397s are fully electric and same with 390s. Both TPE and Avanti crew would have to be route Learned, whereas LNER are already route learned and have trains to do it.
I meant from King’s Cross via Carlisle to Aberdeen
I'd be interested to know how many tickets are sold for the LNER London to Aberdeen services (~7h15m) which are for the full length of the service. There's a reasonable amount of industry need connecting the two cities, particularly people heading to long-term placements on the rigs.
Yes route learning would be involved but that's hardly a showstopper to introducing a new service?
Yes - Lumo/FirstGroup are doing London-Stirling next year. I suspect it'll be very successful.
Avanti could run 805s but I don’t think there are any spare sets for new routes, furthermore no Scottish drivers or TMs are trained on them so not only would they have to route learn but they would be trained on new traction too. In terms of TPE the 802s could do as they are bi mode but would the demand from Liverpool or Manchester to Aberdeen be high enough? To me it just seems easier for LNER to do it as all the staff are trained in the Newcastle-Carlisle section aswell as up to Aberdeen. It would also mean they wouldn’t have to do route refreshers for when the September diversions come.
They don't have enough 805s to do that. Newcastle Carlisle Aberdeen would take an age, and if people are having to change at Carlisle to get there they might as well change in Scotland.
What I was suggesting is that LNER runs King’s Cross to Aberdeen via Carlisle not that Avanti does it.
Still would take an age and eat resources. People on the WCML can change as I said.
I know they can change but it can be confusing changing in waverly and it would mean LNER wouldn’t have to make there drivers do route refreshers which eats resources if they can have a permanent route via Carlisle.
Passenger numbers are 19,000 per year. Aberdeen to Newcastle and Darlington is 30,000, which might be split ticketing or less flight competition rather than purely being more demand than to London. Dundee to King's Cross is 24,000 and 16,000 to Newcastle, York and Leeds combined.
If Avanti for example were to run to Fort William for example, you'd need to extend Glasgow Central Low Level platforms, and have bi-modes. Or run through from Edinburgh via the E&G.
It is a cross platform interchange at Haymarket going north between Avanti and Scotrail from the West Coast Main Line to Aberdeen.
According to RailwayData, just shy of 19,000 passengers travelled to Kings Cross from Aberdeen in the latest year with data (a further 6,500 travelled to Euston). I'd add that as well as industry need, this is where passengers going to the Shetland Islands would travel if going there by ferry, and while one case isn't representative, the last time I did KGX-Aberdeen (August 2023), there were two passengers in my carriage doing that; the 10:00 from KGX usually is a reasonable connection to the overnight ferry heading north.
You haven't said what route it would take, but if it's going via York then I assume you mean running across the Hadrians Wall line from Newcastle to Carlisle ... and then what, via Coatbridge?
TransPennine Express services take 1:05-1:11, but I don't know if the extra time is entirely due to not being able to tilt.
Avanti manage to attract through custom between Stafford / north and Rugby / south on Birmingham services via cheaper advances despite a time penalty of an hour. That might be harder with such a limited service compared to an hourly route though, especially when the West Midlands example has a clearer reason to exist (being a Birmingham / Wolverhampton – London and West Midlands – North service).
I was assuming maybe 5 minutes from the stop at Lockerbie, 5 minutes for not being able to tilt, and then the random extra 5 minutes from general pathing difficulties.
The downside to routeing the Inverness train that way is that there are only 8 trains a day between Inverness and Edinburgh, including the sleeper, so if you take one of them away to go on a strange fantasy route then you're having a big impact on the capacity between Inverness and Edinburgh, more so than for Aberdeen which has more than twice as many trains to Edinburgh. And it would still take significantly longer than the current service, so you're still inflicting a 30 minute delay on anyone wanting to catch the one train a day to Newcastle or beyond.
Indeed, and it was routed via Birmingham after the Highland Chieftain was introduced on the East Coast route. It was gone by the very early 1990s once Push-Pull formations came in.
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