Feels like not long ago that people insisted that everything had to go through Piccadilly (because nobody wanted to go to Victoria - e.g. the Angry Of Southport campaign). Now, people want to divert Piccadilly services to Victoria instead (even if that means a significant time penalty for passengers south of Stockport)? Confusing.
Personally,
if you insist on having an hourly Stockport - Denton - Victoria service then it'd make more sense as an extension of a diesel service that already runs into Manchester from the west - which probably means the Llandudno service - since it can't be an electric service and it'd be a long diversion for passengers from places like Buxton/Sheffield getting into central Manchester - plus you'd then have the problem of splitting the Buxton/Sheffield service between two Manchester termini (which would be unattractive) - and any service from south of Stockport that runs via Denton would have to either terminate at Victoria from the east or extend it to somewhere else
At least extending the Llandudno service through to Stockport would keep an unnelectrified service on an unnelectrified line, remove the need for something terminating at Victoria and if there's only one unit at a time east of Victoria it'd avoid conflict on the single line bits through Denton.
But a Victoria - Stockport service isn't a priority IMHO (however much the track bashers may want it!).
If we had rail services run based on operational sensibilities rather than politics, I'd welcome a half hourly service from Chester to West Yorkshire, but you're going to get trouble if you try to meddle with entrenched operations.
The underlying question there is not about Redcar, but does Leeds need more or less than 2 tph to Manchester Airport? The fact that one train goes onwards to Redcar and another to Newcastle is irrelevant. I would say it should have a minimum of 2 tph to the airport, which is not a fantastic provision to begin with, when you put it in the context of services from the west.
Similarly, we can ask the same question about Liverpool and Preston:
Does Liverpool need 5 tph through the Castlefield Corridor? (2 to Oxford Rd, 2 to the airport and 1 to Nottingham?)
Does Preston need 4 tph through P13 & P14 (3 tph to the airport and 1 to Stockport)?
Should P14 be used for any trains heading to the east?
Should all TPE airport services go back to reversing in Piccadilly and what services would that action displace from the main shed?
The TfW extension to Leeds is an interesting one when put in the context of future NPR service provision. If Manchester-Leeds is to have 8 tph, perhaps one or two could start from Chester or North Wales.
Additionally, if we are to route more services to Victoria, could the Cardiff services be routed there to avoid Stockport-Piccadilly and come in to Manchester from the West?
Just my suggestions, but to answer your questions, I'd rather that the "map" was a lot simpler to reduce conflicts and make the timetable more resilient in the event of inevitable delays.
For example, if all Chat Moss services ran to Victoria, all "Chorley via Bolton" services ran to Piccadilly, all "other Bolton" services ran to Victoria, chop the Cleethorpes service at Piccadilly (so that all Airport services use 13/14), that kind of thing. Try to ensure that a place has all services departing from the same main station (rather than, e.g. Blackpool getting half its services from Pic and half from Vic). Keep It Simple, Stupid.
