On 2 Oct, 21:42, "Clive D. W. Feather" cl...@on-the-
train.demon.co.uk wrote:

I suspect the number of passengers wanting to go end-to-end contra-peak
is tiny compared with the confusion caused by having just two or three
non-stop services in an otherwise clockface timetable.

Possibly, although you could perhaps run the service like the semi-
fast Peterborough/Cambridge services in the day (xx06/xx36 from KGX),
meaning it would stop at Finsbury Park, Potters Bar, Hatfield & Welwyn
Garden City. It would then be a pretty recognisable stopping pattern.
While many of us pretty much know the stopping pattern by the train
type, time of departure or even the platform number (not an exact
science but usually good enough), I don't think many other people know
or care.

The 0944 and 1014 (the 1014 is not in the current timetable) often
use(d) a 313 to do WGC, Hatfield, Potters Bar, Finsbury Park and
King's Cross. On the slow line it's a 75mph limit anyway, so bar the
slower acceleration the times aren't that different. The bottleneck is
beyond WGC, so on the inner-suburban lines there is a fair bit of
capacity available.

Technically, it's pretty irrelevant because;
a) During the off-peak times the trains aren't that busy anyway.
b) The timings of these additional services may be such that they're
only a few minutes apart from the current semi-fast trains (and, see
a).
c) Many 313s are unreliable enough as it is (many have door
interlocking problems) so until they're all fixed - hopefully as part
of the refresh - you won't want many more running as they'll only end
up screwing up the service completely!
d) In the long term, with new stock and many other changes as part of
the capacity study, the whole timetable is going to be torn up and
redone!

The only reason to consider some tweaks is because all of this talk is
about 7 or 8 years from now, so there could be a few improvements made
in the short term.

Jonathan