Transport for Wales Rail

[FireFly209]

RE: Transport for Wales Rail

(25/07/2021 12:37)507022 Wrote:  Up to the 1970s, the Wrexham service ran to New Brighton, along with those from Chester Northgate until that station closed, then they were diverted to Birkenhead North. I feel that would be a better option than what exists at present, even though it would need more units to work the service. It would offer passengers a more reliable service to Birkenhead and Liverpool

Personally, I agree that Birkenhead North would make a much better terminus over Bidston, for a number of reasons. Firstly, there’s three platforms at this station - platform 3 for West Kirby and New Brighton, and platform 2 for Liverpool. However, platform 1 sees very little use, and would make an ideal terminating platform for the Wrexham services. It would allow a train to wait for its departure time without getting in the way of any Merseyrail services. Granted, to make this actually work, it would require the installation of a crossover at the west end of the station, and a platform signal for trains to be able to depart in the Wrexham direction from this platform, which might be a sticking point for this. However, the second big advantage is better connections - suddenly you’re connecting with twice as many Merseyrail services to/from Liverpool, making the Wrexham route more accessible.

In terms of timetables, and the plan to increase to a half-hourly service, I feel they would be more successful running 5 units on a every half hour frequency, with 15 minutes layover time at each end - this would build a far greater resilience into the timetable, and would also provide flexibility for if/when new stations eventually get added to the route in the Wirral end of the route. If it were to hypothetically return to terminating at Birkenhead North, this would have also fitted in well with the old 15-minute frequency of the West Kirby and New Brighton lines, as there was a 10 minute gap at Birkenhead North every 15 minutes which this 15 minute layover would have slotted perfectly into. Though, now those two routes are on 20-minute frequency, it’s a little more complicated than that - but that’s for better minds than mine to work out... The issue with this concept, though, is that this would require a fifth unit to run - which would cost more in daily running costs. Plus, there’s the previously mentioned signalling issues which would be even worse with five units in use, plus freights...