This is not what I am saying at all. What I am saying is that, given the majority of passengers' well-documented preference for staying on a diverted train rather than transferring to a cramped, crowded bus which cannot convey cycles, prams or buggies, the S & C could be used a few times a year for long distance diversions, as it has been for many years past. If Avanti and TPE, quite understandably,don't wish to pay for their traincrews to maintain the relevant route knowledge, I am sure that Northern crews from Blackburn, Carlisle and Skipton depots would be quite happy to earn a little Sunday overtime on route conducting duties - paid for by Network Rail as part of their engineering works budget.
Sounds nice in theory but how many staff do Northern have with the route knowledge (bearing in mind that they generally don't operate anything north of Clitheroe, and that the staff who know Leeds - Carlisle will be a different pool to those who know Blackburn - Clitheroe), and how many "spare" staff do they have who know the route, over and above the number required to actually run Northern trains on those days?
For example, I knew a Northern guard at Sheffield who was annoyed at getting Saturday duties but as he was one of the few who signed the Brigg route, he was one of the first in line to work those trains - TOCs generally don't put significantly more staff on route knowledge/retention than a line needs over a week (e.g. it'll only be a tiny number of the overall Leeds crew)...
,...so are you saying that Northern should train another dozen staff on route knowledge (over and above the number required to do regular S&C duties), to ensure that there were sufficient to cover diverted Avanti services?
It's one of these problems where a solution looks neat, but I think that the complications are larger than they first appear
But Avanti have ordered the right number of bi-mode 805s for North Wales services. How on earth would you put them on long Glasgow diagrams without decimating capacity on the lines they are designed for. Buying additional bi-mode trains just for diversionary purposes seems to be a collosal waste of taxpayers money, especially when there are already good alternatives (ECML or fast coach links)
Agreed - feels like we are coming up with solutions ("diversions - yay - the fun of putting long InterCity trains over Ribblehead") and working backwards to come up with any way to try to justify it (e.g. the long diversion via Settle is going to require significantly more units - it's a slow line, it's significantly further than going over Shap - so the number of bi-mode units running the Holyhead services south of Crewe won't be enough to make much difference)
- We don't subsidise routes because they're "romantic" we do so because they're important to the people who use them, both locally and from elsewhere.
Being "important to those who use them" is a cop out answer.
Everything is important to the people who use it - that's why they use it - the question is not whether the people who use it think it's important, the question is whether enough people use it to justify mass transportation with all of the costs involved in heavy rail.
- My own experience travelling on the route involves weekdays and weekends at all times of day
Given how lightly used the line is, and how many times you seem to use it (at all times of the week, at all times of the year), I'm beginning to wonder how much worse the passenger figures would be without you
- You quote passenger numbers at individual stations, but unless you have a threshold at which you say the line isn't worth it, they're not much use.
A reasonable threshold feels like "are there more people than would use a bus"?
If a Sprinter does a couple of miles per gallon, and the average passenger numbers are more like something that a minibus could accommodate, then heavy rail doesn't seem very "green" to me.
What does "wiping the slate clean and starting again" actually entail ? If it involves potentially withdrawing the service, then I will take it as a personal affront because it is a service I use regularly. Such a proposal would cause damage to me personally if carried out.
It'd damage you personally?
I could see it being annoying, but that seems incredibly emotive language (considering it's not a line you rely on to get to work or anything important like that)
Going from Preston to Scotland by train if the WCML is closed is not a very easy or particularly pleasant undertaking, though, involving 3 changes, and often not even a Permitted Route (though that itself could be fixed by adding more engineering easements).
Don't get drawn into the trap of thinking every IC journey has London at one end!
...but we have direct trains from Birmingham and Manchester to Scotland via the ECML (as well as London - Scotland that way), so if the diversions are only really for Preston people then that seems a pretty excessive/ expensive "solution" to keep Preston people happy
Evidence please that BR "bent over backwards" in this way.
And before you trot out the old "WCML diversions into St Pancras" of the 80s example, that was in the days when St Pancras at best was despatching 1tph on a Sunday to the East Midlands and the MML / Thameslink service was probably no more than half hourly on a Sunday. The paths for such diversions no longer exist because of the growth of the route that was the diversion.
And such diversion opportunities have always been limited. The argument that "the fragmented privatised railway" doesn't do this is also untrue - during the WCML modernisation you had the Rio HSTs to Manchester, the West Mids crowdbusters which used Voyagers along the GW/GC joint and into Euston, and the more recent GW diversions via the GW/GC joint and SWML.
The recent thread on "services diverted into other London termini" was interesting - interesting for how few examples there were of this kind of thing, even in the BR days (when passenger numbers were significantly lower and there were significantly more free paths around) - it seems to be something that's a nice idea in theory but even BR didn't bother (yet people will blame TOCs for not doing something on the busy modern railway that BR didn't manage either)
My view is that a service can and should be provided between Skipton and Lancaster or Carlisle but that the paths south of Skipton should be reorganised around EMU timings at 100 miles / hour max, as per the available rolling stock. If this permits a third Leeds to Skipton service to run all day rather than at peak only, this would allow semi-fast services off peak which are quicker and offer much greater capacity, especially given the potential traffic generated by Bingley and Keighley. Trains to the hills could then start and terminate at Skipton, with significant extra DMU availability. Any loss of custom from people unwilling to change trains to reach Leeds would be more than balanced out by the trip generation in urban West Yorkshire.
That sounds reasonable - a four coach 333 would soak up a lot more people than a two coach Sprinter - better to free up scarce DMU resources for use elsewhere
(It was only built in the first place because the Midland Railway lost their battle to get better 'running powers' handling by the LNWR over Shap).
^^ This ^^
It was a speculative punt by nineteenth century entrepreneurs that didn't serve anywhere significant beyond West Yorkshire - a bet that failed
Ribblehead viaduct is a highlight, but the rest just perfectly pleasant and lovely. Not a patch of the likes of the West Highland lane.
My take on it is that Ribblehead is best experienced from ground level - the view from the train going over it isn't bad but it's not as nice as the view from bridges over the Forth/ Clyde/ Tweed/ Tyne etc - if you offered me the option of a ride over Ribblehead or a visit to the adjacent road then I'd take the latter
I'd probably say Shap is more spectacular, to be honest (it still takes my breath away, to be honest, and I do have a soft spot for spectacular proper mainlines like the classic Rhein route or the Montreux Riviera)
As a Scot, I prefer the Montrose Riviera - lovely view over the basin
As a passenger and regular user of both routes, I don't believe that I should be penalised by having my service closed, because the railway industry hasn't kept control of costs. The industry needs to adress its overall cost base, rather than shutting routes.
It's not a case of the railway failing to control costs, it's that the passenger numbers aren't sufficient (week round, year round) to put enough bums on seats of a two coach DMU
If the passenger numbers are more suited to single decker buses or even minibuses then it's hard for me to argue that heavy rail is the answer.
You can blame the increasing costs if you want to try to blame privatisation for the fact that there are insufficient passengers but it was a heavily loss making line in the 1980s which is why British Rail tried to close it (yet the privatisation that you're so against has kept it open for decades, despite the increasing costs)
You might as well claim hat people are being penalised for the fact that their local pub has closed, when there were only a handful of drinkers. If there were more people who used it, we wouldn't be having this conversation.
So you're up for Serpell?
We ned to be able to have some kind of sober discussion about the costs/ benefits of certain lines/ stations/ services without bringing Serpell/ Beeching into it - acknowledging that some lines have very low passenger numbers doesn't mean that people necessarily want to close 90% of the network. But if people can't accept that some lines are unfit then we're stuck subsidising them more and more each year - which is money that could be spent elsewhere.
