The ECML timetable from 2022. Your ideas on the reported proposals.

[S&CLER]

The consultation about the ECML timetable proposals from 2022 has been widely reported in the railway press, and there seems to be disappointment about reductions in point to point service between local stations, in favour of more long distance trains from London, as well as curtailment of some TPE services north of York (which in my opinion ought to serve Newcastle via Hartlepool, eventually).
Would one possible answer be a Leeds-Stansted bi-mode service calling at Doncaster, Retford, Newark, Grantham, Peterborough, March, Ely and Cambridge? This would relieve LNER of shorter distance traffic between Peterborough and Leeds, which might not be unwelcome to it, and eliminate the proposed nonsense of having to double back to Doncaster to travel from Newark to Retford. Would this be a good use of an hourly path between Peterborough and Doncaster?

If Stansted-Cambridge-Peterborough were served this way, perhaps Birmingham-Stansted could become Birmingham-Norwich, while Nottingham-Norwich became Nottingham-Ipswich.

 

[Bigman]

You may as well just extend a Thameslink to York to take over the local stopper duties.

 

[Ianno87]

The consultation about the ECML timetable proposals from 2022 has been widely reported in the railway press, and there seems to be disappointment about reductions in point to point service between local stations, in favour of more long distance trains from London, as well as curtailment of some TPE services north of York (which in my opinion ought to serve Newcastle via Hartlepool, eventually).
Would one possible answer be a Leeds-Stansted bi-mode service calling at Doncaster, Retford, Newark, Grantham, Peterborough, March, Ely and Cambridge? This would relieve LNER of shorter distance traffic between Peterborough and Leeds, which might not be unwelcome to it, and eliminate the proposed nonsense of having to double back to Doncaster to travel from Newark to Retford. Would this be a good use of an hourly path between Peterborough and Doncaster?

If Stansted-Cambridge-Peterborough were served this way, perhaps Birmingham-Stansted could become Birmingham-Norwich, while Nottingham-Norwich became Nottingham-Ipswich.

Which services proposed in the timetable consultation would you remove to provide the capacity for the Leeds-Stansted service to operate?

The skip-stopping is proposed precisely because there is no capacity for an "all stations" service.

The fact is that the Newark-Retford market is miniscule, in spite of being provided with a direct service every 2 hours for the last 10 years (the best service they've ever had between them).

 

[swt_passenger]

We’ve already had a significant thread about the published proposals, surely this is just unnecessary speculation now? It’s been determined in the main thread that it’s only a consultation for looking for problems and won’t result in significant changes.

Various consultations on the May 2022 East Coast Mainline timetable

Mod Note: It appears that there are currently four separate consultations underway between CrossCountry, LNER, Transpennine Express, Northern and Great Northern/Thameslink relating to the May 2022 timetable change and their ECML services. Links to all four are below and some documents have been...

www.railforums.co.uk

 

[yorkie]

We’ve already had a significant thread about the published proposals, surely this is just unnecessary speculation now? ...

I've moved this thread into the appropriate forum section, to allow for speculation

 

[D6975]

Interesting to note that the timetable for the North Transpennine route proposed by TPX shows the Redcars as extended to Saltburn. Looking at the timings, they are keeping the same paths, so will require 8 sets, up 2 sets on the original Middlesbrough service of a few years ago. On the plus side it gives a very generous turnaround time at Saltburn, so turning round late running services short shouldn’t be necessary. They will need to retain a few more 185s unless there’s a clever reshuffle now that the Edinburghs seem to be going to be cut short at Newcastle.

 

[Watershed]

Interesting to note that the timetable for the North Transpennine route proposed by TPX shows the Redcars as extended to Saltburn. Looking at the timings, they are keeping the same paths, so will require 8 sets, up 2 sets on the original Middlesbrough service of a few years ago. On the plus side it gives a very generous turnaround time at Saltburn, so turning round late running services short shouldn’t be necessary. They will need to retain a few more 185s unless there’s a clever reshuffle now that the Edinburghs seem to be going to be cut short at Newcastle.

The Saltburns won't all be 185s.

 

[D6975]

The Saltburns won't all be 185s.

I never said they would be. I just said another set was needed. Latest indications were that 2, poss 3 diagrams will be 68s.

 

[tbtc]

The skip-stopping is proposed precisely because there is no capacity for an "all stations" service

That's it - if everything runs at a certain speed between Peterborough and Doncaster then you can get away with one intermediate stop but if you add a further stop then you've got the next service breathing down your neck - so how do we accommodate local demand for the kind of "Retford to Newark" journeys at the same time as finding paths for the London - Leeds/ Newcastle/ Edinburgh services that could easily be over two hundred metres long and carrying several hundreds of passengers?

There are a few other examples elsewhere, e.g. whilst Morpeth/ Alnmouth/ Berwick (and, to a lesser extent, Dunbar) have a reasonable enough number of trains to/from both Edinburgh and Newcastle, there's not enough space in the timetable to stop many services at multiple services between Edinburgh and Newcastle, so there's not much opportunity to go between Alnmouth and other stations in Northumberland... or do you slow everything down by five minutes so that you can accommodate local journeys (but inconvenience larger numbers of people)?

Or do you remove one train per hour from the timetable, which probably means adding more passengers and more stops to the other services to cover for the removed trains?

Leeds - Stansted sounds an interesting service post-HS2 though (once some/most of the London - Leeds/ Newcastle/ Edinburgh services move to HS2)

 

[LittleAH]

I never said they would be. I just said another set was needed. Latest indications were that 2, poss 3 diagrams will be 68s.

Most diagrams will be 68s