So money can be found to upgrade Narbeth tunnel to try to save Stephen Crabb, whose majority plummeted from around 5,000 to approx 300 in May, yet no money can be found to electrify between Labour held constituencies between Cardiff and Swansea. Right.................
I can guarantee you that if Pembrokeshire was a solid Tory area and Stephen Crabb wasn't vulnerable Narbeth tunnel would not be planned to be needlessly expensively re-engineered.
Does the budget announcment actually come with a detailed breakdown of expenditure? If so, is taking the 800s to Pembroke Dock actually going to require expensive work to Narberth tunnel, or is it mainly a paper exercise? If the former then I'm sorry I tried stiring things up (although I doubt my attempts had any influence); I was aiming to get GW to keep some IC125s for the Penzance route so that they still had some for Pembroke Dock or a 5-car W&B Cardiff - Pembroke Dock service to replace the HSTs.
The reality is that Tenby needs some tidy length direct services from the populace South Wales areas at certain times of the year. GWR HST's have been doing this as Regional Railways and successors have not had the resource to. The fact the HST's are to/from London is somewhat of a red herring.
Agreed; ATW clearly lacks the rolling stock to provide the capacity that the Pembroke Dock line needs on a sunny summer weekend but a 68 + 5 coaches + DVT from Cardiff or Bristol would do the job nicely. Replacing the 150s with 156s (doubling them up to 4-car in the summer) would be nice also and much more important in my view than keeping London services.
The whole of the Pembroke Dock line is actually in the constituency of Conservative MP Simon Hart, rather than Stephen Crabb...
A good point that I was going to make, but wasn't quite sure which side of the constitunecy boundry Narberth falls on. Pembroke Dock and Tenby I was sure about though; they are most definately in 'Carmarthen West & South Pembrokeshire' which is not Stephen Crabb's constituency.
Abergavenny should be the outer terminus for Metro services to Cardiff.
I disagree. The metro service(s) should, in my view, be the only ones to call at Caerleon and allow the Manchesters to miss out Cwmbran and Pontypool. In order that passengers from Caerleon can get to Birmingham and Worcester/Oxford with just one change it is therefore important that the Metro service should run through to Hereford (really that makes it an outer-suburban run given the distance from Hereford to Cardiff).
"One minute dwell at Oxford Rd and Piccadily" strongly suggests that end door Class 175's are out the equation for North Wales to Manchester runs. Queue speculation about new build or Class 185s plus upsetting poster Rhydagaled! Likewise minimizing dwell at Crewe in my experience only having 4 end doors on 2 car 175's working Cardiff to Manchester turns are a cause of this.
Correct, I am not happy to read that. To be clear however, I am
not opposed to the 185s joining the franchise but neither do I want to see them on anything I would consider a 'Regional' or higher route. The current Llandundo-Manchester stoppers are almost outer suburban, so if there was a suitable faster alternative 185s would be fine for that. However as it is, despite their slowness, those trains are the 'principle fast service' and therefore Outer Suburban stock doesn't cut it in my view. My preference would be for the Northern Connect to Chester to take over the intermediate stops currently served by ATW east of Chester, given that Northern have outer suburban stock on-order for those services. The W&B Manchester services would then be regional express, probably calling at Warrington, Chester, Fflint, Rhyl, Llandundo Junction, Bangor and Holyhead only, and the all-stops Llandundo-Chester workings could be 185s going to Liverpool, plus the peak-extra stopper into Manchester in the hour Northern's service goes to Ellesmere Port instead of Chester.
Any Holyhead-Cardiff train beyond one pair per day is a waste of space. A political construct that bears no resemblence to where people actually want to go.
I'd go:
- Hourly Holyhead to Crewe - all stations to the Junction then semifast. 5 or 6 car 175.
- Hourly Llandudno to Manchester portion worked with a Liverpool portion detached at Chester. 5 car 175 with 2 on the Liverpool portion, 3 to Manchester.
- Hourly Cardiff to Chester. 2 or 3 car of whatever.
I think if you have one Holyhead-Cardiff each way, you might as well have at least two (prefrably three) each way to allow passengers making the reverse trip (north in the morning, south in the evening) to benifit from a fast through train. The third one would be in the middle of the day for those who don't want an early start or late night. Any more than three each way though, or any more than 9 intermediate stops between Holyhead and Cardiff, and it's a waste.
Besides that, my thinking for north Wales is the Manchester-Holyhead fast and Llandudno-Liverpool stopper noted above, plus semi-fasts Bangor/Caernarfon-Birmingham via Crewe and Stafford. If that last one can continue to London then so much the better, but in that case it could be better to swap it with the Holyhead service so that the Manchester becomes the semi-fast to Bangor/Caernarfon instead of the Holyhead express. With HS2 coming to Crewe, which will make it faster to change there anyway, I don't think the through services from north Wales to London should continue unless they run via Birmingham.
don't worry it gets worse, Grayling has apparently given his support for half hourly trains between North Shropshire and Manchester Airport and Shrewsbury and BHM INTL...
https://www.shropshirestar.com/news/transport/2017/12/01/mp-pleased-with-train-talks/
So despite Schedule 4 of the Agreement that says the SoS cannot support bids beyond service levels specified in it which are 1 tph from SHR to BHM INTL and 1 SHR to MAN no mention if airport.
As unrealistic as finding these extra paths is (although maybe HS2 remodelling Crewe will help get trains from Shropshire through), I think an extra path north from Shrewsbury would be a very good thing if it could happen. Replacing the Shrewsbury-Crewe shuttle, an hourly Shrewsbury - Manchester (perhaps via the airport) stopping/semi-stopping service with 185s would allow the Manchester-Swansea service to run non-stop between Crewe and Shrewsbury while allowing those stations to retain a through service to Manchester. If it happens it probably should be transfered to Northern though, to avoid the cross-border political complications.
Longer trains would also help keep dwell times down.
That is what I think the new franchise should be doing for regional express services, rather than downgrading to suburban stock.
I used to think that no one would retrofit etcs in anything second hand and we'd be stuck with the 158's however given how the £ pans out with the new Peter Wilknison quality franchises im not so sure any more.
The 'quality' weighting does open up interesting possibilities for new build, which would allow the franchise to aquire additional ETCS fitted trains without having to retro-fit. A mix of new 2-car and 3-car units for the Cambrian, working hourly out of Birmingham in 5-car and 6-car formations with a unit detached at Shrewsbury (for Wrexham/Chester) every two hours and at Machynlleth (for the Cambrian coast) in the other hours. That would free up 158s to run Manchester-Swansea in 4-car formations, or possibly Manchester-Holyhead with a Llandudno (or Caernarfon) portion.
If they put up a proper building and staffed it at Dyfi Junction, or rebuilt Mach to an island platform, I wouldn't have any particular objection to the Coast being connections only, allowing something like a 4-car 170 to run to Aber.
I'd possibly go along with the Dovey Junction idea if it was a proper fully-enclosed (and heated) waiting room open throughout train operating hours. Machynlleth though is too out of the way for Aberystwyth-Cambrian Coast journeys, although for passengers between the coast and Shrewsbury all you need is to keep the waiting room and toilets at Machynlleth open at all times. Just make sure to use one platform for all westbound services and the other (or, ideally, the same one if trains in both directions don't need to be in the station at the same time) for all eastbound services if you do that.
4 trains per hour are on their way to Ebbw Vale
1tph each for Cardiff - Ebbw Vale, Cardiff - Abertillery, Newport - Ebbw Vale and Newport - Abertillery surely? Adds up to 4tph through the line's core, but only 2tph at EbbW Vale itself.
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Post now updated with additional comments
