Forum
http://www.modern-railways.com April 2019 Modern Railways 47
10 minutes, it shows a wait of
36-39 minutes at Leeds for what is a
two-minute walk on the level. This
sort of thing happens because there
is no strategic planning between
different operators, but many
operators cannot themselves plan
properly. The afternoon up train on
the Far North line from Wick arrives
at Inverness two minutes before
the last southbound departure at
20.15, and therefore no connection
is shown because a minimum of five
minutes is required, itself too short
for a place as far flung as Inverness,
where trains are infrequent.
Regulation of trains is something
else that has greatly deteriorated,
and in many cases completely
abrogated. On my last three journeys
from Carlisle to Edinburgh, my train
has been held at Haymarket East
Junction for almost 10 minutes,
while short, sparsely occupied local
trains were given priority, in two
cases destroying the northbound
connection, missed by a mere couple
of minutes. In the worst example,
25 passengers on a TransPennine
Express service requiring the
Perth/Inverness train were thus
delayed by an hour, while the nine
carrying on to Inverness were sent
by taxi over the 118 miles from
Perth, an unforgiveable and very
expensive operational mistake.
If the forthcoming rail review is
to have the success that it needs,
the examination of timetable
production and operation should
be at the forefront of the agenda.
ROBERT H. FOSTER
Skipton, North YorkshireNORWICH IN 90
Your article regarding the addition
of Norwich in 90 services by Greater
Anglia in May (‘News Front’, last
month) only gives part of the
story. The four additional weekday
Norwich in 90 services (available
to view in industry systems such as
Realtime Trains and OpenTrainTimes
since the turn of the year), will be
at 09.00 and 17.00 from Norwich,
returning at 11.00 and 19.00
from Liverpool Street. In order to
squeeze these trains on to the graph
something like over 200 other services
have had to be altered. Many of these
changes are fairly minor and have
limited impact, but to deliver a clean
path for the 19.00 from Liverpool
Street pretty much the whole main
line down evening peak between
18.00 and 19.15 has had to be recast.
Not surprisingly, such a level of
change comes at a cost, with the
downsides mostly being felt on
mid and north Essex commuter
services. Currently in the evening
peak there are departures from
Liverpool Street to Clacton (with
the odd Walton service) at broadly
20-minute intervals until the off-peak
pattern resumes at 19.18. After 18.00
from the May timetable change the
intervals become 22 minutes, five
minutes, 19 minutes and 43 minutes.
Additionally, the 18.19 Walton
departure is recessed in Witham
down loop to let the accelerated
18.30 Norwich pass and the 18.35
Clacton has three additional stops.
The result is journey times increased
by five to nine minutes compared
to today. Other changes include therecessing of the new 18.48 to Harwich
International at Witham to allow the
new 19.00 and 19.02 departures to
Norwich to overtake. This results in
an extended gap of 32 minutes in
Colchester fast services at the end
of the peak compared to today.
To be fair (and as a former service
specifier and train planner), I have
great sympathy for the planners as
they have been given an unenviable
challenge to deliver this franchise
commitment without any enhanced
infrastructure. However, with the
Great Eastern main line now probably
Britain’s most congested two-track
railway something had to give, and
it is mostly the services in the Essex
commuter belt that will suffer!
You do have to wonder what then
is the point? As mentioned above
it is a franchise commitment and
politically the Great Eastern main line
taskforce’s ambitions for faster journey
times may well be laudable, but can
the result be considered balanced?
I do wonder however if those Essex
MPs that supported Norwich in 90
in their election manifestos
appreciated that to deliver it would
result in worsened journeys for
many of their constituents.
On the face of it none of the
Norwich in 90 paths are optimal
from a commercial perspective, with
the 19.00 probably having the best
potential of the lot. Proposed to be
operated initially by two Class 755
Flirts with a maximum capacity of
only 458 seats, it is not the most
efficient use of a scarce valuable
path, even at the end of the peak.
On top of this, as mentioned above,it also sterilises a great chunk of the
graph as trains have to be moved
out of the way of it, confounding
traditional railway economics
and the most efficient use of the
infrastructure. I sincerely hope it
won’t be flooded with loads of cheap
advance singles in order to fill it!
As referenced in the excellent
article by Richard Harper (p60),
planning train services in the current
complex environment needs to
take account of many, sometimes
conflicting pressures and desires,
and trade-offs sometimes need to be
made so that the plan can be made
to work. This is where I feel that the
changes on GA from May fall short.
Also, what happened to
consultation? The GA franchise
agreement includes obligations to
consult on significant alterations
to the timetable when they have
a materially adverse effect on the
ability of passengers using any station
served by the passenger services
to make journeys relating to work
or education. Is the recasting of a
huge chunk of the evening peak
not significant and likely to have a
materially adverse effect on some
passengers? With the May changes
a ‘fait accompli’ and the bid for
December 2019 due in before this
issue goes to press, any material
changes will have to wait until
May 2020. That said, by then
‘hopefully’ with a mostly new
train fleet with much better
performance, a more considered
recast could be devised.
MARK NORRINGTON
Wivenhoe, EssexDiss: No 90005 with the 11.30 Norwich – Liverpool Street passing GA’s Stadler Flirt No 755405 in the
Up Loop during test running between Diss and Trowse Junction on 11 January 2019. Iain C. Scotchman044-047_MR_Apr 2019_forum.indd 47 12/03/2019 15:04