham-Scotland services for engineering work.

I can see why you might be confused, though, as VWC and VXC were quite tightly integrated so it was often hard to tell who was operating what out of the two.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 28 Dec 2020 ==

TPE from Glasgow / Edinburgh to Manchester just duplicates the Avanti service north of Preston and the Northern service from Preston to Manchester which has a lot more capacity now than it did when 150s and 156s were used. I think it would be a pretty easy route to cull on the grounds of duplication.

That is like saying Avanti West Coast duplicates WMT from London to Birmingham. Manchester, as England's second or third city (depending who you ask), definitely justifies a direct InterCity service to Scotland.

Having said that, I could see the justification for lopping it back to only two-hourly Edinburghs; the Glasgow demand is much, much lower. Only real problem with that is needing to redo the north WCML timetable based on a 2-hourly pattern rather than an hourly one (unless you want stations like Penrith to go down below hourly, which I don't think is justified).

 

[dk1]

TPE from Glasgow / Edinburgh to Manchester just duplicates the Avanti service north of Preston and the Northern service from Preston to Manchester which has a lot more capacity now than it did when 150s and 156s were used. I think it would be a pretty easy route to cull on the grounds of duplication.


No, it went to TPE using 185s from the Winter 2007 timetable. There was a period where it was run as a standalone Voyager service, distinct from the services from south of Manchester but still as XC within Virgin Trains.

Perhaps I'm confusing it as to when VWC took over Birmingham-Scotland. Those 185s have been on the route longer than seems possible. Ah yes, VXC would've still been serving that route then. Cheers.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 28 Dec 2020 ==

No, that's Birmingham-Scotland, not Manchester. Manchester-Scotland has never been Virgin West Coast, other than very occasional diversions of London/Birmingham-Scotland services for engineering work.

I can see why you might be confused, though, as VWC and VXC were quite tightly integrated so it was often hard to tell who was operating what out of the two.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 28 Dec 2020 ==

Yes my mistake. I get it now. So much went on back then.

 

[JonathanH]

That is like saying Avanti West Coast duplicates WMT from London to Birmingham.

WMT duplicates Avanti West Coast - an hourly shuttle Northampton to Birmingham and Northampton to Stafford via the Trent Valley might well be sufficient with the service south of Northampton simplified as you suggest in the opening message and no through running across Northampton, particularly if the cheap fares are binned off.

 

[Ianno87]

WMT duplicates Avanti West Coast - an hourly shuttle Northampton to Birmingham and Northampton to Stafford via the Trent Valley might well be sufficient with the service south of Northampton simplified as you suggest in the opening message and no through running across Northampton.

But you "might as well" join up across Northampton (if the paths line up) and get an alternative slow service for "free". Hitherto, I don't think it abstracts from Avanti that much - rather it attracts a budget market who would otherwise travel by coach / Road , or not travel at all.

 

[Bletchleyite]

But you "might as well" join up across Northampton (if the paths line up) and get an alternative slow service for "free".

Exactly. Unless you're going to build a Swiss style Takt, connections would often be poor enough for someone going, say, New St to Bletchley to be quicker on the WMT service.

The suggestion that WMT duplicates Avanti is as ridiculous as suggesting that Crossrail duplicates GWR fasts from Reading and they should reduce that to a simple shuttle. Nothing to be gained by doing so, and completely silly.

The WMT Euston-Brum is just a combination of Euston-Northampton, Northampton-Brum and Cov-Brum locals. It works pretty well and serves an entirely different purpose, and still would even if the "WMT Only" fares were removed. Even the through Liverpools would have worked fine if they hadn't been done on the cheap (i.e. excessively tight diagramming).

Similarly, the Euston-Crewe doesn't really duplicate Avanti, it provides a service Avanti don't, i.e. serving the Trent Valley local stations with more than a derisory few-trains-a-day service then a fast commuter service from Rugby/MKC south. Even if the dedicated fares were removed, it would still be well-used, though perhaps only as a 4-car rather than 8.

 

[JonathanH]

But you "might as well" join up across Northampton (if the paths line up) and get an alternative slow service for "free".

Yes, but you get the hassle (and confusion for passengers) of having to split off long trains into shorter ones when it is easier just to run the Birmingham / Stafford service from the bay platform at Northampton and London services from platform 1, 2 or 3 as appropriate. I'd argue that splitting trains is seen as more confusing for passengers than cross-platform interchange and something occasional passengers really don't like. Through passengers to the Trent Valley stations can have same or cross-platform interchange at Rugby into a Northampton to Stafford local from whatever Avanti service stops there.

Even if the dedicated fares were removed, it would still be well-used, though perhaps only as a 4-car rather than 8.

The moment it becomes a 'short train', it would seem difficult to justify running it through to London when there are 11-coach Pendolinos to fill on the same route. One of the themes of the discussion in this thread is to run fewer longer trains that connect better and remove duplication.

 

[waverley47]

*Post 2/2, list of services to get the axe*
Remember this is temporary, all services can be reinstated.

All:

- Remove some peak extras. Their reason for being has gone, and they clutter up the timetable, making planning more difficult.


ScotRail:

- Chop the via Falkirk Grahamston services, shove the Polmont and Linlithgow stops onto the fasts and the Stirlings. They're duplicate, and there's space on these services now. Extend the Springburns back to Cumbernauld to cover Stepps and Gartcosh. Gets rid of 2tph in each direction, and there is slack in the timetable to cover it.

- Chop peak extras to East Kilbride, Ayrshire, Clydeside and Lanarkshire.

- Chop 1tph fast off Ayr services, it's not needed in the current climate.

- The North Clyde/Argyll lines have already been changed, and the service level now seems about right (cutting Dumbartons back to Dalmuir ect)

- The two fast trains between Airdrie and Bathgate can probably go, provided the other two pick up the stops. 4tph to Bathgate is probably not needed either.

Avanti:

- One Manchester and one Birmingham can go. Stop the Glasgow everywhere to pick up stops. Extensions to Chester, probably cut some (see now, where a shuttle runs to Crewe in some hours)

- Keep the Scotland via Birmingham.

Transpennine:

- Edinburgh extensions can go. Shave it back to Newcastle and run the two Newcastle terminators as semi-fast, with the same stopping pattern.

- One of Scarborough/Redcar to Manchester can go. Shuttle to York and connection onto the other. Saves 1tph through the core.

- Manchester to Glasgow can go, it's an easy connection onto the 3tp2h Avanti at Preston. Manchester to Edinburgh can stay, to keep 1tph Carlisle - Edinburgh

- Cut the airport extensions. Terminate them in the main shed at Piccadilly or send them through to Liverpool. The trip to the airport just uses up paths on the Castlefield corridor.

Northern:

- Airedale needs looking at, probably 1tph off the top but the services are balanced nicely so I'm not sure.

- 2tph from Hull to Doncaster probably isn't needed.

- 1 Southport and 1 Blackpool North extension can go for the time being (since when did Blackpool get 4tph???)

- Sheffield to Nottingham is a duplicate extension.

Crosscountry:

DH43257 summed it up nicely.

1tph Manchester to Bournemouth 8-10 car
1tph Edinburgh to Plymouth (some extensions at either end) 7-10 car
1tph Cardiff to Nottingham 4-6 car
1tph Birmingham to Cambridge 4-6 car

Anglia:

- Cut Stansted express to 2tph maximum.

- Are the Bishop's Stortford terminators really necessary?

- 1tph to Southend can go, 3 seems excessive when commuting has been hit so hard, those trains seem empty at the moment

- the Colchester Town semi-fast seems a little excessive when it gets 4tph to Liverpool Street anyway.

LNER:

- The Newcastle terminators can go in the hours they don't serve Edinburgh.

- The Glasgow extensions can go, as can the Stirling ones: they just import delays from Thameslink.

- The York terminators can probably go, or cut 1tph to Leeds and send those to Leeds instead.

- Now that we've cut the TPE to Edinburgh, it seems reasonable that all Edinburgh services can stay (it's still the most lucrative route).

EMR:

I'm not really sure. One of the London services can probably go, but then you'd be fighting between Nottingham or Sheffield for who gets to keep their 2tph.

None of the local services are really duplicates, and if you remove slow services, you shove the stops and the passengers onto fast services, which are no longer fast.

LNWR:

Again, this is tricky. Removing the Tring terminators or sending everything to Northampton seems reasonable, until you have to rewrite the timetable to accommodate this new stopping pattern. I'd remove one Tring and one Milton Keynes. Cutting one via Northampton train seems reasonable.

WMR:

I've never really understood the service patterns, so I'll leave that one to someone more knowledgeable.

GWR:

Chiltern and GWR are tricky, as there are lots of services at the inner ends, but lots of outer termini. Trimming 2tph between Paddington and Reading is a no brained, but then you have to start thinking who loses out: is it Bristol or Cardiff that loses half their London services?



I'm not really knowledgeable enough about anything to the south of the Thames to attempt rationalisation. I'd say Gatwick express should be absorbed by TSGN, which seems to be happening, and surely a couple of Thameslink services can go (even if peak time only).

A lot of the southern England branch lines seem relatively sparsely served anyway, which makes pruning difficult. Someone else can come and attempt the remaining TOC's.

 

[Peregrine 4903]

One thing to remember is completely rewriting the timetable to make it clockfaced for the new reduced service will take at least 2 years for major routes, so isn't a viable option in the short term.

In the short term it will likely just be removing services from the WTT, but have them as strategic paths so they can be easily re-instated if demand permits it.

I said this in another thread, but a lot of tocs have already reduced their service by up to or even over 20%, so would no need to reduce it further.

One thing people in this thread need to remember is that a lot of TOCs have already reduced there train service by close to 20% and other cases even over 20%.

Take Avanti West Coast for example: the xx00 to Manchester Piccadilly, xx03 to Birmingham New Street have both been completely withdrawn already. The London Euston to Chester services have also practically both been withdrawn apart from a couple of services a day and a Crewe to Chester. The Glasgow Central via Birmingham services have also mostly been cutback to Preston or Blackpool North. And the peak extra services to Liverpool Lime Street and the Blackpool North via the Trent Valley services have been completely withdrawn. I haven't worked it out but this has to be at least a 20% cut in services, perhaps more. And as people have mentioned the only large savings involve sending stock off lease, Avanti could if they wanted to withdraw all their Chester, Wrexham General, Holyhead and Shrewsbury services and then send the Voyagers off lease early. They could then wait and see how demand builds up while they wait for their IEP's.

Crosscountry are another example. They have withdrawn:
Manchester Piccadilly - Briston Temple Meads
Newcastle - Reading
Birmingham New Street to Leicester
That should be close to a 20% service reduction.

TPE are another example. They have withdrawn:
Manchester Airport - Newcastle
Manchester Airport - Glasgow Central

Liverpool Lime Street to Scaraborough has been cut back to York to Scarborough
Manchester Airport to Cleethorpes, now mostly go from Manchester Piccadilly

This should also be close to a 20% service reduction.

Some TOCs haven't really massively reduced their timetable but a lot are close or have already achieved the 20% service reduction so if this 20% service reduction is required by the DfT no need for them to reduce any more services.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Yes, but you get the hassle (and confusion for passengers) of having to split off long trains into shorter ones when it is easier just to run the Birmingham / Stafford service from the bay platform at Northampton and London services from platform 1, 2 or 3 as appropriate.

Most of them run through as 8-car now. Splitting and joining to different destinations has gone and will not return; it was the cause of a fair chunk of the the Liverpool/Rugeley service issues when one portion rocked up on time at New St and the other didn't.

You're left with adding 4 to a few peak services if necessary, that's not a major hassle and it doesn't confuse people, they are well used to it.

What you are proposing would make the service less pleasant to use and more expensive to operate. Totally and utterly negates the point.

I'd argue that splitting trains is seen as more confusing for passengers than cross-platform interchange and something occasional passengers really don't like.

Local services primarily serve regular users. If the WMT Only fares were binned, there would be very few occasional passengers.

Through passengers to the Trent Valley stations can have same or cross-platform interchange at Rugby into a Northampton to Stafford local from whatever Avanti service stops there.

When (roughly) that was the service, nobody used it - it was usually a single 153. Losing all that fares income by splitting services up but still operating all the sections individually isn't going to save any money, is it?

The main reason to split that sort of through service is if it causes a punctuality/reliability issue like the Liverpools did. The Brums haven't done that so there is little or no case to split them like that.

The moment it becomes a 'short train', it would seem difficult to justify running it through to London when there are 11-coach Pendolinos to fill on the same route. One of the themes of the discussion in this thread is to run fewer longer trains that connect better and remove duplication.

An 8-car 350 formation is 160m long, that isn't a "short train". The "lots of short trains" issue isn't really there on the WCML, it can be found mostly away from London, most notably in Northernland. On Saturdays and Sundays I think there's only one 4-car diagram left on each day. On weekdays, 4s only run when there isn't enough stock to do 8 due to the peak-time 12s, and are usually overcrowded.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 28 Dec 2020 ==

Again, this is tricky. Removing the Tring terminators or sending everything to Northampton seems reasonable, until you have to rewrite the timetable to accommodate this new stopping pattern. I'd remove one Tring and one Milton Keynes. Cutting one via Northampton train seems reasonable.

If I recast it it'd be based on 2 reasonably quick trains per hour from each station. But if you're just lopping out of the present timetable, just making the Saturday or even the Sunday service operate Monday-Friday would probably achieve it (and both of those already fit around the Avanti service which is by and large the same all week). There are a lot of peak extras.

 

[Peter0124]

Glasgow to England services:

• I'd say Manchester-Glasgow (and possibly even Liverpool-Glasgow) can be scrapped apart from maybe 1 or 2 trains a day each way as there is good connectivity at Preston (Maybe even divert the Glasgow service over to Edinburgh or find a way of running 10 coach 397s to Edinburgh). Otherwise what would happen to the spare 397s if approximately 50-60% of their workings are scrapped.
• The current 1tpd LNER Glasgow to Kings Cross should stay but instead of 06:48 have it depart at around 09:00.
• The 1tp2h XC extensions should stay in my opinion (Helps keep Glasgow-Motherwell-Edinburgh-North East England link)
• The 3tp2h Avanti service should stay
  • 1tph Glasgow-Euston via Trent Valley with a permanent call at Crewe added in, with removal of calls at Penrith/Oxenholme as they can go over to both the Glasgow/Edinburgh to Euston via Birmingham services. This should still keep the departure times at xx:40 Southbound from GLC and xx:30 Northbound from Euston (xx:10 from Euston right now I hope reverts back). Maybe even get rid of some of the calls at Motherwell particularly in the morning.
  • 1tp2h Glasgow-Birmingham-Euston to keep the link between Glasgow and the West Midlands.
• Caledonian Sleeper is tricky but atleast right now the lowlander should be scrapped until most restrictions are gone (probably Summer time) as I doubt anyone even used it (it actually ran last week for a few days before being cancelled again). The Fort William portion can stay with a Glasgow Queen Street low level call going towards London when the lowlander is cancelled.

Avanti services from Euston:
Departures
xx:07 Liverpool (Stafford, Crewe, Runcorn)
xx:20 Manchester (MKC, Stoke, Macclesfield, Stockport)
xx:23 Birmingham (Watford Junction, Rugby, Coventry, Birmingham International)
xx:30 Glasgow (Crewe, Warrington BQ, Wigan NW, Preston, Lancaster, Carlisle)
xx:40 Manchester (Crewe, Wilmslow, Stockport)
xx:43 Glasgow/Edinburgh (MKC, Coventry, Birmingham International, Birmingham New Street, Sandwell and Dudley, Wolverhampton, Crewe, Warrington BQ, Wigan NW, Preston, Lancaster, Oxenholme, Penrith, Carlisle). Odd hours xx:43 calls at Motherwell and Glasgow Central. Even hours xx:43 calls at Haymarket and Edinburgh.

Basically the same as right now (6tph) but with the xx:10 path scrapped in favour of xx:30 (there can be 1 or 2 trains a day from Euston to Holyhead using the xx:10 path).
xx:10 path was silly as it always ended up on a red approaching Stafford as it was stuck behind the xx:07 Liverpool, and both of those trains are very close together from Stafford to Crewe and it adds unnecessary 20 minutes onto the Glasgow service, which should be sped up as best as possible as it needs to try and compete with air travel.

And most peak extras scrapped to create a consistent timetable (Any necessary peak extras in the morning can run ECS to Wembley, with them forming maybe some other peak extras in the evening)

Arrival times into Euston:
xx:01 Liverpool
xx:06 Manchester via Crewe
xx:14 Glasgow
xx:26 Manchester via Stoke
xx:33 Glasgow/Edinburgh via Birmingham
xx:56 Birmingham

An idea for general interwork would be to have the:
Longer turn around times
xx:01 Liverpool arrival form the xx:40 Manchester departure
xx:06 Manchester arrival form the xx:43 Glasgow/Edinburgh departure
xx:14 Glasgow arrival form the xx:07 Liverpool departure
xx:26 Manchester arrival form the xx:23 Birmingham departure
xx:33 Glasgow/Edinburgh arrival form the xx:20 Manchester departure
xx:56 Birmingham arrival form the xx:30 Glasgow departures

Units will generally get to work all of the different routes with this interwork
For example:
(1) Glasgow -> Euston -> Liverpool -> Euston -> Manchester -> Euston -> Birmingham -> Euston -> Glasgow
(2) Glasgow/Edinburgh -> Euston -> Manchester -> Euston -> Glasgow/Edinburgh

(1)
1R20 0428 Glasgow Central to London Euston (09:14 arrival or thereabouts)
1F14 1007 London Euston to Liverpool Lime Street
1A35 1247 Liverpool Lime Street to London Euston (15:01 arrival or thereabouts)
1H70 1540 London Euston to Manchester Piccadilly
1A62 1815 Manchester Piccadilly to London Euston (20:26 arrival or thereabouts)
...

(2)
9M48 0549 Glasgow Central to London Euston (11:33 arrival or thereabouts)
1H24 1220 London Euston to Manchester Piccadilly
1A46 1455 Manchester Piccadilly to London Euston (17:06 arrival or thereabouts)
9S97 1743 London Euston to Glasgow Central


OR


Shorter turn around times
xx:01 Liverpool arrival form the xx:30 Glasgow departure
xx:06 Manchester arrival form the xx:40 Manchester departure
xx:14 Glasgow arrival form the xx:43 Glasgow/Edinburgh departure
xx:26 Manchester arrival form the xx:07 Liverpool departure
xx:33 Glasgow/Edinburgh arrival form the xx:20 Manchester departure
xx:56 Birmingham arrival form the xx:23 Birmingham departure

Units will generally stay on their own route with this interwork
For example:
Glasgow -> Euston -> Glasgow/Edinburgh -> Euston -> Manchester -> Euston -> Manchester -> Euston -> Liverpool -> Euston -> Glasgow
Birmingham -> Euston -> Birmingham -> Euston -> Birmingham -> Euston...

With exceptions when a Voyager is used on one of the services (Get rid of them on the xx:43)

I don't have experience on working with timetables (But I do like looking at train diagrams especially for Avanti, by using the Realtime Trains platform numbers) so would appreciate some constructive criticism for these ideas especially as these ideas could seem to have inefficient use of stock. The interwork pattern should not matter though as these are long distance services so delays shouldn't spread to different parts of the countries as much (Impossible to do the full cycle of services in a single day for some interwork patterns as a Glasgow via Trent Valley return trip will take about 10 or 11 hours) and the services all use the same 80 mile section from London Euston to Rugby.

 

[tbtc]

I think we should probably wait until at leat Easter to have any real guide to where demand is going to be. This isn't just a case of going back to "My Favourite Timetable When I Were A Lad", as demand is going to be reduced quite unevenly, it may be quite different in different regions, it may be quite different at different times of day or different types of train. At the moment, rail is waiting for the dust to settle in other areas of the economy - e.g. if you assume that many people can do their jobs from home at least part of the week then will business flights ever go back to the levels they were once at (can they be done by "Zoom" or are they partly about giving a certain class of employee a bit of a jaunt?)... will leisure flights bounce back (especially given the Brexit situation)? Until we know these things, it's hard to know whether we need to throw as many resources at Airport services.

Whereas, we can probably assume that football is going to survive at the top levels (it's still taking place without fans), so there'll be that kind of demand once all grounds are allowed to re-open, but maybe away fans won't be let back any time soon (given the complications/ expense/ police costs that they can cost - the football authorities might be happy to keep deferring the decision on when they are allowed back).

But, given the focus on evening services in this thread, we don't know about bars/ restaurants/ cinemas/ theatres/ music and comedy gigs - we have to accept the reality that some venues just won't open again. Some of those have been dying for years anyway, as home streaming cut into the number of people willing to spend an entire evening out of the house. COVID has removed a lot of people from the "habit" of doing those kind of things, they've found new leisure pursuits.

IF my office re-opens I'll have to go back for a specified number of days (probably fewer than the number I used to be there, but at least a certain number) but if you re-open the cinemas/ gigs etc (assuming that the organisation hasn't closed down, the building been sold etc) then I'm out of the habit of those kind of nights out, so I'm not sure I'll be going back in the same way (which may make them unsustainable for the reduced amount of people who will go back, which may tip even more into closing). It's a vicious circle, but the closed cinema can mean nearby restaurants are no longer viable, which can make a theatre less attractive if there's no longer the option of having a meal at somewhere decent nearby).

Remove the "leisure" element from late evenings and you're left with (just) the "essential" travellers (e.g. people working late, although a number of them will have been working late because they were working in aforementioned leisure industry). What numbers will that leave? Given that a late evening train comes at the opportunity cost of closing stations earlier in the day (shortening staff shifts), allowing engineering possessions to commence earlier etc. Obviously people will argue that late trains are "useful", since "useful" is a great word to describe things that don't pay for themselves but we'd like to retain (e.g. every re-opening has either been "above predictions" or "useful"). But if people aren't having the same nights out then presumably they won't need the same trains home in such number (frustrating for people who want to have long days out by train but we have to accept that we are a tiny minority...)

My focus on services would be:

1. Nothing is permanent - no lines close, no stock scrapped - this is just whilst the economy readjusts and we can make longer term plans - refusing to make any cuts is going to make the railway a much bigger target to cut though

2. Much easier to just remove part/all of a journey that re-write the whole timetable, so try to do that where possible to make it easier to reintroduce services at a later date (that may mean that it's better to go from every fifteen minutes to every half hour on a corridor, taking two trains per hour away, rather than rewriting the timetable to create a twenty minute service

3. Where possible, more services stopping at hub stations - e.g. Peterborough/ Doncaster/ Rugby/ Stafford/ Crewe. We've seen these stations lose a number of services as the long distance trains are sped up - but by having more services stopping at them we can retain a good number of journey opportunities even if there are overall cuts being made

4. Retain a good frequency as far as the nearest "hub" station. So, for TPE I'd have hourly Middlesbrough and Scarborough services but these don't need to all run through to Leeds/ Manchester - in fact they could both be hourly as far as York and then alternate beyond (to provide a bi-hourly service from Middlesbrough/ Scarborough to Leeds/ Manchester - I'm not a big fan of joining/splitting services outside of the "Metro" operations like Southern have. Same with having a high quality hourly service from Hull to Doncaster (even if the number of London services is significantly lower than Hull Trains used to provide)

5. Remove the "TOC specific" tickets from routes like Preston to Edinburgh/ Glasgow and see what *actual* demand remains, tailor your services around that. I'm not saying we remove all advanced tickets, but we should focus them on the routes with the most "elastic" demand, rather than trying to cram in more people to focus on the ORCATS cash

5. You could even provide an increase in journey opportunities by doing this - e.g. if the St Pancras - Leicester services dropped down to three per hour, but all of these stopped at East Midlands Parkway then you could have connecting DMUs there to provide both Derby and Nottingham with good journey opportunities to Leicester/ London. Same with improving the number of services at Crewe (you could run a Liverpool - Crewe shuttle in the peaks to retain a half hourly London service for passengers prepared to change there, if you had to cut Liverpool's peak extras)

6. Everything being Government controlled means we can eliminate much of the "wasteful" competition - e.g. if Chiltern no longer undercut the Avanti/LNW services from London to Birmingham then services out of Marylebone can focus on intermediate stations, which may mean merging the middle distance and longer distance services on that line.

7. Cross border services may take more of a hit, as the different administrations don't have/keep the same restrictions, so may take a disproportionate drop in demand - but hopefully this will only be until mass vaccination is resolved

Perhaps I'm confusing it as to when VWC took over Birmingham-Scotland. Those 185s have been on the route longer than seems possible. Ah yes, VXC would've still been serving that route then. Cheers.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 28 Dec 2020 ==


Yes my mistake. I get it now. So much went on back then.

My memory of the Manchester - WCML - Scotland route is along the lines of...

• Later days of BR: Mainly Manchester Airport - Scotland services with 158s but a handful of through trains from Birmingham (and further south) - most Birmingham services running via Crewe - Wigan though (partly as they were hauled by 86s)
• Operation Princess: Bi-hourly Birmingham - Crewe - Wigan - Scotland (ex- Bristol) and bi-hourly Birmingham - Stoke - Manchester - Scotland (ex Reading) with Voyagers
• Later Virgin (post XC/WC split up): Bi-hourly Piccadilly - Scotland (with Voyagers) - the "via Wigan" services had gone up to hourly by this point (but generally just starting/finishing at New Street)
• Then handed over to TPE so run it with 185s (from Manchester Airport) - essentially a swap around so that Chester - London had a significant increase in capacity by taking resources for the Manchester - Scotland line by taking resources from the Manchester - Windermere line by taking resources from the Manchester - Cleethorpes line - which meant Sheffield went down to two coach 170s so that (then Chancellor) George Osbourne's constituents had many more seats to/from London

...but it was run by West Coast for a period (after Arriva took over XC), and separate to the Birmingham - Stoke - Manchester service (which was part of Arriva by that stage). Probably around fifteen years ago now but I get my dates muddled up.

 

[Ken H]

if you are going to hack 20% of trains out of the timetable, that will hit Network rail revenue. With less trains running, is there scope for savings there. less signallers, less maintenance perhaps.
Network rail will also have a hit from reduced station catering at major stations. I expect much station catering will be unviable for some time.

but like with trains paths, if you cut from network rail, you have to retain the ability to easily put it back later when its needed.

 

[NoMorePacers]

- 2tph from Hull to Doncaster probably isn't needed.

Maybe not. Goole-Doncaster definitely needs 2tph though.

 

[squizzler]

Do why farmers have learnt to do: diversify from the core activity into other areas! Keep the same trains but convert that unwanted 20% of capacity into parcels (and bike) space to make up the shortfall from passenger revenue but from other means. Simples!

Parcels and other fast / lightweight goods is going to be the big growth area for the railways due to the chronic shortage of drivers following our loss from the EU and the trend towards last mile delivery being done by bicycle courier, radio control planes and street robots. Mark my words.

 

[The Planner]

if you are going to hack 20% of trains out of the timetable, that will hit Network rail revenue. With less trains running, is there scope for savings there. less signallers, less maintenance perhaps.
Network rail will also have a hit from reduced station catering at major stations. I expect much station catering will be unviable for some time.

but like with trains paths, if you cut from network rail, you have to retain the ability to easily put it back later when its needed.

Why would there be less signallers, chances are you will not be pruning back box hours and considering the improvement notice slapped on us by the ORR, we will be doing more maintenance, not less.

 

[Ken H]

Why would there be less signallers, chances are you will not be pruning back box hours and considering the improvement notice slapped on us by the ORR, we will be doing more maintenance, not less.

switch out some small boxes. and look at manning in power boxes.

 

[Iskra]

I’ve not read the full thread, but I think the Lowland Sleeper would be a fairly easy cut without upsetting too many folk.

 

[Nicholas Lewis]

That 'competition' is reported to be considered by the DfT / Treasury to drive down the fares which can be charged and therefore reduce the revenue for the government. With it all going into one pot and passenger sentiment being strongly against the 'confusion' of different fares for the same journey, it appears likely that competition is unnecessary on the post-Covid railway.

Williams review actively discourages it and other than Grand Central and Hull Trains putting on services to key destinations that really ought to be served by LNER in the first place no other privateer has made a go of competition. Whats going to be interesting is whether the concessions are just expected to operate the timetable or whether they will have some latitude to drive revenue.

Why would there be less signallers, chances are you will not be pruning back box hours and considering the improvement notice slapped on us by the ORR, we will be doing more maintenance, not less.

Hopefully overnight hours will be back at 5-6hrs or more on many routes so routine mtce can be undertaken with less intrusion of weekend possessions for all but heavy mtce/renewal tasks.

But you "might as well" join up across Northampton (if the paths line up) and get an alternative slow service for "free". Hitherto, I don't think it abstracts from Avanti that much - rather it attracts a budget market who would otherwise travel by coach / Road , or not travel at all.

revenue abstraction is irrelevant in the post williams model - what we need is a service pattern that delivers capacity where its needed along with journey patterns that maximise demand without needing extra infrastructure. Concessions are then let to operate this. Trouble is this needs a complete rewrite of the timetable across many areas and thats probably a 18-36mth process to complete and implement if your not going to undermine relaibility.

 

[backontrack]

EMR:

I'm not really sure. One of the London services can probably go, but then you'd be fighting between Nottingham or Sheffield for who gets to keep their 2tph.

None of the local services are really duplicates, and if you remove slow services, you shove the stops and the passengers onto fast services, which are no longer fast.

This is ambitious - and probably not worth the effort - but hmm: does curtailing Northern's Leeds-Nottingham service at Sheffield make it in any way possible to extend one of EMR's London-Nottingham services to Sheffield via Alfreton?

Probably a nightmare to path, but hmm.

 

[Aictos]

Thameslink services every 15 minutes from bedford must be looking like a potential victim,along with the st albans stopper/luton-rainham being looked at.

I think GTL could probably get away with doing something like a 20 minute service without too much damage to reputation ,but going end to end from bedford-brighon, instead of the alternation between the brighton service and the other terminating at gatwick/three bridges.5 minutes extra wait for a service would be tolerable for most folks,15 mins would not, and that would also clear up a bit of the pathing congestion through the core, which is clearly not up to 24 trains per hour or whatever was touted at the time, somthing like 12 to 15 tph optimal.

As for the St Albans stopper,that could be stretched into luton without too much hassle.

As for the rest of EMR land, the london based services and the corby's probably wouldn't be affected, But i would wager some of the regional services might get a bit of a trim.Also that the 156's would probably be retained longer than planned, probably down to southern not being able to release all their 170's, and the 156's being cheaper to run.

Just to point out that there are driver changeovers at both Luton and St Alban's so any proposals would need to take that into account.

What they did with the first lockdown was operate Rainham to Luton as far as Kentish Town, Wimbledon/Sutton services had 2tph extended to Luton from St Albans, Sevenoaks ran to Blackfriars while Bedford services were a basic 4tph, also the peak extras such as Orpington to Luton were cancelled.

If any reduction in service is done in regards to the TL services, I would suggest a basic 2tph on all routes but on a week by week basis see if it is viable to run a few extra peak time only services.

Failing that, I think they should keep the existing timetables as they are with regards to Thameslink.

 

[The Planner]

switch out some small boxes. and look at manning in power boxes.

How many boxes can be switched out (it won't be many) and unless you are making signalers redundant, you will still be paying them.

 

[hooverboy]

Why would there be less signallers, chances are you will not be pruning back box hours and considering the improvement notice slapped on us by the ORR, we will be doing more maintenance, not less.

signallers should be relatively unscathed in the event of passenger TOC cuts, as lines have to be 24/7 ready for both freight and passenger traffic,and "events" happen to cause logjams,delays and so on.Trains may not run over the metals as frequently, but they do have to run, and run over them safely.

maintenance wise for cost cutting measures,I would have thought NR would be pushing for the final removal of the remaining manned crossings and such,with replacement to automatic barrier.Also more consolidation of signalling centres to remote operation.

NR if anything should be the recipient of some extra "kickstarter" funding to get the state of the network,rails, signalling and trackworks equipment properly up to 21st century scratch during this period.It's actually an opportunity now for the government to provide much needed employment, but it's a case of being willing to spend a bit to save a lot more.
Updating signalling and trackside comms could be done in tandem with one of the other government manifesto promises of upgrading rural broadband etc.NR and the telco's just need to get together and decide where to route the fibres, the modems and so on will run in seperate protocols/channels so they won't interfere with one another.

However having NR doing their own one,and BT etc having their bespoke kit basically doubles the labour costs of gouging out trenches,planning,civils etc. easily sorted by talking to one another

 

[JonathanH]

This is ambitious - and probably not worth the effort - but hmm: does curtailing Northern's Leeds-Nottingham service at Sheffield make it in any way possible to extend one of EMR's London-Nottingham services to Sheffield via Alfreton?

Probably a nightmare to path, but hmm.

Why would you do that? If a cost-effective, cheap to run train can't be justified over the route from Sheffield to Nottingham because of the reduction in demand, why would you extend a much more expensive to run long-distance service which has more carriages over that route?

 

[hooverboy]

This is ambitious - and probably not worth the effort - but hmm: does curtailing Northern's Leeds-Nottingham service at Sheffield make it in any way possible to extend one of EMR's London-Nottingham services to Sheffield via Alfreton?

Probably a nightmare to path, but hmm.

I guess another cost cutting measure EMR might have a look at is the feasibility of changing the 170 turbostar bogies to the lightweight 172 type at major overhaul.It would probably depend on whether DfT would demand type approval all over again though,or whether "172 grandfather rights" could be aplied to the retrofit.
I know EMR were interested in bombardiers hydrive concept for the engines.

 

[backontrack]

Why would you do that? If a cost-effective, cheap to run train can't be justified over the route from Sheffield to Nottingham because of the reduction in demand, why would you extend a much more expensive to run long-distance service which has more carriages over that route?

Answer: to maintain 2tph London-Nottingham AND 2tph London-Sheffield while still removing 1tph from the MML.