Timetabling Improvements in East Anglia

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Upon first hearing about the "Ipswich in 60, Norwich in 90" schedule on the service which I call the "IC3 East Anglian" (the intercity service on what was under LNER Table no. 3), I inferred that its primary benefit would be in enabling a Swiss-style timetable in which the principal long-distance service in one direction calls at a nodal station at the same point in the hour as that in the other direction, & local trains are congregated at that time. For a 90-minute line this would mean departing one end on the hour & the other at half-past (or any two times that are at opposite ends of the hour). However, the IC3 departs on the hour from both ends of the line. This means that the symmetry minutes are 15 & 45, & that the two runs call at Ipswich at opposite ends of the hour. This I consider to be a disappointment, although it's worth noting that a nodal timetable is not implemented simply by getting the journey times of the principal service down to nice round figures; all the local connections have to be retimed too.
Currently, the IC3 has x trains to which one can change at Ipswich:

• 1tph regional to Bury St Edmunds and Cambridge, arr. nn:02, dep. nn:20.
• ½tph regional express to Bury St Edmunds, Ely and Peterborough, arr. odd:28, dep. even:01.
  
• 1tph regional to Saxmundham and Lowestoft, arr. nn:36, dep. nn:17.
• 1tph suburban to Derby Road and Felixstowe, arr. nn:54, dep. nn:58.
• 1tph regional express London, Chelmsford and Colchester to Norwich, arr. nn:43, dep. nn:44.
• 1tph regional express Norwich to Colchester, Chelmsford and London, arr. nn:08, dep. nn:09.

None of these times are particularly conducive to a nodal timetable, so all would have to be retimed. The other issue at Ipswich (not as much of a problem at the more capacious station in Norwich) is that to accommodate these 6 services it only has 4 platforms & no overtaking facility, so the regional express between London and Norwich (the old IC3) would have to be placed at the opposite end of the hour from the East Anglian. This gives planners a dilemma: either arrange the Suffolk trains around the non-stop service to London, neglecting connections to the Essex cities, or arrange them around the regional express for a longer journey time.
Ipswich isn't the only difficulty. Apart from the Felixstowe local, all of the connecting services have to be timed with consideration given to connections at the other ends of the lines, at Lowestoft, Cambridge and Peterborough. A Swiss-style nodal timetable must therefore be thought of as a long-term aspiration & not a short-term goal.



Yesterday (19/I/2020), I travelled on the 2L83 (highlighted in red on the accompanying picture) from Peterborough to Colchester, & upon examining it in the timetable, I was reminded of a particular train that I had seen in a historical timetable. After March, my train travelled over the exact same route, & at approximately the same time, as the North Country Continental did in 1947 (viewable courtesy of Timetable World; it's the train with a "Y" in the header in Table 32). It was shortly after the war, & the NCC was still diverted to Colchester because of the German occupation of the Netherlands, despite the latter having ended 2 years prior.
It might have been moderately attractive for the Yorkshireman in search of variety in his holiday resorts as a way of reaching Clacton, although the mid-afternoon departure time would have made a Friday after-work journey difficult, & he would have had to find accommodation in Colchester & commute to the seaside as the NCC was scheduled to arrive 22 minutes after the last train down Table 19 had gone.
For tourists with even broader sights, using the rationing-era NCC for its raison-d'être was not actually possible, for upon arrival (by change in Manningtree for a local train) at Parkeston Quay, they would have witnessed the SS Arnhem, Vienna or Prague approaching the so-called New Pier that had once been used for train ferries & preparing to round the head of the Harwich peninsula, 7 minutes underway.
An attempt to catch the ferry by means of the 2L83 would meet a strikingly similar end: change at Manningtree for a local train, arrive at Harwich International Port 2 minutes after closure of check-in.
Today's successor to the Hook Continental is a local train of code 2A48 (blue on the attachment) that stops at every station from Cambridge to Harwich bar Kennett. As you can see, yesterday it was cancelled because the 755 (Basil Faulty unit) that had been assigned to it had broken down. The 2D98 to Lowestoft which has been cancelled as well was presumably the subsequent service to which the unit had been assigned. In-fact, the succession of services cancelled begins in Ipswich nearly 3 hours earlier.
Even when not cancelled, its origination from Cambridge gives a pretty meagre offering in terms of convenience to the provincial journeymaker. The one train it connects with is the Cross-Country to Stansted Airport, a destination which can claim to be Harwich's spiritual successor. The arrival from King's Lynn 10 minutes earlier misses out at Ely on the service from Liverpool by 2 minutes.
Compared to 19:47 at Cambridge, the same time at Peterborough reached on the express presents a far superior offering. Passengers off the 1L13 from the East Midlands and the North West have an interchange of 10 minutes. In case of delay, this may not be much, but the 1L13 is an express from Peterborough to Ely & the 2L83 a local, so sending the latter out in-front would delay the former further & is unlikely to occur.
Unlike at Cambridge, direct services are available from ECML destinations. The tightest of these is the 19:47 IC1 (1-Edinburgh-22) from Edinburgh. Since this offers only 3 minutes & stops in another part of the station, it would make a combination of doubtful resilience, & may be considered a "last-chance saloon" rather than a dependable connection. Fortunately the total IC1 service is here 2 trains per hour, & the 19:28 1-York-90 & 18:47 1-Edinburgh-20 are available to offer a more secure planned itinerary. Passengers from west of the ECML can make use
Even passengers from Birmingham, with a 27-minute layover, do better at Peterborough, being able to depart an hour later, with that hour crucially being 5pm. This caters better to the business market, & also to the office worker who wishes to start his holiday on Friday evening without having to convince his manager to allow his shift to be shortened by an hour.
And the only thing standing in the way of using the remnant North Country Continental for its original purpose is one negative connection of 2 minutes.
The proposed solution to this is to divert the 2L83 at Manningtree North as follows:

Manningtree North Junction pass 21:38½
Manningtree East Junction pass 21:39½
Mistley pass 21:41
Wrabness pass 21:46
Parkeston Goods Junction pass 21:49½
Parkeston Quay Harwich International Port [3] arr. 21:53½​

Stena Line close check-in for the 23:00 departure at 22:15. This gives passengers 21½ minutes to enter the terminal. If this is not ample time, consider that the original NCC (when the ferry departed at 22:00) arrived at 20:55. My proposed schedule gives the same connection time plus 1½ minutes.
If more time is needed to check everybody in & Stena are unwilling to reschedule their sailing to a later time (which would probably dismay the business market given the 8am arrival in Holland), I would suggest a "polling-station" policy of allowing everyone who is in the queue at 22:15 to get themselves checked in, as a way of allowing for optimistic potential growth scenarios as a result of the new rail connection. Consider also that the Hook Continental from London Liverpool Street gave Parkeston Quay staff only 20 minutes to get everyone onto the boat, whereas I'm allowing more than that just for check-in, excluding passport control, luggage handling & other post-check-in functions.
In order to maintain a balanced timetable, the 2L83 must return to Colchester, which may be done as follows:

Parkeston Quay Harwich International Port [3] dep. 22:00
Parkeston Goods Junction 22:01½
Wrabness pass 22:05½
Mistley pass 22:10½
Manningtree East Junction pass 22:12
Manningtree arr. 22:13 dep. 22:14
Colchester North arr. 22:24​

I propose that this be considered a single service, calling and reversing at Parkeston Quay, but it could be considered 2 separate runs.
After arriving in Colchester, the unit does not enter the sidings there, but instead dead-runs to Crown Point, picking up carriages in Ipswich. As an ECS this is a low-priority run, & moving it to a later time in the evening ought not to be difficult.

 

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Over the years there have been many thoughts along the lines you suggest, but they tend fail due to the lack of infrastructure on the GEML and associated branch lines, most of which have single line sections. Standard repeating hours have been the principle for as long as I can remember, although this is now compromised by the 90 minute Norwich schedules. In addition you have to consider freight, with 2 class 4 freight paths per hour between Stratford and Ipswich essential.

A Swiss style nodal timetable only works if the geography and infrastructure allows. In East Anglia some if the key nodes are in the wrong place. A Network Rail paper a few years ago attempted this, but seemed to suggest two key nodes were needed at Newmarket and Manningtree! The Swiss will make infrastructure improvements to develop consequential timetable improvements. The structure of the UK Rail industry makes that approach much more difficult.

Whether improvements to the connectivity of the timetable can be made by taking advantage of the superior performance of new rolling stock remains to be seen, the current timetable has some very good connections, but inevitably some poor ones too.

The suggestion to divert 2L83 to Harwich International instead of Colchester has some merit given the sailing time of the ferry, although Stena prefer people to be in the ferry earlier (to spend money) and advertise accordingly, with the London departure being at 19.32. Indeed the ferry time moved earlier a few years ago to save fuel on the crossing. The return train from Harwich International to Colchester is not needed, hardly anyone travels in that direction at that time so the unit is best sent back to Crown Point for maintenance as soon as possible. There are crewing implications too.

But at the end of the day we are only talking very small numbers, very few foot passengers on the ferry now compared to the good old days, and even fewer come from the North. Flying to Amsterdam, whatever the environmental consequences, is the most convenient way to Holland, unless you fancy the new Eurostar service.

 

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Purely selfishly, living in Yorkshire I would also prefer a Peterborough-Harwich to a Cambridge-Harwich. It would work particularly well in the morning (0730-ish from Harwich); in the evening I would prefer to be on board earlier.
However
(1) I would have thought Cambridge and perhaps Norwich are the most likely origin/destination points for Dutchflyers, rather than the North and Midlands and (2) there is still IIRC some demand for military travel to/from Colchester which might well route via PBO from the traditional army recruiting areas "up north" (excuse the sterotype). As well as the Continental IIRC there was a service from Colchester in the 50s, after all (not to mention the London-Colchester-Peterborough 170s of the early 2000s!).