Trivia: Towns which do not deserve the service they get

[Owen]

Controversial, but I say Ely. I accept it is more down to geography, but Bury St Edmunds is twice as big and has less than half the service.

Definitely! No need for 4 operators in a town of 15,000!

Norwich doesn’t have a Stansted service but Ely does, hardly right.

 

[TheEdge]

Wow, is this just the "Hate on Ely" thread?

 

[Metal_gee_man]

Grantham is another that has enough LNER services stop, GC stop there as well and obviously EMT, it's definitely a destination station due to the excessive number of parking spaces and car parks but in terms of town its a bit of a ghost town and certainly doesn't deserve the service it gets on population alone, that being said its almost a parkway station for the number of intercity users that travel by car to the station

 

[tsr]

Long Buckby has always struck me as a rather lucky location. Most people have never even heard of the place but it gets quite a decent service. Population 3,913 according to Wikipedia, and 3tph to London during the day... marginally more in the peaks.

Shalford is interesting as it is the one village east of Guildford with a higher frequency than all the others, as the peak time services terminate and start back there. It's also a regular 1tph call on the off-peak stoppers, unlike the 1tp2h for many of the rest.

 

[PermitToTravel]

Epping, with a population of less than 12000 has a very frequent service 7 days a week on the Central Line

It's beside the motorway and has a massive car park. The villagers of the next stop along, Theydon Bois, are very lucky indeed though.

 

[yorksrob]

I agree, and my last paragraph says as much... but other than being a convenient railhead due to location, there's not all that much to write home about with Wakey itself.

It does appear to have a population of 330,000. You'd be hard put to justify not stopping your InterCity trains there.

 

[DanTrain]

Alnmouth is hardly a town but is effectively a North Northumberland Parkway station, also drawing passengers from second home owners who may work in the big cities 3 or 4 days a week and have long weekends in the country. Long stay parking has been a problem in the station car parks.

I'd add Chathill to the list, but it's not even a village. An historical anachronism, there's nothing there bar half a dozen houses and the rail service provided to let the stopping service that's really to and from Alnmouth turn back. It used to be a junction for the long closed Seahouses branch. Current services aren't convenient for the holiday trade and not good for commuting to Newcastle so it's a minor miracle that as many use it as they do, although numbers are in danger of falling below 2,000 at the present rate of decline. The long gone Post Office had an impressively large building for such a small communityView attachment 61085 View attachment 61095 .

Alnmouth almost certaintly takes passengers that would use Chathill if it had a better service, after all almost everyone has to drive to the station up in Northumberland. Even so, the wholy county has a population of 320,000, including Berwick and Morpeth which are served by their own stations so Alnmouth is doing well with 0.34 million passengers per year!

 

[MikeWM]

Wow, is this just the "Hate on Ely" thread?

It doesn’t belong in this thread anyway - it isn’t a town...

 

[Killingworth]

Alnmouth almost certaintly takes passengers that would use Chathill if it had a better service, after all almost everyone has to drive to the station up in Northumberland. Even so, the wholy county has a population of 320,000, including Berwick and Morpeth which are served by their own stations so Alnmouth is doing well with 0.34 million passengers per year!

Holiday cottage users going to Edinburgh for a day out. Masses of them!

 

[Gems]

Alnmouth almost certaintly takes passengers that would use Chathill if it had a better service, after all almost everyone has to drive to the station up in Northumberland. Even so, the wholy county has a population of 320,000, including Berwick and Morpeth which are served by their own stations so Alnmouth is doing well with 0.34 million passengers per year!

Absolutely agree. Chathill always baffles me. Served by two trains a day, yet on the doorstep is some of the finest landscape and beaches anywhere. Chathill has to be among'st the most underused, yet with the most potential of any station.

 

[DanTrain]

Holiday cottage users going to Edinburgh for a day out. Masses of them!

Absolutely agree. Chathill always baffles me. Served by two trains a day, yet on the doorstep is some of the finest landscape and beaches anywhere. Chathill has to be among'st the most underused, yet with the most potential of any station.

It wouldn't take much for Northern to extend an hourly or two-hourly pacer up there and as you say I reckon they'd see the reward from it, being the closest station to much of the Northumberland coast!

 

[Bletchleyite]

It wouldn't take much for Northern to extend an hourly or two-hourly pacer up there and as you say I reckon they'd see the reward from it, being the closest station to much of the Northumberland coast!

They need to wire the turnaround siding so it can be EMU-operated. Put a 323 on it and it wouldn't get in the way of the ICs in the way it presently does.

That, or an hourly regional Newcastle to Edinburgh all stations (except the North Berwick stops) service would be a good development and could allow some stops to be removed from ICs.

 

[DanTrain]

They need to wire the turnaround siding so it can be EMU-operated. Put a 323 on it and it wouldn't get in the way of the ICs in the way it presently does.

That, or an hourly regional Newcastle to Edinburgh all stations (except the North Berwick stops) service would be a good development and could allow some stops to be removed from ICs.

I'm fully in favour of this idea, perhaps retaining an hourly IC at Berwick and removing from others except during peaks/occasional calls. There's been much debate on other threads over whether there is enough space for this on the busy line but I don't see why a 100mph EMU shouldn't work with all the sidings (perhaps even a ScotRail 380 so as to prevent Northern having to move 2/3 EMUs up to the NE).

 

[Old Yard Dog]

Quite a number of the smaller stations on Merseyrail, e.g. Aughton Park, Town Green, Little Sutton, Overpool and probably most obviously Capenhurst-in-the-Sticks. These are served at quite high frequency simply because Merseyrail is primarily a simple all stations operation (though Capenhurst only gets half the Chester trains).

Manchester Airport, where used as a terminus of convenience. If Picc had 6 platforms facing west I reckon it wouldn't get a number of the Northern services.

Little Sutton, my local station, and Overpool are in densely populated suburbs of Ellesmere Port. But they are not used as much as they might be because (1) they have no car parking and (2) competition from Hooton which has a huge and cheap car park, direct trains to Chester, and up to three times as many trains to Liverpool. Hooton also enjoys much cheaper fares to Liverpool than LTT and OVE as it is treated as if it were in Merseyside when in fact it is in Cheshire.

People tend to use stations which have good services. Hence York, Wakefield and Doncaster have huge usage figures despite both being much smaller than say Bradford and Hull. It doesn't means that these places deserve or don't deserve their trains, they just happen to be geographically lucky. Ditto Crewe and Milton Keynes.

 

[61653 HTAFC]

It does appear to have a population of 330,000. You'd be hard put to justify not stopping your InterCity trains there.

But if they didn't already run through, you wouldn't divert them there. Especially as that population figure is for the whole borough (including Cas, Pontefract and Knottingley among others), a bit like including Keighley in the figure for Bradford. According to wikipedia (yes, I know...) Wakefield itself has a population of 99,000. It's a modestly sized city which has lucked out on intercity connections.

 

[Owen]

It doesn’t belong in this thread anyway - it isn’t a town...

It absolutely does.

 

[Esker-pades]

It absolutely does.

Ely is a Cathedral City! (Not the cheese.) It's the Radio 4-pedant complaint.

 

[Owen]

I’m aware of what it is. My complaints about the service that it’s afforded with a justified.

I’ve went through it hundreds of times and am aware of what is on offer. For a town of 15,000 in the fens, it most definitely has far too much service!!

 

[TheEdge]

I’m aware of what it is. My complaints about the service that it’s afforded with a justified.

I’ve went through it hundreds of times and am aware of what is on offer. For a town of 15,000 in the fens, it most definitely has far too much service!!

How and why would you thin out the service?

With the exception of EMT services that could use the North curve all other trains have to pass through the station and as an interchange may as well stop.

 

[yorksrob]

But if they didn't already run through, you wouldn't divert them there. Especially as that population figure is for the whole borough (including Cas, Pontefract and Knottingley among others), a bit like including Keighley in the figure for Bradford. According to wikipedia (yes, I know...) Wakefield itself has a population of 99,000. It's a modestly sized city which has lucked out on intercity connections.

If you didn't, you'd risk leaving a very large population away from IC services.

 

[61653 HTAFC]

If you didn't, you'd risk leaving a very large population away from IC services.

On the other hand, if the principal route into Leeds from London had been via Hambleton, Wakefield would never have grown as much as it has. You wouldn't stop serving it now, but if the trains didn't go that way anyway you wouldn't divert all of them through there.

 

[J-Rod]

I’m aware of what it is. My complaints about the service that it’s afforded with a justified.

I’ve went through it hundreds of times and am aware of what is on offer. For a town of 15,000 in the fens, it most definitely has far too much service!!

Handy for those of us in King's Lynn that need to go to Manchester from time to time..

 

[Wirewiper]

Interchange. Not just for Lymington and IOW, but between fast and all stations stopping services.

Also a railhead for much of the New Forest. Brockenhurst is a surprisingly busy station.

 

[Clip]

These threads always deliver in the same way - discussing populations and what does or does not constitute a town/borough but one of the reasons some places that have small populations get more calls by trains is because you have to stop them somewhere dont you? Cant have them all arriving at the final destination at the same time or you would just end up queuing more of them outside

 

[yorksrob]

On the other hand, if the principal route into Leeds from London had been via Hambleton, Wakefield would never have grown as much as it has. You wouldn't stop serving it now, but if the trains didn't go that way anyway you wouldn't divert all of them through there.

You could say that most industrial centres in the North wouldn't be as big as they are without a main line running to it.

The fact is that to run via Hambleton would be to miss out a large traffic source. Larger than a number of IC stops on the ECML.

 

[Ken H]

Oxenholme Lake District

Umm. If it were called kendal south you may think differently

 

[Ken H]

Clapham(yorks). there is nowt there!

 

[Iskra]

Umm. If it were called kendal south you may think differently

But it's not. It's called Oxenholme and is a mere hamlet but is busy because it is the junction for the Lakes line, so it meets the criteria for this thread perfectly.

 

[Iskra]

Without trying to get involved in the Huddersfield/ Bradford squabbles (!), the problem with the argument that somewhere like Huddersfield gets too many services is... what would be the appropriate level (based on the current frequency on the lines)?

I can certainly buy the argument that the trans-pennine route should have fewer/longer services - maybe four per hour but 150m long minimum - but since we currently have six/hour on the route then (if not all stopping at Huddersfield) how many should stop? The semi-fasts would have to stop there (otherwise Huddersfield would have no trains to local places like Marsden), so do you drop it down to four/hour (i.e. only two "fast" services to Manchester/ Leeds)? Seems a huge cut in the Leeds service (down from four fast services to just two fast services per hour? In comparison central Bradford gets six Leeds services per hour, Wakefield gets eight Leeds services per hour (ignoring the one that reverses at Castleford).

Dropping just one Huddersfield service would be a waste of time and confusing to passengers used to *everything* stopping there (and it'd just end up sitting waiting outside Manchester/ Leeds for a couple of minutes longer, benefitting nobody).

Same goes for other stations mentioned on here that have everything stopping there - to drop the frequency is going to be off-putting and (unless you "do a Breich") you won't actually speed services up so what's the point? (that's not to say that "doing a Breich" is a bad option, mind)

That is pretty much bang on. And yes I get the difficulties and pointlessness of messing around reducing the service.

 

[class26]

Grantham is another that has enough LNER services stop, GC stop there as well and obviously EMT, it's definitely a destination station due to the excessive number of parking spaces and car parks but in terms of town its a bit of a ghost town and certainly doesn't deserve the service it gets on population alone, that being said its almost a parkway station for the number of intercity users that travel by car to the station

Sorry but GC do NOT stop in Grantham and never have,
Your reply doe snot make any sense because the car parking spaces are used and are used because train stop there so there MUST be a need for the services surely? I do not follow the logic of your argument.