The service between Nuneaton and the North West is inadequate to be touted as some sort of alternative to direct services from Leicester; Derby perhaps. If there were hourly Virgin services to Manchester calling then it would be great, but reality is that the Trent Valley stopper is slow North of Nuneaton and - whilst recognising the transformational impact of the service on the Trent Valley towns - doesn't really cut the mustard for a link between Leicester & the North West as a regional service
The LM service north of Nuneaton will be speeded up further when diverted away from Stoke - I'm not convinced that the "Leicester to North West" service is *that* big?
I would also be interested whether it would be acceptable for Warrington Central to lose its last regional service once TPE moves to the Newton Le Willow route.
Currently it has EMT between Liverpool and Norwich and TPE between Liverpool and the Scarborough / Northeast of England.
Warrington will have lots of medium/ long distance links - including new ones like Bradford and Manchester Airport.
Does it matter to most people if most of those services are from Bank Quay rather than Central?
Hot food is crazy. When everyone else is cutting back I cannot see any sane TOC introducing it. Most stations allow you to purchase food that is a lot better and cheaper than the microwave meal or microwave bacon roll the train would serve.
Increased capacity is far more important.
Agreed.
Hot food onboard is much less important nowadays, considering the transformational changes to catering at most busy stations
It would seem highly unlikely that the Welsh Government, having paid towards refurbishing the 158s to an extremely high standard recently, would then mandate their replacement
Agreed.
158s seem well suited to ATW - 90mph units capable of splitting/ joining to deal with portion working (e.g. six coaches from Birmingham to Shrewsbury, four on the Cambrian, two to Pwllheli, two to Aberystwyth - maybe two of the original six to Wrexham etc).
People seem obsessed with finding "solutions" to problems that aren't really there.
Others have highlighted the sound operational reasons for Nottingham. Also, firstly does Peterboro have the capacity to do that? Secondly is there any demand for Liverpool to Cambridge/Stansted. Thirdly, if we are going to be uber-crayonista why not alternative desitnations at the northern end?
The route used to be quite varied in BR days - it could be Barrow/ Blackpool/ Liverpool at one end and Norwich/ Ipswich/ Cambridge at the other.
I don't know which flows would be bigger, I don't claim any knowledge - I don't know how much more complicated it would be to share termini.
At the moment the two services (ex Birmingham and ex Liverpool) are about half hourly from Peterborough.
If you run bi-hourly Liverpool to Stansted/ Norwich and bi-hourly Birmingham to Stansted/ Norwich then does that mean Ely - Norwich becomes a lopsided 30/90 minute service? Same goes at Stansted? Are there paths to muck about with the current clock face service?
Ignoring minor details such as signalling, not enough units etc.
If I was going to split the service anyway I would select ely. The Norwich end needs to reverse anyway and the other half can go to Cambridge or Ipswich.
However I will put that in the pipe dream box.
As above, I've no real opinion over the benefits of one destination over another (Sheffield to Cambridge would be handy, but I don't think either market is big enough to warrant one over another).
But, I can't see how Ely would really solve anything - it'd still mean a really long service (with all the operational problems that EMT currently have) - and Ely isn't much of a destination in its own right.
Absolutely not the case, a 5-car 222 has fewer seats than a 4-car 158... Plus there wouldn't be enough capacity at one end of the route and too much at the other end because you wouldn't be able to split/join at Nottingham, and they are very expensive trains to run. I'm all for better trains, but only where it actually represents an improvement!
Not to mention severe speed restrictions for 222s across the fens. Not an option.
Agree with you both.
It may be marginally easier to path 222s on the Grantham - Peterborough section (90mph DMUs amongst the faster ECML trains can't be easy?) but 222s would be a waste on the route - too inflexible (no splitting), too heavy, too fast for most of the route (compared to using them on XC), lots of wasted capacity on a service that needs more seats at the western end...
