Northern (Arriva Rail North)

[iMarkeh]

RE: Northern (Arriva Rail North)
For the Mid Cheshire line, isn't there level crossing issues between Mouldsworth and Mickle Trafford. Something to do with agreements with adjacent landowners and if the extra tph was introduced, the level crossings would be locked out of use for longer than the agreement. Sure there was a big explanation on the RailUK forums about it.

Currently, a new service couldn't run east as Stockport is close to capacity and west to Chester because of this landowner agreement thing. A service between Mouldsworth and Altrincham is basically useless so you lose out.

Short term, could you have 2 trains coupled MAN to Altrincham then run the front one fast to Northwich then all stops to Chester. The rear service calling all stops to Greenbank or would that cause too much confusion?

The only other way to accommodate this would be coupling to the Buxton service at Stockport (and uncouple on the return) so the main throat has no extra trains. This then has passenger confusion and patching to cross the WCML as main issues to implementation.