£2bn rail upgrade proposal put forward for Midlands

[DavidB-AU]

A proposal for £2bn of improvements to the rail network between the East and West Midlands has been submitted to the government.

 

Midlands Connect said it would mean direct services between Coventry, Leicester and Nottingham for the first time since 2004.

 

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-48759800

[Ramblin Rich]

Interesting article, but I don't understand why the middle segment interviews relate to the Hereford line when the main story is about services between Birmingham and East Midlands area!

[pete_mcfarlane]

3 hours ago, Ramblin Rich said:

Interesting article, but I don't understand why the middle segment interviews relate to the Hereford line when the main story is about services between Birmingham and East Midlands area!

 

That's one of the lines down for improvements, although it's not clear from the BBC story. 

 

A more detailed explanation of what's happening is here:  https://www.midlandsconnect.uk/news-and-events/2-billion-midlands-rail-upgrade-plans-the-most-ambitious-for-a-generation-as-government-is-urged-don-t-ignore-the-midlands/

 

Interestingly, it seems to suggest that Moor Street is going to see a lot more use, presumably using the reinstated platforms, including services from the East Midlands. 

 

 

 

 

 

[Ramblin Rich]

17 minutes ago, pete_mcfarlane said:

 

That's one of the lines down for improvements, although it's not clear from the BBC story. 

 

Thanks Pete, that makes more sense!

[TheSignalEngineer]

I wish them luck with Nuneaton. A dive-under was designed from the Leicester line to platforms 1 & 2 during West Coast Route Modernisation but I expect that was lost in the mists of time. The gradient and curvature was a bit wicked and would have severely restricted freight loading which is what we really wanted it for, so another solution was found. 

IIRC we may have built, at fantastic cost, a Newt Pond, but ran into difficulties when it was discovered that on the site where the shed dumped the water softener and boiler sludge there was a colony of a rare protected variety of butterfly normally only found on the UK on chalk downs in Kent. 

[w124bob]

The reversal of trains to/from Liecester to gain access to Coventry could be done simply by changing ends where the route up from the main station diverges with the new(ish)Leicester platform lines, there's already a crossover. Just install a raised walkway for the driver to change cabs then backdown straight througth plat 1 to Leamington. If you alterd the rail conections at Leamington to allow departures from platform4 toward Coventry you barely impact on any other services as LM must already have paths through Kenilworth. Covs to crowded to accomodate another service . There was talk at onetime at XC of the the Manchester/Bournemouth services missing Brum altogether by running down the WCMLto a new junction south of Milton Keynes then across to Oxford, with the NE/Bournemouth routed via the Hatton route and Chiltern extending some Banbury terminating services through to Oxford.

[TheSignalEngineer]

14 hours ago, w124bob said:

The reversal of trains to/from Liecester to gain access to Coventry could be done simply by changing ends where the route up from the main station diverges with the new(ish)Leicester platform lines, there's already a crossover. Just install a raised walkway for the driver to change cabs then backdown straight througth plat 1 to Leamington. If you alterd the rail conections at Leamington to allow departures from platform4 toward Coventry you barely impact on any other services as LM must already have paths through Kenilworth. Covs to crowded to accomodate another service . There was talk at onetime at XC of the the Manchester/Bournemouth services missing Brum altogether by running down the WCMLto a new junction south of Milton Keynes then across to Oxford, with the NE/Bournemouth routed via the Hatton route and Chiltern extending some Banbury terminating services through to Oxford.

We looked at the option of running to Abbey Junction for turning back at Nuneaton c2000 when it was decreed that we couldn't have timetabled moves across WCML  on the flat but it was decided that the time penalty was too much. It was decided that it was better to terminate Coventry trains and make passengers for beyond change at Nuneaton.

At Leamington the Nuneaton locals already depart from Platform 4.

 

The problem with the line between Coventry and Leamington is that the single line sections are too long to reliably run more than about 6 trains per hour in total.

[Supaned]

Haven't they since built a housing estate on the site of Nuneaton shed , making a dive under the WCML even more difficult?

 

It has to be asked though , is there really that great a demand for through travel from Coventry to Leicester and points beyond? If there was genuine statistical evidence in terms of ticket sales (I wouldn't count a passenger survey as that isn't necessarily a true reflection of journey intent) then fair enough but I'd be very surprised if this was the case. Certainly when I pass through Nuneaton I can't say as there are many dozens of people connecting between the Coventry and Leicester trains with any regularity.

 

I really can't see how they can achieve the manoeuvre they want without a reversal or a horrendously expensive and intrusive flyover , and again , I'd make the point , for what actual benefit.

 

 

[Zomboid]

The present rail service does a great job of suppressing any demand for Cov to Leicester train travel. In one of the links above I think it says that 1% of such journeys are made by rail. Suggests that a through service is likely to increase passenger numbers, without considering any intermediate journeys or any from points beyond.

 

Whether that makes a big bridge of some sort viable is another question that I couldn't shed any light on.

[w124bob]

5 hours ago, Supaned said:

Haven't they since built a housing estate on the site of Nuneaton shed , making a dive under the WCML even more difficult?

 

It has to be asked though , is there really that great a demand for through travel from Coventry to Leicester and points beyond? If there was genuine statistical evidence in terms of ticket sales (I wouldn't count a passenger survey as that isn't necessarily a true reflection of journey intent) then fair enough but I'd be very surprised if this was the case. Certainly when I pass through Nuneaton I can't say as there are many dozens of people connecting between the Coventry and Leicester trains with any regularity.

 

I really can't see how they can achieve the manoeuvre they want without a reversal or a horrendously expensive and intrusive flyover , and again , I'd make the point , for what actual benefit.

 

 

 I imagine quite a demand , but only in one direction!

[TheSignalEngineer]

On 27/06/2019 at 17:09, Supaned said:

Haven't they since built a housing estate on the site of Nuneaton shed , making a dive under the WCML even more difficult?

The housing estate is on the Anker Mill site outside the historic railway boundary. During WCRM a proposed new underpass was designed to get traffic from the Leicester line to the Down Slow, but abandoned in favour of the new connection from the Birmingham line near the bridge over the main line to just north of the former Ashby Junction. The connection as originally proposed would have enabled trains from Coventry to Leicester to reverse in the station.

[Trog]

The last time I walked that way the formation of the connection between the Leicester line and the line to Coventry was still there if a bit boggy. However the bridge under the WCML was replaced by a small box culvert during the West Coast up grade work. Even if the line was reinstated using it would mean that trains from Coventry to Leicester would not be able to serve the Nuneaton TV station.

[CovDriver]

There has always been a plan of sorts to have a dive under the WCML to allow a direct service towards Leicester.

I personally think it would be fantastic for this to happen as I did read somewhere online that XC wanted to dispose of the Birmingham to Leicester/Nottingham services and concentrate on the longer distance services.

And with East Midlands Trains becoming part of Abelio as from August this year and Abelio already having the West Midlands I can see in the future some routes being covered by both of these franchises.

Almost back to the old Central Trains days or dare I say British Rail. 

[Supaned]

I don't think XC necessarily want rid of the Leicester/Notts stoppers , more a case of local authorities wishlisting train services along with certain TOCs fishing for work. The stopping services concerned both form longer distance trains as part or their diagrams , the Notts stoppers forming a Cardiff upon turnround at Notts and the Leicester terminator forming a Stansted at New Street,

 

There could be a case for re-connecting the New St - Leicester stopper to the Leicester - Lincoln , which could certainly be achieved without any investment in infrastructure, but going back to the days of Central Trains is not necessarily a good thing , in their latter days the service was farcical with late running , and indeed since the timetable change I'd suggest LNW/WMT concentrate on running and staffing their current published timetable before taking on any more work.

[pete_mcfarlane]

46 minutes ago, Supaned said:

There could be a case for re-connecting the New St - Leicester stopper to the Leicester - Lincoln , which could certainly be achieved without any investment in infrastructure, but going back to the days of Central Trains is not necessarily a good thing , in their latter days the service was farcical with late running , and indeed since the timetable change I'd suggest LNW/WMT concentrate on running and staffing their current published timetable before taking on any more work.

 

Isn't the New Street - Leicester stopper the remains of the former Nottingham - Birmingham via Loughborough and Leicester service? ISTR that at one point there was one of these an hour, in addition to the two services via Derby. 

 

A lot of the work that Regional railways and then Central trains did to link up local services in to lengthy cross country routes seems to have been slowly unpicked over the last 15 years because of those reliability issues. 

[CovDriver]

1 hour ago, Supaned said:

I don't think XC necessarily want rid of the Leicester/Notts stoppers , more a case of local authorities wishlisting train services along with certain TOCs fishing for work. The stopping services concerned both form longer distance trains as part or their diagrams , the Notts stoppers forming a Cardiff upon turnround at Notts and the Leicester terminator forming a Stansted at New Street,

 

There could be a case for re-connecting the New St - Leicester stopper to the Leicester - Lincoln , which could certainly be achieved without any investment in infrastructure, but going back to the days of Central Trains is not necessarily a good thing , in their latter days the service was farcical with late running , and indeed since the timetable change I'd suggest LNW/WMT concentrate on running and staffing their current published timetable before taking on any more work.

We have plenty of staff thanks it's the ridiculous short turn around times and bare minimum PnB timings within the diagrams in this new timetable. 

And with the majority of our diagrams now at almost 10hrs we simply don't want to stay and do a bit of O/T as the DTCM's Duty traincrew managers are simply trying run this new timetable on the goodwill of the traincrew doing Over time.