I would have guessed that via Manchester was the shortest mainline route. How far is it compared to going via York?
Not only is this route substantially cheaper, it is often also quicker. For example, the service departing Leeds at 0748 arrives Glasgow Central at 1201 (4h 13 min), with a return from Glasgow Central at 1840 arriving Leeds at 2248 (4h 8 min), both with a single change at Carlisle. A through train with village station stops eliminated between Skipton and Carlisle (i.e. calling only at Settle and Appleby) could achieve an extra time saving of about 30 minutes.
Not to detract from the point of your post, but for accuracy's sake only calling at Settle and Appleby would only save about twenty mins.
The 1336 weekday departure from Carlisle to Leeds calls before Skipton at Kirby Stephen, Garsdale, Ribblehead, Hellifield and Gargrave in addition to Appleby and Settle, and in the public timetable is shown as taking 149 minutes. Cutting out these 5 stops should bring the time down to 140 minutes. The express timing from Glasgow Central to Carlisle with a stop to pick up at Motherwell is about 72 minutes. Together with a 3 minute stop at Carlisle, the overall journey time would be about 215 minutes (3h 35min), provided an express bimode train such as a Hitachi class 802 was used. The current time taken for the 1204 departure from Glagow Central, with a 9 minute connection at Carlisle onto the 1336 departure to Leeds (arr 1605), is 241 minutes (4h 1min).
Less comfortable than a Voyager Leeds to Edinburgh? I don't think so!
I think it's around ten miles shorter than via Edinburgh, which makes sense as a valid route (and made more sense when CrossCountry was serving Glasgow every other hour).
I think this comment and many other similar ones highlights the problem.
I would tend to agree with all of this (except the “comfort” of the class 158s but will park that issue).
The Northern spirit service was also on shaky ground for pathing reasons. Slotting between 2 class 86/87 hauled services is much easier than trying to path between 2 pendos an hour + other services. A two car 158 is a huge waste of a WCML path too.
Agree it would need to be a different operator. The Northern service is two-hourly so there should be enough space to fit it in. The timetabling difficulty would be on the busier Leeds - Skipton and Carlisle - Glasgow sections.
The sections are long but not overly so now that IBs have been installed (especially when compared with the Bentham Line!). Blea Moor is the only passing place and only in the Up direction.
Easy enough to fit between Leeds and Skipton, there's plenty of 'express' paths available. But whether those paths marry nicely with paths north of Carlisle I don't know.
The only other speed restriction is through Dent, 30 mph.
On the S&C the only off peak fares are day returns.
It would be easy enough to recast the HS2 timetable to send more services to Edinburgh.
The imbalance between demand for the two cities is known about now, so the timetable should be recast before the line opens. I am not aware of any plans to address this.
They're lower capacity, but wouldn't classic services still be weighted in Edinburgh's favour, especially if there's still 3+ tph via Newcastle? (Currently 2 tph LNER, 1 tph CrossCountry, ~5 tpd each of Lumo and TPE via Morpeth, ½ tph each of Avanti and TPE via Carlisle for Edinburgh vs just the Warrington fasts and an Avanti West Midlands and TPE Manchester Airport in alternating hours for Glasgow ≈ 4-5 tph for England – Edinburgh vs 2 tph for England – Glasgow via Lockerbie)
No doubt it will be.
I'd expect someone is working on it right now.
I admire your optimism!
Why are we worrying about timetables this far out? Edinburgh has 400m long platforms so no physical infrastructure is needed if the decision is made to run more capacity to Edinburgh than Glasgow.
The S&C has almost the longest continual PSR on the network at 53.5 miles from Dent to Petteril Bridge Junction. It's 60mph all the way for passengers and freight, quite remarkable really.
