New regional services in Birmingham

West Midland Trains operates the regional services in the Birmingham region. Its central hub, Birmingham New Street, is the busiest station in the UK outside London and one of the most complex to operate, considering its mix of long- and short-distance services, as well as starting/ending and through trains. The station has 12 platforms, each divided in two parts to be usable to start/end trains from either side as well as for through services.

In this project we assisted West Midland Trains (WMT) in simulating the performance impact of new services to be provided in the Birmingham area, and in particular:

• new trains from Birmingham New Street to Worcester Shrub Hill;
• new trains between Birmingham New Street and Kings Norton via the Camp Hill lines, serving reopened stations at Moseley, Kings Heath and Hazelwell;
• new shuttle trains between Wolverhampton and Walsall calling at two new halts Darlaston and Willenhall.

The combination of TRENOplus and trenissimo allowed completing each task in a couple of weeks, successfully delivering the results to WMT within the expected and available time frame.