Northern Powerhouse Rail / HS3 Timeline and Ideas

[lejog]

But there is literally no business case for HS3 on capacity grounds.
None of the existing routes is anywhere near maximum passenger capacity.

Capacity is a major problem on many of the current lines serving NPR routes, because there is a mixture of stopping services and fast trains on largely two track lines, certainly between Liverpool and York. I posted an illustration recently of the Chat Moss line, just considering the Huyton-Earlestown section, where stoppers every 30mins left only 2 10 minute windows for fast trains. Fine when there will be 2 TPE services from May, but when a fast Northern service starts in 2019 it will be tailgating a TPE service (or vice versa). To allow 4 fast TPE services to run between Huddersfield and Leeds on a closer to clock face basis, the two stopping services serving the 7 intermediate stations are to be replaced by 3 skip-stop services serving 4 stations each (and 185s and 170s are replacing sprinter/pacers). On the York-Leeds stopping service, Northern's track access agreement uniquely specifies that 158s must be used and even then those services from York that stop at Church Fenton have to wait there for 8 mins to be passed. And so on....

Hopefully NPR will carry all the fast traffic, while the existing lines revert to carrying stoppers and semi-fast services, then the capacity should move towards the 10tph you quoted.

And the headline journey time without going to Manchester Airport would still be impossible to achieve without an impossibly expensive high speed approach.
Dog legging at 140-150mph beats crawling at <90 into Manchester on the existing line.

Its not too surprising that the preferred route is a dogs leg when it satisfies the lobbying of the larger councils funding TfN.

Merseyside lobbies for a HS2 connection to London. Tick.
Greater Manchester lobbies for the line to serve Manchester Airport. Tick.
West Yorkshire lobbies for the line to serve Bradford. Tick

But in lobbying for this route Merseyside/GM may have to accept that the original 20min journey time for Liverpool-Manchester may have to stretch.

 

[MarkyT]

But there is literally no business case for HS3 on capacity grounds.
None of the existing routes is anywhere near maximum passenger capacity.

You could throw 100s of millions at platforms extension and extend all trains both fast and slow to increase capacity, but that wouldn't overcome the journey time difference which on simple two track infrastructure limits the useful maximum frequency, as B&I points out.

I am continually told on here that the reaaon why Manchester, Liverpool and other northern cities can't have more frequent suburban services (of the sort which will actually encourage people to leave their cars at home) is because all or most of the lines are filled with a mixture of stopping and fast trains. Hence HS3 to remove fast services. Can HS3 justify itself on the basis of shortening current Liverpool-Manchester times by about 10 minutes, or Manchester-Leeds times by about 20 minutes?

This is the crux of the problem. Segregating fast and and stopping services onto different tracks or routes could allow frequency of both to rise, which significantly increases their attractiveness even without any significant speed increase. Frequency is even considered by analysts as a component of journey time in the sense that any randomly timed journey demand can on average commence earlier on a higher frequency route, so will be complete commensurately earlier as well. In the short term operators plan to increase frequency over the existing transpennine infrastructure using skip stop patterns, but this cannot be a universal solution especially through the urban approaches and will result in some smaller stops on the routes concerned getting a reduced frequency as well as some direct journey opportunities being removed altogether.

 

[snowball]

Merseyside lobbies for a HS2 connection to London. Tick.

Crewe to Liverpool via HS2, High Legh, NPR and Warrington looks a very long way round compared with Crewe to Liverpool via WCML, Weaver Junction and Runcorn. Would it be any shorter in time?

 

[MarkyT]

Crewe to Liverpool via HS2, High Legh, NPR and Warrington looks a very long way round compared with Crewe to Liverpool via WCML, Weaver Junction and Runcorn. Would it be any shorter in time?

At around 20km further, not much if at all I would guess, especially with a Warrington stop and a fairly slow divergence at the new junction which is certain to be straight on for the London Glasgow axis. On the other hand it would bypass the double track section north of Crewe shared with all kinds of traffic including freight, although beautifully aligned for high speed as part of the original Grand Junction Railway. Pity poor Runcorn too after many decades of direct fast London services. Oh well perhaps they they can retain a 'LM' service via Birmingham instead!

 

[B&I]

Capacity is a major problem on many of the current lines serving NPR routes, because there is a mixture of stopping services and fast trains on largely two track lines, certainly between Liverpool and York. I posted an illustration recently of the Chat Moss line, just considering the Huyton-Earlestown section, where stoppers every 30mins left only 2 10 minute windows for fast trains. Fine when there will be 2 TPE services from May, but when a fast Northern service starts in 2019 it will be tailgating a TPE service (or vice versa). To allow 4 fast TPE services to run between Huddersfield and Leeds on a closer to clock face basis, the two stopping services serving the 7 intermediate stations are to be replaced by 3 skip-stop services serving 4 stations each (and 185s and 170s are replacing sprinter/pacers). On the York-Leeds stopping service, Northern's track access agreement uniquely specifies that 158s must be used and even then those services from York that stop at Church Fenton have to wait there for 8 mins to be passed. And so on....

Hopefully NPR will carry all the fast traffic, while the existing lines revert to carrying stoppers and semi-fast services, then the capacity should move towards the 10tph you quoted.



Its not too surprising that the preferred route is a dogs leg when it satisfies the lobbying of the larger councils funding TfN.

Merseyside lobbies for a HS2 connection to London. Tick.
Greater Manchester lobbies for the line to serve Manchester Airport. Tick.
West Yorkshire lobbies for the line to serve Bradford. Tick

But in lobbying for this route Merseyside/GM may have to accept that the original 20min journey time for Liverpool-Manchester may have to stretch.

For so long as political imperatives demand that 2 of Britain's 4 high speed lines must serve a field on the wrong side of Manchester Airport, that journey time looks implausible. If HSTed is right, we will need trains combining a top speed of 170 mph+ with lightening acceleration to achieve it.

I'm not sure that most people travelling between Liverpool and Manchester will be too upset if today's 32 minute best time becomes something like 28-30 minutes. Politically, though, it may take a bit of spinnage, especially to the anti-HS lobby, to justify spending which makes such little difference to the headline journey time. That is where improving services on the existing network, using the benefits of released capacity, becomes crucial.

 

[B&I]

At around 20km further, not much if at all I would guess, especially with a Warrington stop and a fairly slow divergence at the new junction which is certain to be straight on for the London Glasgow axis. On the other hand it would bypass the double track section north of Crewe shared with all kinds of traffic including freight, although beautifully aligned for high speed as part of the original Grand Junction Railway. Pity poor Runcorn too after many decades of direct fast London services. Oh well perhaps they they can retain a 'LM' service via Birmingham instead!

It would be disappointing if there couldn't be a substantial improvement on the current 37 minute best timing over the constricted, tilt-free line between Lime Street and Crewe, particularly the painfully slow crawl through Runcorn. But here again, capacity is as important as speed, as more frequent stopping services through Weaver Junction should replace the Liverpool-Birmingham service once it has been diverted onto HS2 (and speeded up beyond all recognition in the process).

 

[HSTEd]

At around 20km further, not much if at all I would guess, especially with a Warrington stop and a fairly slow divergence at the new junction which is certain to be straight on for the London Glasgow axis.

That is fairly slow only in comparison to the speeds available on true high speed lines though!
Modern swingnose crossings can obtain diverging route speeds of something like 230km/h.

Also remember that depending on the layout of the crossing you may have a fast route East West as well as North-South.

For example if the two lines merge and then diverge you only get the N-S fast route, but if the two lines cross with a chord or two between them, then you can have two fast routes and only Manchester-Scotland and Liverpool-London trains would take diverging routes.

I make it 90km from Crewe to London via the Airport.
If the train sustains the relatively sedate speed of 250km/h (it would move slightly faster than that on plain line and slower on junctions and in restricted areas like Warrington) then the journey time would be 23-24 minutes once acceleration times are added in.

The current Crewe-Liverpool time is something like 38 minutes.
Even with a stop at the Airport it could probably compete, assuming it can keep the speed up and avoid any long crawls.

How fast could you go through Warrington Central if you had maximum camber and maximum unbalanced camber?

 

[edwin_m]

But there is literally no business case for HS3 on capacity grounds.
None of the existing routes is anywhere near maximum passenger capacity.

I am continually told on here that the reason why Manchester, Liverpool and other northern cities can't have more frequent suburban services (of the sort which will actually encourage people to leave their cars at home) is because all or most of the lines are filled with a mixture of stopping and fast trains. Hence HS3 to remove fast services. Can HS3 justify itself on the basis of shortening current Liverpool-Manchester times by about 10 minutes, or Manchester-Leeds times by about 20 minutes?

I think Ed's point here is that capacity could be (for example) doubled relatively easily just by doubling the length of each train. You'd have some fairly major platform lengthenings to do, but far less than building a new line. And it wouldn't do anything to improve frequencies. So NPR must be justified on frequency and journey time not capacity.

 

[Olaf]

The 'medium distance services' you refer to are surely the ones that will offer most development opportunity to fill released capacity on conventional main lines after the long distance non stops have moved to HS2.

There may be opportunity but would there be sufficient demand to push up the BCE to justify additional expenditure? Some routes that may be the case, subsidies may also help, but costs are more likely to be prohibitive in many cases and Government finances are both finite and over-stretched.

East-West Rail which the government still appears to be rather keen on.

This is a key requirement for the new communities to built in the areas adjacent to the route.

Electric road vehicles ....

Not when taking into account the time to delivery on new railway infrastructure - the cadence is quite different - and adoption of electric-powered vehicles is not the key disruptive here.

 

[Olaf]

Yes, I forgot we had a government worshipping at the altar of 'the great car economy' once more. Though I'd have to accept that, even within an overall context of trying to encourage modal shift to rail, Sheffield-Manchester road links are appalling. Has no more thought been given to the combined road-rail tunnel, or was that always science fiction stuff?

I think if you opened your eyes you will find the world is changing around you.

Weather it is road, rail, maritime, or air we close to wide-spread adoption autonomous operation under remote supervision and traffic management.

 

[Olaf]

Press release by Transport for the North:

http://www.transportforthenorth.com/leaders-unite-behind-draft-transport-plan/

It is things like the wording of the fourth paragraph that raise concerns amongst the those that are expected to pay for such aspirations regarding the quality of the analysis, though the fifth helps to stead the nerves. I expect this, at least initially, is going to get a bit of a bumpy response when it gets down to the nitty-gritty. Should prove interesting to follow developments.

So, 16th January is the date to end the speculation regarding aspirations.

 

[B&I]

I think if you opened your eyes you will find the world is changing around you.

Weather it is road, rail, maritime, or air we close to wide-spread adoption autonomous operation under remote supervision and traffic management.

Who knows? This might be the greatest thing since sliced bread. Or it might be a loopy craze which will never prove to be workable. It is telling, though, that long before there is any prospect of widespreaf take-up for this technology, some are already using it as a reason to reduce public transport spending.

BTW, where is all the space going to come from to build the roads, car parks, driveways etc to accommodate people shifting back from road to rail? Given plummeting real-terms incomes, how are many going to afford what will no doubt be extremely expensive vehicles? Who is going to pay for the IT necessary to.operate them, when at present our private monopoly telecom infrastructure provider can't even provide the broadband set-up that other advanced countries take for granted? Why should autonomous / electric vehicles be a reaaon to shift resources away from.public transport, apart from the gact that certain people, some of them politicians and senior civil servants, don't like public transport?

Perhaps my eyes are fully open, and I just don't like some of the things I see. Or maybe I'm not prepared to put blind faith in a technology which I don't see as universally beneficial.

 

[B&I]

That is fairly slow only in comparison to the speeds available on true high speed lines though!
Modern swingnose crossings can obtain diverging route speeds of something like 230km/h.

Also remember that depending on the layout of the crossing you may have a fast route East West as well as North-South.

For example if the two lines merge and then diverge you only get the N-S fast route, but if the two lines cross with a chord or two between them, then you can have two fast routes and only Manchester-Scotland and Liverpool-London trains would take diverging routes.

I make it 90km from Crewe to London via the Airport.
If the train sustains the relatively sedate speed of 250km/h (it would move slightly faster than that on plain line and slower on junctions and in restricted areas like Warrington) then the journey time would be 23-24 minutes once acceleration times are added in.

The current Crewe-Liverpool time is something like 38 minutes.
Even with a stop at the Airport it could probably compete, assuming it can keep the speed up and avoid any long crawls.

How fast could you go through Warrington Central if you had maximum camber and maximum unbalanced camber?

Eh? Even innthe most imperialist fantasies of certain local authorities, there is absolutely no way a Crewe-Liverpool service would run via Manchester Airport - HS3 appears destined to enter the airport station from the Crewe direction.

Assuming the line will be from a junction off HS2 somewhere north of Crewe, via some point in Warrington, to Liverpool, what could the distance, speed and timings be?

 

[lejog]

Having plotted a couple of routes on mapping software from Liverpool to Warrington to meet HS2 north west of Knutsford, the Liverpool to Crewe distance would be in the order of 70-72km, compared with 62km for the current route via Runcorn. So a "higher speed" journey time of say around 27mins seems reasonable.

My post about council's lobbying may have been been a little cynical. Given that NPR will only get the go ahead if the total budget is reasonable, building a new Liverpool to Knutsford line was always going to be cheaper than a building a new Liverpool to Manchester line.

 

[HSTEd]

Eh? Even innthe most imperialist fantasies of certain local authorities, there is absolutely no way a Crewe-Liverpool service would run via Manchester Airport - HS3 appears destined to enter the airport station from the Crewe direction.

Assuming the line will be from a junction off HS2 somewhere north of Crewe, via some point in Warrington, to Liverpool, what could the distance, speed and timings be?

I will trial it and get back to you.
However why wouldn't the service to Liverpool run via Manchester airport?
Doing so enables the minimum amount of track to be built?
You build a line from Liverpool to Manchester Airport and avoid building two parallel north south lines.

 

[snowball]

However why wouldn't the service to Liverpool run via Manchester airport?
Doing so enables the minimum amount of track to be built?
You build a line from Liverpool to Manchester Airport and avoid building two parallel north south lines.

Have you looked at a map?

The proposed HS2 route from Crewe to Manchester Airport turns sharp right off the Wigan-bound main line at a point SW of the M56/A556 junction, and then heads in a direction south of east, going directly away from Liverpool. Then after curving north and passing through the proposed airport station, it almost immediately enters the tunnel that takes it most of the way to Piccadilly. To enable trains to pass through the airport station and then head towards Liverpool without reversing, you would need an additional long tunnel curving back west under built-up areas.

The current NPR proposal seems to be that trains from Manchester to Liverpool would use the HS2 line through the airport in the opposite direction to what you propose for Crewe to Liverpool.

 

[lejog]

I think Ed's point here is that capacity could be (for example) doubled relatively easily just by doubling the length of each train. You'd have some fairly major platform lengthenings to do, but far less than building a new line. And it wouldn't do anything to improve frequencies. So NPR must be justified on frequency and journey time not capacity.

Train lengths weren't mentioned, unfortunately elementary maths means you can't run anywhere near 10-12 tph on the current lines in the North with a mix of fast services and half hourly stopping services.

Remember that we know that modern railways can support 18 identical stopping patterns per hour or something like 10-12 trains per hour even with varied stopping patterns.

 

[B&I]

I will trial it and get back to you.
However why wouldn't the service to Liverpool run via Manchester airport?
Doing so enables the minimum amount of track to be built?
You build a line from Liverpool to Manchester Airport and avoid building two parallel north south lines.

Because to travel from Liverpool to Crewe via Manchester Airport would involve taking the Manchester HS2 spur (which will AIUI tunnel under Crewe) from the junction with the HS2 spine at High Legh up as far as the airport, then doubling back through High Legh and down the spine aa far as Crewe? Surely it is Liverpool-Piccadilly-points east NPR services which will call at a field on the wrong side of Manchester Airport.

 

[lejog]

However why wouldn't the service to Liverpool run via Manchester airport?.

Here (at least for 14days) is a map of the HS2 route.

Are you seriously suggesting that a line is built from Warrington to Manchester Airport (the red dot) for trains to run back to Hoo Green?

 

[HSTEd]

Here (at least for 14days) is a map of the HS2 route.
[GIANT MAP]
Are you seriously suggesting that a line is built from Warrington to Manchester Airport (the red dot) for trains to run back to Hoo Green?

Apologies, I was not aware of that map - however, this is still far closer to the via Manchester solution than what "somewhere north of Crewe" implied in my head, which is a twenty miles further south.
Surely the logical route would be a cloverleaf at High Legh then?
Which in journey time terms is going to be pretty much the same as what I just proposed.

Changes of a few kilometres in length make little difference when we are talking about the speeds we are talking about.

Train lengths weren't mentioned, unfortunately elementary maths means you can't run anywhere near 10-12 tph on the current lines in the North with a mix of fast services and half hourly stopping services.

What else does "nowhere near maximum passenger capacity" mean?

The trains are nowhere near the practical length of feasible platform extension/SDO works.

 

[edwin_m]

There was originally going to be a triangle at High Legh so trains going into and out of service at Piccadilly could access the rolling stock depot at Golborne. However this was taken out of the design when the depot was moved to a site just north of Crewe.

A solution in this area would be either to reinstate the triangle and add a link from somewhere northwest of it towards Liverpool, or to build an east-west link from the Manchester route somewhere around the A556 into Liverpool with probably a south to north-west chord where it crosses the Golborne route to allow London and Birmingham to Liverpool through workings. The first solution is less construction, may not need a second Ship Canal crossing, and also allows trains between Manchester and the north via the Airport. But it has more complicated junctions and is more restrictive timetable-wise because of the extra sharing with HS2.

 

[lejog]

Apologies, I was not aware of that map - however, this is still far closer to the via Manchester solution than what "somewhere north of Crewe" implied in my head, which is a twenty miles further south.
Surely the logical route would be a cloverleaf at High Legh then?

Yes or as a said earlier in the day, without a detailed knowledge of Cheshire villages, northwest of Knutsford.

What else does "nowhere near maximum passenger capacity" mean? The trains are nowhere near the practical length of feasible platform extension/SDO works.

Well I'm glad that you are no longer claiming that "we know that modern railways can support something like 10-12 trains per hour even with varied stopping patterns" - it was the use of "we know" that was particularly annoying for anyone that travels on rail in the North.

Yes it may be possible to increase train lengths, but whether that is useful capacity is less clear. For instance sure increase the length of the 5 fast trains between Leeds and York, but it may not be particular useful while you face a choice of 9.08, 9.12, 9.17, 9.43 and 9.48 departures.

 

[HSTEd]

Well I'm glad that you are no longer claiming that "we know that modern railways can support something like 10-12 trains per hour even with varied stopping patterns" - it was the use of "we know" that was particularly annoying for anyone that travels on rail in the North.

I still do claim that, but there are very few if any modern railways in the North.
The system has far too many flat crossings and overcomplex infrastructure for that.

I was referring to the example of a Shinkansen in Japan that regularly manages ~10tph with mixed stopping patterns.

Yes it may be possible to increase train lengths, but whether that is useful capacity is less clear. For instance sure increase the length of the 5 fast trains between Leeds and York, but it may not be particular useful while you face a choice of 9.08, 9.12, 9.17, 9.43 and 9.48 departures.

That is still three trains per hour effective (if calculated by maximum wait tmie for another train) and for much of the hour is much less than that.
So I would argue that three fast trains an hour effective is pretty good going, and there is little case for more whilst the trains remain so short.

 

[B&I]

I still do claim that, but there are very few if any modern railways in the North.
The system has far too many flat crossings and overcomplex infrastructure for that.

I was referring to the example of a Shinkansen in Japan that regularly manages ~10tph with mixed stopping patterns.

So lines in the north would have a capacity of 10 TPH if they were completely rebuilt to Japanese standards? What do you propose for rolling stock? Trigger's broom on wheels?

 

[HSTEd]

So lines in the north would have a capacity of 10 TPH if they were completely rebuilt to Japanese standards?

If they were rebuilt into lines with electrification, flying junctions throughout and cab signalling..... yes

What do you propose for rolling stock? Trigger's broom on wheels?

.... Class 395s?

 

[Olaf]

Who knows? This might be the greatest thing since sliced bread. Or it might be a loopy craze which will never prove to be workable. It is telling, though, that long before there is any prospect of widespreaf take-up for this technology, some are already using it as a reason to reduce public transport spending.

BTW, where is all the space going to come from to build the roads, car parks, driveways etc to accommodate people shifting back from road to rail? Given plummeting real-terms incomes, how are many going to afford what will no doubt be extremely expensive vehicles? Who is going to pay for the IT necessary to.operate them, when at present our private monopoly telecom infrastructure provider can't even provide the broadband set-up that other advanced countries take for granted? Why should autonomous / electric vehicles be a reaaon to shift resources away from.public transport, apart from the gact that certain people, some of them politicians and senior civil servants, don't like public transport?

Perhaps my eyes are fully open, and I just don't like some of the things I see. Or maybe I'm not prepared to put blind faith in a technology which I don't see as universally beneficial.

You wont see anything relevant if you are impaired by you misconceptions. Sorry, but teh balls are already in motion.

 

[B&I]

You wont see anything relevant if you are impaired by you misconceptions. Sorry, but teh balls are already in motion.

That isn't evidence that any of this is workable. It's only evidence that some well-connected people hope to make money out of it.

 

[B&I]

If they were rebuilt into lines with electrification, flying junctions throughout and cab signalling..... yes

.... Class 395s?

So, if the lines are completely re-built, to the standard of new lines, they will have the capacity of new lines. Why not just build new lines, for even more capacity?

Will class 395s have the 170 mph top speed which you have proposed for NPR?

 

[HSTEd]

So, if the lines are completely re-built, to the standard of new lines, they will have the capaciry of new lines. Why not just build new lines, for even more capacity?

Why not indeed?
My reputation is melting away, I am the man for which the solution is almost always a Shinkansen

Will class 395s have the 170 mph top speed which you have proposed for NPR?

Well you could build 170mph commuter interior sliding door units - virtually all Shinkansen sets have pouch sliding doors - and interiors don't have much effect with speed.
Class 395 are only capable of 140mph but the 75% axles powered unit concept is typical of Shinkansen

 

[Domh245]

I am the man for which the solution is almost always a Shinkansen

And if it isn't a Shinkansen, it's third rail electrification!