It will be interesting to see what the timetable planners come up with for the re-opening. I can't remember where the notion of extending the current Wigan Wallgate - Rochdale trains up over Copy Pit to Blackburn came from, nor whether it was based on anything more than us lot speculating!
I think it was because there is no planned major timetable recast until the Northern Chord and Lancashire electrification are complete.
Extending the Rochdale terminators does work (to my amateur eyes at least, although I didn't even look at the freight paths), but it is far from ideal. Journey times from Blackburn to Man Vic would be about 70 minutes, and they would have to depart from Blackburn only five minutes after the Blackpool North - York trains in order to maintain the current path from Rochdale. End-to-end would take just short of two hours. At the moment, units terminating at Wigan then sit in the Carriage Sidings for 24 minutes. Turn-around time at Blackburn would be 32 minutes, so one full return journey would be five hours.
Half an hour sitting in platform one at Blackburn seems excessive (not to mention inefficient), so I'm sure something better could be done which would need fewer units - but this might require substantial timetable changes elsewhere.
Based on the through-trains in the current timetable, there is the
possibility of one or two odd workings:
- an early morning Kirkby to Blackburn via Bolton, Man Vic and Rochdale
- two afternoon Blackburn to Blackburn via Todmorden, Rochdale and Man Vic
- an afternoon Clitheroe to Blackburn via Blackburn (!), Man Vic and Rochdale.
The attached timetables are only the off-peak service pattern; before 9am and after 1600 it all gets too complicated! (The Blackburn - Wigan services are the ones highlighted - the others on the pages are current trains with potential conflicts in the Blackburn and Todmorden areas, if that makes sense!)