The Anonymous Widower

Roaming Around East Anglia – The Future Of Ipswich Station

Ipswich station is going to get a lot of extra services over the next few years and may need extra platforms.

In a few years the services at the station could include.

• Greater Anglia – London and Norwich – Three trains per hour (tph)
• Greater Anglia – Ipswich and Lowestoft – One tph (Three trains per day are London and Lowestoft)
• Greater Anglia – Colchester and Peterborough – One tph
• Greater Anglia – Ipswich and Felixstowe – Four tph (tram-trains)
• East West Rail – Manningtree and Oxford/Reading – One tph

In a typical hour there will be five tph going through the station, with some hours having an extra train between London and Lowestoft.

So in this timetable that means that Ipswich station will only be handling one through train every 10-12 minutes in each direction, three of which will be twelve cars long.

Only one Lowestoft trains and four Felixstowe tram-trains will terminate at Ipswich station  There is a long-enough convenient platform 1 for the Lowestoft trains, but where would the Felixstowe service be turned round?

I took these pictures as I passed through Ipswich station.

As often happens, the Felixstowe train had to be turned back in the vSouthbound through Platform 2. Not a particularly good procedure!

Building a new platform at Ipswich station will be difficult.

• To build it next to Platform 1 will mean that there will be a lot of reorganisation of the station behind Platform 1.
• Building it on the far side of the station will be expensive and also mean Felixstowe services will have to cross the main lines, which will cause disruption.

I would expect that sorting Ipswich station could be a sum of at least £5million and possibly a lot more. There would also be a lot of disruption during the rebuilding.

As the pictures show, there would be space outside the station to put a tram stop, that would be capable of handling four tram-trains per hour to Felixstowe.

Conclusion

If this happens and the Ipswich and Felixstowe service is replaced with a frequent tram-train, it will be a big boost to the economy for both Ipswich and Felixstowe.

March 7, 2019 - Posted by AnonW | Transport/Travel | Felixstowe Tram-Train, Ipswich Station, Roaming Around East Anglia- March 2019