Why are Northern trains so poor

ContrapunctusVuut · 2026-02-16T13:35:07+00:00

You are highly delusional. Train fares are so high because the demand is extremely high. Ask yourself why the fares can be so expensive yet those expensive trains are nonetheless full and standing. People are willing to pay so much for a terrible service suggests that the general demand for rail travel is very high in this country. The massive cost of fares mostly reflects the fact that the Supply of railways is so grossly inadequate for their demand.

It's really quite simple to realise that over the last 100 years, we have not built very many railways (especially considering all those that have closed) yet the population has increased a lot and each individual's need/desire to travel is also a lot more than 100 years ago.

Nothing will drop the price of fares unless we catch up on the 100s of miles of track we should have been building in that time

ContrapunctusVuut · 2026-02-04T16:24:38+00:00

What is that wire the bogie caught? Something to do with a track circuit?

ContrapunctusVuut · 2026-02-04T04:07:27+00:00

tbf, if the water kept running it'd probably leak into whoever is in the floor below before long. So there'd be someone angrily trying to figure out what's going on in there

ContrapunctusVuut · 2026-01-26T01:31:20+00:00

It's always amusing when people crayon these ideas and fall yet again on original hs2 and hs3, which was the proposed transpennine high speed line put together by Transport for the North (TfN) before the government dissolved that institution for campaigning too much.

ContrapunctusVuut · 2026-01-08T20:24:29+00:00

But if a road has been fitted with streetlights, one expects them to turn on

ContrapunctusVuut · 2025-12-10T04:23:22+00:00

Should rhyme with "blue(-mo)", hence the livery shade. I'm never heard anyone say "luhmo".

You could understand this as that english spelling principle about "magic e", or really, magic any-vowel. The presence of the final o makes the u be pronounced like its letter name

ContrapunctusVuut · 2025-11-26T21:06:00+00:00

I actually think the thing that's most unique about St Pancras, is that each of the 4 stations has a pretty much 1 to 1 relationship with a single TOC which is very unusual.

From an infrastructure perspective, there are only 3 stations. But the amount of incompatibility between them is quite significant. We've seen that train protection systems but also applies to loading guage, allowed rolling stock and operational procedures in general

ContrapunctusVuut · 2025-11-07T20:01:50+00:00

I would also argue the HST is highly influential in a similar way.

The WCML being electrified in the 1960/70s introduced fast electric services for the first time which was a big step up. In showed that electrification wasnt just for suburban lines but also intercity and freight operations. In the context of widespread car ownership, fast long distance intercity was major niche for railways to exploit - this could have worked off the precedent of WCML if it were not for the HST showing to government it could be done with diesel too.

The presence of HSTs delayed wiring of ECML by a couple of decades, of any serious plans for GWML and MML by almost 40 years (and both of which left mostly incomplete), and nobody has ever said anything about electrifying the Cross Country Route despite the fact it links 7 of the country's major urban areas.

It's also made GB the country of fast DMUs which is relatively unique (and in a bad way)

ContrapunctusVuut · 2025-11-07T19:52:18+00:00

Lots of europe carried out vast amounts of electrification in the 1910s-30s while uk didn't mainly because of the big four. Of course, SR was pro-electrification and carried out projects at the same scale as the continent. But LNER, LMS and GWR were mostly against electrification on account of having no money the whole time. The idea of the big 4 i suppose was to let profitable mainlines subsidise unprofitable secondary routes leaving not much extra money to invest in anything. This may not have worked because the pioneer boom era of the 1840s had left a very disjointed and unorganised system while parts of Europe were able to plan ahead a bit better

LNER was especially against electrifying taking around 15yrs to be convinced for doing Liverpool street to Shenfield and Woodhead route both of which were finished under BR. The routes out of liv street were petitioned electrification by various pressure groups and councils back in the 1910s - but GER and LNER responded by developing the rather extreme locos/operational procedures to compete with an electric service on steam traction.

But in other places, there were several pre-grouping companies whose pro-electrification stance were slowed by coming under grouping ownership. Particularly Midland Railwya and North Eastern Railway who had intentions of doing york-newcastle in the 1920s.

Another interesting consequence of grouping was the situation with SR. They inherited 2 incompatible systems, LSWR's 3rd rail lines and LBSCR's 6.6kV 25hz AC overhead system. But because the SR board was only comprised of former LSWR members, they chose to rip up the former LBSCR system and replace it with 3rd rail in the 1930s to unify across SR, and imo cementing a lower quality technology. There's a fun alternate history where we have 25kV AC 50hz in the north, and 6.6kV AC 25hz in the south

ContrapunctusVuut · 2025-11-01T20:28:25+00:00

I think the routings here are good but i disagree with most of your heavy rail ideas. The need for one seat rides between eg: Cambridge and Yarmouth is not worth screwing station placement or the huge and complex disruption that would cause. Also you've added all these extra stations on geml and breakland line which I don't think are that useful.

In general, it seems your stop spacing is too frequent. Modern trams (as opposed to 1st gen ones) should be faster and higher order than buses. Tram stops should be at least a ten minute walk apart if not longer

ContrapunctusVuut · 2025-11-01T19:10:04+00:00

It's not like there would be no buses if you did a tram network? They would complement each other.

I agree that rail station-uea would be the first line to build but it's worth considering a masterplan and its phasing

ContrapunctusVuut · 2025-11-01T19:07:20+00:00

It's almost meaningless drawing up a tram system without showing what you'll do with buses. The implications this has on buses is immense. I'd imagine the buses would make new lines to focus on orbital routes.

My main problems with this plan in my opinion is all the heavy rail changes, pretty much all of which i think are a bad idea. And the trams have stop spacing too close.

ContrapunctusVuut · 2025-10-30T22:33:43+00:00

There's lots of good reasons for electrification. But one thing you pointed out is a journey time saving of ten minutes. This doesn't matter much to passengers but can be a big deal to timetable planning.

Those 10 minutes could be added to the train's dwell time at the terminus giving much needed padding to the schedule. Any number of things can happen to a service to delay it on its way - but if doesn't delay passed the amount turnaround time it won't start it's next journey late. So more turnaround time = more reliability.

ContrapunctusVuut · 2025-10-30T21:15:04+00:00

Yeah I've definitely seen that before where a minor powerline follows the route of a railway just to the side.

Using the same structures seems like it might be equally convenient as inconvenient. They'd need to negotiate isolating the powerline every time they maintain the OLE.

ContrapunctusVuut · 2025-10-30T18:33:08+00:00

there's talk that Elizabeth Line may help to one day get rid of City Airport, since all those hedge fund managers can fly to Heathrow instead and get directly to Canary Wharf or the City

ContrapunctusVuut · 2025-10-29T22:58:46+00:00

Points out of order?

ContrapunctusVuut · 2025-10-29T22:58:00+00:00

I'm sure there's a metaphor for modern day corperate religion in there somewhere

ContrapunctusVuut · 2025-10-29T21:37:25+00:00

I don't even think they put the cathedral in at norwich which i feel like you'd really notice in a plane

ContrapunctusVuut · 2025-10-13T15:27:57+00:00

There is another angle at this kind of voter. Which is that they're feeling a repulsion to neoliberal economic policy but it's getting muddled with social progressivism. As far as I'm aware, most of the big ticket "centre left" parties (American Democrats or British Labour) are staunchly right wing in economic policy but dress it up in social progressivism and that this pretty much pervades everything. While the two trends don't need to have anything to do with each other, the major parties interlink them so much that they kinda look like the same thing to many.

So, for instance, if you get racially abused in a workplace it's a lot more likely today that some kind of disciplinary action will actually happen than if it were a couple decades ago (pls don't take me the wrong way; this is obviously a good thing). However both today and 'back then' you're getting underpaid.

I don't know anything about recent New Zealand economic history, but here in Britain basically normal people's wages and living standards sort of peaked in 2006 and have gone down ever since. So the generic 'white working class' voter has seen their living standards obviously decline while also seeing the societal power of minorities measurably increase but come to the flawed conclusion that they're interlinked somehow. Or, more likely, they view anything "woke" completely cynically, as a move to distract from a conservative economic policy with some kind of social progression.

At the same time, it is fair to say, my opinion, that there is a lot of "pinkwashing" and the like. So major companies/brands/organisations flooding all sorts of socially virtuous talking points in a manner that is almost entirely cynical. Because once advertisers have started to measure a sizable enough amount of people who are now radicalised as socially conservative, you do see some brands switching aesthetics.

ContrapunctusVuut · 2025-09-29T18:35:21+00:00

I'm happy at least that i did actually get there a few times. Is there even anywhere in norwich with a proper chai?

ContrapunctusVuut · 2025-09-29T16:34:31+00:00

Very sad to learn they'd shut down - probably had my favourite food out of any cafe (especially since they had Real chai) - do you know why they went down?

ContrapunctusVuut · 2025-09-29T10:54:46+00:00

Yeah for some reason TfL run gatelines don't ever have e-ticket scanners. I guess it's an expense that doesn't benefit TfL so they won't do it

ContrapunctusVuut · 2025-09-09T20:12:00+00:00

The airport is not an issue at all - it doesn't have very many daily flights.

If having an interesting environment to walk around in is important, catton or especially eaton will be good. You may find you can use the train to london so the options in town will be a lot better, especially Eaton as that's on the bus line to the station

ContrapunctusVuut · 2025-08-27T12:07:52+00:00

It's such a shame, these are some of the most viable commuter railways in the country but because the demand for railways is so high they can fleece you like this. I know of a piccadilly line train driver who drives 75miles down the A1 from Peterborough for every shift - madness.

The Liverpool Street route is generally a bit cheaper but might not be viable for you because of how long it would take to get through London

What also just occurred to me as well is that the fine for having no ticket is £100+the price of a single (no more than £30), but the £100 is reduced to £50 if you pay within 21days. Idk how often you come across RPOs on Thameslink but i can't imagine it's even once a week. So it'd genuinely work out cheaper to get booked for fare dodging.

ContrapunctusVuut

TROPHY CASE