Features
Facilities are basic - the original station building burned down in the 1990s), and the ticket office is now a temporary wooden building. Its low-level platforms are located on the Trent Valley Line section of the West Coast Main Line on the up slow and down slow. The fastest passenger services are run by Virgin Trains, although only a handful of Virgin Trains peak time, late night and weekend services call at the station. From December 2008 hourly services commenced in each direction thanks to the new London Midland semi-fast service between Euston and Crewe via Northampton and Stoke-on-Trent (Monday to Saturday daytime plus a limited Sunday service). During weekdays, the London Midland service are designed to connect with fast Virgin trains services at Rugby, offering a total journey time between Lichfield Trent Valley and London Euston of 1 hour and 35 minutes including the connection time. London Midland are currently looking into Project 110, with the aim of increasing capacity and reducing journey time.
A single platform at right-angles to the low-level station, located on the Down Walsall line, accessible by staircases on the up and down low-level platforms, forms the high-level part of the station. This forms the northern terminus of the Cross-City Line, and is served by two trains an hour, every day of the week. On weekdays there are an additional 4 trains between 0600 and 0900 towards Birmingham and an additional 2 trains between 1720hrs and 1820hrs.
The route north of Lichfield Trent Valley on the high-level line runs via Alrewas to Wychnor Junction, joining the main line that runs between Birmingham and Derby. Although this section of the line is absolute block signalling and primarily used for freight, in the early mornings and late evenings the line is also used by Virgin Trains and CrossCountry Trains to move trains from Birmingham to Bombardier's maintenance depot at Central Rivers, near Burton. There are also some late night diverted passenger services that are routed via Lichfield instead of Tamworth for the purpose of upkeeping a driver's route knowledge. When there is scheduled engineering work anywhere between Birmingham New Street and Wychnor Junction on the mainline via Tamworth, express trains will generally be diverted this way, and it is a useful diversion during times of disruption. There is a single chord line between the high level and low level lines, allowing trains from the North East direction to get onto the West Coast Mainline in the down direction (reversing if necessary on the low level to then travel in the up direction), as well as up direction (or reversed) trains from the low level to travel towards the North East via Wychnor Junction. Although infrequently used, there are a couple of early morning and a late night empty stock movements of both Virgin Trains and CrossCountry Trains from/to Central Rivers that use the chord for route retention purposes.
The signal box was demolished over the weekend of 15 June 2008 as part of the West Coast upgrade.
Read more about this topic: Lichfield Trent Valley Railway Station
Famous quotes containing the word features:
““It looks as if
Some pallid thing had squashed its features flat
And its eyes shut with overeagerness
To see what people found so interesting
In one another, and had gone to sleep
Of its own stupid lack of understanding,
Or broken its white neck of mushroom stuff
Short off, and died against the windowpane.””
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“However much we may differ in the choice of the measures which should guide the administration of the government, there can be but little doubt in the minds of those who are really friendly to the republican features of our system that one of its most important securities consists in the separation of the legislative and executive powers at the same time that each is acknowledged to be supreme, in the will of the people constitutionally expressed.”
—Andrew Jackson (1767–1845)
“The features of our face are hardly more than gestures which force of habit made permanent. Nature, like the destruction of Pompeii, like the metamorphosis of a nymph into a tree, has arrested us in an accustomed movement.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)