Stations justifying an additional platform if space permitted

[GordonT]

Manchester Airport and Manchester Piccadilly.

 

[jfowkes]

St Pancras International (EMR platforms)
Bedford (additional EMR platform)

 

[YamYamDave]

Euston

 

[devon_belle]

Exeter St Davids
Cardiff Central (?)
Southampton

 

[Llandudno]

Sheffield
Liverpool Central Northern Line
Chester

 

[The Planner]

Euston

Why?

Manchester Airport and Manchester Piccadilly.

Manchester Airport is getting its platforms extended to allow longer trains and more permissive working.

 

[PGAT]

Dartford

 

[Joey Beauchamp]

Oxford

 

[YorkRanger]

Leeds could do with additional through platforms. Every time I travel through there I get the "we're just being held at a red signal outside the station while we wait for a platform to become available" announcement.

Liverpool Central Northern Line

I agree, or at a bare minimum, they need to make the existing platform wider somehow. Far too narrow and overcrowded as it is currently.

 

[lachlan]

Leeds could do with additional through platforms. Every time I travel through there I get the "we're just being held at a red signal outside the station while we wait for a platform to become available" announcement.



I agree, or at a bare minimum, they need to make the existing platform wider somehow. Far too narrow and overcrowded as it is currently.

Frequently get this on the way into Bristol - arrive on time, get stuck waiting for a platform, pull in a few minutes late. Though Bristol doesn't exactly look short on platforms? Hopefully they don't need to expand it given they're now building an entrance at the other side where a new platform could go...

 

[southern442]

East Croydon - seems to have gone a bit quiet on that front...

 

[ItsGrimUpNorth]

Carlisle.

A platfrom 0 was touted if HS2 came here (Ho ho ho), but the sidings by platform 1 could easily be developed for another platfom, or even two - one through and one for the West Cumbria line (thus removing it sometimes blocking platforms 1 and 3 currently) and still have a couple of sidings available.

Indeed development of two would allow the thunderbird usually parked up in the aforementioned sidings to sit in what would be the redundant, and awkard, platform 2?

 

[Western 52]

Llanelli - so trains reversing in platform 1 no longer block the down line. Quite common to be delayed waiting for the previous train to cross to the up line.

 

[Blindtraveler]

Haymarket, along with an additional tunnel bore and track through the gardens, none of which are never going to happen but I do think it's about time we thinned out the service traveling through the city centre and terminated at least two tph on a regular basis in platform zero

To whoever suggested Dartford, I completely agree, particularly on strike days or rail replacement where there is a large number of terminating trains and sometimes units laying over for up to 40 minutes especially on a Sunday when the North Kent Thameslink is only hourly. Indeed were Dartford to gain additional capacity I would turn the aforementioned service round there on a permanent basis and reintroduce the Charing cross or canon Street semifasts to and from the Medway towns or possibly as far as sitting born or faversham providing extra capacity to the smaller stations between raynham and fabisham and therefore speeding up the Dover priory services as well as the odd Margate Ramsgate that also make some calls at certain times

 

[The Planner]

Oxford

Oxford is getting one, its running late, but its getting one.

 

[The exile]

Frequently get this on the way into Bristol - arrive on time, get stuck waiting for a platform, pull in a few minutes late. Though Bristol doesn't exactly look short on platforms? Hopefully they don't need to expand it given they're now building an entrance at the other side where a new platform could go...

Bristol suffers from the fact that there are so many trains coming which need to cross the West end throat at least once as their route involves reversal. That said, I remember being “told” many years ago that Bristol panel couldn’t cope with more than one movement in the station area at once. I’m sure that was a joke but “waiting for a platform” at the East end was not uncommon even at 1980s traffic levels (I know there were 2 fewer platforms….)

 

[Horizon22]

An Abbey Wood platform 5 would be quite nice.
Oxford - it’s coming.
Dartford
East Croydon
St Pancras (both EMR and Southeastern High Speed)
The additional platforms (somewhat pre-built) at Heathrow could come in handy.

 

[robert thomas]

Exeter St Davids
Cardiff Central (?)
Southampton

Cardiff Central could do with several more but other than re-excavating platform 5 which was filled in 50 years ago there is no room

 

[lachlan]

Bristol suffers from the fact that there are so many trains coming which need to cross the West end throat at least once as their route involves reversal. That said, I remember being “told” many years ago that Bristol panel couldn’t cope with more than one movement in the station area at once. I’m sure that was a joke but “waiting for a platform” at the East end was not uncommon even at 1980s traffic levels (I know there were 2 fewer platforms….)

Are you thinking of the east throat? There's a lot of trains coming from the north that then reverse and continue via Bath

I understand the east throat was recently redone as part of the four-tracking through Fulton and there are plans to redo the western side in a few years

 

[LittleRedTrain]

A bit left field, but Denham.
A few years back, the Down platform was moved from the outside of the track to between the two lines (where there were previously through lines). I don't know if passive provision was made to add another face on the opposite side of the island and reinstate a third through line.

This would give another potential overtaking point on the highly congested 2-track Chiltern Main Line and might provide more potential for recovering from disruption.
At the moment if a fast train gets stuck behind a delayed stopper there's very little opportunity to overtake until the stopper turns off at Gerrards Cross, High Wycombe, Princes Risborough or Bicester.

(Alternatively, just put the old through lines back at Beaconsfield or High Wycombe)

 

[yoyothehobo]

Teesside Airport! Its old platforms dont work!

 

[Taunton]

One can find that inbound delays at quiet times are because the station platforms are being treated as surrogate carriage sidings, filled with trains going nowhere. Would adding platforms (expensively) at the station just mean more of this, and sidings outside being be taken out of service and the land sold off to build flats on?

A further contributor is Automatic Route Setting, which for seemingly programming simplicity only wants to run everything in timetable sequence, ignoring that operations often do not turn up in this manner. Various past posts here refer.

 

[mtmikethom]

Ipswich

 

[The exile]

Are you thinking of the east throat? There's a lot of trains coming from the north that then reverse and continue via Bath

I understand the east throat was recently redone as part of the four-tracking through Fulton and there are plans to redo the western side in a few years

Yes - silly me!
Was indeed re-done - but whatever the layout, a train coming in from Bath and going out with a stop at Lawrence Hill is at some point in the reversal going to block all tracks.

 

[Class15]

Ipswich

Absolutely.

 

[GordonT]

Moorgate?

 

[Bletchleyite]

Salford Crescent should be two islands, one towards Manchester, one away from it, so cross platform interchange between Picc and Vic services is possible. Building the signalling centre in the way of this was stupid.

 

[devon_belle]

Cardiff Central could do with several more but other than re-excavating platform 5 which was filled in 50 years ago there is no room

I took the title to mean if there was space.

 

[brad465]

Exeter St Davids

This station sort of is, P2 is being extended to 5 cars which will allow it to be better used.

I'd add Ashford International, either actual new platforms or giving up on Eurostar and allowing 3 & 4 to return to domestic use.

 

[devon_belle]

This station sort of is, P2 is being extended to 5 cars which will allow it to be better used.

As I understand it some more South-facing platforms would be useful too. I guess bays would be out of the question because of the consequences if a train's brakes were to fail on the incline.

I think there was recently a thread – possibly started by me – on speculative ideas for the Exeter area.

Exeter St Davids
Cardiff Central (?)
Southampton

On that subject, I'd like to add Exeter Central to my original list.