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May 2020 timetable changes

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Mathew S

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It would count as an effective closure of the line, so could not be done without Parliamentary approval. It's why trains like Stockport to Stalybridge and the weekly call at Tees-side Airport survive: it's cheaper and less hassle to maintain the bare minimum level of service than to go through all the statutory procedures to close a station or a section of track.
But if there are no stations, and none were mentioned in the post I was replying to, surely there's no problem.
 
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Mathew S

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When I looked at the timetable, there are stations that those trains call at.

Northbound (PM): Falkirk Grahamston, Polmont, Linlithgow, Dalmeny, etc.
Southbound (AM): Dalmeny, Falkirk Grahamston, etc.
Yes, but I'm assuming those stations are still served by other services, are they not?
 

Johnny Lewis

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Yes, but I'm assuming those stations are still served by other services, are they not?
It still constitutes "closure". For some years, a replacement bus ran between Ealing Broadway and Wandsworth Road, to compensate for the withdrawal of XC services over a short section of track in the Clapham Junction area. Although there weren't any intermediate stations, so no station closed as a result of this, it still was classed as a track closure. So the replacement bus ran for about 5 years until the statutory closure process was carried out.
 

Ianno87

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Yes, but I'm assuming those stations are still served by other services, are they not?

Pragmatically, one could ask the question "Does it become impossible to travel between any of those stations by a rail service", to which the answer is "No" (by changing at Haymarket or wherever)
 

snookertam

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The PSUL site just says tha 1N79 and 1N80 are proposed for withdrawal. It doesn't say anything about what may replace them though.

All you need is one train to run between Dalmeny and Linlithgow.
 

30907

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Pragmatically, one could ask the question "Does it become impossible to travel between any of those stations by a rail service", to which the answer is "No" (by changing at Haymarket or wherever)
However, that isn't how the requirement is defined, otherwise you could close Elgin to Forres! Seriously, withdrawing the two trains concerned doesn't preclude operating another service to comply with the requirement.
 

Old Yard Dog

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I don't think there's already a thread for these.

On LNER, the promised two-hourly service between Bradford Forster Square (BDQ) and London King's Cross (KGX) have not yet materialised. However, there is an additional 1 train each way on every day of the week, including, for the first time for many years, a direct service each way on Sundays.

Mondays to Saturdays:
1A19 08.43 BDQ - KGX 11.31 (11.33 Sat)
1D22 16.33 KGX - BDQ 19.29

Sundays:
1A26 10.25 BDQ - KGX 13.33
1D30 19.35 KGX - BDQ 22.22

All trains will also call at Shipley.

Unfortunately the Monday to Friday trains are just a little bit poorly timed to be decent commuter-busting services between Bradford and Leeds. It's also a little disappointing that the ECS off the first BDQ arrival (1929) doesn't then form the 20.45 LDS - KGX, rather than running ECS back to Doncaster Carr. Still, it's a start, and hopefully paves the way to better Bradford and Shipley links in the future.

This does at least provide an off-peak Mon-Fri through working from Forster Square to London which will be useful for those with heavy luggage
 

InOban

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The PSUL site just says tha 1N79 and 1N80 are proposed for withdrawal. It doesn't say anything about what may replace them though.

All you need is one train to run between Dalmeny and Linlithgow.
They could provide a service between Dalmeny and, say, Stirling with passengers changing for QS at linlithgow. Would be quicker, might provide a path for an extra peak service E-G, and even satisfy those who lost their through linlithgow to Stirling service. Certainly timetabling the existing services is awkward.
 

ctrh136

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It looks like the SEV-WGC through services have now been removed from RTT, now just the SEV-BFR and KGX-WGC services. Guess these now won't be until December at the earliest
 

gingerheid

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Why would not using a certain section of track not be legal?
This was the legal argument against withdrawing the West Highland Sleeper all those years ago; it was sole user of two stretches of track in the North of Glasgow.

In fact, it should be harder to stop a service in Scotland than in England. Even though two extra journeys were timetabled to use the same tracks, the court ruled (unlike the situation in England) that these were not "services" because it was clearly not intended that anyone should use them (I think they were something like Springburn to Lenzie and Croy to Ashfield, each once a week after the normal service finished) and they therefore didn't provide a service.
 

DaveN

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It looks like the SEV-WGC through services have now been removed from RTT, now just the SEV-BFR and KGX-WGC services. Guess these now won't be until December at the earliest
Yes and I'd be very surprised if they were added this December since the Corby Electrics are due to be added then, so they'll want to keep changes in the Thameslink core to the minimum.
 

SE%Traveller

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Welwyn to Sevenoaks presumably isn’t that difficult to do, and as you say has the practical outcome of freeing up a platform at Blackfriars - albeit only in the peak.

Maidstone to Cambridge is the fly in the ointment. If they implement Welwyn to Sevenoaks on its own it doesn’t help free up a platform at King’s Cross, and gives a messy situation of having the peak Welwyn service awkwardly split between core and King’s Cross, as well as Knebworth and Welwyn North having no core service at all. However on the plus side the long turnaround times at King’s Cross and Cambridge do have a positive effect on performance for what would otherwise be a highly fragile setup - on top of the existing fragility brought about by the Brighton and Horsham GN services.

It would probably make sense to start Welwyn to Sevenoaks, and leave Cambridge to Kings Cross as is, perhaps tweaking things to run off one platform at Kings Cross. I’m not fully certain how readily simple the latter is to achieve - outwardly it would be a simple case of just holding the incoming service at the home signal for a couple of minutes, but I’m not sure if that blocks the Thameslink junction, which if so would be undesirable.

There’s also the longer term quandry that with Kings Cross being remodelled, the final layout ideally separates out the Thameslink services from everything else, whereas if the Cambridge services are left using the high-numbered platforms they will need to make a conflicting move at the flat Thameslink junction - not sure how the final layout will handle this, although 2tph out of 8tph shouldn’t be too much of an ask.
Yeah you'd have thought linking up the Sevenoaks and Welwyn services would be fairly straight forward... but the placeholders seems to have disappeared for now
 
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In the off chance it may help with an overview of timetable data that has been released so far, an (almost) national May 2020 timetable is available at www.railwaydata.co.uk/timetables/May20
Of course it comes with the usual caveats - some trains are missing, nothing is confirmed, there will be changes before the timetable goes live, etc., etc.
 

bramling

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Yeah you'd have thought linking up the Sevenoaks and Welwyn services would be fairly straight forward... but the placeholders seems to have disappeared for now

I guess it depends where they’re at with the crew route knowledge. There are still many crew changes occurring at Finsbury Park, which is still causing chaos during disruption. Having said that, if you put the crew change at the end of the route then it makes recovery harder as it means the train can’t be turned short - so swings and roundabouts really.
 

DaveN

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Yeah you'd have thought linking up the Sevenoaks and Welwyn services would be fairly straight forward

But they will take the number of trains through the core at the peak hour to 22/21. At this point they need to be operating in ATO mode (and with the traffic management system in place?).

So my guess is that they will want to full rollout ATO and the traffic management system (doesn't need a timetable change) before introducing these services
 

blackfive460

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Northern timetables have now been uploaded. From a quick scan I did not notice any major changes on the west side.

Scarborough <> York shuttles are in.
I'm glad to see that these aren't just an extension of another service. Faster than TPE too!
 

jawr256

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Greybeard33

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Still no extras to Chester and Sunday hourly then? What's it been, 3 years now?
I thought that the Mid Cheshire line enhancements had been canned indefinitely because of infrastructure issues? No paths between Piccadilly and Stockport for the weekday Greenbank service. Hourly Sunday service dependent on User Worked Crossing risk assessments, for which Network Rail has no funding.
 

agbrs_Jack

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I thought that the Mid Cheshire line enhancements had been canned indefinitely because of infrastructure issues? No paths between Piccadilly and Stockport for the weekday Greenbank service. Hourly Sunday service dependent on User Worked Crossing risk assessments, for which Network Rail has no funding.

and Manchester - Congleton - Stoke hourly Sunday service?
 

Mathew S

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4 Years for our hourly sunday service in Congleton!

Absolutely disgusting and unacceptable.
But what would you take out to make it work? There are no more paths into/out of Manchester. There's no point putting extra trains in the timetable knowing they cannot possibly run.

Edit to add: If this is what the timetable ends up like from May, it's interesting to see that nothing seems to be changing to improve reliability through the Castlefield Carridor.
 

agbrs_Jack

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But what would you take out to make it work? There are no more paths into/out of Manchester. There's no point putting extra trains in the timetable knowing they cannot possibly run.

Edit to add: If this is what the timetable ends up like from May, it's interesting to see that nothing seems to be changing to improve reliability through the Castlefield Carridor.

There are paths as Northern submitted the track access document to network rail 6+ times with the service included.

If Castlefield is an issue then terminate at Man Picc. Even a Macc-Stoke shuttle would be better than the rubbish we have now!
 

Mathew S

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There are paths as Northern submitted the track access document to network rail 6+ times with the service included.
Doesn't mean they were approved by Network Rail. There just isn't the capacity (not to mention rolling stock or staffing) to be adding services. There should be, but there's not.
If Castlefield is an issue then terminate at Man Picc. Even a Macc-Stoke shuttle would be better than the rubbish we have now!
I'm not sure there's even any paths into/out of Picc that would allow an additional service to run reliably. Others with more knowledge than I have will I'm sure confirm that, or not, but I just can't see how it would work.
 

158756

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But what would you take out to make it work? There are no more paths into/out of Manchester. There's no point putting extra trains in the timetable knowing they cannot possibly run.

Edit to add: If this is what the timetable ends up like from May, it's interesting to see that nothing seems to be changing to improve reliability through the Castlefield Carridor.

There are paths during the week, so how can they not exist on Sunday when there are fewer services, and almost no freight?
 
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