The fiasco of the Castlefield corridor will be well known to regular readers, but in brief we spent £100 million building the Ordsall chord to allow trains from lines into Manchester Victoria to reach Manchester Airport. The short section of track between Deansgate and Piccadilly is now choked with trains, almost all of which are delayed, causing reactionary delays all over the North. Network Rail’s report recommends taking out some trains, yet we are only talking about a total of 15 trains per hour, which in normal circumstances would be easy. Thameslink was designed around 24.
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