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grahame
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« Reply #2 on: January 27, 2021, 00:18:10 » |
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Working out the services you want, then working out where you don't have the capacity to run them and looking to add that capacity make sense and - err - has been done in practice for a while, and is the way a lot of the way future requirements are looked at.
Want a half hourly service Exeter to Yeovil Junction, with alternate services onward to Salisbury and onward (when they're a GWR▸ diversion) to Castle Cary? Take a look at where they'll be passing each other and that's where you need your loops. But, yet, not as simple as that. There are places that a loop will be expensive, impossible, delay trains by adding a stop away from stations, and you'll slide the trains up and down, perhaps change stopping patterns, etc, to make best use of existing loops, platforms, etc - there's no point in spending for the sake of a train running 5 minute later throughout provided that doesn't mean adding a train to the cycle or missing a connection.
Another benefit ... clock face = same each hour = you will make really good of the facilities and not have lots of them each used only occasionally. And another benefit - where there's a good connection it will be a good connection all day and (please!) if you can get it to work as well in the other direction you have a very marketable product on the flow.
Now ... I was actually looking at "Here's the service how do we do it" for the Wiltshire, Somerset and Weymouth.
Hourly trains - six in the cycle:
Weymouth passes trains at ...
* Maiden Newton (existing loop)
* Around Spakford (new dynamic loop, perhaps from Pen Mill - see also services via Yeovil Junction)
* Between Frome and Westbury (on main double line)
... time at Westbury to connect into Bath and Bristol and from Southampton area train (add 4th platform?)
* Between Melksham and Thingley (new dynamic loop most of the way)
* Shrivenham/Grove (on main double line)
... on way to Oxford
With the train having a turn-around of just over 12 minutes at each end
Hourly trains - South Wales or Bristol to Solent, for those Westbury connections (broadly current stops in our area plus Dilton Marsh and Wilton)
Every 30 minutes Bristol Temple Meads to Bradford-on-Avon, alternating on to Chippenham or Swindon and Westbury or Warminster (this is where the "slide it" exercise comes in and perhaps we're looking far, far ahead) or Radstock.
But is starts ... not even from the service but from:
* the passenger journey which gives
* the service pattern which gives
* infrastructure needs
or as Network Rail are saying - "putting the passenger first".
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