What if Prince's Street station hadn't closed?

[125slamdoors]

Doing some quick counting from the Network Rail Route Study, looking at the (perhaps optimistic) projections for 2043, there are 33 services per hour departing Edinburgh (and the same number arriving) in a westerly direction.

Of those, eight could sensibly operate from Princes Street, at the cost of losing connections to the north.

Where can I find the link to the this? What are the 33 services?

 

[RLBH]

I do get somewhat frustrated that the enthusiasts' stock answer to most of today's problems is usually re-opening something that has been shut for 50+ years, and was probably a very easy closure to justify in the first place.

Quite apart from the obvious rose-tinted spectacles, I think theres an attitude along the lines of: Anytown Central is a busy station today; therefore if Anytown Victoria and its' associated lines were still open, there would be additional traffic and two busy stations. Of course, the likelihood is that traffic would be divided between two stations and two sets of routes, all of which would be relatively underutilised.

Where can I find the link to the this? What are the 33 services?

Lots of interesting things on the Network Rail website: https://www.networkrail.co.uk/running-the-railway/our-routes/scotland/

You want Pages 151 and 152 of the Appendices to the Scotland Route Study for schematic maps of future services. West from Waverley is:

• 4tph Edinburgh to WCML/HST
• 2tph Aberdeen (of which one originates from the ECML)
• 1tph Dundee
• 2tph Perth (of which one extends to Inverness providing ~3tp2h in combination with Glasgow-Inverness)
• 6tph to Glasgow via Falkirk High
• 4tph to Glasgow via Bathgate
• 2tph to Glasgow via Shotts
• 4tph to Glasgow via Carstairs (of which two originate from the ECML)
• 2tph to Bathgate
• 2tph to Dunblane
• 2tph to Falkirk Grahamston
• 2tph to Dunfermline Town
• 4tph to the Fife Circle (two each direction)

Which actually comes to 37tph, not 33tph, in each direction. And that's before considering the east side of the station, which is another 8 tph in addition the three ECML services, which all run through.

 

[adrock1976]

Absolutely, there's no benefit unless connections can be maintained (they can't) or capacity constraints are so dire that they can't be resolved.

Off hand, the only UK cities to have more than one major station are London, Manchester and Glasgow. In all three cases it's because railway competition produced an arrangement of stations that couldn't be rationalised down to one without unreasonable sacrifices; in London, the single station would also have to be unreasonably large, though EustPanCross seems to be trying to achieve it anyway.

You have forgotten Birmingham, which in addition to New Street (ex London & North Western Railway and ex Midland Railway), it also has Moor Street and Snow Hill (ex Great Western Railway).

 

[edwin_m]

And Bradford, as discussed on numerous threads.

 

[naverag]

"Major" station is of course a subjective term, but Canterbury, Edinburgh, Portsmouth, Wakefield, Worcester...

 

[takno]

Completely. Quite apart from anything else, the crowds in Princes Street can get ridiculous, and walking from one end to the other in August is almost impossible. Throw in some good Scottish rain as well, and you're right - people would find other ways to travel pretty quickly.

The obviously-favoured city-centre transport strategy in last uesrsy council consultation was to stop buses from going through the centre, with passengers expected to walk or get some crappy electric contraption to connect. Obviously just a case of some recent grad idiots making the mistakes of the 50s and 60s all over again, but it's fun to see rail enthusiasts making the same mistakes

 

[RLBH]

I'm fully aware of the irony of this post coming on top of my general rubbishing of the idea, but...

One thing that Prince's Street would be useful for is protecting the Edinburgh to Glasgow link against problems at Haymarket. Any trouble at Haymarket causes major problems throughout the Central Belt. If Shotts, Carstairs and WCML services were removed from the mix, the pressure on Haymarket would be reduced, making failures less critical and easier to recover from. It would also be possible to operate an express Glasgow Central to Edinburgh Prince's Street service via Shotts, taking the pressure off of the Queen Street to Waverley route; the two lines used to be pretty competitive before BR picked Falkirk as the main line and downgraded Shotts.

Naturally, keeping it open would have caused more trouble than it was worth for all the reasons discussed above. But it's not like it would be totally without benefits.

 

[edwin_m]

By the way it's Princes Street with no apostrophe either before or after the s. It's named after, but not belonging to, more than one prince.

 

[Mutant Lemming]

"Major" station is of course a subjective term, but Canterbury, Edinburgh, Portsmouth, Wakefield, Worcester...

...or if we're talking passenger numbers Liverpool Central