tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26385437365447999662024-03-13T20:07:12.545+00:00Thoughts of a Trainspotting MathematicianThe ramblings of a British railway enthusiast with too much time on his hands.Dave McCormickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16226892437669224991noreply@blogger.comBlogger120125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2638543736544799966.post-61823343562356183832020-05-10T17:04:00.001+01:002020-05-10T17:04:48.001+01:00On This Day: Brand New Track in South-East London, 5th May 2018Every once in a while, a completely new piece of track opens for service. As far as railway enthusiasts are concerned, this is like Christmas: a chance to not merely colour in a line on our map, but to draw a whole new one in!<br />
<br />
Every once in a while, a bit of track that hasn't seen a service in many years ends up with trains being diverted over it. As far as railway enthusiasts are concerned, this is like Christmas: a chance to colour in a line you never thought you'd get to colour in.<br />
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On the May Day bank holiday weekend of 2018 in south-east London, I got to both a completely new bit of track (the Southwark Reversible), and a piece of track that's been there since 1899 but that I never thought I'd do (the Lee Spur), <i>on the same train</i>.<br />
<br />
Saturday 5th May 2018 was a very good day.<br />
<br />
The long-awaited rebuilding of London Bridge had recently been completed, with a new grade-separated route through the station for Thameslink trains instead of the previous series of flat crossings. By May 2018, the new layout was commissioned for use, but the main timetable change to take advantage of the new layout was still two weeks away.<br />
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As part of the upgrade works, the signalling control was transferred to a brand-new control centre down in Three Bridges. Control of the London Bridge station area itself had been moved over through the course of the works, but transferring the other areas controlled from London Bridge was a more gradual process. Over this bank holiday weekend, the Lewisham area was being transferred, meaning a complete block of all lines through Lewisham and forcing almost all Southeastern services to divert to Victoria.<br />
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Cannon Street station was also closed for engineering works, although Charing Cross and London Bridge remained open. With the block at Lewisham, however, the only line left open into and out of London Bridge was the line via Greenwich, which would ordinarily serve trains to Dartford and beyond.<br />
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Now, on the old layout trains to and from Greenwich could easily run in and out of Charing Cross, but the new layout was optimised for these trains to serve Cannon Street instead. While it is physically possible to run between Charing Cross and Greenwich, on the new layout this means crossing over the Thameslink lines on the flat. This is impossible with the current timetable, because of how many Thameslink trains run.<br />
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But back in May 2018 the vast majority of Thameslink trains were still running on the diversion via Herne Hill — and so a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for a last hurrah of Charing Cross–Greenwich services materialised, which would also provide the first passenger trains over the "Southwark Reversible", the new connection between the Thameslink lines and Greenwich. (Thameslink services over the new connections would start two weeks later, with the new timetable.) The Southwark Reversible connections can be seen in light blue in the map below.<br />
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Naturally I wasn't going to pass up such an opportunity, but it was even better than that: some of the trains out of Charing Cross were using another existing piece of track, the Lee Spur. The Lee Spur is used every day by freight trains and empty stock moves between Grove Park sidings and the line to Sidcup, but there is almost never a use for diverting passenger trains over it, as in almost every other situation there would be no need.<br />
<br />
However, on this bank holiday weekend, it was ideal. The line to Sidcup could not be provided with direct trains to London on their normal route, as that would require going through Lewisham. But trains <i>could</i> use the Greenwich line to head out of London, and then use the various curves near Dartford to head <i>back</i> along the Sidcup line, and then use the Lee Spur to avoid the Lewisham area and head to Orpington.<br />
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This can be seen in the map below: the usual main line is between Charing Cross and Orpington is shown in orange, with those parts closed for engineering works shown in dark red. Long-distance trains were diverted to London Victoria on the route shown in green, while stopping trains ran along the very convoluted route shown in blue.<br />
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A diversion over the Lee Spur would only make sense with total block through Lewisham but almost nothing else closed: if the block extended further towards London, or further south to Hither Green, then there would have been no possibility of diversions and there would simply have been replacement buses. I can find no record of there having been scheduled passenger services diverted over the Lee Spur for many years prior, and I suspect it will be many years before it happens again.<br />
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So this really was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, for me at least, and I was very excited to do these diversions — so much so that I spotted them and put them in my calendar two months in advance!<br />
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<b>1102 (actual 1108) Brighton to London Blackfriars, arr 1221 (actual 1235)</b> <br /> <i>Headcode: 1W26, operated by Thameslink using Desiro City 700152</i> <br /> <i>Distance: 50½ miles</i><br />
<br />
My Saturday morning began at home in Brighton, where I was going very much against the flow in getting a train away from the seaside on a very sunny bank holiday weekend. Two trains from London arrived just before 11am, on adjacent platforms, both about 10 minutes late and both completely and utterly rammed to the rafters with families and all-comers heading to the beach. It took a full ten minutes to get what I estimate would be over a thousand people through the ticket barriers, and only then could boarding commence for the two trains to head back to London.<br />
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The train in front of mine was the 10:58 to Victoria, which eventually departed at 11:05, and it featured my favourite and most ridiculous calling pattern of the 2015-2018 timetable on the Brighton Main Line: after departing Brighton it called only at Burgess Hill, Horley, East Croydon, Clapham Junction and London Victoria. Notable by their absence are calls at Haywards Heath and Gatwick Airport: nowadays trains not calling at Gatwick Airport are limited to peak trains only, but for some reason it happened every hour in the old timetable. If anyone can tell me why, I'm all ears!<br />
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By the time the Victoria train departed first, we left six minutes late at 11:08, and we stayed about five or six minutes late until the outskirts of London, where we came to an unceremonious and unscheduled halt at Purley. The very Victoria train that had left Brighton in front of us was held up at East Croydon because someone had pulled the passenger alarm, and a queue of trains formed up behind it.<br />
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After ten minutes waiting at Purley, we moved on once the Victoria train resolved its difficulties, and we proceeded onwards, now about 15 minutes late. All Thameslink trains were still being routed away from London Bridge, so we had to crawl through the suburbs of south London at a snail's pace, via Crystal Palace, Tulse Hill, Herne Hill, and Elephant & Castle, as every Thameslink train had had to do for the previous three years. (I couldn't wait for Thameslink trains to be routed via London Bridge again!)<br />
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Eventually we arrived into Blackfriars, a station which now straddles the River Thames, platforms suspended over the river, with lifts and stairs at both ends down to the river banks below. Historically the station had been entirely north of the river, and indeed that is where the adjoining tube station still is; but the Thameslink Programme works had created a new entrance on the South Bank, making access to that area much easier.<br />
<br />
I had allowed what seemed like a generous 28 minutes to walk from the new South Bank entrance at Blackfriars to Waterloo East. But we didn't make up any time after East Croydon, even being stopped for a minuter or two at Herne Hill to let a stopping train from Sevenoaks take precedence heading into Blackfriars, and as a result my 28-minute walk turned into a 13-minute dash.<br />
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Fortunately, I had a cunning plan to avoid having to wend my way through the back streets to get to Waterloo East. I headed for Southwark tube station, just 8 minutes walk from Blackfriars, where I met my friend Matt: using the fact that we had travelcards, we headed through one entrance of Southwark tube station, and came out the other end into Waterloo East. Here, there is the bizarre situation of two sets of ticket barriers just a few meters apart — one, for leaving Southwark tube station; the other, for entering Waterloo East station — with the remote possibility you could be stuck between them!<br />
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Fortunately that didn't happen, and between the shortcut through Southwark tube station, and the fact the train we were aiming for was running a few minutes late, meant we easily made it to Platform B at Waterloo East for our next train. The platforms here are numbered with letters A to D, to avoid any confusion with the adjacent mainline station at Waterloo.<br />
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<b>1249 London Waterloo East to London Charing Cross, arr 1253</b> <br /> <i>Headcode: 2B30, operated by Southeastern using Networker 465249*+465172</i> <br /> <i>Distance: ¾ mile</i><br />
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It will likely seem bizarre to most people that we walked from Blackfriars to Waterloo East to get a train from there to Charing Cross, when the District Line from Blackfriars to Embankment would have done the same job much more easily. But, of course, there was track to be had!<br />
<br />
For reasons I will explain below, the limited service running into and out of Charing Cross all had to use platforms A and B at Waterloo. To get between those two platforms and platform 4 at Charing Cross, some very rarely-used crossovers between the two stations had to be used, and I hadn't done those crossovers — and indeed they are rarely used for scheduled services, though they are definitely not the rarest bit of track from this day.<br />
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Nonetheless it was definitely worth the detour to tick them off, and we made sure the platform starter at Waterloo East had the diagonal white lights above it illuminated to indicate the train was taking the crossover before boarding it for the very short journey over the Hungerford Bridge, over the desired crossover at what is apparently known as Belvedere Road Junction, and into Charing Cross, arriving into platform 4 as scheduled.<br />
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At this point Matt and I went and got some lunch and had a bit of a catch-up (even though we'd seen each other only a couple of days previously!), and then headed back to Charing Cross for the main event.<br />
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<b>1433 London Charing Cross to Petts Wood, arr 1554</b> <br /> <i>Headcode: 2O40, operated by Southeastern using Networker 465187*+465042</i> <br /> <i>Distance: 32¼ miles</i><br />
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This train from Charing Cross to Orpington ranks as probably the most convoluted route between those two stations that has ever been devised as a timetabled through service.<br />
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First of all, we left from platform 4 and crossed over on the other crossover at Belvedere Road Junction to gain platform A at Waterloo East, the reverse manoeuvre of what we'd done to get into Charing Cross earlier. This was necessary because only from platforms A and B could we do what we needed to do next.<br />
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Instead of staying on the Charing Cross lines, we carried straight on at Ewer Street Junction, against the normal flow of traffic here: normally we would have crossed from the Down Charing Cross Slow to the Down Charing Cross Fast line, but instead we effectively crossed from the Down Charing Cross Slow to the Down Snow Hill. This put us on the lines reserved for Thameslink trains, and meant we then called in platform 4 at London Bridge: a first for Southeastern services, and one not repeated since this weekend two years ago!<br />
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We then used Line 4 out of London Bridge, designated for Thameslink trains towards East Croydon but peeling off at the last minute before the new flyover (at Corbetts Lane Junction). This put us parallel to the new Southwark Reversible, although technically that name only applies to the other track; nonetheless this was my first time over this rearranged piece of track since the remodelling had been completed.<br />
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This route led us to cross over at Surrey Canal Junction (from Line 4 to Line 2) and at North Kent East Junction to gain the line to Greenwich — easily done with no other trains around, but much more difficult to timetable in among all the trains to and from Cannon Street. Nonetheless, this manoeuvre is now repeated every half-hour by Thameslink trains to Rainham!<br />
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Having gained the line to Greenwich, we sat back and relaxed for nearly an hour as no fewer than 19 station calls were timetabled before the final piece of rare track. The first twelve, through Greenwich, Woolwich, and Abbey Wood (where we saw the almost-but-not-quite completed Crossrail station next to us) took us out of London towards Dartford.<br />
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But after the final station before Dartford, Slade Green, we turned right onto the Crayford Spur, to head back west again, through Crayford and Sidcup. At these seven stations, there was some confusion, as the only trains to London were leaving from the opposite platform from usual — we were heading away from London on the platforms normally used by trains into London! Fortunately most passengers seemed to understand eventually.<br />
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A full hour after leaving London Bridge, we finally arrived at Lee. As I've just explained, trains on this line would continue straight on to Hither Green and into London, but instead we proceeded from Lee to turn left onto the Lee Spur, avoiding Hither Green and instead allowing us to join the main line heading south to Grove Park and onwards to Orpington. Even at the very slow speed limit of 15mph, the very sharp curve (the curve radius being only 250m or so) caused some wonderful flange squeal as we turned from heading west to south-east.<br />
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And then, after just a couple of minutes, we joined the Down Slow line and, once the back end of the train had wended its way across the pointwork, sped up again to carry on to Grove Park and onwards to its destination at Orpington.<br />
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Obviously, we wanted to head back and do it all over again in the other direction, and we could just have carried on to Orpington and waited for the train to head back. But there wasn't any more interesting track left to do on this train, so we decided to stop one station short at Petts Wood, where we could simply cross the platform and head back into London after a short wait, saving us half an hour.<br />
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<b>1601 Petts Wood to London Waterloo East, arr 1723 (actual 1739)</b> <br /> <i>Headcode: 2I48, operated by Southeastern using Networker 465170+465036*</i> <br /> <i>Distance: 31½ miles</i><br />
<br />
We headed back from Petts Wood as far as Grove Park. After departing Grove Park, we were held at the signal protecting the Lee Spur: although the Spur itself is double track, the junction at the Grove Park end is only a single-lead junction, so we had to wait for a couple of minutes for another Orpington-bound train to come round the Lee Spur before we could continue.<br />
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And then we traversed the Lee Spur again, this time on the other track, and carried on to Lee. And that was it: a manoeuvre not likely to be repeated for many years, if ever, I was very satisfied to have done it, and that I could colour it in on my map.<br />
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We relaxed for another hour or so as we retraced our steps, heading back out through Sidcup to Crayford, taking the Crayford Spur, calling at Slade Green, and carrying on back into London, until we got to Greenwich. Unfortunately, at Greenwich, there was a problem with the monitors used by the driver to see the CCTV pictures needed for them to safely close the doors: as a result, we had to wait nearly ten minutes for members of station staff to come and assist the driver in dispatching the train safely.<br />
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That put us nearly 15 minutes late, but no matter: we still had one last piece of brand-new track to do. To get from Greenwich to Charing Cross, we crossed over at North Kent East Junction to Line 3, and then at Surrey Canal Junction we finally gained the brand-new Southwark Reversible line.<br />
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This took us away from the lines to Cannon Street and under the new Bermondsey Diveunder, allowing us to get to Line 5 into London Bridge (otherwise known as the Up Snow Hill) without having to cross Line 4 on the flat. This is now used every day by Thameslink trains from Rainham: while there are conflicts with Cannon Street services, the diveunder avoids any conflicts with other Thameslink services, which is a major improvement.<br />
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After calling in platform 5 at London Bridge — never used before or since by Southeastern services! — we carried on to Ewer Street Junction, where again we went straight on, but effectively crossed from the Up Snow Hill line to the Up Charing Cross Slow line. With our use of rare track complete for the day, we arrived back into platform B at Waterloo East and disembarked to head home.<br />
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Again, I should have had a nice 29-minute walk to Blackfriars, but we were 16 minutes late arriving into Waterloo East due to the problems at Greenwich, so I had to briskly retrace my steps back to Blackfriars in order to make my train home.<br />
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<b>1752 London Blackfriars to Brighton, arr 1910</b> <br /> <i>Headcode: 1W49, operated by Thameslink using Desiro City 700111</i> <br /> <i>Distance: 50½ miles</i><br />
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Fortunately, I made my train home, and I sat back and relaxed as we wended our way back through Herne Hill, Tulse Hill and Crystal Palace for one of the last times I'd use this diversionary route, with all trains (in theory) being routed through London Bridge from the timetable change two weeks later.<br />
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I arrived back into Brighton in time for dinner after one of the most enjoyable and memorable days of track-bashing I've done in years: it's not every day you get to do both a completely new bit of track, and a bit of track you never thought you'd get to do, all on the same train!Dave McCormickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16226892437669224991noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2638543736544799966.post-838908433358615862020-04-26T15:00:00.000+01:002020-04-26T23:55:27.013+01:00On This Day: Three Unusual Lines in Yorkshire, 27th April 2013When faced with the task of trying to tick off a piece of track which is seldom-used by passenger trains, one usually has two options. The first option is to get one of a small number of trains booked over the line, usually at ungodly hours of the night, and hope that the train uses the bit of track it's supposed to. (Often it doesn't, for various reasons, which can be immensely frustrating.)<br />
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The other option is simply to wait for the "right kind" of engineering works — that is, some engineering works closing the "normal route" for trains, thus forcing them to be diverted over a different route. This latter option requires patience, since it may be some time before you get the right kind of engineering works. However, once they do come along you have much greater certainty that the train will use the diversionary route, and what's more these opportunities usually come at weekends — so instead of going out late on a weeknight to do some tiny bit of track in the dark and not be able to see out the window, one can enjoy the view and have an enjoyable Saturday or Sunday day trip.<br />
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Saturday 27th April 2013 was one of those lovely weekend days with the right kind of engineering works in the Sheffield area. A ¾-mile section of the line between Sheffield and Rotherham Central was closed, necessitating a five-mile diversion via Tinsley, along track which normally gets just one train each weekday at 22:00 — it was well worth the trip to Yorkshire to get to do this on a weekend in daylight.<br />
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I took the opportunity to do a couple of other bits of rarely-used track too, whose trains fell into the first category above (not the second) — so I met up with a friend, Paul, who had come all the way from Reading to get the track as well!<br />
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<b>0902 (actual 0915) Coventry to Birmingham New St, arr 0927 (actual 0936)</b> <br />
<i>Headcode: 1G07, operated by Virgin Trains using Pendolino 390125</i> <br />
<i>Distance: 19 miles</i><br />
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I started as usual with a late-running Virgin Pendolino from Coventry to Birmingham New Street. Usually when a fast train is late it would get caught behind a stopping train, but in this case the stopping train had been held at Rugby to follow us, so we made reasonably good time into New Street. New Street was in the middle of being rebuilt at this stage, so I deliberately allowed a little extra time to make the change for my next train.<br />
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<b>1003 Birmingham New St to Sheffield, arr 1117</b> <br />
<i>Headcode: 1S39, operated by CrossCountry using Voyager 221141</i> <br />
<i>Distance: 77¼ miles</i><br />
<br />
I changed for a CrossCountry Voyager northwards from Birmingham to Sheffield, a journey I'd done many times. Unfortunately, while we were on time as far as Chesterfield, there was some congestion in the Sheffield area — perhaps caused by the very diversions I was heading for! — and we arrived in Sheffield 5½ minutes late. Since I only had seven minutes to make my connection, now reduced to 90 seconds, I ran over the footbridge from platform 2 to platform 1A to make my train:<br />
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<b>1124 Sheffield to Doncaster, arr 1204</b> <br />
<i>Headcode: 2R67, operated by Northern Rail using Pacer 144009</i> <br />
<i>Distance: 19 miles</i><br />
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Fortunately, I just about made it! Frustratingly, though, the train was held further down the platform waiting for my previous train to depart, with some people who weren't quite so quick at getting over the footbridge lamenting the fact that the train hadn't been held with the doors open for another minute (since it wouldn't have caused any additional delay).<br />
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But after a couple of minutes we were off, and almost immediately after leaving Sheffield station we veered right at Nunnery Main Line Junction and onto our diversionary route to Rotherham.<br />
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The railways in the former West Riding are a maze of former lines built by different companies and joined together in a very haphazard way. This ended up with two largely parallel routes heading north-east out of Sheffield: one was built by the Midland Railway, running through Meadowhall but skirting the edge of Rotherham (with a station on the outskirts at Masborough); the other, built by the South Yorkshire Railway and eventually absorbed into the Great Central Railway, ran slightly to the east, past a huge marshalling yard at Tinsley and onwards through the centre of Rotherham.<br />
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Both routes were retained until the 1990s, when British Rail finally started to rationalise the network. This was in part precipitated by the arrival of the Sheffield Supertram, which required the route through Tinsley to be reduced to single-track so that the tram lines could be accommodated in parallel. To enable trains to serve both Meadowhall and Rotherham Central, a ¾-mile chord was built... which was precisely the bit of track that was closed on this day!<br />
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The route via Tinsley fell largely into disuse when the chord was built, with a single track retained so trains could still divert if needs be, and for freight trains to access what's left of Tinsley Yard. It was this route we were using to get to Rotherham and onwards to Doncaster; because there's a three-mile-long single-track section, only about four trains an hour could be accommodated over the line. Some trains, such as ours, ran via Tinsley to maintain the stop at Rotherham Central; others ran via the Midland route to maintain the stop at Meadowhall instead.<br />
<br />
Our Pacer made reasonable time along the slow and somewhat bumpy diversion — tracks on diversionary routes tend not to be very well-maintained! — and after Rotherham Central the train continued to Doncaster. Here again there are two routes, one common and one rare — but sadly the rare route (via Thrybergh Junction and the "Roundwood Chord") here was not in use and I had to wait another few years to get that bit of track in!<br />
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On arrival at Doncaster, I met up with Paul, who'd come from Reading via London and York ("I couldn't resist some Grand Central HST mileage", he said, not unreasonably!), and we headed back the way we came.<br />
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<b>1226 Doncaster to Sheffield, arr 1312</b> <br />
<i>Headcode: 2R68, operated by Northern Rail using Pacer 142091</i> <br />
<i>Distance: 19 miles</i><br />
<br />
I retraced my steps, being able to talk Paul through the route — though we got more of a view of Tinsley Yard than perhaps we'd expected, being held at Tinsley East Junction for about ten minutes waiting for a train to come off the single line, but we only arrived into Sheffield five minutes late, and grabbed some lunch before heading for another train.<br />
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<b>1338 Sheffield to York, arr 1455</b> <br />
<i>Headcode: 2Y82, operated by Northern Rail using Sprinter 158855</i> <br />
<i>Distance: 46¾ miles</i><br />
<br />
Another train, another unusual piece of track — but this was different. Firstly, this wasn't a diversion, this was a regular service that only runs twice a day — fortunately it gets a Saturday service, and during daylight hours at that! More importantly, it's not just a piece of track that's rarely-used, but a station too — Pontefract Baghill is one of three stations in Pontefract: while Monkhill and Tanshelf get regular services to Leeds and Wakefield, Baghill gets just these two trains a day between Sheffield and York. (Oh, and lastly, the train was a nice Class 158 Sprinter, not a Pacer!)<br />
<br />
We headed out of Sheffield to the north, on the other route via Meadowhall this time — although the train would normally call at Meadowhall and Rotherham Central, one of the stops had to be sacrificed and in this case the Rotherham Central stop was dropped. We took the normal route to Leeds as far as Moorthorpe, where we carried straight on instead of turning left for 17 miles of unusual track.<br />
<br />
The first nine miles, between Moorthorpe and Ferrybridge, get no other regular passenger services, although very occasionally CrossCountry trains between Sheffield and York will divert via this route (this would normally require two separate engineering blocks to block both of the normal routes via Doncaster and via Leeds). Pontefract Baghill station is a fairly basic affair, with minimal facilites for the handful of people who use it every day (just 7,376 people used it in 2018/19).<br />
<br />
After Ferrybridge, we carried on north on eight miles of track I'd done earlier that year (and <a href="http://railwaydave.blogspot.com/2013/01/rare-track-days-3-doncaster-york.html"> wrote about at the time</a>) past Ferrybridge Power Station and onwards to Milford Junction, where we crossed over to the little-used route between Castleford and Church Fenton. With the myriad of connections and chords on these lines, it can be quite hard to keep track (no pun intended) of what track you've been on!<br />
<br />
We called at Sherburn-in-Elmet before we finally rejoined a "main line" at Church Fenton, pausing again at the very little-used station at Ulleskelf, before finally joining the East Coast Main Line at Colton Junction for the final stretch into York. Although we had left Sheffield some five minutes late, we arrived at York a full six minutes early, since we'd been booked to wait for an ECML train at Colton Junction, but were let out in front of it instead!<br />
<br />
<b>1511 York to Leeds (via Harrogate), arr 1622</b> <br />
<i>Headcode: 2C41, operated by Northern Rail using Sprinter 150207</i> <br />
<i>Distance: 38¾ miles</i><br />
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After only a few minutes in York, we got on another train on a route that I'd done before but that Paul hadn't, the long way round from York to Leeds via Harrogate. This was a busy stopping service on a sunny Saturday afternoon, and we did well to get a seat; unfortunately the Class 150s don't really lend themselves to seeing out the window easily, but we could still admire the view from the numerous viaducts while chatting.<br />
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On arrival at Leeds, Paul headed back to London, while I waited around for my next train. Using the slower route to Leeds had also enabled me to kill a bit of time, as I had one more unusual line to do, that was truly impossible to do other than on one of the two trains a day that serve it — and because they're timed for commuters working in Leeds, I had to wait for the evening peak to catch it (even though it was Saturday!).<br />
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<b>1716 Leeds to Goole, arr 1830</b> <br />
<i>Headcode: 2F25, operated by Northern Rail using Pacer 144021</i> <br />
<i>Distance: 32½ miles</i><br />
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<i>and</i><br />
<b>1849 Goole to Leeds, arr 2000</b> <br />
<i>Headcode: 2F30, operated by Northern Rail using Pacer 144021</i> <br />
<i>Distance: 32½ miles</i><br />
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The line between Knottingley and Goole gets just two trains a day in each direction; one in the morning peak, and one in the evening peak. Fortunately for me, the evening train then comes back from Goole to get back to the depot in Leeds — and it does so in service, so I could easily go to Goole and come back in order to colour in the track on my map.<br />
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The route from Leeds to Knottingley has an hourly service, and the Goole trains simply serve as an extension of one of those trains. Due to the track layout at Castleford, where no trains terminate but all trains are required to reverse in a single platform, it likely isn't possible to run a more frequent service — though Castleford has a disused second platform and reopening it might allow more trains to run. The original Lancashire & Yorkshire route between Leeds and Knottingley avoided Castleford, but the direct route shut in 1981, with trains diverted to serve the town.<br />
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Beyond Knottingley lie eight miles of double track, as far as Drax Branch Junction, and then another eight miles of single track to reach Goole. This is one of the few lines in the UK that sees more freight trains than passenger trains — or did, anyway, with numerous coal trains serving the power stations at Eggborough and Drax. However, Eggborough Power Station closed in 2018, and while Drax has the largest generating capacity of any power station in the UK (at 3.9GW), it is gradually being converted from coal to biomass and natural gas, meaning coal trains will soon be a thing of the past on this line.<br />
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The intermediate stations are, really, an inconvenience in the operation of this railway, then: the four intermediate stations at Whitley Bridge, Hensall, Snaith and Rawcliffe had just 2,550 passengers between them in 2018/19, or less than 10 passengers a day along the whole of the line. Even so, it is cheaper to retain the line and run one train a day than it is to embark upon the expensive public inquiry required to formally close the line, so this "parliamentary" service continues — albeit timed in as useful a way as possible that it might be used by commuters, unlike some other such services.<br />
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This bizarre train eventually pulled into Goole four minutes early, with almost no-one on it, before shunting to the other platform ready to head back to Leeds. (Sadly I had to disembark for the shunt move!)<br />
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There is a level crossing at one end of the station, which I distinctly remember using to cross the line to get to the other platform, even though there is also a pedestrian subway adjacent to it - there's something rather enjoyable about pausing briefly on a quiet level crossing with no traffic and no trains to admire the meeting of transport modes.<br />
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After only 20 minutes in the small town of Goole, I headed back on the very same train to Leeds, retracing my steps, where we arrived five minutes early, giving me plenty of time to make my connection back to Birmingham:<br />
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<b>2011 (actual 2015) Leeds to Birmingham New St, arr 2205 (actual 2212)</b> <br />
<i>Headcode: 1M80, operated by CrossCountry using Voyager 221128</i> <br />
<i>Distance: 116 miles</i><br />
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The train was a few minutes late — hardly surprising given it had started from Edinburgh — and after a last-minute platform alteration from 12C to 16A (necessitating a dash over the footbridge) we were on our way. A couple of temporary speed restrictions through Wakefield meant we lost a little more time, and eventually arrived back into Birmingham seven minutes late.<br />
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I therefore missed the 2214 train to Coventry, but this gave me a change to look around New Street a little bit. As I mentioned, they were in the middle of rebuilding the station, with half of the new concourse being built while most of the old one remained open, and this happened to be the weekend they were switching over from the old station concourse to the new station concourse — with the change happening overnight on Saturday night.<br />
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When I passed through that morning, everything was still boarded up; but in the evening they'd started to take the hoardings down and, on the old main footbridge between platforms 3 and 4, you could see through to the new concourse — and my head exploded as I finally started to comprehend the enormity of the change the station was going through. I actually went back the following afternoon to take some photographs of the new concourse, after it had opened!<br />
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<b>2234 Birmingham New St to Coventry, arr 2300</b> <br />
<i>Headcode: 2C67, operated by London Midland using Desiro 350259</i> <br />
<i>Distance: 19 miles</i><br />
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My final train home was a stopping train — the last fast train having left much earlier in the evening — and I arrived back in Coventry having spent over 10 hours and done 420 miles on trains; a long day, but worth it to ride on three unusual routes across the former West Riding of Yorkshire!Dave McCormickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16226892437669224991noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2638543736544799966.post-86713885796830057432020-04-11T12:03:00.003+01:002020-04-27T00:02:40.636+01:00On This Day: All The Stations, Northern Ireland (8-10 April 2019)This time last year, I had the pleasure and privilege of joining Geoff Marshall and Vicki Pipe on their journey round Northern Ireland to visit <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7ttKX46nJxUeXZ0aoD4Q5g">All The Stations: Ireland</a>: this is the behind-the-scenes story of how things unfolded!<br />
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As regular readers will know, I grew up in Bangor in Northern Ireland, but I've lived in England for most of the last 15 years. In 2017, I got involved in a small way with the original "All The Stations" endeavour, helping to plan Geoff and Vicki's epic trip round all 2,563 National Rail stations in Great Britain, and you can see me in a short cameo in this video at Shippea Hill.<br />
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After the original "All The Stations" was complete, attention naturally turned to the question of what was next. The island of Ireland was the most obvious natural extension; with just 198 stations it was also not nearly as large an undertaking. Surprisingly, despite growing up in NI, I'd been on relatively little of the railways in Ireland: I'd been on the whole network in Northern Ireland, but much of the network in the Republic of Ireland remains unknown to me.<br />
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Still, a one-eyed man is king in a world of blind men, and I thus got involved in helping Geoff plan All The Stations: Ireland. I wrote a very sketchy plan that, in theory, meant you could have done the whole island in five days, but that would have been very, very rushed — probably even more so than some of the English parts of All The Stations, where it really was a feeling of "if it's Tuesday, it must be Bradford".<br />
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When I travelled back to NI for Christmas in 2017, I did so by train and ferry through Holyhead and Dublin — Ryanair had pulled out of flying Gatwick-Belfast, and Easyjet's prices were thus insane, so this was a much cheaper option — which meant I could pick up lots of timetable leaflets when I passed through Dublin Connolly station.<br />
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Geoff and I had a first planning meeting in early 2018, with the intention of it happening later that year. Although we stretched the plan to about two weeks, it was still fundamentally following the same order as my five-day plan, starting in Rosslare and finishing in Derry/Londonderry, going round the lines out of Dublin in a roughly clockwise fashion, and using a bus between Ballina and Sligo to save a very long back-track.<br />
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However, in the end, due to other commitments, it didn't happen in 2018, but instead ended up pushed back to Easter 2019. In the meantime the plan was refined and extended a little, but I'm delighted that the plan ended up working almost without a hitch! It looked like Brexit could end up complicating matters, but an extension to the Article 50 negotiating deadline meant that didn't matter in the end.<br />
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Geoff and Vicki departed from London on the night of Thursday 21st March 2019, making their way to Rosslare the following day and then spending two weeks going round the Republic of Ireland. By the time they got back to Dublin on Sunday 7th April, they had just the line from Dublin to Belfast, and all of Northern Ireland, left to cover. Meanwhile, I flew to Belfast on Friday 5th April to stay with my parents for a few days, ready to meet up with Geoff and Vicki in Northern Ireland!<br />
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<h2>
Monday 8th April (Day 15)</h2>
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For Geoff and Vicki, Day 15 started in Dublin, as they made their way to Belfast. Although the Enterprise runs up to eight times a day between Dublin and Belfast, they of course needed to call at every intermediate station, so they only used the Enterprise between Drogheda and Newry.<br />
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My day started in Bangor, from which I caught the 14:57 train to Belfast, and then the 16:05 Enterprise from Belfast to Newry, to meet them there. We had over a two-hour wait for their first train in NI: Northern Ireland's two most awkward stations are Scarva and Poyntzpass, between Newry and Portadown. While Newry is served by the Enterprise service between Belfast and Dublin, the rest of the suburban services usually only go as far as Portadown, with just five trains a day extending to call at Poyntzpass and Scarva.<br />
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After nipping into the town centre to get a coffee, we boarded the 18:50 train all the way into Belfast. There being plenty of material for the one video already, I didn't appear on camera in the video, but I can assure you I'm sat on the train out of shot! The train was very quiet leaving Newry, and Geoff and Vicki naturally got talking to the guard; what I wasn't expecting was that the guard would make a special announcement welcoming them to NI! That was definitely the most surreal moment of the trip for me.<br />
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The trouble with there being so few trains calling at Poyntzpass and Scarva was that it really wasn't hard for the educated enthusiast to work out which train we were on... and even before we arrived into Great Victoria Street in Belfast, a couple of young fans had managed to track down the train and introduced themselves to Geoff and Vicki, with half a dozen more people waiting for their arrival into Great Victoria Street at 19:59, including a family with a young girl who'd made a lovely drawing for Geoff and Vicki!<br />
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Eventually, Geoff and Vicki managed to escape to their hotel, and I headed back to Bangor. Saying "See you in Bangor!" to folk who I'm used to seeing in London was... somewhat disorienting...!<br />
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<h2>
Tuesday 9th April (Day 16)</h2>
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The next morning (Tuesday 9th April) I met Geoff and Vicki at Bangor station just before midday. Unlike the previous day, where I had stayed entirely off-camera, today I was very much on-camera. I'd done videos with Geoff before, but this was somehow different: here I was the third person on camera, not the second. But more than that, it also felt like I was introducing Geoff and Vicki to the place I grew up, almost like I was showing them round.<br />
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We started with Geoff interviewing me in the café in Bangor station — which even as I write that seems like a completely surreal concept — with a few questions about the Northern Irish railway network. He started by shaking my hand — only, I was expecting his signature left-handed handshake, and you can just spot on the video that I start to reach out my left hand before realising he isn't holding the camera (Vicki was)!<br />
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I'd brought along my copy of <i>Johnson's Atlas and Gazetter of the Railways of Ireland</i>, an absolutely wonderful historical atlas of Ireland's railways, as a prop to talk about how many railways in Ireland had closed in the 1950s and 1960s to leave the shriveled network we have today.<br />
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The atlas was a gift from my grandparents some twenty years ago, and I still treasure it. In fact, the first question Geoff asked was about how I'd got into railways in the first place: that was very much down to my grandpa, who was a civil engineer in the Roads Service in Northern Ireland but who passed on his love of all things transport to me. The question and my answer ended up on the cutting room floor, but it relaxed me into the rest of the interview.<br />
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After the interview, we split up, with Vicki going to look at the castle, and Geoff and I walking into the town briefly to get a drone shot of the marina (which also ended up on the cutting room floor). We reconvened to get the 12:27 train to Cultra, on which I described to camera what all we were going to do that day — and in so doing I managed to steal Vicki's thunder by doing what she normally did!<br />
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We stopped off at Cultra to head to the Ulster Transport Museum — co-located with the Folk Museum and thus generally advertised as the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum (which I must confess paints a very schizophrenic picture until you realise they're separate!) — where we spent an hour looking round. This was very much a trip down memory lane for me: a trip with my grandparents from Bangor to Cultra to visit the Transport Museum was probably one of my first, if not my first ever, train trip. Although I visited the museum several times as a child, including one or two school trips, it must have been at least 15 years since my last visit.<br />
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An hour after we arrived, we were back on the train heading to Belfast Central — or rather Belfast Lanyon Place, it having been renamed seven months previously. The name "Central" stems from the Belfast Central Railway, on which the station lies, rather than the station's location within Belfast: the station is in fact at the eastern edge of the city centre, with Great Victoria Street being much closer to the city centre. While the renaming is welcome, "Lanyon Place" is hardly the kind of memorable name that is likely to displace "Central" in the public consciousness; something more straightforward like "Laganside" would have been better in my view!<br />
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The line from Cultra to Belfast runs largely along the south shore of Belfast Lough; after changing at Central (sorry, but old habits die hard!), we headed back out along the opposite shore on the 14:25 train out to Whitehead. I'd not been on this line in many, many years, and I'd forgotten how lovely the views are across to Holywood and Bangor. We passed by the iconic Carrickfergus Castle, but unfortunately there wasn't enough time in the plans to stop for a visit. Vicki was very disappointed. (The drone shot seen in the video, incidentally, was actually filmed a couple of days later.)<br />
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Upon arrival at Whitehead at 15:00, we were met by Robin from the Railway Preservation Society of Ireland, who whisked us off to the Whitehead Railway Museum. Vicki and I introduced ourselves to Robin while Geoff went and got a few extra shots; I explained I was the local (even if I haven't lived in NI for many years), and Robin immediately replied "ah, you're the fixer!" In the video, Geoff described me exactly like that as he pulled into Bangor, but that was before I'd seen either of them, so this was my first time hearing myself described like that!<br />
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The RPSI works have been based at Whitehead since 1964, but the museum was brand-new, having opened in 2017, and I'd never been, so I was really quite excited to see round. The museum only usually opens on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, but the folks at the museum had heard Geoff and Vicki were coming, so opened the museum especially for us to look round!<br />
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We quickly realised there was lots to see, more than we'd bargained for. As a result, Geoff and Vicki decided quickly that the Whitehead museum deserved its own bonus video, rather than just being a snippet in an already busy day's video, so they quickly filmed a piece to camera to act as a teaser for the bonus video. Robin then showed us round as much of the museum as we could see in about an hour — although we'd planned to get the 16:01 train to Larne, we quickly realised the 16:35 made more sense, and re-planned accordingly.<br />
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The guys at the museum were wonderful, and even though we had very little time there we got to see a fantastic amount of stuff, including a working signal box where Vicki and I both got to pull some real old-fashioned levers. Robin even gave us a lift between the station and the museum, even though it was only a 10-minute walk, to make sure we could see as much as possible — many thanks to the whole team for pulling out all the stops on the day.<br />
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A couple of the young lads from the museum joined us on the train onwards to Larne, which has some lovely views over Larne Lough that I'd forgotten all about. Once we got to Larne Harbour, at the end of the line, they headed straight back, while the three of us got off and took a quick look round. The station was, as you'd expect, deserted, there being no ferries in the harbour and little other reason to use the Harbour station over Larne Town.<br />
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Geoff and Vicki filmed the closing segment to the video outside the station, and then we headed back to Belfast on the 17:35 train. Our earlier re-planning worked out quite well, in that we ended up only having to spend half an hour in Larne Harbour, as well as avoiding the 20-minute walk from Larne Town to Larne Harbour that had been part of the previous plan. The segment where Geoff and Vicki say goodbye to me at the end of the day was actually filmed on the way back to Belfast!<br />
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We arrived back into Belfast Central at 18:36; Geoff and Vicki headed to their hotel, while I headed back to Bangor for the night, ready for another day of trains.<br />
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<h2>
Wednesday 10th April (Day 17)</h2>
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The next morning was the last day of ATS Ireland, and there was only one line left to do: Belfast to Derry/Londonderry, as well as the short branch to Portrush. My day started with the 10:27 from Bangor to Belfast, and I met Vicki at Belfast Central to get the 11:20 to Coleraine.<br />
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Geoff, however... off of my suggestion he'd gone to get a drone shot of Bleach Green Viaduct (which you can see in the video). Due to the location, he'd had to get a taxi to and from the viaduct site, and it took a bit of a walk to get the right shot, so he only just made the train at Yorkgate — which is why the video starts there rather than at Central.<br />
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In the video you can see me talking about the viaduct, which is part of the reason I actually appeared in the video and wasn't just out-of-shot as I was on Monday. The section from Bleach Green to Antrim was shut in 1978, with trains diverted via Lisburn, but reopened on Sunday 10th June 2001 — and I was a passenger on the very first day, again with my grandparents. According to the commemorative ticket, I was passenger number 162 (my grandparents were number 163 and 164 respectively)!<br />
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Unfortunately we were delayed by about 10 minutes at Ballymoney waiting for a late train from Derry/Londonderry to clear the single line — I've <a href="http://railwaydave.blogspot.com/2014/12/dispatches-from-across-irish-sea.html">previously written</a> about the line to Derry/Londonderry being the busiest single-track railway in the UK, and it showed itself up here — and we started to worry that we might miss our five-minute connection over the footbridge at Coleraine to make the 12:45 to Portrush. But with just one train an hour, NI Railways held the connection — and perhaps as much as half the people on the train streamed over the footbridge to catch the connection out to Portrush.<br />
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The station at Portrush was in the middle of being rebuilt, and would fully reopen a couple of months later in time for The Open golf championship, which was hosted by Royal Portrush Golf Club in 2019 for only the second time, the first being in 1951. This provided a huge boost to tourism in the area, but required quite substantial reconstruction of the existing station, which was therefore something of a construction site when we visited.<br />
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That said, for Geoff and I the visit was very brief indeed: on arrival at Portrush, we split up, with Vicki going off to explore the seaside town of Portrush. Although I said "goodbye" in the video, this was simply a convenience of the video, and in reality Geoff and I headed straight back to Coleraine on the train we'd just come in on, to go and get a very special shot for later in the video...<br />
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Outside Coleraine station we took a taxi to Downhill Strand, Northern Ireland's answer to Dawlish. The railway runs through two tunnels west of Castlerock station, emerging on the beautiful white beach at Downhill — the perfect location for a drone shot of a train. There were very few buses, so we took a taxi; the driver said he hadn't been to Downhill beach in at least a decade. Hilariously, my accent — which has been somewhat anglicised over the years of living in England — reverted and became ever more broad the more I talked to the taxi driver, to the point where even Geoff struggled to understand me at times!<br />
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We got out of the taxi and crossed under the railway bridge onto the beach itself, and Geoff got his drone out to take the shot. Sadly, he'd accidentally left it on after getting the shot at Bleach Green, and the battery had run down — all that was left in the batteries was for a brief 30-second flight where it went up and came back down again — so while it was a lovely shot of the beach and Mussenden Temple (the building perched atop the cliff above the railway), it didn't have any trains in it.<br />
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Geoff tried to get it to come back to life, but to no avail. With minutes to go until the hourly train passed through, Geoff hit upon the great idea of filming a passing shot from the beach — which you can see in the video. To steady the shot, Geoff rested the camera (tripod and all!) on my shoulder, before panning round to track the train as it passed us heading towards Derry/Londonderry. (Geoff also shot some panning shots of the train coming back the other way a few minutes later, although those weren't needed in the end.) Fortunately the panning shot worked brilliantly, and rescued what could have been a disastrous trip to Downhill.<br />
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However, there was then the small matter of Geoff and I meeting up with Vicki again to get the following train to Derry/Londonderry. My original plan had been to walk round the headland to Castlerock, but even at low tide it turned out to be impassible, at least in the shoes we were wearing. So we had to turn back and head back to the car park where the taxi had dropped us off. We thought briefly that we'd have to call another taxi to come and get us, but then Geoff checked the bus timetable online — and found there was a number 134 bus right when we needed it, heading towards Castlerock, that would get us there just five minutes before the train!<br />
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We nervously waited in the rather forlorn bus shelter for the bus to come, and I confess I was a little worried it wouldn't show up — but it showed up bang on time, or perhaps even a little early. Because of our iLink cards, we didn't even have to pay extra for the bus, and it got us to Castlerock in plenty of time for the 14:50 train to Derry/Londonderry. We were reunited with Vicki on the train, which took us right past Downhill Strand where Geoff and I had just been — which is perhaps why Vicki is so awed by the beach, whereas Geoff had already seen it!<br />
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The video sequence ("What the actual Dickens?!") — complete with specially composed extended music — perfectly captured the sense of wonder I remember feeling the first time I went on a train to Derry/Londonderry as a child, with the beautiful view suddenly emerging from the darkness of the tunnels. I still maintain that the views between Coleraine and Derry/Londonderry are perhaps the best views from a train anywhere in the British Isles; at the very least they give the West Highland Line and the Kyle Line a very good run for their money — and have a much more frequent service!<br />
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Our arrival into Derry/Londonderry was bang on time at 15:22; Geoff and Vicki got a number of shots from the platform while I waited off-camera. When they were done a handful of fans were waiting for them — they had worked out which train they were on based on Twitter — and Geoff and Vicki happily posed for selfies once they came off the platform.<br />
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After a few more shots of the external of the station — which both Geoff and Vicki took care not to actually name on camera, to avoid even being seen to take sides in the naming dispute! — and of the following train arriving into Derry/Londonderry (as seen from the new Peace Bridge), we boarded the 16:38 back to Belfast, with Geoff and Vicki taking a well-earned nap after 17 days of trains in Ireland.<br />
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And that was it: all of Northern Ireland done in less than 48 hours!<br />
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The original plan had been written to do the whole island in as short a time as possible, and while the rest of the Ireland plan had been dilated to take a good bit longer and allow plenty of time to stop and see the local sights, the Northern Irish plan remained mostly unaltered from the original 2018 plan.<br />
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With hindsight, I suspect Geoff and Vicki could or should have spent longer going round Northern Ireland: perhaps one day for the Bangor branch, one day for the Larne line, and one final day (or possibly even two days) for the line to Derry/Londonderry. That said, given my flight schedules, too much change might have meant I couldn't make it into the videos!<br />
<br />
All in all I had a lovely few days in Northern Ireland, in which it felt like I got to show Geoff and Vicki round this wonderful railway network that I'd grown up with, and which I still cherish as one of the hidden railway gems in the UK.Dave McCormickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16226892437669224991noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2638543736544799966.post-81575084022586410532020-04-05T13:52:00.004+01:002020-04-27T00:04:39.983+01:00On This Day: Track-Bashing in Cardiff and London, 6th April 2014In my quest to travel on every railway line in the UK, some lines were a lot harder than others. There are a number of diversionary routes that see very limited use in normal circumstances, but which retain a token service primarily to enable drivers to retain "route knowledge" over these lines.<br />
<br />
One of these sections of track is the Leckwith Loop, just west of Cardiff, circled in red in the map below. This 26-chain (520m) section of track provides an alternative access between Cardiff Central station and the line towards Bridgend, through Ninian Park station rather than along the South Wales Main Line.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VAZbeq3G7J8/XonTKnTkMyI/AAAAAAAAAtA/oKOsqt6goQgNDwQp2QhIZA9-5JngJlMpQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/OTD-2014-Cardiff-Leckwith.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="781" data-original-width="1600" height="195" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VAZbeq3G7J8/XonTKnTkMyI/AAAAAAAAAtA/oKOsqt6goQgNDwQp2QhIZA9-5JngJlMpQCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/OTD-2014-Cardiff-Leckwith.PNG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Map based on <a href="https://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetMap</a>; © OpenStreetMap contributors</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
However, a previous attempt to use one of the small number of services booked over this line had failed — as the train had simply run the "normal" route along the main line. Rather than try again, I waited for a day when the main line was closed for engineering works, so that <i>all</i> trains would be running via the Leckwith Loop.<br />
<br />
On Sunday 6th April 2014, such a day finally materialised. But there was a problem: there was another bit of track I needed also in use on the same day, in London!<br />
<br />
There were engineering works at Bromley South in south-east London, with the station completely closed. This would have meant Bromley being without a train service; so instead, SouthEastern ran a service to Bromley North, which is usually closed on Sundays.<br />
<br />
Bromley North is at the end of a 1 mile, 49 chain (2600m) branch line from Grove Park, which is ordinarily served by a simple shuttle service between Grove Park and Bromley North, running every 20 minutes on Mondays to Saturdays, with no Sunday service. (See map below.)<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-uZNPZ3NYhVw/XqYTMZZ8bgI/AAAAAAAAAuo/HukWFxB4d4scj7THblldyBBkOGSK7GhUACLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/OTD-2014-BromleyNorth.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="782" data-original-width="1600" height="195" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-uZNPZ3NYhVw/XqYTMZZ8bgI/AAAAAAAAAuo/HukWFxB4d4scj7THblldyBBkOGSK7GhUACLcBGAsYHQ/s400/OTD-2014-BromleyNorth.PNG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 12.8px;">Map based on </span><a href="https://www.openstreetmap.org/" style="font-size: 12.8px;">OpenStreetMap</a><span style="font-size: 12.8px;">; © OpenStreetMap contributors</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
However, on this Sunday, <i>through</i> trains were running from London Victoria, meaning that the connection at Grove Park onto the branch — never normally used in passenger service — was being used all day! The bit of track that I wanted to travel on was perhaps less than 100m long — but it was rare enough to be worth the journey.<br />
<br />
So, I hatched a plan. From home in Coventry, I needed to go at least as far as Bridgend to cover the Leckwith Loop, and I needed then to go to London to get to Bromley North. Coming up with a plan for the journeys was fairly straightforward, but figuring out which tickets to use was much more difficult; three singles would have been prohibitively expensive.<br />
<br />
A bit of digging into the fares system found that Coventry to Bridgend had two available ticket routes: via Birmingham or via Reading, with the former being the cheaper (as it was a shorter route). If I went out via Birmingham and came back via Reading, then all I would need on top of that would be a Reading to London ticket, and problem solved.<br />
<br />
So, to do this, I wanted a Coventry to Bridgend return, routed via Birmingham, with the return portion excessed to come back via Reading... which is where the trouble started. Because it was a slightly complicated ticket, I deliberately went the previous day to the ticket office in Coventry to buy it, only to be told that excesses could only be done on the day of travel. So I purchased the main return ticket, and came back the following morning in plenty of time.<br />
<br />
Then a second problem appeared: while the cheapest fare via Birmingham is the Off-Peak Return, the cheapest via Reading is a <i>Super</i> Off-Peak Return. At first the ticket office tried to insist I had to excess my Off-Peak to another Off-Peak, but I pointed out the wording of the National Rail Conditions of Travel:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>"If you make a journey by a route that is not valid you will be liable to pay an excess fare. The price for this will be the difference between the amount paid for the Ticket you hold and the lowest price Ticket available for immediate travel that would have entitled you to travel by that route."</i></blockquote>
Eventually, after the two clerks talked to a supervisor, they agreed to excess it to a Super Off-Peak Return. However, they weren't able to only excess one portion (perhaps due to a limitation of their IT systems) — so I had to excess <i>both</i> outward and return portions. The internal guidance to railway staff states that it is possible to only excess one portion, and that that should be charged at half the difference; but since that guidance isn't made publically available, I couldn't rely on it.<br />
<br />
In the end, then, I had these four tickets (as well as a Reading to London Travelcard):<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-3KGThPPa0wo/XqYTV-1BUiI/AAAAAAAAAus/ITaA4bwaWDYfgCKhckZ8GyGe8XU_lZgdACLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/OTD%2B2014%2BExcess.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1004" data-original-width="1600" height="250" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-3KGThPPa0wo/XqYTV-1BUiI/AAAAAAAAAus/ITaA4bwaWDYfgCKhckZ8GyGe8XU_lZgdACLcBGAsYHQ/s400/OTD%2B2014%2BExcess.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
The one in the bottom-left wasn't necessary, so I paid perhaps £7.30 more than necessary, but I accepted that as a price for getting on the train I needed to get!<br />
<br />
<b>0837 Coventry to Birmingham New St, arr 0906</b> <br />
<i>Headcode: 2C99, operated by London Midland using Desiro 350129*+350104</i> <br />
<i>Distance: 19 miles</i><br />
<br />
My Sunday morning started with the first departure from Coventry: all lines through Coventry are shut on Saturday nights to enable essential maintenance work to be undertaken, meaning the first train doesn't leave until after 08:30. This was an uneventful run, calling all stations to Marston Green and then running fast to Birmingham New Street, where I had a six-minute change:<br />
<br />
<b>0912 Birmingham New St to Newport, arr 1055</b> <br />
<i>Headcode: 1V46, operated by CrossCountry using Voyager 220011</i> <br />
<i>Distance: 97¾ miles</i><br />
<br />
Owing to engineering works between Bristol Parkway and Swindon, this 09:12 to Plymouth was diverted via Newport — yes, a train that should have run entirely within England was diverted via Wales. This was great news for me, though, as it saved me an hour, as otherwise I couldn't have got to Newport so early — one of those wonderful unusual moments where diversions worked in my favour!<br />
<br />
We left Birmingham by the usual route through University, running non-stop to Cheltenham as usual. But after that, we turned right to head to Gloucester, and carried on down the lovely route along the Severn Estuary, with lovely views of the Severn Bridge (M48) and the Second Severn Crossing (M4) from Chepstow, livening up an otherwise dull, grey day.<br />
<br />
Although some of the diverted trains were reversing at Severn Tunnel Junction to head back through the Severn Tunnel and head onwards to Bristol, this involved reversing beyond the station, and where possible it is preferable to do so in a platform. Our train therefore continued another 9 miles to reverse in Newport, the next station, where we arrived three minutes early thanks to the generous timings for these engineering diversions.<br />
<br />
<b>1100 Newport to Bridgend, arr 1140</b> <br />
<i>Headcode: 1B14, operated by Arriva Trains Wales using Sprinter 150236</i> <br />
<i>Distance: 33¼ miles</i><br />
<br />
At Newport, I changed onto a two-car Sprinter forming the 1009 from Hereford all the way to Fishguard Harbour — fortunately I was only going two stops to Bridgend! The train was a bit late coming in from Hereford — perhaps due to the CrossCountry services reversing at Newport and getting in the way — and eventually left about five minutes late.<br />
<br />
Once we got to Cardiff, I poked my head out of the door to look at the signal, and was delighted to see the box above the green signal saying "N" — indicating we'd been cleared for the route towards Ninian Park — and not "M" for main line. Even with the engineering works going on, I was still in a little doubt as to whether this diversion would come off — but it did, and it was suddenly worth the journey!<br />
<br />
We left Platform 3 at Cardiff Central on what was then called the Down Barry Relief line — but instead of heading towards Barry we peeled off right to go through Ninian Park station. Due to the track layout here, we passed through the Cardiff-bound platform in the "wrong" direction — though since Ninian Park doesn't get a Sunday service there weren't any passengers to be confused!<br />
<br />
And then we turned onto the Leckwith Loop, a 26-chain (520m) section of track which had been the entire purpose for my journey to Bridgend. I wish I could say the track afforded some spectacular view, but the only view on offer was that of suburban Cardiff. After an all too brief minute or so, we rejoined the South Wales Main Line at Leckwith North Junction, and carried on along the normal route to Bridgend along the South Wales Main Line.<br />
<br />
I arrived in Bridgend and crossed smartly to the other platform, to head straight back to London:<br />
<br />
<b>1153 (actual 1159) Bridgend to London Paddington, arr 1551 (actual 1542)</b> <br />
<i>Headcode: 1L54, operated by First Great Western using HST set OC47 with 43093+43124</i> <br />
<i>Distance: 183¾ miles</i><br />
<br />
Due to the aforementioned engineering works between Bristol Parkway and Swindon, this train was taking the long way round to London — in more ways than one — turning a journey that should have taken 2 hours and 50 minutes into a 4-hour marathon. As a treat to myself, and since the train was expected to be fairly busy, I elected to pay the £20 for a first-class upgrade, which got me some snacks and a decent seat with a view for this long trip.<br />
<br />
Here's a map showing the usual route (in blue), and our diversion (in orange):<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-c5wjQGHjbbk/XqYTVzNAIaI/AAAAAAAAAuw/GHGfSPyYHZMX5yF9c8enhpo1lifsfVPhACEwYBhgL/s1600/OTD%2B2014%2BGWR%2Bdivert%2Bhighlighted.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="607" data-original-width="1466" height="165" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-c5wjQGHjbbk/XqYTVzNAIaI/AAAAAAAAAuw/GHGfSPyYHZMX5yF9c8enhpo1lifsfVPhACEwYBhgL/s400/OTD%2B2014%2BGWR%2Bdivert%2Bhighlighted.PNG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px;">Map based on <a href="https://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetMap</a>; © OpenStreetMap contributors</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
We left about six minutes late, and retraced our steps to Cardiff, again travelling via the Leckwith Loop and continued through Ninian Park station. Since the Leckwith Loop is only a single-track chord, this didn't produce any new track for me, but it did mean use of the crossover at Leckwith North Junction. We then approached Cardiff Central on the Up Barry Relief, before crossing the ladder at the west end of the station to gain access to Platform 1.<br />
<br />
From Cardiff Central we departed and proceeded as normal to call at Newport, and then carried on through the Severn Tunnel to Bristol Parkway. Since the route onwards towards Swindon was shut, after a 6-minute stop we reversed direction to head down Filton Bank (which was still two-track back then!) to Bristol Temple Meads.<br />
<br />
After a 13-minute stop at Bristol Temple Meads we reversed direction again to call at Bath Spa. But even the normal route onwards from Bath Spa was blocked, so we deviated right at Bathampton Junction to head through Bradford-on-Avon and Trowbridge towards Westbury.<br />
<br />
Just before Westbury, at Hawkeridge Junction, we peeled off onto the Westbury East Loop — allowing us to head towards London without having to reverse once more in Westbury station — and joined the "Berks and Hants" route into London, through Newbury. Although I'd done the Westbury East Loop before, it was always nice to do such an unusual piece of track again — like the Leckwith Loop, it gets a handful of services a day, so it's much easier to do it during engineering works.<br />
<br />
We carried on to Reading, where we arrived on time; however, due to even more engineering works, only two of the four tracks between London and Reading were open, so we crossed to the Up Relief east of Reading to crawl along the lines usually used by stopping trains. We ran quite early, so much so that we were held at Heathrow Airport Junction for six minutes awaiting a train from Heathrow to go in front of us.<br />
<br />
Once we got to Ladbroke Grove, where the four-track main line widens out into six tracks for the final approach to Paddington, we crossed unusually all the way across from Line 6 to Line 1 — enabling us to arrive into Platform 4 at Paddington a full nine minutes early at 15:42.<br />
<br />
I hot-footed it to the tube to head onwards to Victoria:<br />
<br />
<i>Bakerloo Line: 1545 Paddington to Oxford Circus, arr 1553</i><br />
<i>Victoria Line: 1554 Oxford Circus to Victoria, arr 1558</i><br />
<br />
Thanks to a very efficient cross-platform interchange at Oxford Circus, I arrived in Victoria only 16 minutes after I arrived in Paddington, very good going indeed! I recall the Bromley North service was running half-hourly, but I'd already had a long day and I was glad to be able to speed along onto my train to Bromley North:<br />
<br />
<b>1608 London Victoria to Bromley North, arr 1642</b> <br />
<i>Headcode: 2U40, operated by Southeastern using Networker 465016</i> <br />
<i>Distance: 12¼ miles</i><br />
<br />
To get to Bromley North from Victoria required almost as much of a magical mystery tour through South London as I had just had through Wiltshire and Berkshire! We departed on time from Platform 6 at Victoria, initially on the Down Chatham Slow, but crossing to the Down Chatham Fast at Grosvenor Bridge Junction. From there we carried on to Brixton Junction, where we turned left to run via the Catford Loop through Denmark Hill — another slightly unusual piece of track to be using.<br />
<br />
We called at Denmark Hill, Peckham Rye and Nunhead before turning left at Nunhead Junction to head towards Lewisham. But instead of using Platform 4 at Lewisham, as most trains from Victoria would, we used Platform 2, in order to head down the main line from Charing Cross through Hither Green.<br />
<br />
Just outside Grove Park, we crossed from the Down Slow all the way over to the branch platform (Platform 1), using the very unusual connection onto the branch — and when I say unusual, I mean <i>it doesn't have any booked passenger services!</i> On the one hand, this meant I didn't technically <i>need</i> to do it, as it didn't count as a line with a regularly-scheduled passenger service; but on the other hand, getting a passenger train over a bit of track that isn't normally used is pretty cool, no?<br />
<br />
After a minute or two stopped in the branch platform, we continued onwards to Bromley North — and although I didn't <i>need</i> to do the connection, I did need to do the branch itself, which I hadn't. However, while they'd opened Bromley North station specially on this Sunday to provide a service to the people of Bromley, they didn't bother doing the same for the one intermediate station on the branch at Sundridge Park — so, even more unusually, we sailed non-stop through the station!<br />
<br />
Arrival into Platform 2 at Bromley North was bang on time, at 16:42. By this stage the dull greyness had given way to drizzle, and rather than try and do anything clever I simply returned to the train to head back into Victoria:<br />
<br />
<b>1655 Bromley North to London Victoria, arr 1726</b> <br />
<i>Headcode: 2U90, operated by Southeastern using Networker 465016</i> <br />
<i>Distance: 12¼ miles</i><br />
<br />
After stopping at Grove Park platform 1, we crossed to the Up Slow to retrace our steps to Victoria, getting held briefly at Nunhead Junction for a train crossing our path. This brief delay meant we arrived into Victoria three minutes late at 17:29. By this stage I was quite hungry and grabbed some food to eat on the way home, before heading back to the tube and back to Paddington:<br />
<br />
<i>Victoria Line: 1744 Victoria to Oxford Circus, arr 1748</i><br />
<i>Bakerloo Line: 1751 Oxford Circus to Paddington, arr 1759</i><br />
<br />
Another cross-platform interchange at Oxford Circus, though the frequency on the Bakerloo line meant it wasn't quite as efficient as the previous one. Although I was heading back to Coventry, and the fastest route to do so would have been to head to Euston, because of the combination of tickets I'd used I had to go back via Reading, which meant leaving once more from Paddington:<br />
<br />
<b>1815 London Paddington to Reading, arr 1911</b> <br />
<i>Headcode: 2R63, operated by First Great Western using Turbo 165109*+165131</i> <br />
<i>Distance: 36 miles</i><br />
<br />
We left from Platform 13 at Paddington, one of the former Metropolitan Railway platforms converted for use by mainline trains, which has now disappeared: in order to lengthen Platform 12, Platform 13 had to go (or rather, Platforms 12 and 13 were effectively merged).<br />
<br />
Since I had to head back to Reading anyway, I elected to take a stopping train — as this gave a useful opportunity for a friend of mine in West Drayton to lend me a high-visibility jacket, which I needed for the following weekend. He duly met me on the platform and handed the orange jacket off through the train door, and I carried on to Reading without delay. (Possibly more of that story soon!)<br />
<br />
I knew that the CrossCountry trains from Reading to Coventry were only every hour, and I knew that I would likely just miss one, it being due out just two minutes before we arrived. However, I also knew that CrossCountry trains — by their nature of crossing the country — have a tendency to be late... as we were pulling in, I checked my phone and saw that the 19:09 hadn't left yet, so upon arriving at Platform 13 at Reading I ran up onto the huge brand-new footbridge and over to Platform 8...<br />
<br />
<b>1909 (actual 1912) Reading to Coventry, arr 2023</b> <br />
<i>Headcode: 1M70, operated by CrossCountry using Voyager 220001</i> <br />
<i>Distance: 79¾ miles</i><br />
<br />
Made it, just! We left just 90 seconds after I'd arrived at Reading. The rest of the journey home to Coventry was an uneventful journey on a familiar route: the only oddity being that we were routed through Didcot Parkway station (via Platform 3) without stopping, instead of going round the avoiding lines; this is sometimes done to avoid a conflict, although it does slow the train down a little bit.<br />
<br />
Nearly 12 hours after I left, I arrived back into Coventry just a minute late, after a very successful 474-mile day... of which perhaps 4 miles were new track — such is the life of track-bashing!Dave McCormickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16226892437669224991noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2638543736544799966.post-50610539753078706772020-03-29T15:41:00.000+01:002020-04-27T00:07:43.228+01:00On This Day: Diversions During the Reading Blockade, Easter 2013<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
Since we're all locked down due to the current pandemic, and I therefore can't indulge my hobby of going on trains for a fun weekend, I thought it might help everyone if I looked back at some of the many, many trips I've taken but never written about. So, welcome to the revival of my blog!</div>
<br />
Today's trip is from seven years ago today: Friday 29th March 2013, which was Good Friday. Due to the massive remodelling of Reading station, First Great Western trains were subject to some incredible diversions — so some friends and I took a trip to Paignton and back to sample the diversions.<br />
<br />
I think it's worth taking a moment to remember how transformational a project the Reading remodelling was: adding five new full-length platforms (while closing two short bay platforms), but more importantly grade-separating most of the conflicting movements to the west of the station with the incredible flyover structure installed.<br />
<br />
For comparison, here's the 2009 track layout:<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ApfaiiJx9jQ/XqYTw5pPZqI/AAAAAAAAAvQ/1x87rp201ss6pP4jQKtyCjNWRstoK1KuwCEwYBhgL/s1600/Reading-2009-new.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="520" data-original-width="1600" height="130" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ApfaiiJx9jQ/XqYTw5pPZqI/AAAAAAAAAvQ/1x87rp201ss6pP4jQKtyCjNWRstoK1KuwCEwYBhgL/s400/Reading-2009-new.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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<br />
And the 2015 track layout:<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kNqnW_rUTcE/XqYTxusVDuI/AAAAAAAAAvY/EANS4y7JXb0zN5ZbmyCOSH7scFPyIFBUACEwYBhgL/s1600/Reading-2015-better.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="520" data-original-width="1600" height="130" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kNqnW_rUTcE/XqYTxusVDuI/AAAAAAAAAvY/EANS4y7JXb0zN5ZbmyCOSH7scFPyIFBUACEwYBhgL/s400/Reading-2015-better.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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<br />
Obviously to get from one to the other took a lot of work, and one big chunk of that was done over the four-day bank holiday weekend at Easter 2013, which saw Reading shut to all but a handful of trains. The main job at Easter 2013 was to open platforms 12-15 and to slue the Relief Lines (shown above in green) to the north to create the space to build the rest of the new layout to the west of the station.<br />
<br />
However, with Reading shut, there's not an obvious way to get trains from the Westcountry and South Wales into London. But not running any trains would simply have left hundreds, maybe thousands of people trying to wait for dreaded rail replacement buses. This simply wasn't acceptable.<br />
<br />
Instead, some very commendable long-term planning on the part of First Great Western and Network Rail ensured that an hourly service between London and each of Bristol, Cardiff and Plymouth could be maintained throughout the block, using a variety of fascinating diversionary routes, shown in the map below.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-3jJtfrPR5I4/XqYTxJeIZGI/AAAAAAAAAvU/saMK2_BpFsMJ4914qM1qWKD_2d5M2oVWwCEwYBhgL/s1600/OTD-Easter-2013-map-traced.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="568" data-original-width="994" height="227" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-3jJtfrPR5I4/XqYTxJeIZGI/AAAAAAAAAvU/saMK2_BpFsMJ4914qM1qWKD_2d5M2oVWwCEwYBhgL/s400/OTD-Easter-2013-map-traced.PNG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px;">Map based on <a href="https://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetMap</a>; © OpenStreetMap contributors</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
The orange lines through Reading were shut for through trains for the whole weekend. Instead, trains to Bristol and Cardiff used the diversionary route into London Paddington via Banbury shown in green, while trains to Exeter and onwards to Plymouth and Penzance used route shown in blue into and out of London Waterloo!<br />
<br />
Both routes were incredibly rare territory for HSTs to use, especially the route into Waterloo. So my friends and I hatched a plan to go to Paignton and back, going out from Waterloo via Basingstoke, and coming back via Bristol and Banbury into Paddington.<br />
<br />
As I was living in Coventry at the time, my day started with a Pendolino from Coventry to London Euston:<br />
<br />
<b>0811 Coventry to London Euston, arr 0913 (actual 0924)</b> <br />
<i>Headcode: 1R21, operated by Virgin Trains using Pendolino 390154</i><br />
<br />
Oddly, even though it was a bank holiday, Virgin Trains were running more or less a full weekday service, complete with extra peak trains. Needless to say my train was pretty empty.<br />
<br />
Unfortunately we were held at Rugby for seven minutes to allow the late-running 04:28 from Glasgow Central to pass us. We lost a bit more time en route and eventually arrived into Euston 11 minutes late, meaning I had to hot-foot it to Waterloo:<br />
<br />
<i>Northern Line: 0928 Euston to Waterloo, arr 0937</i><br />
<br />
By the time I arrived the others were already on the platform for the FGW train to Penzance:<br />
<br />
<b>0959 London Waterloo to Newton Abbot, arr 1352</b> <br />
<i>Headcode: 1V36, operated by First Great Western using HST 43168+43040</i><br />
<br />
The train was fully reserved in standard class, so we walked to the far end of the train and took up a bay of seats in first class - £20 for the upgrade was more than worth it for the four-hour trip to Newton Abbot. Because the diversion entails a reversal en route, the train had first class at the country end, not the usual London end, so we had quite a trek to the far end of platform 11 to board our train.<br />
<br />
For some bizarre reason, although the FGW HSTs were booked to leave Waterloo at xx:07 — sandwiched between the xx:05 to Weymouth and the xx:09 to Poole — they were <i>advertised</i> as departing eight minutes earlier. The train was advertised to depart at 09:59 — although the automated announcements at Waterloo didn't have all the stations to Penzance recorded, so the announcements had some hilarious gaps in them — but we actually pulled out at 10:07.<br />
<br />
On previous occasions, HST diversions into Waterloo had been limited to the Windsor side, either direct from Reading via Waterloo, or from Woking via Chertsey. As I recall, this was the first time HSTs had been allowed to run along the South Western Main Line all the way up through Surbiton and Wimbledon.<br />
<br />
We were booked non-stop from Waterloo to Basingstoke, getting a pretty decent run at 42 minutes start-to-stop — only a couple of minutes longer than a non-stop run on (then) South West Trains. One of our friends was busy and couldn't make it, so a couple of our party decided to bellow out the droplights as we went through his station — though I'm not sure the good people of SW19 were expecting to hear "GOOD MORNING, WIMBLEDON" from a passing HST!<br />
<br />
After our stop at Basingstoke we continued towards Salisbury, getting checked briefly outside Salisbury station, before carrying on through Warminster and into Westbury. At this point we rejoined territory much more familiar for FGW HSTs, but in order to do so the driver had to change ends — the lines to Salisbury and Taunton face the same way out of Westbury. The reversal put first class into the more normal position at the back end of the train.<br />
<br />
After the reversal, which took all of five minutes, we carried on — still bang on time — round the Frome avoiding lines, to Castle Cary, where we had a long 9-minute stand in order to regain some semblance of a "normal" path — presumably the fact that Westbury only has three platforms prevented us from dwelling there any longer.<br />
<br />
We carried on, calling at Taunton and Tiverton Parkway, and into Exeter St David's, where we again had a long booked stand, this time of 17 minutes. This would probably have been done in order to keep most of the local service around Exeter — the lines to Barnstaple, Exmouth and Paignton — running to a relatively standard timetable.<br />
<br />
The last leg of our journey took us down the wonderful stretch past the sea wall at Dawlish, and onwards to our arrival at Newton Abbot at 13:52, bang on time.<br />
<br />
Unfortunately, our connecting train to Paignton was not on time; it was coming the other way, via Banbury and then via Bristol — and there had been a problem between Banbury and Oxford with a previous train, making our train just over an hour late. The original plan of having about 45 minutes in Paignton was thus scuppered, as our train was in fact going to be terminated at Newton Abbot. More significantly, this meant our train <i>back</i> to London was going to start from Newton Abbot.<br />
<br />
However, while I'd previously been to Torquay some years previously, I'd never done the last bit of track from Torquay to Paignton — so I all but insisted that we get another train to Paignton and back, even if it only gave us about 10 minutes in the town. We wandered into the small town of Newton Abbot to find some lunch — I think we ended up with fish and chips — and then back to the station.<br />
<br />
<b>1441 Newton Abbot to Paignton, arr 1500</b> <br />
<i>Headcode: 2T19, operated by First Great Western using Pacer 143603</i> <br />
and <br />
<b>1513 Paignton to Newton Abbot, arr 1529</b> <br />
<i>Headcode: 2F41, operated by First Great Western using Pacer 143603</i><br />
<br />
We took a Pacer to Paignton and came straight back, barely even stepping onto the platform, but at least the original aim of getting to Paignton was fulfilled. The train was fairly busy with families going to and from the seaside on a chilly but not unpleasant Good Friday. Of course, Pacers don't have first class, so we had to suffer standard class with the rest of the travelling public...<br />
<br />
We changed at Newton Abbot once more, crossing the footbridge to our train, which was just arriving an hour later than it should have been, to head back to London.<br />
<br />
<b>1549 Newton Abbot to London Paddington, arr 2025</b> <br />
<i>Headcode: 1A27, operated by First Great Western using HST 43010+43182</i><br />
<br />
Once again, we paid the £20 upgrade to sit in first class, as this journey was nearly 5 hours long, taking an even longer route to get back to London. We retraced our steps as far as Taunton, though this time calling at Teignmouth and Dawlish, with a longer-than-usual stop at Teignmouth putting us a few minutes late, but we were back on time by Taunton.<br />
<br />
After Taunton, we turned left at Cogload Junction instead of right, and carried on towards Bristol instead of Westbury. We called at Weston-super-Mare, which involved going on the loop through the station instead of round the (much faster) avoiding lines — which was track I hadn't been on until that day, so I was very pleased to finally do that bit of track!<br />
<br />
From Weston we carried on to Bristol Temple Meads, calling in platform 7 before carrying on to call at Bath Spa, Chippenham and Swindon. So far, so normal for a train to Paddington... but it was about to get decidedly weird.<br />
<br />
We continued up the Great Western Main Line towards Didcot, but just before Didcot we turned left — at Foxhall Junction — to take the Didcot West Curve, a piece of track making up the third side of the triangle at Didcot, which normally gets very few passenger trains. It briefly saw a regular service in the early 2000s, when FGW tried running direct trains between Bristol and Oxford, but they never took off.<br />
<br />
(Actually, until recently the last CrossCountry train from Reading to Birmingham ran via Foxhall Junction to reverse there and use the Didcot West Curve — for route knowledge retention purposes — and by coincidence I'd been on exactly that train three days previously, after an evening ticking off the old connection between the main part of Reading station and the "Southern" lines towards Wokingham... but that's another story.)<br />
<br />
So to get to go round the Didcot West Curve (just before sunset) was great fun, and a bizarre bit of track to be doing on a train from Newton Abbot to Paddington. We kept going to Oxford, which was our last passenger stop before London Paddington, before continuing north.<br />
<br />
The train then carried on northwards to Banbury, where we reversed — and in order to allow the reversal to take place, two brand-new semaphore signals had been installed! There had long been shunt signals to allow reversals to take place, but these are not generally allowed to be used by passenger trains, so they were replaced with brand-new signals, complete with finials (the decorative pointy caps on top of the signal post).<br />
<br />
From Banbury we then retraced our steps back to Aynho Junction, turning left there and heading through Bicester North and up the Chiltern route towards London. (Now, you may ask why we didn't use the direct line from Oxford to Bicester to save the faff of reversing at Banbury. The answer is that back in 2013, the line from Oxford to Bicester Town was just a branch line, with the Bicester south chord not having been built — so reversal at Banbury was the only option.)<br />
<br />
We carried on through Princes Risborough, High Wycombe and Gerrards Cross — all most unusual places for a FGW HST to be passing through! — before getting to West Ruislip. If we carried on we would have ended up at London Marylebone, so instead here we crossed over, to head south on the northbound track as far as South Ruislip, in order to gain the single line towards Greenford.<br />
<br />
The line from South Ruislip to Greenford and onwards to Old Oak Common is the remants of the New North Main Line: the Chiltern route was originally a joint venture between the Great Western Railway and the Great Central Railway, to provide them both with a faster route to Birmingham.<br />
<br />
However, the connection to Paddington fell into disuse from the 1990s, when services towards Birmingham were concentrated on London Marylebone. A single Chiltern Railways train per day was retained between London Paddington and West Ruislip to keep up route knowledge. But even that ceased to run in December 2018, when the route between Old Oak Common and Greenford was required to close for conversion to use by HS2, meaning that the Chiltern service now only runs between West Ealing and West Ruislip.<br />
<br />
So to have a FGW HST running along this stretch of the New North Main Line, while incredibly rare, was a sort-of tribute to a bygone age of express trains from Paddington to Birmingham (and on to Birkenhead!), and the unusual track made for a very enjoyable end to a long day.<br />
<br />
We'd made good time en route; although we'd left Banbury about 7 minutes late, the timings through Greenford had a bit of slack in them (a sensible precaution when trying to run four trains per hour over a single-track line), so we arrived into Paddington platform 8 four minutes early at 20:21.<br />
<br />
The five of us went our separate ways, and I grabbed a bite to eat (I think I may have gone to McDonalds, but I don't remember all that well now!) before heading for the tube to Euston:<br />
<br />
<i>Bakerloo Line: 2046 Paddington to Oxford Circus, arr 2054</i><br />
<i>Victoria Line: 2056 Oxford Circus to Euston, arr 2058</i><br />
<br />
I opted for the double-back at Oxford Circus, this being a little bit faster than the Circle Line — and I'm glad I did, as I made a train back to Coventry with just a minute to spare:<br />
<br />
<b>2103 London Euston to Coventry, arr 2206</b> <br />
<i>Headcode: 1G46, operated by Virgin Trains using Pendolino 390154</i><br />
<br />
By sheer coincidence, I ended up on the same Pendolino that I'd had that morning! The run back to Coventry was much less eventful than the morning run, and I arrived back on time to complete a 673¼-mile day, and one of my longest-ever days on trains.<br />
<br />
I recently discovered that I'd managed to save some paper timetables from the day — such was the extent of the works that FGW deemed it worth producing hefty booklets showing all the trains on their diversionary routes (though an hilarious misprint meant "Taunton" was printed instead of "Truro" on the front cover!).<br />
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<br />
The dates on the cover tell another story: although the full block at Reading was only four days, there then followed a week of a very temporary weekday timetable, with only half of Reading station open, while they tied the remaining tracks back together.<br />
<br />
That temporary timetable did not go very well: the timetabling was a bit too optimistic, and coupled with a slightly late completion of the engineering works, Easter Tuesday did not go well for FGW. A few hasty changes were made to the timetable for the rest of the week.<br />
<br />
But, after another all-line block on the following Sunday to complete the works, the station reopened in full the following Monday (8th April) and settled down to work in a temporary configuration for a couple of years, while the flyover was being built.<br />
<br />
Two years later, another all-line block at Easter 2015 was undertaken, with similar diversions, to complete the work at Reading and bring the flyover into use. (I confess that I'd enjoyed the 2013 diversions so much that I did it that I took a trip to Taunton and back in 2015 to experience it all over again — though that trip I did the other way round!)<br />
<br />
Ever since, Reading has gone from being one of the worst-performing stations, causing delay to almost every passenger who passed through, to one of the best-performing stations in the country — a testament to a vision for change on the railways.<br />
<br />
I hope to write more of these blogs in the future to keep us all sane during lockdown — let me know if there's any particular areas of the country from which you'd like to hear about my travels!Dave McCormickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16226892437669224991noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2638543736544799966.post-60783950313541291562015-09-21T11:21:00.000+01:002015-09-21T11:21:34.200+01:00A Scottish Success Story: Reopening the Borders RailwayOn Sunday 6th September 2015, a six-carriage train left the new station of Tweedbank at 08:45, bound for Edinburgh: for the first time in 46 years, trains had returned to the Scottish Borders. The <a href="http://www.bordersrailway.co.uk/">Borders Railway</a>, running for over 30 miles from the outskirts of Edinburgh to just beyond Galashiels to the small town of Tweedbank, is the biggest railway reopening project ever undertaken in Britain.<br />
<br />
The scene could hardly be more different than 46 years previously: when, on Sunday 5th January 1969, the overnight sleeper train to St Pancras pulled out of Edinburgh Waverley station at 21:56 and headed for Carlisle via Galashiels and Hawick, its path through the Borders was blocked by numerous protesters, and only after the local MP David Steel (who was on the train) intervened was the train able to proceed.<br />
<br />
Its eventual arrival in Carlisle, over two hours late, ended over a century of service on the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waverley_Route">Waverley Route</a>, a 98-mile railway passing through the heart of the Scottish Borders. After years of protests, the line fell victim to the infamous <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beeching_cuts">Beeching Axe</a>, with services withdrawn and some of the rails removed the very next day to symbolise the fact that the line was now closed.<br />
<br />
To leave such a wide area as the Scottish Borders without railway lines was one of the most controversial railway closures of the 1960s, not least because the railways in the Scottish Highlands serving far fewer people were kept open as a "lifeline". Even until its closure the Waverley Route had carried not just local trains but express trains to and from London, and its closure had a severe effect on the local economy.<br />
<br />
The Waverley Route opened from Edinburgh through Galashiels to Hawick in 1849, and was extended to the border city of Carlisle in 1862. Initially it served mainly local traffic, but after the opening of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Settle-Carlisle_Line">Settle-Carlisle railway</a> in 1876, the line was upgraded to carry the Midland Railway's express trains between St Pancras and Edinburgh.<br />
<br />
The stretch north of Carlisle was one of the toughest sections of mainline for drivers to work, with two summits at Falahill and Whitrope requiring 10-mile ascents at a gradient of 1 in 70. Combined with the many curves, this meant the Waverley Route was comparatively slow, and the Midland Railway could not compete with its rivals on the West and East Coast Main Lines on journey time between London and Edinburgh.<br />
<br />
Instead, the Midland laid on plusher coaches in an attempt to give the passenger a better experience. But plusher coaches couldn't make up for the simple fact that the Waverley Route was really a rural line, with no significant base of population along the route; Galashiels is the largest town, but even today it has just 22,500 people.<br />
<br />
In the era of rationalisation in the 1960s, then, the fact that there were two routes from Edinburgh to Carlisle was seen as duplication. The other line from Edinburgh served even fewer centres of population than the Waverley Route, but at Carstairs it joined the WCML, and it could thus be worked as a 28-mile branch line off the mainline to Glasgow. It was also straighter and not as steeply graded, with just the one major summit at Beattock to climb.<br />
<br />
With the local passenger services used by less than 10,000 passengers a week, and through traffic able to be accommodated on other lines, British Rail saw little reason to keep the Waverley Route open. Closure was initially proposed in the Beeching Report in 1963; the ultimately unsuccessful campaign to keep it open delayed closure until 1969, making it one of the last major closures. It was also one of the longest lines to be closed, second only to the Great Central Main Line, which closed a few months later.<br />
<br />
Almost as soon as the line had closed, people campaigned for the Waverley Route to be re-opened. The first serious study was undertaken in the early 1990s, but the key political change that made the reopening possible was Scottish devolution. With power devolved from Westminster to Holyrood, no longer could the plight of the Borders be ignored as simply a rural area remote from London; here was a significant part of Scotland, with an immense potential for tourism, and an obvious candidate for reopening the railway.<br />
<br />
With the area looking mainly towards Edinburgh, reopening the line from Edinburgh as far as Galashiels was a logical first step, with extensions onwards to Hawick (and perhaps even Carlisle) left as future possibilities. After much campaigning, in 2006 the Scottish Parliament approved the construction of the line from Edinburgh to a couple of miles beyond Galashiels, to the small town of Tweedbank, with the aim of Tweedbank being a railhead for the wider area.<br />
<br />
The line's construction was eventually costed at £294 million for a mainly single-track line with "dynamic loops", sections of double track a few miles long spaced to allow trains to pass at speed. The plans originally called for the 35-mile line to have 16 miles of double track, but this was reduced to just nine miles in order to cut costs and keep within the original budget.<br />
<br />
Although the line was originally built as double track, since closure a number of its bridges and tunnels had fallen into disrepair and required replacement prior to the reopening. In order to keep costs to a minimum, a number of the bridges were constructed to allow only a single track - meaning that if the line is to be fully redoubled in future the bridges will need to be rebuilt. Nonetheless, passive provision has been built in for an additional loop through Newtongrange station.<br />
<br />
Just seven new stations were opened with the line, the stations at Brunstane and Newcraighall having been opened in 2002 to provide a park-and-ride service into Edinburgh city centre. Four of the seven new stations, Shawfair, Eskbank, Newtongrange and Gorebridge, are in Midlothian, firmly aimed at commuters into Edinburgh. As a result, much of the benefit of the so-called Borders Railway will be felt not by the Borders but by Edinburgh itself, as commuters switch from car to train.<br />
<br />
Nonetheless, the three other stations, at Stow, Galashiels and Tweedbank, are right in the heart of the Borders: they will serve not just the town of Galashiels but also Melrose, Newtown St Boswells, and even Hawick. While there are undoubtedly those who commute from Galashiels and around into Edinburgh, whose journeys will be much improved, Galashiels will generate traffic in its own right, with visitors to the Borders finally able to get there by train.<br />
<br />
Indeed, just a few days after it opened, I was one of those visitors: on Thursday 10th September I took a trip from Edinburgh to Tweedbank and back. Unfortunately, not everything went as smoothly as could be hoped: the train I went for was eventually cancelled due to an engine problem, and I thus experienced first-hand the fact that, with a single-track railway built down to a price, one significant delay could ripple through the entire service.<br />
<br />
There are precisely enough passing places on the single-track line to support a half-hourly service, and no more. (This must be one of the few railways that is being used at 100% capacity immediately after opening!) The fact that the loops are "dynamic" means trains can pass at speed, and with the loops being a few miles long there is scope to recover from delays of a few minutes, but not much more.<br />
<br />
I had arrived in Edinburgh from London at about 16:15, and I walked over to get the 16:24 to Tweedbank from platform 7. The train was already pretty full, and I was lucky to get a seat - but given this was the last train on which off-peak tickets were valid until the 18:24 departure this was no great surprise. But 16:24 came and went; the crew for the train had been delayed, and by the time they got there at 16:35 or so, the engine had automatically shut down. The driver tried to restart the engine, but it spluttered and spluttered, sounding distinctly unhealthy.<br />
<br />
Eventually, after ten minutes or so, the guard announced the train was cancelled, and that passengers should join the next departure, the 16:50, from platform 20. Those of you who know Edinburgh station will know that platform 7 to platform 20 is one of the longest walks you can have to do in Edinburgh station! But I only got just back towards the concourse before I heard: "This is a platform alteration: the 16:50 Scotrail service to Tweedbank will now depart from platform 7."<br />
<br />
Everyone was rather confused, but it eventually became obvious what was going to happen: the 16:50 would come in to platform 7 and join up to the sickly 16:24, and the pair of units would go up to Tweedbank as one. Unfortunately, by the time the driver was informed of this, and by the time the trains were actually joined together, the train departed Edinburgh at 17:04, some 14 minutes late (and some 40 minutes later than I should have!).<br />
<br />
Part of the reason for this was that a train could be allowed to climb the 1-in-70 gradient up to the summit at Falahill with three of four engines working, but not with only one of two engines working. Indeed, we lost a further three minutes on our trip up the hill even with three engines working, although a booked five-minute stand at Shawfair (to let another train pass) allowed us to regain some lost time.<br />
<br />
The four-car train was now pretty busy throughout, with people standing in each carriage. A significant number of the passengers got off at Newcraighall, the well-established park-and-ride; from then on, everyone had a seat, but the train remained reasonably busy throughout. On leaving Gorebridge, the end of the Midlothian commuter belt, there were still at least half of the seats taken, and most of them remained on the whole way to Tweedbank. The trip back down to Edinburgh was rather less busy, but nonetheless well-used by people heading into Edinburgh in the evening.<br />
<br />
For much of its length the line felt like a commuter railway; but the scenery once into the countryside of the Borders was lovely, the fading autumn sunshine giving a wonderful yellow hue to the rolling hills and valleys. The line is a welcome addition to Scotland's already impressive array of scenic railway lines; indeed, Scotrail have begun refitting some of their Class 158 "Sprinter" trains to give better visibility, so that passengers can better admire the view.<br />
<br />
Teething troubles aside, the railway was well-used, and all the locals were quite excited to be able to use the train to get to Edinburgh. It seems clear that about half the business on the new line will come from commuters on the 13-mile stretch out to Gorebridge, and one option might have been to run a half-hourly service to Gorebridge, with an hourly service onwards to Tweedbank. Instead, though, there is a half-hourly service all the way to Tweedbank running until 8pm Monday-Saturday (with an hourly service at evenings and weekends), making it clear that the aim is to grow the Borders rather than simply provide for commuters into Edinburgh.<br />
<br />
If a passing loop were provided at Newtongrange, in combination with some reconfiguration of the tracks between Edinburgh and Newcraighall, it would in fact be possible to run a train every 15 minutes as far as Gorebridge (though not without difficulty), with a half-hourly service onwards to Tweedbank. That ought to be sufficient for many years to come, even if the line is extended to Hawick: I doubt that the line will ever be an alternative route from Carlisle to Edinburgh, but its potential to open the Borders up to tourism is considerable, and an extension to Hawick is certainly possible.<br />
<br />
Whether it happens will depend a lot on the success of the line. The Borders Railway was <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-south-scotland-34177585">officially opened by the Queen</a> on Wednesday 9th September, on the day she surpassed Queen Victoria as the longest-reigning monarch, lending a huge stamp of approval to the newly-reopened line. In the first ten days of operation, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-south-scotland-34290849">some 23,500 people used the line</a>, slightly higher than expected; if that kind of passenger usage can be sustained then the case for extending the line to Hawick will become a lot stronger.<br />
<br />
Scotland's railways have seen three major reopenings - <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stirling-Alloa-Kincardine_rail_link">Stirling-Alloa</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airdrie-Bathgate_Rail_Link">Airdrie-Bathgate</a>, and Edinburgh-Tweedbank - in the last eight years, and a steady programme of electrification proceeding apace, most notably on the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edinburgh_to_Glasgow_Improvement_Programme">Edinburgh-Glasgow main line</a> via Falkirk. This provides a remarkable contrast to England, where several major electrification projects are running late or have been put on hold, and the only major re-opening plan (for the line between Oxford and Milton Keynes) is still in the planning stage.<br />
<br />
Admittedly, there are some major projects in England, such as <a href="http://railwaydave.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/what-is-crossrail.html">Crossrail</a> and <a href="http://railwaydave.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/what-is-thameslink-programme.html">the Thameslink Programme</a>, which are much bigger in scale than anything being undertaken north of the border. Nonetheless, Network Rail in Scotland has just opened the longest domestic railway line in the UK for over a century, and it makes me want to ask: how can England can tap into that Scottish spirit?Dave McCormickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16226892437669224991noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2638543736544799966.post-50843406253822747232015-06-29T12:40:00.001+01:002015-06-29T12:40:12.056+01:00We Are Sorry To Announce...: Why Network Rail's Electrification Plans Are Running Late (and Over-Budget)Last Thursday, the Secretary of State for Transport, Patrick McLoughlin, made an announcement that seemed to throw Network Rail's ambitious upgrade plans for 2014-19 into disarray. The electrification of the Midland Main Line (MML), between London and Sheffield, and the electrification of the Trans-Pennine line, between Manchester and York, are to be "paused". Network Rail will instead concentrate their efforts on the electrification of the Great Western Main Line (GWML), which is running late and over-budget.<br />
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Fundamentally, the situation is simple: the cost of the <a href="http://railwaydave.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/what-is-electrification.html">electrification projects</a> has risen beyond the amount budgeted for the 2014-19 period. To remedy this, either Network Rail need more money to complete everything, or something has to be postponed in order to stay within the budget. Since Network Rail now counts as public sector, they can't just borrow their way out of trouble, as they have done in the past. The Treasury and the Department for Transport (DfT) aren't willing to give Network Rail more money, so the MML and Trans-Pennine electrification schemes have been delayed.<br />
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To their credit, the DfT also don't want to take money away from Network Rail: rather, they are actively trying to get the most out of the budget that they've set – there is certainly no way that funds will be transferred to other projects such as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Speed_2">HS2</a>, as some commentators have <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/26/hs2-vanity-project-network-rail">suggested</a>. A full review will be undertaken by the autumn, and by the end of the year we should have a much better idea of what will actually be electrified by 2019.<br />
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Whatever happens, though, Network Rail have an uphill struggle to get things back on track: the GWML electrification project provides an unfortunate case study in how a project with well-minded ideals can snowball out of control. Work is underway, but progress has been a lot slower than everyone would have liked. The plan had been to get wires to Oxford, Newbury and Bristol Parkway by 2016, to Bath and Bristol Temple Meads by 2017, and to Cardiff and Swansea by 2018, with the Welsh Valley lines following on from the mainline in South Wales. That plan, however, has proved hopelessly optimistic.<br />
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So where did it all go wrong? A number of things have led to the project running late and over budget, but fundamentally it boils down to two causes:<br />
<ul>
<li>Britain's railway industry lacked the experienced engineers and pre-existing equipment necessary to carry out large-scale electrification projects;</li>
<li>the scope of the GWML electrification project was gradually enlarged to include other upgrades that weren't originally included in the budget.</li>
</ul>
Given the lack of electrification that's taken place over the past couple of decades since privatisation, it's not all that surprising that the skills base that we had built up until the 1990s has dissipated, and we're basically having to start from scratch in recruiting and training a whole generation of engineers who can design, build and test the overhead line equipment necessary for electrification. That, at least, was foreseen and a large recruitment drive in the early 2010s did help matters there.<br />
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The GWML is the first electrification project being undertaken using a new <a href="http://www.networkrail.co.uk/news/2013/jul/Groundbreaking-factory-train-slashes-years-off-electrification-programme/">High Output Plant System (HOPS)</a>, designed by Windhoff. HOPS is, essentially, an all-in-one electrification "factory train", with segments containing all the equipment to drive piles, place stanchions, fit cantilevers, hang wires, and finally inspect and test the whole thing. (See <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFg0EOUJNrc">this fascinating YouTube video</a> for a visual explanation of what it does.) The principal benefit of HOPS is that it can run with the adjacent line open, making it much easier to take overnight possessions.<br />
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Unfortunately there were some delays in building the train in Germany, and also some teething troubles in getting the train working here in Britain, not helped by the fact the engineers were having to be trained at the same time. The electrification schedule was heavily dependent on using the HOPS train at full speed – for example, getting 24 piles driven every single night – but unfortunately that rate has only been achieved very recently, after well over a year of use; even now there are still some problems with the system.<br />
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The piling itself also caused delays, in more sense than one. In the 1980s, as an effort to combat copper thefts, many lineside cables carrying vital signalling equipment were buried next to the track to make them more difficult to access. Unfortunately, records were not kept of exactly which cables were buried where; it was thus almost inevitable that the piling work for electrification would end up piling right through those wires. In the short term, this caused huge disruption to commuters on the GWML, as signals went black for several miles at a time, sometimes taking days to fix. In the long term, it meant that an inventory of all trackside cables had to be drawn up before piling could continue, meaning more delays to the electrification project.<br />
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The signalling system caused another problem for electrification. In order to ensure trains cannot crash into one another, for over a century the signalling system has used <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Track_circuit">track circuits</a> to detect where trains are: simply put, you split a track into blocks, attach a wire to each rail, and when a train passes over the rails in a given block it completes the circuit and current flows. But since current from the overhead wires is liable to leak into the rails (since the rails are used to earth the train), those track circuits have to be modified in order to run electric trains, or alternatively replaced with axle counters (which simply count the number of axles passing a given point on the rails).<br />
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In fact, however, much of the signalling equipment on the GWML – not just the track circuits, but the signals and points too – was last modernised in the 1960s, and was approaching the end of its life anyway. Rather than simply "immunise" the existing equipment against electric trains, the decision was taken to replace the majority of the signalling equipment between London and Bristol; a similar project was already underway in South Wales when electrification was announced, and the remodelling of Reading station (see diagram <a href="http://railwaydave.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/what-is-intercity-express-programme-and.html">here</a>) already entailed moving the signalbox there anyway.<br />
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In and of itself, this wasn't a huge increase in cost, but it was a significant one. It led to "scope creep", where the exact scope for what is being upgraded is enlarged gradually, again and again, such that you don't quite notice the increase in cost until it's too late. The best example is the upgrade of the line between Bristol Temple Meads and Bristol Parkway: this was reduced from four to two tracks in the 1980s as a cost-saving measure, but with plans for a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Bristol_Metro">Greater Bristol Metro</a>, and the line being resignalled anyway, it makes sense to include the "re-quadrification" of this line in the resignalling of the Bristol area.<br />
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Similar upgrades include adding extra platforms at Oxford and West Drayton, and re-doubling the line between Swindon and Kemble (towards Gloucester). Such upgrades are undoubtedly a good idea, but they only add to the cost of the work on the GWML, particularly if they're added in at the last minute after the design has (supposedly) been finalised.<br />
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Moreover, it has exacerbated the shortage of engineers: any change to the network, big or small, requires specialist engineers capable of designing modifications to the signalling. The signal design engineers have had their hands full in recent years: lots of upgrades, combined with a drive by Network Rail to cut costs by consolidating signallers into huge <a href="http://www.networkrail.co.uk/news/2014/jul/Manchester-rail-operating-centre-opens/">Rail Operations Centres (ROCs)</a>, has led to a significant increase in resignalling work in the past few years. The supply of engineers simply can't keep pace with demand.<br />
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What does all this mean for the GWML electrification project? The cost has gradually crept up, from £1.1 billion when it was first announced in 2009, to £1.7 billion today, and the work is reported to be over a year behind schedule. On Thursday, McLoughlin declared that electrification of the GWML is now the DfT's "top priority", but it's not clear exactly what that will mean.<br />
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While the aims of getting wires to Bristol Parkway by the end of next year are clearly now impossible, there are two seemingly immovable deadlines that the GWML electrification team must face up to:<br />
<ul>
<li>the introduction of the new "very high frequency" timetable for the GWML in December 2018, involving full use of the new Hitachi <i>Super Express</i> trains as part of the DfT's <a href="http://railwaydave.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/what-is-intercity-express-programme-and.html">Intercity Express Programme (IEP)</a>;</li>
<li>the opening of <a href="http://railwaydave.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/what-is-crossrail.html">Crossrail</a> to Reading in December 2019.</li>
</ul>
This month's Modern Railways magazine suggests that the initial aim is just to get the wires to Swindon in time for December 2018: while the timetable was planned on the basis of electric operation, use of the IEP bi-mode trains in electric mode east of Swindon and diesel mode west of Swindon would just about be good enough to operate the desired timetable.<br />
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If it really does take until late 2018 to get to Swindon (and, one would hope, Oxford and Newbury too), then that represents a delay of over two years to the project. Given that the introduction of electric trains to commuter services between London, Oxford and Newbury is planned to initiate <a href="http://railwaydave.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/franchises-and-rolling-stock-cascades.html">a huge cascade</a> – in which the diesel trains currently used in the Thames Valley are to transfer to the Bristol area, allowing some of the oldest diesel trains in the country to be retired – delays to that cascade will have impacts across the country.<br />
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What effect will this have on the rest of the electrification project? Some would say that Network Rail and the DfT tried to bite off more than they could chew in launching more than one major electrification project to run simultaneously, especially when we didn't have a big enough basis of engineers or equipment. Allowing Network Rail to focus on one major line at a time (albeit with the electrification between Manchester, Preston and Blackpool, and between Edinburgh and Glasgow, still ongoing) will hopefully allow the team on the GWML to get to grips with the equipment, and then, hopefully, the whole team can be transferred to, say, the MML in about 2020.<br />
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While initial works on the MML and Trans-Pennine lines had begun, the only serious work that is already underway is the rebuilding of some bridges: a necessary precursor to any electrification project is to ensure that the electric wires actually fit above the railway you're trying to build them over. Fortunately, these works only involve relatively standard civil engineering teams, and that work can perhaps continue – albeit at a slower pace – while the GWML electrification team cracks on with the job.<br />
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Of course the delay to the electrification projects is disappointing: it means passengers will have to put up with diesel trains for even longer. Sadly, it is not yet beyond the bounds of possibility that the MML or Trans-Pennine electrification schemes could yet be scrapped, especially if money becomes much tighter. Paradoxically, though, their delay may actually be a benefit, not a hindrance. Indeed, that was very much the tone of McLoughlin's statement: on the Trans-Pennine electrification, he said "we need to be much more ambitious for that route".<br />
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Ironically, it is precisely the "scope creep" on the GWML that could show the way forward. Much like the GWML electrification, the MML and Trans-Pennine electrification projects were costed and budgeted for just that: electrification, and only electrification. But just putting wires on an existing route doesn't necessarily lead to a dramatic improvement in capacity: what you really want is to upgrade the various capacity pinch-points, spruce up the stations, and bring in new trains, all at the same time, in what British Rail used to call "Total Route Modernisation".<br />
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That, belatedly, is precisely what's happening on the GWML: Reading has already been completely rebuilt, with major upgrades at Oxford and Bristol to come, and three fleets of trains (the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intercity_Express_Programme">Hitachi <i>Super Express</i> trains</a> for long-distance services, and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail_Class_387">Class 387</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail_Class_365">Class 365</a> trains for commuter services) will be introduced in the coming years, commensurate with electrification. If MML and Trans-Pennine electrification are to be truly worthwhile, they must include major upgrades to the various pinch-points of the network too, and that kind of upgrade is much easier done before there are wires to get in the way.<br />
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On the MML, a completely remodelled layout at Derby station is already planned for the next few years, as is a straightening of the notorious S-bend at Market Harborough to raise the speed from 60mph to 85mph. But works at Leicester to segregate east-west flows from north-south flows, by adding a flyover at Wigston, would also best be done before the line is electrified; they are currently planned for 2019-2022, but they could yet be folded into a more comprehensive MML upgrade programme.<br />
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Similarly, the Trans-Pennine electrification programme has never really been sure what it's trying to provide for: plans for six trains per hour between Manchester and Leeds were first thought to require re-opening the two abandoned tunnels at Standedge, to permit the line between Stalybridge and Huddersfield to be returned to four-track operation; but then a plan was crafted to do away with the stopping services, instead stopping longer-distance services at alternate stations. The Trans-Pennine line would certainly benefit from a more thought-out upgrade programme, rather than just electrifying what's currently there and running the risk of preserving it in aspic.<br />
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Until the outcome of the review, led by <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-chair-of-network-rail-announced">the new Network Rail chairman</a> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Hendy">Sir Peter Hendy</a>, the future remains uncertain. It may yet be that some of the MML or Trans-Pennine electrification work can be started before 2019, but it's clear that their completion will be closer to 2025 than 2020 (and work on <a href="http://railwaydave.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/what-is-electric-spine-or-why-freight.html">the Electric Spine</a> has been quietly drop-kicked into the long grass). But frankly, at this rate, if Network Rail can get the majority of the GWML electrified by 2019 – say, as far as Bristol and Cardiff – they'll be doing quite well.Dave McCormickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16226892437669224991noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2638543736544799966.post-37047287148816463372015-03-31T12:00:00.001+01:002015-03-31T12:00:10.389+01:00Franchises and Rolling Stock Cascades: the Merry-Go-Round of the Privatised RailwayOne of the most common myths of the privatised railway is that the companies own the trains they operate. Nothing could be further from the truth: in fact, how the "rolling stock" of trains and locomotives is managed is probably the most complex part of the puzzle that makes up the <a href="http://railwaydave.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/should-we-renationalise-british.html">fragmented, privatised British railway network</a>.<br />
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With the trains owned by three rolling stock holding companies (ROSCOs), and each passenger operator running under a franchise from the Department for Transport (DfT), in a perfect free-market railway each franchise would be free to obtain rolling stock from any of the ROSCOs. But often there are only so many trains which are suitable for a particular route: long-distance trains on the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Coast_Main_Line">West Coast Main Line (WCML)</a> pretty much have to be <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail_Class_390">Pendolinos</a> or <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail_Class_221">Voyagers</a>, because they're the only trains that can tilt. Moreover, franchises are constrained by how much subsidy they get from the DfT: it costs more to buy a new fleet of trains than to just keep running the old ones. <br />
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How much subsidy a franchise gets is decided by the bidding process: companies compete for the rights to run trains in a particular area for, say, ten years or so. While the DfT decide the winning bid based on a number of different factors, often - but by no means always - the franchise goes to the company demanding the least subsidy. This means that a decision on whether to order new trains, thus requiring more subsidy, forms an integral part of a franchise bid.<br />
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As a result, the biggest news to come out of any franchise announcement is what new trains will be ordered, and where existing stock will move: <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-deal-for-rail-passengers-in-west-of-england-and-wales">last Monday's announcement</a> of a new 3½-year deal for First to run the Great Western franchise was no exception. In addition to the already-planned <a href="http://railwaydave.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/what-is-intercity-express-programme-and.html">IEP</a>, two new train fleets, one for Thames Valley commuters and one for travellers between London, Devon and Cornwall, were announced to great fanfare.<br />
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But this announcement - together with <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/transformation-of-rail-travel-in-the-north">last month's Invitation to Tender for the new Northern and TransPennine franchises</a> - marked a significant departure in DfT policy. Until now, the DfT has insisted that it has <i>no</i> national plan for rolling stock, and which trains are used where is a matter for the operators. Here, however, we see the DfT deciding, for the first time, which trains should go where. Why has there been such a change in policy?<br />
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One result of the franchise bidding process is that moving entire fleets of trains between lines is most easily done when a franchise expires. Often the introduction of new trains for one particular line can lead to a "cascade", as the older fleet moves to another line to replace an even older fleet, and so on. In the days of British Rail, railway managers were free to move rolling stock around to meet demand. The key difference between then and now, however, is that under the privatised railway such cascades have to be negotiated and planned, piece by piece, several years in advance, in contrast to the simplicity of single management decisions by British Rail.<br />
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A classic example of such a cascade under British Rail was the building in 1989 of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail_Class_321">Class 321s</a> for WCML commuter services between London Euston and Northampton: their introduction meant that the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail_Class_317">Class 317s</a> (dating from 1981) could be cascaded onto Great Northern local services between King's Cross and Cambridge, which in turn released the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail_Class_312">Class 312s</a> (dating from 1975) to run services between Liverpool Street and Clacton. One new fleet built, but three lines end up with more modern trains.<br />
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As long as the DfT insist that they have no national rolling stock plan, such a cascade is much more difficult to organise, and becomes a long, protracted affair (if indeed it can happen at all). But the <a href="http://railwaydave.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/what-is-electrification.html">massive electrification projects</a> presently being undertaken by Network Rail will require a huge cascade, with electric trains moving from existing lines in the south-east to the newly-electrified lines elsewhere. It seems that the DfT has finally decided it can no longer sit back and leave it all to the operators.<br />
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To the DfT's credit, it was foreseen from the outset that the first phase of the North-West Electrification would allow electric operation of services between Manchester, Glasgow and Edinburgh as early as December 2013, during the life of the existing TransPennine Express (TPE) franchise: as a result, an order for 10 new 4-car <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail_Class_350">Class 350</a> "Desiro" units was tacked onto an existing order by London Midland, and they entered service with TPE over the course of the winter of 2013/14.<br />
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But with new Northern and TPE franchises due to begin operating in April 2014 and April 2015 respectively, the plan was to leave it up to the bidders to propose which trains to use on the newly-electrified lines in the North-West as they went live from December 2014 onwards. Even though the electrification between Liverpool and Manchester was planned explicitly as somewhere to send the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail_Class_319">Class 319s</a> after they became surplus to requirements at <a href="http://railwaydave.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/what-is-thameslink.html">Thameslink</a> following the introduction of the new fleet, the new operators would not have been required to use them.<br />
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Then the InterCity West Coast franchise deal collapsed.<br />
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Back in August 2012, I wrote a <a href="http://railwaydave.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/the-government-giveth-and-government.html">blogpost</a> heralding the arrival of First West Coast, to replace Virgin Trains on long-distance services between London, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool and Glasgow on the WCML. But six weeks later, the DfT were forced to <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-19809717">admit</a>, on the eve of a court case brought by Virgin, that they'd got their sums wrong. The franchise deal was cancelled, and Virgin celebrated what they saw as snatching victory from the jaws of defeat.<br />
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In the aftermath of the West Coast débâcle, the whole DfT process of franchising was suspended for over a year while a full review was carried out. With a large number of franchises having been due to expire during 2013 and 2014, many franchises were awarded extensions without further bidding: in the InterCity West Coast example, Virgin were first awarded an extension from December 2012 to November 2014, which was later extended again to run until March 2017. Only then will another franchise competition lead to a (potential) change of operator; until then, Virgin Trains will continue to operate.<br />
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More importantly, the current Northern and TPE franchises have been extended until February 2016. With the wires between Liverpool, Manchester and Wigan going live in early 2015, the DfT were forced to step in to ensure that 14 Class 319s - later upped to 20 - would be transferred from Thameslink to Northern through 2014 and 2015. Even then, it will be late in 2015 before enough 319s have transferred north to cover all the possible electric services, even though the wires are already in use as of Thursday 5th March.<br />
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The delay is ultimately due to delays to <a href="http://railwaydave.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/what-is-thameslink-programme.html">the Thameslink Programme</a>: the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail_Class_319">Class 700</a> trains - due to replace the Class 319s - are running a bit late. To allow some 319s to be released as soon as possible, in December 2012 the DfT essentially used Southern as an "agent" to procure 29 new 4-car Electrostars from Bombardier, classified as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail_Class_387">Class 387</a>. Although two-thirds of them are already in service, with the rest following over the next few months, these 110mph trains were intended only as a stopgap: once the Class 700s arrive they'll be surplus to requirements at Southern.<br />
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This week's announcement of the new Great Western franchise has put one more piece in the puzzle of the ongoing rolling-stock cascade: the Class 387s were destined for the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Western_Main_Line">Great Western Main Line (GWML)</a> to run Thames Valley commuter services post-electrification. While the North-West electrification couldn't really justify brand-new trains, commuter services on the GWML are some of the most overcrowded in the country, and are thus a logical fit for the Class 387s.<br />
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To bolster capacity on the GWML, the 29 Class 387s currently entering service will be transferred to Great Western, and will be supplemented by another 8 newly-built Class 387s. Additionally, 21 of the 40 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail_Class_365">Class 365</a> fleet currently used by Great Northern services between King's Cross, Peterborough and Cambridge will also transfer over to the new Great Western franchise by 2018. This will enable <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail_Class_165">Class 165</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail_Class_166">166</a> trains currently operating in the Thames Valley to move to Bristol, displacing other diesel trains from there (the details of which are yet to be confirmed).<br />
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Again, however, thanks to the delays, this Great Western franchise is really just an extension of the existing First Great Western franchise that's operated, in some shape or form, since privatisation in 1996. In other words, this hasn't emerged as the result of a competitive tender: for the first time <i>the rolling stock movements have been specified by the DfT</i>.<br />
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And there's more: last month, the DfT released its "Invitation to Tender" for the new Northern and TransPennine franchises, due to take over in February 2016. These describe the services that the operators are obliged to run, and other conditions. Unusually, the DfT has specified some quite stringent conditions on the rolling stock to be used by the new franchises: the biggest headline was that the new Northern franchise would not be permitted to use <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacer_%28train%29">Pacers</a> from 2020 onwards.<br />
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I've written about Pacers many times before: put simply, they were built in the early 1980s out of bus parts, as a cheap way of keeping rural lines open by reducing operating costs. Most importantly, they are the only trains which have fixed axles, rather than bogies with proper suspension, and the ride quality can thus be quite poor. To a certain extent, the fact they are concentrated in the north of England means that trains across the north are not perceived as a pleasant way to travel, and they may even be suppressing demand as a result.<br />
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To replace the Pacers, the Northern franchise must procure 120 new carriages of diesel trains. Other than that, though, most of the Invitation to Tender gives the bidders a fair amount of freedom on which trains to use, and it remains to be seen exactly which electric trains will move north. Surely, though, given that the Class 319s are already established in the North-West, it would be cheapest - and most sensible - for bidders to recommend more 319s transfer north to cover the remaining electric services. We'll have to wait and see who wins.<br />
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So is the DfT likely to continue specifying which trains a franchise should use, or will the free market prevail? A lot of that will depend on who wins the next election: the scrapping of the hated Pacers is a very good vote-winning policy, and it can hardly go unnoticed that the Secretary of State for Transport, Patrick McLoughlin, was joined in making the announcement by the Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg, whose Sheffield constituency could vote him out in May.<br />
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For now, though, the announcement of the Great Western franchise brings some more clarity to the inevitable rolling stock cascade, which currently looks like this:<br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-V2GKJSYAIIo/VRm-Hn0w2fI/AAAAAAAAATQ/bPc-BRCjKG0/s1600/RollingStockCascade.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-V2GKJSYAIIo/VRm-Hn0w2fI/AAAAAAAAATQ/bPc-BRCjKG0/s1600/RollingStockCascade.png" height="233" width="320" /></a></div>
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And that's just what we know about already! That doesn't tell the story of what happens to the 59 remaining Class 319s, or what becomes of the stock that is displaced by some of these moves, or which trains will be scrapped. For that, as always, we'll have to wait for the next franchise announcement...Dave McCormickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16226892437669224991noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2638543736544799966.post-52750021152074797652014-12-29T12:28:00.000+00:002014-12-29T12:28:00.470+00:00Dispatches from Across the Irish Sea: The Busiest Single-Track Mainline in the UKOver in Northern Ireland, very quietly, something quite remarkable is happening: for the past 18 months, Northern Ireland Railways have been running an <i>hourly</i> service on a single-track mainline with only a handful of passing places. This makes it the busiest entirely single-track mainline in the United Kingdom. While home in Northern Ireland this Christmas, I decided to investigate how this feat of timetabling actually works in practice.<br />
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The <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belfast%E2%80%93Derry_railway_line">mainline in question</a> is that running north out of Belfast, through Antrim, Ballymena and Coleraine and onwards to Northern Ireland's second city, known to one side as Londonderry and the other as Derry. (There's <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derry/Londonderry_name_dispute">an entire Wikipedia article</a> on the naming dispute, if you really want to know.) For the avoidance of confusion I will call it Londonderry throughout, simply because that's what's printed on the timetable (rather than any assertion of my own political affiliation).<br />
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Londonderry, a city of 90,000 people, is out on a limb - some might say a <a href="http://westsomersetrailway.vticket.co.uk/article.php/742/the-withered-arm-and-the-atlantic-coast-express-spring-steam-gala-2014">withered arm</a> - of the NI railway network, with journeys from Belfast taking slightly over two hours. One problem is that Londonderry is just 70 miles from Belfast by road, but 95 miles by rail, thanks largely to the railway having to avoid the Sperrin hills of Mid-Ulster by heading first for Ballymena and Coleraine and then hugging the north coast.<br />
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Moreover, the rail network in NI suffered severe cuts in the 1950s, and for many years the whole network was run down, with just a basic service provided. While the entire line from Belfast to Ballymena, some 33 miles, was once double-track, now just five miles of double track remain at the Belfast end where the line is shared with trains to and from Larne, with the rest of the line reduced to a single track, with loops for trains to pass each other.<br />
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But the 1990s and 2000s saw a revival in fortunes, with reopened lines and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belfast_Great_Victoria_Street_railway_station">stations</a>, and a brand-new <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dargan_Bridge,_Belfast">bridge over the River Lagan</a> in Belfast, all of which contributed to a significant upsurge in use. This was followed in the late 2000s by a complete replacement of the outdated fleet of 1970s slam-door trains with new, comfortable units built by CAF in Spain. Delivered in two batches in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NIR_Class_3000">2005</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NIR_Class_4000">2011</a>, the 43 three-car diesel units have revitalised the network. (The closest comparable trains in England would be the three-car <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail_Class_185">Class 185</a> Desiro units operated by TransPennine Express.)<br />
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This much-needed investment was hard to come by, for a number of reasons. For one, the railways in Northern Ireland are still entirely nationalised. But more importantly, the size and usage of the network is so much smaller even than, say, Scotland that even investment in basic track renewals - which are taken completely for granted in Great Britain - have to be fought for with the government in Northern Ireland.<br />
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In other words, the fact that NI Railways secured £64 million for upgrades to the track between Ballymena and Londonderry - even after spending £185 million on new trains - represents a very significant investment in transport in NI. The investment will allow speeds on the line to be upgraded, removing some long-standing speed restrictions. The work between Ballymena and Coleraine was completed in 2013, with the line closing for several months, while the work between Coleraine and Londonderry is due to be completed by 2016.<br />
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In particular, the speed improvements have already meant that an hourly service can now run between Belfast and Coleraine, a distance of some 60 miles, with only five miles of double track at the Belfast end and six intermediate passing loops (only four of which are in regular use). Indeed, there are enough passing loops to allow a roughly half-hourly service in rush hours in the peak flow direction, with two extra trains into Belfast in the morning and two out again in the evening.<br />
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Most impressively, none of the passing loops on the line between Belfast and Londonderry are longer than half a mile: in other words, they all require one or both trains to come to a stand in order for them to pass. While the line between Salisbury and Exeter, with an hourly service, is largely single-track, there is a 10-mile section of double track at Yeovil, and a three-mile stretch at Axminster, giving some margin for error in running an hourly service. Similarly, the Ipswich-Lowestoft line has some double-track sections to help facilitate its hourly service.<br />
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So rather than claiming the line to Londonderry as the busiest single-track mainline, you could well argue that it's the maddest; that it's crazy to try and run even an hourly service on a single-track line with no "dynamic loops" - double-track sections which allow trains to pass on the move, rather than forcing one train to come to a stand - let alone to try and run a half-hourly service in the rush hour.<br />
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Indeed, most single-track lines in Great Britain are either short branch lines - such as those in Cornwall - or long lines through rural Wales or Scotland, where there might be only four trains a day. Inter-city services on single-track lines are much rarer, and not that much more frequent: even on, say, Perth-Inverness, the service remains irregular, with a train every 90 minutes or so.<br />
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Nonetheless, a single-track line to Londonderry has been sufficient until now - the 62 miles between Ballymena and Londonderry were built as single-track and have remained so ever since. And the fact is that, while some upgrades might be feasible if this were England, the NI railway network is so much smaller that even upgrading any significant length of the line to double track would cost far more money than is available. As a result, NIR have become experts at make-do-and-mend.<br />
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However, having achieved an hourly service between Belfast and Coleraine with only some track renewals, they now want to extend the hourly service all the way to Londonderry. To do that, they need an extra passing loop. Beyond Coleraine, there is just one passing loop at Castlerock on the 34-mile line run to Londonderry, and that loop is only six miles from Coleraine. Unfortunately, to get a train from Castlerock to Londonderry and back takes about 75 minutes - making it impossible to run an hourly service.<br />
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So part of the £64 million will be spent building an extra passing loop at Bellarena, some seven miles closer to Londonderry, which will permit an hourly service to run, at least in theory: it will certainly be tight to keep everything running to time. Part of the justification for the spending is that it entails the removal of the loop at Castlerock, along with the antequated signalling there - this will mean a reduction in running costs for years to come.<br />
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For the time being, until the passing loop at Bellarena is completed, the hourly service from Belfast to Coleraine continues every two hours to Londonderry, and in the other hours the train along a short 6-mile branch from Coleraine to the popular seaside resort of Portrush.<br />
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To see how it all runs, I took myself on a day trip to Londonderry and Portrush on the Sunday after Christmas. NI Railways do an excellent "Sunday Day Tracker" ticket, where you can go anywhere on the NI Railways network for just £7 - a fantastic value ticket even by comparison to some of the excellent Day Rangers in England, and even if it were twice the price it would be a bargain. A shame it's only available on Sundays!<br />
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I caught the 11:20 service from Belfast Central to Londonderry. About five miles north of Belfast, we diverged from the line to Larne at Bleach Green Junction; just as we did, we passed a train coming the other way, just before we entered the single line towards Antrim. Half an hour after crossing that train, we arrived in Ballymena, where the next hourly service was waiting to pass us. We proceeded to Ballymoney and waited for five minutes for the next train to pass us.<br />
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It was clear at this point where the timetable had been fudged ever so slightly: Ballymena and Ballymoney are only about 24 minutes apart, even with a call at the intermediate station of Cullybackey. By adding a few minutes at either end, the timetablers created a repeating hourly pattern, where the line was occupied one way for each half of the hour. This also, helpfully, provides a little bit of slack to minimise the knock-on effect of delays. It certainly seemed to function very smoothly for my journeys north and south: the train north was on time all the way, and the train south was all of a minute late back into Belfast.<br />
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The Cambrian line, connecting Shrewsbury in England to Aberystwyth on the west coast of Wales, has long had an aspiration for an hourly service, having suffered for years with a two-hourly service to one of the most important tourist regions in Wales. The infrastructure is now in place for trains to run every hour, with an extra passing loop at Dovey Junction and a dynamic 2-mile double-track section at Welshpool.<br />
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Once the rolling stock becomes available it is hoped to have an hourly service at least for the morning and evening rush hour from May 2015. But they could do well to learn from NI Railways in how to run and manage a long single-track line: even the Belfast-Coleraine section proves it's possible to run a reliable hourly service.<br />
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What's more, though, is that the line between Coleraine and Londonderry is easily one of the most stunning railway lines in the whole of the British Isles. Upon departing Coleraine, you hug the west bank of the River Bann, which on Sunday was like a millpond, beautifully calm. After gradually edging away from the Bann, we arrive in Castlerock, and then head into a 600-metre long tunnel.<br />
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At the other end, you emerge for all of 100 metres into daylight, greeted on the north side by the most stunning rough seas and rocky shores of the north Atlantic coast. And after another 300-metre-long tunnel, you come to Downhill Strand, one of the longest and most stunning beaches in Northern Ireland. With the rough waves still lapping onto the shore, the view is easily a rival to Dawlish (if somewhat shorter) and certainly one of the best in the UK.<br />
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Further west, as the north shore becomes less exposed and turns into Lough Foyle, there are thousands of wading birds to be seen. In the background, you can see across the estuary to Malin Head in County Donegal, which, in spite of being the northernmost part of the island of Ireland, is in the Republic of Ireland - and indeed, such is mobile phone coverage in that area that my phone briefly picked up a signal from across the border!<br />
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It's easily been a decade since I was on the line to Londonderry, and I'd honestly forgotten quite how stunningly beautiful the line is. Michael Palin went as far to describe the Coleraine-Londonderry line as "one of the most beautiful rail journeys in the world". I look forward to the improved service making it possible for even more people to see the wonderful scenery on this busiest (and maddest) single-track railway line.Dave McCormickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16226892437669224991noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2638543736544799966.post-14501927873479986652014-12-27T21:00:00.001+00:002014-12-27T21:00:26.991+00:00Overrunning Engineering Works: A Perfect Storm?Three words that inevitably strike fear into any rail passenger's heart: "overrunning engineering works". This Christmas, as with every year, Network Rail used the two-day Christmas shutdown to perform essential maintenance and upgrade work on the British railway network. Unfortunately, it didn't all go to plan: the work at Kings Cross station in London has overrun, and on Saturday 27th December there were <i>no trains</i> to and from Kings Cross. This has left passengers between London and Scotland without any direct trains all day.<br />
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The Office of Rail Regulation has announced a review into the major disruption to passengers caused by the overrunning engineering work, and not just that at Kings Cross: work at Paddington also overran, although the station was reopened by 2pm on Saturday. Let me try and pre-empt the review, and offer some insight into what happened and why.<br />
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First of all, what happened at Kings Cross? There were several sites of engineering work between Kings Cross and Alexandra Palace, just five miles outside London on the East Coast Main Line (ECML). The ECML is undergoing some upgrade works to cope with the extra Thameslink trains that will run on the line from 2018. One of those sites was at Holloway South Junction, between Kings Cross and Finsbury Park, where the overhead electric wires were being renewed; unfortunately it seems that this work has overrun.<br />
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How on earth can this have happened? Minor overruns of an hour or two are (unfortunately) not particularly uncommon, but the disruption is usually limited. In this case it's clear that something has gone badly wrong, with the work running nearly 24 hours late. The overall package of works was planned from Christmas Day to Sunday 28th, with just one track into and out of Kings Cross on Saturday and Sunday, and a limited service running all weekend. Unfortunately, not even that one track was available on Saturday.<br />
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Whose fault is it? Ultimately, the responsibility for engineering works lies with Network Rail, who own and maintain all the tracks: however, much of the actual work is done by engineering firms working as subcontractors. It may well simply be that the failure of one piece of equipment has made it impossible to complete the works in time; hopefully that detail will come out in the ORR report.<br />
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However, Network Rail (and its subcontractors) are largely invisible to the travelling public: they don't run any trains, and they only operate a handful of stations (including Kings Cross). Instead, most of the blame gets heaped on the train operators - in this case, East Coast and Great Northern, along with the smaller operators Grand Central and Hull Trains.<br />
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The operators are really in an impossible situation. On the one hand, they've got thousands of angry passengers who can't get where they want to go, and at this time of year they get accused of "ruining Christmas". On the other hand, they're dependent on Network Rail to provide the tracks they need to run on, and they get told the night before that they can't.<br />
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As a result, they have had to scramble to provide any semblance of a service. The first problem was that, while these things are usually planned the night before, there were very few staff in on Boxing Day to do any of the planning. So the service was cobbled together overnight: with Kings Cross shut, East Coast elected to (try and) run a half-hourly service as far south as Finsbury Park, where passengers could change for the Victoria Line for services into London: a perfectly reasonable plan that has been used many times before during planned engineering works on Sundays.<br />
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The second problem was a lack of platform capacity. There are 12 platforms at Kings Cross (although only six of those would have been open today). At Finsbury Park, however, there are just two platforms that can be used to turn trains from the north: trains arrive in platform 4, and can either depart from platform 4, or shunt empty to platform 5 and depart from there. With everything running smoothly, this can just about sustain a half-hourly service.<br />
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But did it run smoothly? Not a chance. Huge queues started to build up at Finsbury Park from mid-morning, as all passengers who would have travelled out of Kings Cross were advised to head to Finsbury Park. At least twice the station had to be shut due to overcrowding, and as a result there literally wasn't enough room to let people off the trains: as a result a queue of southbound trains built up, with some arriving at Finsbury Park nearly three hours late. This meant that trains heading back north were also delayed, with just five long-distance trains managing to leave Finsbury Park between start of service (at about 10am) and 3pm. During the afternoon the service started to recover, but thousands of journeys were disrupted across the day.<br />
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Lots of people are asking: who on earth thought that Finsbury Park was an acceptable substitute for Kings Cross? I can sympathise with their concerns, but there really was no other alternative. There are only so many stations on the ECML with the necessary signalling to terminate trains and send them back north again: the next reasonable alternative would have been Stevenage. Finsbury Park at least had the advantage that people could use the Victoria Line to get to and from Kings Cross. And diverting trains off the ECML onto other lines would have been impossible at short notice, as the drivers wouldn't be cleared to drive on other lines (see <a href="http://railwaydave.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/what-is-automatic-train-operation-and.html">here</a> for my earlier post on driver "route knowledge").<br />
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So why not just divert the passengers to the trains running on other lines north from London? Sadly, the other main route to Scotland, the West Coast Main Line (WCML) from Euston, was also closed for engineering works at Watford Junction, and will remain closed until Monday morning. The wisdom of closing both the WCML and the ECML - and thus leaving neither major route from London to Scotland open - is certainly questionable, and undoubtedly made the bad situation much worse. The only other line out of London to the north is the Midland Main Line (MML) from St Pancras, which doesn't have as much capacity as the WCML or the ECML (its trains are considerably shorter and less frequent).<br />
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Indeed, during the August bank holiday weekend there were also simultaneous closures at Watford and Kings Cross, and that weekend there were horrendous crowds at St Pancras as people tried desperately to head north. But then, at least, Kings Cross remained partially open, with a couple of trains in and out each hour, and passengers mainly got where they were trying to go. With Kings Cross completely shut, that left both the WCML and the ECML at severely reduced capacity.<br />
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The fact is, however, that the period between Christmas and New Year is pretty much the only week-long period with very few commuters, and thus the only time to avoid disrupting people's journeys to and from work. Many people who only take the train at Christmas (or a few times a year) come away thinking that the railways never work, precisely because of all the engineering work. But when well over a quarter of ticket revenue is from season ticket holders, the railway can't annoy commuters too much. Ultimately, both the Watford and Kings Cross works needed a four-day block, which is only available at Christmas and Easter. (See <a href="http://railwaydave.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/bank-holiday-engineering-works-bus.html">here</a> for my earlier post on bank holiday engineering works.)<br />
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The other overrunning engineering work, at Paddington, has got rather less attention in the press. The four lines between Paddington and Slough were shut for engineering works over Christmas Day and Boxing Day, and were due to reopen on Saturday morning. Unfortunately, all four lines into Paddington remained firmly shut until 2pm, when two of the lines were reopened. Trains from the west, on the Great Western Main Line (GWML) were instead turned at Reading during the morning. It's not exactly clear what caused the disruption.<br />
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What makes the Paddington disruption different to that at Kings Cross? For one, the availability of diversionary routes: passengers between Reading and London can use the alternative South West Trains route via Staines and Clapham Junction, while passengers for Heathrow can use the Piccadilly line. Secondly, Paddington was able (finally) to open at about 2pm, and from then a relatively normal service could resume.<br />
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One difference, though, was that the Paddington disruption was not advertised in advance. It was clear by about midday on Boxing Day that there would be significant disruption to trains in and out of Kings Cross, and the railway companies managed to get that message out fairly well. (Indeed, the fact that they got the message to travel to Finsbury Park out so well may actually have worked <i>against</i> them in making the overcrowding at Finsbury Park so bad!) The Paddington disruption, in contrast, seemed to come completely by surprise and was all the more disruptive for it.<br />
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All in all, the whole debacle caused absolute chaos for passengers trying to travel to and from seeing friends and relatives after Christmas. While commuter journeys and business traffic is much reduced between Christmas and New Year, there's a significant boost in leisure traffic. Thanks to the perfect storm of planned and overrunning engineering works, those passengers travelling between Scotland, the north of England and London have been very badly hit today, and I hope that lessons are learned.<br />
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I can't help feeling, though, that we've been here before: back in 2007, three sets of Christmas engineering works overran at the same time, at London Liverpool Street, Rugby and Glasgow Central. Ultimately, that was down to there simply not being enough engineers qualified to deal with overhead electric wires to go round - something all three sites required in abundance. I can't help but feel a slight sense of déjà vu: there are at least five separate engineering worksites this Christmas which require modifications to overhead wires, and I hope that history is not repeating itself.<br />
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The thing which worries me most is that Kings Cross is by no means the largest piece of engineering work going on this Christmas. The aforementioned works at Watford Junction are due to be completed by the morning of Monday 29th. Moreover, there are huge projects underway at Reading and London Bridge which are due to reopen on Monday 5th January, which will be the first day back to work for the majority of commuters - if either of those projects run late, then the crowds at Finsbury Park will start to look small by comparison.<br />
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Ultimately, though, I would like to pay tribute to all the Network Rail engineers who are out there doing their best to complete the improvement works on time; while most of us enjoyed our Christmas dinners, they were out there working hard to keep our railways running, and I wish them the best of luck in getting all this engineering work completed on time.Dave McCormickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16226892437669224991noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2638543736544799966.post-9536193838421934712014-09-16T11:34:00.000+01:002014-09-16T12:13:14.602+01:00Should We Renationalise the British Railways? That's Not the Right QuestionLet me start with a surprising statement: the Department for Transport (DfT) now exerts far more control on the British railways than they ever have before. And yet, the railways are more "privatised" than they have been since the start of the First World War. Welcome to the confusing, contradictory world of Britain's rail industry. <br />
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<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail">British Rail</a> was privatised in 1994, and ever since there have been calls to renationalise it. But the biggest change wasn't that the railway network was privatised; the biggest change was that it was <i>fragmented</i>, broken down into literally dozens of separate companies all ostensibly trying to work together to provide a unified National Rail network, all the while each trying to extract their own little margin of profit.<br />
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What this means is there isn't a "British Rail PLC" that can simply be renationalised, but rather a whole multitude of companies which would need to be recombined were we to try and renationalise the railways.<br />
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What are these companies? In a nutshell, the privatised railway can be explained as follows: one company owns the tracks, three more companies own the trains, and about 20 other companies run the passenger services. In theory, they all work together to move passengers around, but are also in competition with each other...<br />
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How did we end up with this mess? To answer that we must turn to politics. In 1992, the Conservative Party included in their election manifesto that they'd privatise the railways if they won the election. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It%27s_The_Sun_Wot_Won_It">To the surprise of everyone</a>, they won, and then had to make good on that election promise. In 1993, the blueprint was laid out for privatisation: although ostensibly designed to generate competition between the different sectors, the cynic in me wants to believe that the government knew they'd probably lose the next election (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_general_election,_1997">they did</a>), and thus set about privatising the railway in a way that couldn't ever be undone. (Nonetheless, I am reminded of the aphorism: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor">"never assume malice when stupidity will suffice".</a>)<br />
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The tracks, points, signals and stations were sold off to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railtrack">Railtrack</a>. Railtrack were a profitable company, listed on the London Stock Exchange and part of the FTSE 100 index. But after a litany of accidents, including <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatfield_rail_crash">Hatfield</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potters_Bar_rail_accidents#2002">Potters Bar</a>, Railtrack's assets and operations were transferred to the state-controlled not-for-profit company <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_Rail">Network Rail</a> in 2002.<br />
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Meanwhile, the trains were sold off to three rolling-stock holding companies (ROSCOs): <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angel_Trains">Angel</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eversholt_Rail_Group">Eversholt</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porterbrook">Porterbrook</a>. Between them, these three companies own practically all the trains, locomotives and carriages used on the British railway network, being leased back to the companies that operate them. In other words, all the trains that used to belong to British Rail were sold off, and <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-29098340">about 11%</a> of the ticket price you pay goes to leasing them back from the ROSCOs! And, unlike Network Rail, the ROSCOs are very definitely private companies and all make a tidy profit.<br />
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Most importantly, though, privatisation created 25 train operating companies (TOCs): each part of the country was carved off into a separate franchise, and each was awarded separately to be run by a private company. Each franchise controls the drivers, guards and other operating staff, and is responsible for running the day-to-day service with rolling stock leased from the ROSCOs. Minimum numbers of services per day are specified (usually quite tightly) in the franchise agreement, ensuring that passengers are provided with the service they expect.<br />
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One of the aims of privatisation in this form was competition: different companies should "compete" for passengers, driving down prices while improving quality. But that doesn't really work on a railway network with limited capacity, and with a complicated interwoven timetable. In many cases there's more than one company on each line - for example, both Virgin Trains and London Midland operate services on the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Coast_Main_Line">West Coast Main Line</a> out of London Euston to Watford, Milton Keynes, Rugby, Birmingham and beyond - but there are only a limited number of trains that can be run.<br />
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So how do they decide who gets priority? The short answer is that Network Rail does. Each TOC bids for "paths", much like air-traffic control slots, to run a train at a particular time, and then Network Rail decides which paths can go to which operators, and effectively the actual timetable is written, as a whole, by Network Rail. In cases of dispute, things can get referred to the Office of Rail Regulation; sometimes the dispute is resolved by the DfT specifying the exact timetable. This means that the DfT can specify exactly how much competition they want (often none at all).<br />
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Perhaps the most laughable way in which this fragmentation manifests itself is when trains inevitably get delayed. If London Midland say to Virgin, "Oi! You delayed our train!", it's not really good enough if Virgin just mumble "Sorry...". No, this is a <i>commercial</i> railway where London Midland must be compensated for the delay caused by Virgin. As a result, Network Rail employ hundreds of <i>train delay attribution clerks</i>, whose entire job is to monitor delays to trains and attribute every minute of delay to a specific cause, and thus determine who pays the compensation. (Operators get compensated when a train is delayed by just 3 minutes; sadly they have to be delayed by 30 minutes for them to pass such compensation on to the passengers.)<br />
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That basic structure has been with us now for 20 years, since privatisation took effect on April 1st 1994. There are a lot more details - such as all the subcontractors employed to clean the trains, run the catering services, upgrade the tracks, design the signalling systems - and I'm ignoring freight trains and open-access operators, but you get the picture: the railways no longer function as one, but rather as a myriad of separate companies.<br />
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In a small number of cases, that's led to a dramatic improvement in services, particularly with CrossCountry Trains, the long-distance services such as Bournemouth-Manchester and Plymouth-Edinburgh which avoid London and instead pass through Birmingham New Street. Under British Rail, CrossCountry was always the Cinderella of the network, passed from pillar to post with no investment to speak of for decades; with CrossCountry as a separate franchise, Virgin were able to dramatically improve the service. Although, it is now a victim of its own success and the trains are too short, and no-one wants to subsidise lengthening the trains...<br />
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And there lies the rub: subsidy. Ever since the then-Transport Secretary Barbara Castle decided in 1968 that some lines could remain open even though they would require permanent subsidy from the Treasury to operate them, all political parties have accepted the principle that the railways should be subsidised by the government. Even as privatisation was enacted, it was accepted that the franchises would, in many cases, require government subsidy to operate; conversely, some of the more lucrative franchises (principally long-distance inter-city operators like Virgin and GNER/East Coast) were required to pay premiums back to the Treasury. This ensured that the principle of cross-subsidisation - where lucrative services propped up loss-making ones - continued as it had done for years.<br />
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Of course, when it was all one British Rail, there was no profit to be made; every penny of subsidy went towards improving punctuality and upgrading services. But with the railway fragmented into lots of pieces, allocating subsidy is all of a sudden a trickier job. Previously the job of dishing out money to individual regions or services was the job of the British Railways Board, which operated at arms' length from the DfT, much like today's Network Rail. But without the BR Board, that function is instead fulfilled by the Department for Transport itself.<br />
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In other words, the DfT is now the one deciding that, for example, Manchester Piccadilly gets two extra platforms and freight trains to Southampton should be electrified, and that reopening the line between Lewes and Uckfield will have to wait. Network Rail can have their own say on small-scale track improvements, but for anything large-scale or anything involving a significant timetable change, it's the DfT's decision. Even under BR, the DfT didn't have this much control in the day-to-day running of the railway.<br />
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Yet, conversely, with dozens of companies involved in running the railways, all trying to extract a profit, the railway is nearly as privatised as it was in the days of Stephenson and Brunel. And while privatisation usually makes things more efficient and reduces costs, in this case the fragmentation has meant that costs spiralled massively, to guarantee each of the companies involved a share of the profit.<br />
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Where does this profit come from? Government subsidy (at least in part). Whereas subsidy to British Rail only rose above £1 billion per annum in 1991 (and even that was partly due to the recession at the time), in 2006-07 the total subsidy to Network Rail and the TOCs stood at a whopping £6.3 billion. To be fair, that's come back down to about £4 billion per annum as at 2012. (More figures <a href="https://fullfact.org/factchecks/taxpayer_subsidy_train_network_nationalisation-3391">here</a>.) Nonetheless, what that means is that subsidy to the railways today is about <i>three or four times</i> what it was when it was nationalised; even adjusting for inflation, subsidy has at least doubled in real terms since privatisation.<br />
<br />
The reasons for that are not at all clear, and nor is the solution. While some of that subsidy is due to the fragmentation of the industry, some of it may be due to the boom in passengers: passenger numbers troughed at about 700 million in 1995, but have since climbed to over 1.4 billion in 2012. As a result, the railways are carrying more passengers per year than it has since before the Second World War, and moving more people costs more money. Some of the increase in subsidy is also down to long-overdue maintenance; British Rail postponed a lot of maintenance (often even simple things like replacing worn-out track), and Network Rail is having to work overtime to clear the backlog.<br />
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It's also important to remember that, in spite (or perhaps in some cases because) of the fragmentation, the railway network has improved immeasurably in the last 20 years. The <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Coast_Main_Line">West Coast Main Line</a> now gets 125mph trains every three minutes, and it takes less than an hour to get from Coventry to London (though the upgrade did cost £9 billion). And as my recent posts have shown, we're currently in the throes of one of the biggest programmes of upgrades to the railway network in decades, with <a href="http://railwaydave.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/what-is-crossrail.html">Crossrail</a>, <a href="http://railwaydave.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/what-is-thameslink-programme.html">the Thameslink Programme</a>, <a href="http://railwaydave.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/what-is-intercity-express-programme-and.html">Great Western electrification</a>, <a href="http://railwaydave.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/what-is-northern-hub.html">the Northern Hub</a> and <a href="http://railwaydave.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/what-is-electric-spine-or-why-freight.html">the Electric Spine</a>. Those upgrades don't come cheap.<br />
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On September 1st 2014, Network Rail was reclassified as a public sector body, meaning that its debt (some £34 billion) counted towards the national debt for the first time since privatisation. That debt is an inevitable side effect of wanting investment now but wanting to pay later; railway investment is a pretty safe bet, because there will always be lots of passengers to move, and if you can move them more efficiently then so much the better. (Incidentally, one of the few reasons the debt was kept off the public sector books was that Gordon Brown didn't want to breach his rule that the national debt should not exceed 40% of GDP, though that went out the window in the financial crash of 2008.)<br />
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In practice, this means very little else; the DfT will continue to exert the same control over Network Rail as they have done for years, and Network Rail will continue to ask for more money for improvements. It will probably mean that the salaries of the big bosses at Network Rail will have to fall in line with public sector limits (current chief executive Mark Carne receives an annual salary of <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-23974267">£675,000</a>), but the day-to-day running of the railway will change very little.<br />
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Does it perhaps signify a change in ethos at the Department for Transport, a desire to move towards a renationalised railway? I don't think so, or at least not under the current government. Indeed, the current government is trying to get East Coast, which was temporarily renationalised when the franchise held by National Express went bust, back into the private sector by the next election.<br />
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The Labour Party, however, have <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/sep/19/labour-state-rail-east-coast">suggested</a> that a state not-for-profit firm (such as that which currently runs East Coast) should be allowed to bid for franchises when they come up for renewal. Personally I think that's just making a dog's breakfast of a railway network even worse by trying to partially renationalise bits by the back door: it's not clear that partial renationalisation is actually better, since then you might have not-for-profit companies trying to compete with the likes of Virgin Trains, and that isn't likely to end well (for anyone).<br />
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Ultimately, no government since John Major's has had the guts to take any fundamental policy decisions with respect to the structure of the railway network; they've tinkered at the edges, but the railway is still basically that given to us in 1994 at the time of privatisation. A full renationalisation might bring costs down and thus enable more investment in the infrastructure for the same level of subsidy. But even British Rail struggled to find the right structure for the railways: they tried organising it by region, but in the 1980s moved to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_rail_transport_in_Great_Britain_1948%E2%80%931994#The_1980s:_Sectorisation">"sectorisation"</a>, where InterCity, Network SouthEast and Regional Railways were all subordinate only to the top management, without regions to get in the way.<br />
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Ever present in British Rail, though, was the knowledge that the tracks cannot be maintained without knowing what trains have run over them, and trains cannot be maintained without knowing where they've been. Perhaps the oddest thing about privatisation is that it has separated track from train, with virtually no "vertical integration" of tracks and trains for nearly 20 years. In recognition of that, South West Trains are experimenting with a "deep alliance" with Network Rail's Wessex Route: since 2012 the track and trains on the lines out of Waterloo have been brought into one management structure, for the first time since the days of British Rail.<br />
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But that won't work everywhere: even within the Wessex Route there are other trains run by CrossCountry, Southern and First Great Western, as well as a multitude of freight trains serving the port of Southampton. Try and make a vertically integrated railway around Birmingham or Manchester and you're in for a world of trouble, such is the number of different operators in the area. Indeed, the success of CrossCountry is precisely because there <i>isn't</i> vertical integration. Sadly, there isn't an easy one-size-fits-all solution, as British Rail found.<br />
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Let me be clear: on this occasion I don't want to try and argue either for or against renationalisation. My point is that renationalisation would require reintegration of the myriad companies that were created at privatisation, and <i>that</i> would bring about a complete restructuring of the railway. In other words, renationalisation is not something to be undertaken without a lot of thought put into the structure of any renationalised railway and - more importantly - how we get there.<br />
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Putting the railway network back together could be done: it would probably require the state buying out the train operating franchises (or letting them expire), getting the trains back into public ownership, and instituting a management structure more like British Rail. But that kind of shake-up would require more political will than I think any government is likely to want to expend on railways: unlike privatisation, which was achieved within a single parliament by a partisan government, reintegration and renationalisation might require a commitment over one or more decades to see it through.<br />
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For all its faults, the privatised railway has presided over one of the biggest booms in passenger use in history. After 20 years of getting used to a whole new structure, the rail industry has found its feet again, and a huge programme of upgrades, new lines and electrification is underway, with £30 billion being spent over the next five years or so to dramatically improve the railways in a way not seen for generations. Would that investment have come under British Rail? Possibly. But when the current structure has given rise to that much investment, it's hard to argue that now is the time for a fundamental shake-up of the railway industry.<br />
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There is undoubtedly scope to improve the organisation of the railways, but I think it's best achieved by the typical <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/402242-a-truly-english-protest-march-would-see-us-all-chanting">chant of the Englishman</a>:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>"What do we want? Gradual change! When do we want it? In due course!"</i></blockquote>
Whatever happens, though, I sincerely hope that it's not driven by blind ideology with no regard for the structure of the industry. Full-scale renationalisation rammed through without a plan for how to reintegrate the railways would be no better than John Major's privatisation. And until someone comes up with a detailed plan for <i>how</i> to renationalise the railways, the question of whether or not we <i>should</i> renationalise them is impossible to answer.Dave McCormickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16226892437669224991noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2638543736544799966.post-16375215202425107522014-09-11T12:42:00.001+01:002014-09-11T12:42:07.611+01:00What is... the Electric Spine? (Or, Why Freight Trains Matter to Everyone)The "Electric Spine" is a plan to electrify two key rail arteries from the port of Southampton to the north of England (via Nuneaton and Sheffield), creating an electrified trunk route avoiding London, principally for use by freight trains. The plan is, as yet, still not finalised; but it promises to have a huge (yet also subtle) impact across the country. So while this blog usually focusses on passenger trains, for this post I'd like to delve into the world of freight trains, and explain why we're spending over a billion pounds so that freight trains can run a bit faster...<br />
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Once upon a time, almost all freight traffic in Britain was moved by rail. While the vast majority of it is now hauled by lorries instead, for some traffic (e.g. coal) rail is still the "right" way to move it around the country. This is especially true of long-distance flows: for example, for taking containers from Southampton to Scotland, or cars from Merseyside to Dagenham Dock, rail has the advantage of bulk and speed that road just can't match. Indeed, container traffic has seen a marked shift from road to rail in recent years, and the challenge for the rail network is how to accommodate it.<br />
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Unlike passenger trains, which can be broken down into discrete services, even the destinations of freight trains can vary from day to day. Passenger trains between London and Birmingham are completely segregated from, say, passenger trains between London and Dover; in that sense, the electrification of the <i>passenger</i> rail network can be - and is - broken down into discrete chunks, one main line at a time. Freight trains, though, are much less frequent and tend to run to a wide variety of destinations, over a variety of different routes according to where there's capacity.<br />
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By its very nature, then, the network used by freight trains is huge and sprawling: indeed, it's quite hard to find a significant part of the network that <i>isn't</i> used by freight trains at all. As a result, while some freight trains running on key main lines can be hauled by electric locomotives, the vast majority of freight trains remain hauled by diesel engines, even when some of the route has electric wires, because having to stop and change engine takes too much time. And that's unlikely to change until a significant portion of the freight network is electrified.<br />
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So what is driving plans to try and do just that? The key advantage of electric freight trains over diesel ones is acceleration. Freight trains are mostly limited to 60mph, and while some container trains can manage 75mph, electric haulage can't really improve that. What it can do, though, is dramatically improve acceleration, so that when a freight train has to run between two passenger trains, it doesn't need as large a gap. Quicker acceleration, more capacity. Crucially, though, not just capacity for freight trains but also for <i>more passenger trains</i>.<br />
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This is especially true on mixed-traffic lines, where passenger and freight trains have to share the same tracks. For example, while the south end of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Coast_Main_Line">WCML</a> has four tracks, north of Preston it's two tracks all the way to the outskirts of Glasgow. In particular, over Shap in the Lake District, where the WCML runs roughly parallel to the M6, the two-track line threads its way between the hills with gradients as steep as 1 in 75. For a 4,000-tonne freight train, 1 in 75 is a big problem! However, while diesel trains are limited by how big an engine they have and how much fuel they can carry, electric trains are basically limited only by how much current they can draw.<br />
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The difference between electric and diesel freight trains over Shap can be summed up as follows: from Preston to Carlisle (about 90 miles), a freight train hauled by an electric locomotive generally won't have to stop to be overtaken by faster passenger trains, while a diesel train almost certainly will. Having to have the freight train slow down, pull into a loop, wait to be overtaken, and then start up again costs a lot of time and capacity; converting diesel freight trains to electric over Shap would significantly increase capacity on this very mixed-traffic line.<br />
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The "Electric Spine" is the first major project in trying to convert freight trains to electric haulage: the broad intention is that almost all long-distance container trains to and from the port of Southampton will be able to run with electric traction. At this point, though, while the project is committed by the government, it's still being developed by Network Rail, and is unlikely to be fully complete before 2025. Indeed, more than any of the other "big projects" I've discussed recently, the Electric Spine poses the biggest unknowns: there are things in the plan that have never been done before.<br />
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Let's return to electrification in general (see <a href="http://railwaydave.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/what-is-electrification.html">my earlier post</a> if you need a refresher). There have been many different voltages and both overhead wires and various forms of third rail in use for electric trains over the years, but two systems remain in widespread use in the UK: 750V DC third rail, mainly south of London, and 25kV AC overhead wires, mainly north of London. Because most passenger services are self-contained, most electric trains only need one kind of electric equipment, and for the small number of services (mainly <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thameslink">Thameslink</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Overground">London Overground</a>) which use both, the trains can be fitted with both systems.<br />
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Both systems have advantages and disadvantages: third rail systems are better suited to dense suburban networks, while overhead wires are better suited to long-distance traffic. That said, most would agree that overhead wires are better than third rail - and if the network south of London were being electrified today there is no question that it would be done with overhead wires. The principal problem with third rail is that, because the rail is so close to the ground, the voltage can't really be made higher than 750V. (The National Grid uses 275kV DC to transmit electricity around the country, but the wires are high in the air.)<br />
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In order to provide enough power through the third rail, the current has to be higher than it would in overhead wires (power is current times voltage), and as a result a lot of power is lost in transmitting it down the rails; this means third rail requires lots more substations to provide enough power. In particular, providing enough power through the third rail to permit electric locomotives to haul freight trains is hideously expensive, and while it can be done, there are only a couple of routes which have been upgraded to provide enough power, namely those connecting London to the Channel Tunnel.<br />
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And here we encounter the major problem with the Electric Spine: Southampton is already electrified... with third rail. The plan for the Electric Spine thus calls for something which has never been done on this scale: the conversion of the line between Basingstoke and Southampton from third rail electrification to overhead wires. While this means freight trains will be able to run on overhead wires all the way to the docks at Southampton, the existing passenger trains which run between London and Weymouth would be required to change from third rail to overhead wires at Basingstoke and back again at Southampton.<br />
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For the sake of convenience to passenger trains, you might reasonably ask whether you could simply have <i>both</i> overhead wires and third rail between Basingstoke and Southampton. Clearly it has to be possible over short distances, otherwise trains would never be able to change from one to the other. However, in the section with both overhead wires and third rail, both systems must be carefully insulated from each other in other to prevent current straying from one to the other. As such, the existing third rail equipment would have to be heavily modified; it's certainly not as easy as just adding overhead wires on top of the existing third rail.<br />
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In any case, part of the justification for converting the line between Basingstoke and Southampton is that the third rail equipment, which was installed in 1967, will need to be replaced shortly anyway. Given that 25kV AC requires fewer substations than 750V DC, it is in fact cheaper - at least as far as the infrastructure is concerned - to replace the third rail with overhead wires. But this ignores the fact that the existing electric trains, run by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_West_Trains">South West Trains (SWT)</a>, would require conversion to work on overhead wires as well as third rail. These trains are about 10 years old, and most (the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail_Class_450">Class 450s</a>) should be straightforward enough to convert (though the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail_Class_444">Class 444s</a> may require more work).<br />
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And here is where the ugly truth of the privatised, fragmented British railway system rears its head: who pays? The Department for Transport are happy to pay Network Rail for the work to the infrastructure, but it is not clear who will pay for the conversion of the trains. The trains are operated by SWT, but are in fact owned by the rolling stock holding company <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angel_Trains">Angel Trains</a>. Why should either SWT or Angel Trains pay to change their trains because of Network Rail's infrastructure changes?<br />
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The issue is yet to be resolved, and it's still not clear whether the line between Basingstoke and Southampton will actually be converted. I suspect it will, but I suspect the government will have to pay for the conversion of the trains as well. However, if any of the electrification projects were to run over-budget, the quickest way to save money would be to kick the whole Basingstoke-Southampton conversion into the long grass.<br />
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The rest of the Electric Spine can be broken down into four distinct chunks:<br />
<ul>
<li>The section between Basingstoke and Oxford, via Reading, will be electrified as part of the Great Western Main Line electrification, associated with the Intercity Express Programme (see <a href="http://railwaydave.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/what-is-intercity-express-programme-and.html">my earlier blogpost</a>) - at least, the Reading-Oxford part will; exactly what will happen with Reading-Basingstoke isn't clear.</li>
<li>The section between Oxford and Bedford is unusual in that part of the line that will be electrified isn't open yet! The "East-West Rail Link" is soon to be reopened; whether it will have overhead wires from opening (in 2017) or whether it will follow a few years later (by 2019) remains unclear. (See also <a href="http://railwaydave.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/east-west-rails-best-sneak-peek-into.html">my earlier blogpost</a> about a railtour along part of the East-West line.)</li>
<li>The section between Bedford and Sheffield amounts to electrification of the rest of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midland_Main_Line">Midland Main Line (MML)</a>, the section between London and Bedford having been electrified in 1981 for suburban trains. This section will herald the biggest changes for passenger trains too, allowing the existing diesel trains running between London and Nottingham, Derby and Sheffield to be replaced by electric trains.</li>
<li>The section between Oxford and Nuneaton, which will probably be the last part to be completed (apart from Basingstoke-Southampton), will link Southampton to the West Coast Main Line at Nuneaton, allowing electric trains to run all the way from Southampton to Manchester, Liverpool and Glasgow. I wouldn't be surprised if this got pushed past 2020 (and it would make another easy target for cuts).</li>
</ul>
While this is a good start to an electric freight network, that's all it is: a start. For one, it's missing a key connection from Sheffield to the electrified East Coast Main Line at Doncaster. But it also leaves the other major deep-water container port - Felixstowe, in Suffolk - just twelve miles from the electric wires at Ipswich. Electrifying that branch could probably do as much for container freight as the whole Electric Spine project.<br />
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One of the other major freight projects in recent years has been to increase the number of trains from Felixstowe which can avoid London to get to the north of England and to Scotland. Currently much of the traffic runs through London: fitting freight trains through London is a perennial challenge, with most London Overground routes in fact being freight routes that some would argue would be more efficient without any passenger stations on them! In order to relieve the pressure, tunnels and bridges have been enlarged to permit container trains to run from Felixstowe to Nuneaton via Ely, Peterborough and Leicester. If that line could also be electrified, then we'd start to make major inroads into converting at least container trains to electric traction. It seems that that, however, will have to wait for Southampton to have its turn first.<br />
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Ultimately, the point of the Electric Spine is to increase capacity - both for freight and passenger trains - by using electric locomotives, with their impressive acceleration, to speed up freight traffic across the country. On the one hand, this should mean fewer lorries on the roads, making road travel easier for everyone. On the other hand, this will mean more capacity for passenger trains, and fewer delays caused by late running freight trains (hopefully). It sounds like a win for everyone - and it should be - but the devil, as usual, is in the detail. For now: watch this space.<br />
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<i>Previous post: <a href="http://railwaydave.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/what-is-northern-hub.html">What is... the Northern Hub?</a></i>Dave McCormickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16226892437669224991noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2638543736544799966.post-86154394570540225352014-09-08T13:53:00.000+01:002014-09-11T12:42:37.392+01:00What is... the Northern Hub?The Northern Hub is a £560 million project to upgrade and electrify much of the railway network in the North of England, particularly focussed on the cities of Manchester, Liverpool and Leeds. As well as electrifying over 300 miles of track, the project will unlock one of the biggest bottlenecks in the country: Manchester Piccadilly station will gain two extra platforms, and the Ordsall Chord will allow trains to run directly between Manchester Piccadilly and Manchester Victoria. All in all, rail travel in the North of England will be transformed.<br />
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You may have noticed that, so far in this series of blogposts, the projects we've looked at - e.g., <a href="http://railwaydave.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/what-is-crossrail.html">Crossrail</a>, <a href="http://railwaydave.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/what-is-thameslink.html">Thameslink</a> and the <a href="http://railwaydave.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/what-is-intercity-express-programme-and.html">Great Western Main Line</a> - are all in the <i>South</i> of England. It's fair to say that the South - particularly London and the South-East - gets more than its "fair share" of investment compared to the proportion of the population that lives there. To a certain extent, the Northern Hub will help to smooth out that imbalance.<br />
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It's important to understand why there's an imbalance in the first place: the fact is that railways are most efficient in dense urban areas and between big cities. As a result, railways naturally gravitated towards London and the South-East, meaning more people used the railways in London, meaning they got more investment, and this created a "feedback loop" of perpetual investment in the South-East to try and cope with ever-increasing demand.<br />
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By contrast, while the urban areas in the North of England have received some investment, the railways in the North don't get used as much, so they don't get as much investment, and hence their use doesn't increase as quickly. While much of the South-East has 12-carriage commuter trains into London, four carriages already makes a long commuter train into Manchester, and most platforms can't accommodate more than six. This isn't in and of itself a problem, nor is it necessarily a sign of bias in investment priorities, but it is nonetheless a reality.<br />
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However, the use of relatively short trains does make the North's trains less efficient to run: a 12-car train doesn't cost six times as much to run as a 2-car train, not least because you still only need one driver and one guard. What's more, almost all of the North's trains are diesel trains: by contrast to the South-East, where the only major commuter line which <i>isn't</i> electrified is the Chiltern line out of Marylebone, so far there are just a handful of electric lines around Manchester and Leeds, and (as I discussed <a href="http://railwaydave.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/what-is-electrification.html">previously</a>) diesel trains are more expensive to run.<br />
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Happily, though, an opportunity to make the North's railway network far more efficient came when then-Transport Secretary (Lord) Andrew Adonis hit on a bright idea. He reasoned as follows: Thameslink is getting a huge fleet of new trains, meaning the 86 4-car <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail_Class_319">Class 319s</a> will no longer be required. The trains could simply be moved to another already-electrified line to displace some older trains and allow them to be scrapped, but instead Adonis decided to invest in electrifying new lines, and send the Class 319s there.<br />
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This allows lines to be electrified <i>without</i> incurring the additional cost of a brand-new fleet of electric trains, a significant saving. One of those lines is the Great Western Main Line, where <a href="http://railwaydave.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/what-is-intercity-express-programme-and.html">new electric inter-city trains</a> will replace the existing <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail_Class_43_%28HST%29">HSTs</a>, and the Class 319s would be used on suburban services in the Thames Valley between London and Reading, Oxford and Newbury.<br />
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The GWML alone, however, wouldn't account for all 86 class 319s, so in 2009 four lines in the North-West were chosen for electrification in a phased programme:<br />
<ul>
<li><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liverpool_to_Manchester_Lines">Liverpool-Manchester via Newton-le-Willows (the Chat Moss line)</a>, with Manchester to Newton-le-Willows being electrified by December 2013 and Newton-le-Willows to Liverpool by December 2014;</li>
<li><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liverpool-Wigan_Line">Liverpool-Wigan via St Helens</a> to be electrified by December 2014;</li>
<li><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manchester_to_Preston_Line">Manchester-Preston via Bolton</a> to be electrified by December 2016;</li>
<li><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackpool_Branch_Lines">Preston-Blackpool North</a> to be electrified by December 2015 (though this has now slipped to February 2017).</li>
</ul>
The Chat Moss electrification was announced first, in July 2009, with the other lines following in December 2009. The initial announcement came rather out of the blue: it is not entirely clear why the Chat Moss line was chosen, but if Adonis's intention was to start the ball rolling on significant investment in the railway network across the north of England, he picked the right line! Although they initially put the plans on hold thanks to the post-election Spending Review, the new coalition government reconfirmed the plans in October 2010.<br />
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The class 319s are to be cascaded to the North-West, permitting older diesel trains (such as the dreaded <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacer_%28train%29">Pacers</a>) to be scrapped. All told, about 35 Class 319s will be needed across the North-West. However, due to delays in the Thameslink Programme, while the first two phases of wiring will be completed by December 2014, there will only be three electric trains available to run the local services. A further 11 will follow over the following year, which will account for all the Liverpool-Manchester and Liverpool-Wigan services, with the remainder of the trains being available early in 2017 for the completion of the third and fourth phases.<br />
<br />
---<br />
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One of the most important diesel-operated services in the North, however, is the Trans-Pennine service between Manchester and Leeds, with five trains an hour running between these two huge cities. Most start in the west at Liverpool or Manchester Airport, while in the east the trains continue on to Hull, York, Scarborough, Middlesbrough or Newcastle. With one of the routes between Liverpool and Manchester now being electrified, and the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Coast_Main_Line">ECML</a> between York and Newcastle already wired, that leaves only a relatively short gap between Manchester and York; wiring that gap would permit a disproportionate number of services to be converted to electric operation.<br />
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Moreover, the Trans-Pennine services are some of the most overcrowded trains in the North, and as reasonably fast inter-urban services they are a plum candidate for investment, sure to bring more significant benefits than merely electrifying commuter lines. Sure enough, in November 2011, the government announced a follow-on to the North-West Electrification: the Trans-Pennine route between Manchester, Huddersfield, Leeds and York is to be electrified by 2018. The line from Leeds to Selby (though oddly not all the way to Hull) was added to the electrification plans in July 2012.<br />
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All the big stations along the way (Liverpool Lime Street, Manchester Piccadilly, Leeds and York) are already electrified, while Manchester Victoria will be electrified as part of the North-West Electrification, making this project relatively simple; instead the big challenge will be electrifying the 3-mile-long tunnels at Standedge (under the Pennines) without causing too much disruption.<br />
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However, before the benefits of a more frequent electric Trans-Pennine service can be realised, one of the biggest capacity bottlenecks on the network has to be sorted out: Manchester Piccadilly station. It may strike you as odd to learn that, in spite of its proliferation of short commuter trains, Manchester Piccadilly station is running more or less at capacity: there is no more room to run more trains.<br />
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Manchester Piccadilly is an odd station: it has 12 terminus platforms, all facing south, used by services long-distance from London, Bristol, Bournemouth, and Cardiff, as well as local services to Stoke-on-Trent, Crewe, Chester, Glossop and Sheffield. However, the station also has two through platforms at its west side, used by services to Liverpool, Preston, Blackpool and Scotland. That there are only two such through platforms is already a capacity constraint, and plans are in place to add two extra through platforms by 2018.<br />
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But that in and of itself doesn't solve the fundamental problem, which is that too many trains want to go through each other. In particular, all the Trans-Pennine services between Liverpool and Leeds have to cross the entire width of the station throat, from the westernmost platforms to the easternmost approach lines to the south. Trains between Manchester Airport and Leeds have to reverse in one of the 12 terminus platforms, requiring them either to cross everything on the way into Piccadilly, or on the way out. This diagram shows the problem:<br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-5ZUHYFv0P0Q/VAu2hRWj5iI/AAAAAAAAAQE/jRjE1wUSYgc/s1600/Manchester-simple-pre.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-5ZUHYFv0P0Q/VAu2hRWj5iI/AAAAAAAAAQE/jRjE1wUSYgc/s1600/Manchester-simple-pre.png" height="200" width="400" /></a></div>
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Enter the Ordsall Chord. From 2016, a short piece of track will fill in the third side of the triangle in western Manchester and allow trains from Piccadilly to curve round and head through Victoria, Manchester's other major station. Once the grand centerpiece of the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway, Victoria is a shell of its former self, particularly since the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windsor_Link_Line,_Greater_Manchester">Windsor Link</a> was opened in 1988 and many services were transferred to Piccadilly. Access between the two has always been rather difficult, and while Metrolink has made it easier, the Ordsall Chord will provide a direct rail connection between the two stations for the first time.<br />
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Once completed, it will allow Victoria, not Piccadilly, to become the hub for Trans-Pennine journeys. The Ordsall Chord will permit trains between Manchester Airport and Leeds to run via <i>both</i> Piccadilly and Victoria, and avoid having to reverse along the way. While trains between Liverpool and Leeds can already run via Victoria without any capacity problems, to do so requires diverting them via Chat Moss instead of via Warrington Central; coincidentally (or perhaps as a rare piece of forward planning?) the Chat Moss is the route that's being electrified, while the route via Warrington Central will remain diesel-only.<br />
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But more importantly, it will de-tangle the services coming into Piccadilly, with services to Stockport and beyond able to run completely independently of the Trans-Pennine services, bringing significant improvements in punctuality for both groups of services, as well as allowing an increase to six Trans-Pennine services per hour. This diagram shows the solution:<br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-t3xmsjqIY_U/VAu2mew5ChI/AAAAAAAAAQM/s-0B4Q2QB9c/s1600/Manchester-simple-post.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-t3xmsjqIY_U/VAu2mew5ChI/AAAAAAAAAQM/s-0B4Q2QB9c/s1600/Manchester-simple-post.png" height="200" width="400" /></a></div>
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As a result, by 2018 the rail network around Manchester will be transformed by two extra platforms at Piccadilly, the Ordsall Chord connecting Piccadilly and Victoria, and electrification across much of the North-West and the whole Trans-Pennine route from Liverpool to Newcastle. Put it all together and you have the "Northern Hub", whose total cost is about £560 million.<br />
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The only problem is the lack of clarity in what <i>trains</i> will be running on such lines: the letting of new franchises for <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_TransPennine_Express">TransPennine Express</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Rail">Northern Rail</a> has been delayed until February 2016, and only once the new franchise is announced will it become clear what, if any, strategy there is for rolling stock across the North.<br />
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One possibility is that the remainder of the Class 319s, perhaps together with some of the other trains released by Crossrail and the Thameslink Programme, could be used on Trans-Pennine services. Currently, however, the Trans-Pennine services run with <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail_Class_185">Class 185s</a>, modern three-car diesel trains which are less than 10 years old, ideally suited for inter-urban services. To replace those with commuter trains from the South-East which are nearly 25 years old is clearly a downgrade, and smacks of the North being handed the unwanted old tat from the South-East.<br />
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Unlike the North-West Electrification, however, which could only be reasonably justified by the use of existing trains, it's quite possible that the new Trans-Pennine franchise will decide to order some new electric trains to run across the Pennines. This would allow some (if not all) of the Class 185s to be transferred elsewhere, and trigger a rolling stock cascade that would ensure that many areas benefit from newer trains, while allowing more of the oldest clapped-out trains (hopefully all the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacer_%28train%29">Pacers</a> and possibly some <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprinter_%28train%29">Sprinters</a>) to be withdrawn from service.<br />
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In any case, the North is getting some much-needed improvements to its rail network, including a whole new railway line, new platforms and lots of new overhead wires. While we'll have to wait and see what trains serve it, it is clear that areas which have seen little investment for over 20 years will see dramatic improvements over the next few years. It could even be the start of a whole new rail boom across the North...<br />
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<i>Previous post: <a href="http://railwaydave.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/what-is-intercity-express-programme-and.html">What is... the Intercity Express Programme?</a></i><br />
<i>Next post: <a href="http://railwaydave.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/what-is-electric-spine-or-why-freight.html">What is... the Electric Spine?</a></i>Dave McCormickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16226892437669224991noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2638543736544799966.post-34388474661997770192014-06-17T13:41:00.000+01:002014-09-08T14:02:57.341+01:00What is... the Intercity Express Programme? (and what does it mean for the Great Western Main Line?)The <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intercity_Express_Programme">Intercity Express Programme</a> is a £5.7 billion order for building the next generation of long-distance train in Britain. Or at least, that's the theory: its critics would claim it's an overpriced, wrong-headed solution in want of a problem to fix. It all started when someone decided many of our long-distance trains were getting a bit old. It's since morphed into something quite unusual, involving the first major use of electric-diesel "hybrid" trains (though it remains to be seen if that's actually a good idea)...<br />
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The <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail_Class_43_%28HST%29">High-Speed Train</a>, or HST, also branded as the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InterCity_125">InterCity 125</a>, entered service in 1977 and will probably still be in service for the rest of this decade. It was and is the mainstay of long-distance inter-city services across Britain; they regularly reach Penzance, Aberdeen, Sheffield, Swansea and many places in between.<br />
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They are diesel-powered, and are thus not used much on those routes which are already electrified; but they provide all long-distance services on the Great Western Main Line (GWML), as well as supplementing the fleets used on the Midland Main Line (MML), East Coast Main Line (ECML), and the Cross-Country routes. These days, they are easily distinguished by being one of the last fleets of trains with slam doors. But the HST was never designed to be around for so long; it was a stopgap solution.<br />
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As is so often the case, this stopgap solution ended up being a lasting feature of the British rail network. The plan in the 1970s had been for something much grander: the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Passenger_Train">Advanced Passenger Train (APT)</a>. Capable of tilting round corners and hitting speeds in excess of 150mph, the APT was forged in the "white heat of the [technological] revolution" so championed a few years earlier by Harold Wilson. Unfortunately, it proved to be a bit <i>too</i> "white heat", and after many setbacks it was finally launched in 1981 while it was still prone to failures. The launch was a PR disaster, and only three production units were ever built, before being scrapped in 1985.<br />
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As a stopgap, the BR engineers had decided to build something a bit more conventional; and thus was born the HST. The fleet of nearly a hundred trains, with their distinctive angular power cars at each end, have served the country well for over 30 years now, but they are starting to show their age. While the typical lifespan of a diesel train is 25-30 years, the HSTs have all had their engines upgraded or replaced; nonetheless, asking them to go much past 40 years in service is pushing it.<br />
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So, in 2005, the Department for Transport set out to replace the HSTs. In a spectacular lack of ambition, they seemed only to want a like-for-like replacement; one high-speed diesel-powered train replaced by a slightly newer, slightly fancier, high-speed diesel-powered train. Fortunately, someone in the Department woke up to the opportunity that total replacement of the fleet could provide: since the trains need replacing anyway, why not make them electric? And indeed, once the investment in electrification was forthcoming, the need to replace the HSTs like-for-like evaporated.<br />
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Rather than scrap the "Intercity Express Programme" (IEP) and simply order some new electric trains to a standard design, the DfT pressed ahead with a revised plan for the IEP. There would be three types of train, all to be built to roughly the same design: electric trains, diesel trains, and "bi-mode" trains, the latter being hybrid trains capable of running off the overhead wires where there were wires, but also carrying underfloor diesel engines to take the train where the wires won't stretch. Eventually the diesel option was dropped, once the full plans for electrification emerged, but the bi-mode option was kept.<br />
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Ostensibly, the point of bi-mode trains is to be able to utilise the overhead wires between, say, London and Edinburgh, and then proceed on to Aberdeen or Inverness under diesel power. This means that you don't have diesel trains running "under the wires" for long distances, which ought to save on fuel consumption. But the key benefit of electric trains is that, almost uniquely among forms of transport, they don't have to carry around engines to generate movement. Bi-mode trains, though, mean still carrying around the heavy diesel engines even when you're not using them, and so one of the great benefits of electrification (lighter trains) is lost. It <i>should</i> result in an overall reduction in fuel consumption, but the jury is still out on that.<br />
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After a long and torturous bidding process, which was interrupted first by a review into the project's viability after electrification was announced, and then by the General Election and the Spending Review that followed, Hitachi were chosen as the preferred bidders, and would supply over a hundred <i>Super Express</i> trains. They will be built in Hitachi's new factory in Newton Aycliffe, Co. Durham, and marks the first major entrance of the Japanese train builders into the European market.<br />
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A total of 866 carriages, in a variety of 9-car and 5-car formations, some electric and some bi-mode, will replace all the HSTs on the Great Western Main Line (GWML) and the East Coast Main Line (ECML), as well as the Class 91 locomotives and Mark 4 carriages on the ECML.<br />
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I remain somewhat sceptical of IEP, especially the virtues of bi-mode trains: there are those who would have preferred a standard fleet of all-electric trains, and perhaps use diesel locomotives to haul them where there aren't wires, but I will reserve judgement until the trains actually arrive. It must be said, though, that however you spin it, £5.7 billion is a <i>lot </i>of money for this many trains; standard electric trains would almost certainly have been cheaper.<br />
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Let's turn specifically to their impact on the Great Western Main Line. Combined with electrification, the new trains ought to bring a step change in performance and journey times; but on their own they cannot on their own provide the necessary capacity increase on the GWML.<br />
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London to Reading is perhaps the single busiest passenger flow on the whole railway network, with commuters flooding long-distance trains for the non-stop run to London, and making it near-impossible to get a seat in rush hours. If there is to be enough capacity to provide a meaningful increase in seats in the peaks, more has to be done. Fortunately, more is being done. For one, Crossrail's arrival in 2019 will free up a significant number of platforms at London Paddington, meaning they can be used by longer-distance trains instead.<br />
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But Paddington isn't the linchpin of the GWML: the biggest bottleneck, by a long way, is Reading. Reading has long suffered from not having enough platforms - fast trains out of London in particular had only one platform available - and too many conflicting routes, with freight trains between Southampton and the north having to cross the main GWML, and with Cross-Country services added to the mix there was never enough capacity. Here's Reading as it looked in 2009 (click to expand):<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a aiotitle="" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-mlX9IWJKT90/U5To0hLnWaI/AAAAAAAAANc/GqQKTFJfq_c/s1600/Reading-2009-new.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-mlX9IWJKT90/U5To0hLnWaI/AAAAAAAAANc/GqQKTFJfq_c/s1600/Reading-2009-new.png" height="130" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Reading station layout, 2009</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Fortunately, for the last five years Reading station has been undergoing one of the biggest rebuilding and remodelling projects ever undertaken on the British railway network. In a £900 million scheme, five new platforms have been added, and two viaducts to the west end of the station will open next year to segregate east-west traffic from north-south traffic. The scheme, due for completion at Easter 2015, will dramatically increase capacity through Reading, permitting fast trains to run as often as every three minutes between London and Reading. Here's Reading as it will look in 2015 (click to expand):<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-vWR2pXpifnM/U5To6VlPPOI/AAAAAAAAANk/uvlXLywgYrA/s1600/Reading-2015-new.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-vWR2pXpifnM/U5To6VlPPOI/AAAAAAAAANk/uvlXLywgYrA/s1600/Reading-2015-new.png" height="130" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Reading station layout, 2015</td></tr>
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As you can see, the layout of the railway will be transformed. One of the most innovative features is the "Reading Festival Chord" (in light green above), a roller-coaster of a track that goes under the main lines and then over the "feeder" lines from Reading West. What it means is that Cross-Country trains between Birmingham, Oxford and Southampton will be able to reverse at Reading station without ever having to cross the path of high-speed services on the GWML, and that is nothing short of genius on the part of the designers of the scheme.<br />
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There is one last part of the puzzle for the GWML, and that is the question of what trains will provide suburban services into and out of Paddington. While Crossrail will take over the stopping services, and the Hitachi <i>Super Express</i> trains (from IEP) will provide the long-distance services, a fleet of electric units will be required for the semi-fast services to Oxford and Newbury, as well as for the branch lines to Windsor, Marlow, Henley and Basingstoke (which will also be electrified).<br />
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Here comes the clever part: by syncing up the electrification of the GWML with the Thameslink Programme, no trains need be built specifically for the GWML suburban services; instead, trains will simply transfer from Thameslink over to the GWML. Initially, those were planned to be the Class 319s that currently run on Thameslink, but instead the newly-built Class 387s - which are capable of 110mph, rather than just 100mph - may be transferred; that has yet to be decided.<br />
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All told, the Great Western Main Line will be transformed by 2019: <br />
<ul>
<li>650 track-miles of electrification;</li>
<li>brand-new Hitachi <i>Super Express</i> long-distance trains running between London, Bristol and Swansea;</li>
<li>electric suburban trains providing fast commuter services from Oxford and Newbury;</li>
<li>Crossrail services providing through trains from Reading and west London to the City;</li>
<li>five new platforms and a completely new layout at Reading.</li>
</ul>
This will enable a "very high frequency" timetable to be introduced - with three or four trains an hour between London and Bristol, compared to just two per hour currently - which should bring a completely different experience to the GWML, just as the very high frequency timetable introduced on the WCML in 2008 has meant I can get from Coventry to London in an hour (a distance of 94 miles), and if I miss a train I only have to wait 20 minutes.<br />
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On top of that, following on from the electrification of the GWML, it is planned to electrify the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valleys_%26_Cardiff_Local_Routes">South Wales Valley Lines</a>, a dense network of suburban routes into Cardiff: another 200 miles of track should be electrified by 2020, bringing electric suburban trains to Cardiff and revolutionising rail travel in South Wales - though the details have yet to be worked out.<br />
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With all that said, I should point out that not <i>all</i> of the Great Western Main Line will benefit from these upgrades. The electrification will not extend to Gloucester, Cheltenham, Worcester or Hereford; but they will at least benefit from bi-mode trains, capable of running of the electric wires as far as Swindon or Oxford. More importantly, the overhead wires will not go south of Bristol or west of Newbury - meaning all of Devon and Cornwall will remain unelectrified, and indeed will still be served by (refurbished) HSTs, if current plans are anything to go by.<br />
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So while parts of the Great Western network flourish, Devon and Cornwall may feel like they're stuck in stagnation. With this kind of scheme, though, there are always winners and losers; in this case it's clear that Bristol, Cardiff, Oxford and the like will benefit from significantly improved journeys to London. And while Devon and Cornwall will not see so much investment immediately, that doesn't rule out the possibility of extensions to the electrification later; indeed, I'd count on at least one major extension to the GWML electrification before 2025.<br />
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The Great Western Main Line is going through a momentous phase in its history, perhaps the biggest change since the days of Brunel. It remains to be seen exactly what emerges in 2019, but it's clear there will be faster, more frequent trains - at least for some.<br />
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<i>Previous post: <a href="http://railwaydave.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/what-is-electrification.html" target="_blank">What is... Electrification?</a></i><br />
<i>Next post: <a href="http://railwaydave.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/what-is-northern-hub.html">What is... the Northern Hub?</a></i>Dave McCormickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16226892437669224991noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2638543736544799966.post-5207194880890590712014-06-09T13:11:00.000+01:002014-09-11T12:42:58.493+01:00What is... Electrification?Electric trains are cleaner, quicker, lighter, quieter and cheaper to run. So why is only 40% of the British rail network capable of running electric trains, and the other 60% is still suffering noisy, cramped, sluggish diesel trains?<br />
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The simple answer is infrastructure costs. While electric trains are cheaper to run, an electric train must be powered by electricity received through either overhead wires or a third rail. So while the <i>second</i> electric train is cheap to run, all the costs of putting up the overhead wires (or laying down the third rails) and connecting them to the National Grid must be borne before the first electric train can run. Putting up all the wires and transformers for a railway line to take electric trains currently costs about £250,000 per single-track kilometre.<br />
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Here's a map showing the parts of the network that are electrified:<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-sFUShNrSTp0/U5Ms0xZPMjI/AAAAAAAAANE/hE3WR06tCZY/s1600/BR-Elect-2012.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-sFUShNrSTp0/U5Ms0xZPMjI/AAAAAAAAANE/hE3WR06tCZY/s1600/BR-Elect-2012.png" height="640" width="355" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">British railway network, showing electrification (as at 2012)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
First, let's look at the benefits that "electrification" can deliver. With a diesel train, the train must carry around fuel and then generate power by burning that fuel in a diesel engine. But with an electric train, the train can simply tap straight into the electricity, and use that electricity to turn motors. Motors are much lighter than engines, and combined with the savings on having to carry around the fuel, the train is much lighter.<br />
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As a result, electric trains can accelerate much faster than diesel trains, making them excellent for suburban routes with lots of stops. What's more, the improved acceleration permits trains to run closer together, meaning more trains can run. Time and again, newly-electrified railways see a significant upturn in usage, often known as the "sparks effect", as improved capacity and speed combine with modern, clean electric trains to yield a much more attractive way of commuting.<br />
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The benefits are by no means limited to suburban trains, though: electric trains can pack more power for the same weight, and thus much better performance for longer-distance traffic. It's no coincidence that all the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_speed_record_for_rail_vehicles">world speed records for trains</a> since the 1970s have been set by electric trains; specifically, by high-speed trains in France and Japan.<br />
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Nonetheless, electrifying small, dense, intensively-used suburban networks is usually most cost-effective, since you convert the greatest number of services to electric operation for the least total cost outlay. And thus goes the history of British railway electrification: first to be electrified, in the early 20th century, were suburban lines in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liverpool_Overhead_Railway">Liverpool</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyneside_Electrics">Newcastle</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London,_Brighton_and_South_Coast_Railway#Electrification">south London</a> - all using different (and incompatible) electric voltages and transmission systems. (Indeed, none of them still use the system they first pioneered!)<br />
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After the railways were <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Four_(British_railway_companies)">"grouped" into four large companies</a> in 1923, the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Railway_(UK)">Southern Railway</a> became the undoubted pioneers of electrification. Having standardised on 660V (later upped to 750V) <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_current">DC</a> supplied through a third rail, they made a concerted effort to electrify their entire network: by 1939 the "Southern Electrics" covered almost all of south London, running as far afield as Brighton, Eastbourne, Hastings, Guildford, Portsmouth and Reading.<br />
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But a committee in 1921 had recommended the national standard should be 1,500V DC through overhead wires; a few lines were electrified using this system by the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_and_North_Eastern_Railway">LNER</a>, such as the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodhead_Line">Woodhead route</a> between Manchester and Sheffield, but the Great Depression and the Second World War prohibited much progress being made. Overhead wires finally started appearing on <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Eastern_Main_Line">the commuter route from London Liverpool Street to Shenfield and Southend Victoria</a> in 1949.<br />
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By the time of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_rail_transport_in_Great_Britain_1948%E2%80%931994#The_Modernisation_Plan">1955 Modernisation Plan</a>, technology had moved forward considerably, and 25kV (25,000V) <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternating_current">AC</a> became the national standard for all new electrification schemes. Over time, all the remaining 1500V DC overhead wires were converted to 25kV AC, except those on the the Woodhead route where the line was controversially closed in the 1980s. More importantly, the 1960s and 1970s saw the entire 400-mile <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Coast_Main_Line">West Coast Main Line</a> between London and Glasgow electrified at 25kV AC with overhead wires.<br />
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As with many things on the railways, the story at this point inevitably gets tied up with politics. After the success of the WCML electrification and various suburban electrification schemes around London and Glasgow in the 1970s, British Rail wished to embark on a rolling programme of electrification, whereby all the major main lines would be gradually electrified over the course of 20-30 years. Unfortunately, the plan was formulated in 1981, and the Conservative government of the day declined to proceed with the rolling programme in full. To its credit, though, it did fund the electrification of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Coast_Main_Line">East Coast Main Line</a> between London and Edinburgh, completed by 1991.<br />
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This relatively slow pace of electrification is in marked contrast to other countries in Europe, notably Germany, where they forged ahead with much electrification even before the Second World War, and were more aggressive in replacing steam directly with electric trains, rather than just building diesel engines. Over half of the French, German and Italian rail networks are electrified, while in Belgium and the Netherlands nearly three-quarters of the network is electrified.<br />
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Any long-term plans British Rail might have had for electrification were well and truly dashed when, in 1994, the railways were privatised and fragmented. The industry was left without a body like the British Railways Board to advocate for a coordinated national approach to things like electrification. As a result, between 1991 and 2010 only nine miles of railway were electrified: the short link between Stoke-on-Trent and Crewe received overhead wires as part of the West Coast Route Modernisation, to provide a diversionary route for electric trains while other lines were rebuilt.<br />
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It has taken the railway network most of a generation to find its voice again. Indeed, as recently as 2007, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Armitt">John Armitt</a>, then chief executive of Network Rail, said that electrification was just another interface to go wrong: too often the overhead wires come down and cause disruption; better to not put them up at all and have a quieter life. In less than five years, though, the view has turned full circle and the government is currently demanding electrification faster than Network Rail can deliver it!<br />
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When <a href="http://railwaydave.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/what-is-thameslink-programme.html">the Thameslink Programme</a> was approved in 2007, the initial intention seems to have been that the electric trains would simply be moved to a different line with older trains, permitting some of the oldest electric trains to be retired. This "cascade" of trains has long been standard practice, as it allows more than one line to benefit from better trains while only building one new fleet.<br />
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But in July 2009, instead of simply shuffling the trains about existing electrified lines, the then-Transport Minister <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Adonis,_Baron_Adonis">Andrew Adonis</a> approved a plan to electrify new lines in the north-west and the Thames Valley. Once the new trains had been built, the old electric trains from Thameslink would move to the newly-electrified lines; as a result, the lines could be electrified <i>without</i> the cost of building new electric trains. This significant saving is probably the only way electrifying some of the lines could be justified: the cost of new electric trains is not to be underestimated.<br />
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The plans were put on hold when the coalition government took over in 2010, but within a year it was back on track. Indeed, the present government has taken a huge liking to electrification, and rather than a rolling programme we seem to be heading for a "big bang", where a huge number of lines will be electrified by 2020:
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<ul>
<li>a triangle of routes in North-West England, namely the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liverpool_to_Manchester_Lines">Liverpool-Manchester</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liverpool-Wigan_Line">Liverpool-Preston</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manchester_to_Preston_Line">Manchester-Preston</a> lines, as well as the branch from <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackpool_Branch_Lines">Preston to Blackpool North</a>, will be electrified by 2016;</li>
<li>the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huddersfield_Line">Trans-Pennine route</a> from Manchester to Leeds, York and Selby will be electrified by 2018;</li>
<li>the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edinburgh_to_Glasgow_Improvement_Programme" target="_blank">Edinburgh-Glasgow Improvement Programme</a> (EGIP) will see the main route from Edinburgh to Glasgow (via Falkirk) electrified by 2016, with other suburban routes in the central belt following by 2019;</li>
<li>the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Western_Main_Line">Great Western Main Line</a> (GWML) from London to Oxford, Newbury, Bristol and Swansea will be electrified in stages from 2016 to 2018;</li>
<li>following on from that, the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valleys_%26_Cardiff_Local_Routes">Valley Lines</a> in south Wales will be electrified by 2020;</li>
<li>the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midland_Main_Line">Midland Main Line</a> (MML), already electrified between London and Bedford, would have its wires extended from Bedford to Corby, Nottingham, Derby and Sheffield in stages from 2017 to 2020;</li>
<li>in a project dubbed the "Electric Spine", the lines from Southampton to Nuneaton and Bedford would also be electrified to create an electric freight route for containers from Southampton to the north of England and Scotland.</li>
</ul>
Let's see that on a map:<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-PreexnZ5UIo/U5MtE-tN-tI/AAAAAAAAANM/U9BPda_rY-E/s1600/BR-Elect-2020.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-PreexnZ5UIo/U5MtE-tN-tI/AAAAAAAAANM/U9BPda_rY-E/s1600/BR-Elect-2020.png" height="640" width="356" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">British railway network, showing planned electrification by 2020</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
In theory all of this should be electrified by 2020. However, some parts of the plan are further advanced than others, and you'll note I didn't put a date on the completion of the Electric Spine: it seems as if the Department for Transport saw an idea that Network Rail put forward for possible future electrification and said "ooh, yes, we like that", and approved it before Network Rail had really had a chance to scope out to the project. Nonetheless, the rest of the electrification schemes are proceeding apace, with part of the Liverpool-Manchester line already open to electric trains.<br />
<br />
While electrification provides significant benefits - reduced running costs, faster journeys - it doesn't always provide a "step change" without other investment, and the most successful electrification schemes are usually accompanied by changes to track layouts and signalling to unclog bottlenecks in the route.<br />
<br />
For example, when the southern part of the WCML between London and Manchester was electrified in the 1960s, a flyover was built at Rugby to allow trains from Birmingham to head to London without interrupting the flow of northbound trains. That one bridge did nearly as much for improving capacity as electrification alone did; together with major rebuilding projects at London Euston and Birmingham New Street stations, they yielded "total route modernisation", and provided for a doubling of traffic on the WCML between 1962 and 1975.<br />
<br />
Each of the major electrification schemes planned comes along with various capacity improvements. In the next three posts, I will look in turn at the three big drivers of change on England's railways outside London:
<br />
<ul>
<li><a href="http://railwaydave.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/what-is-intercity-express-programme-and.html">the "Intercity Express Programme" (IEP)</a> will introduce brand-new Hitachi <i>Super Express</i> trains to the GWML which, combined with electrification, the construction of <a href="http://railwaydave.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/what-is-crossrail.html">Crossrail</a>, and the complete rebuilding of Reading station, will totally transform the Great Western Main Line;</li>
<li><a href="http://railwaydave.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/what-is-northern-hub.html">the Northern Hub</a>, encompassing the electrification in the north-west
of England and across the Pennines, will unlock capacity through the
congested approaches to Manchester Piccadilly and transform rail travel
across the north of England; </li>
<li><a href="http://railwaydave.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/what-is-electric-spine-or-why-freight.html">the Electric Spine</a>, which technically includes the MML electrification, will (hopefully) transform the future of freight movements by rail across the country.</li>
</ul>
In the meantime, if you'd like to learn more of the history of electrification in Britain, I'd recommend two booklets on the electrification of the WCML: <a href="http://www.railwaysarchive.co.uk/documents/BRB_YNR001.pdf">the first</a> was published in 1966, and <a href="http://www.railwaysarchive.co.uk/documents/BRLM_Elec002.pdf">the second</a> was published in 1974. Both are preserved on the <a href="http://www.railwaysarchive.co.uk/">Railways Archive</a>, a fascinating treasure trove of historical documents from 1830 right through to the present day.<br />
<br />
<i>Previous post: <a href="http://railwaydave.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/what-is-automatic-train-operation-and.html">What is... Automatic Train Operation?</a></i><br />
<i>Next post: <a href="http://railwaydave.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/what-is-intercity-express-programme-and.html" target="_blank">What is... the Intercity Express Programme?</a></i>Dave McCormickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16226892437669224991noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2638543736544799966.post-38734886925181175312014-05-09T12:58:00.000+01:002014-06-09T13:25:44.591+01:00What is... Automatic Train Operation? (And Why Do We Still Need Train Drivers?)I'm often asked... sometimes asked... well, somebody asked me once: what do train drivers do? How hard can it be? Why can't it all be automated?<br />
<br />
First thing: driving a train isn't like driving a car. The key difference is in braking. When driving a car, you brake on sight - you see something in the way, be that a pedestrian in the road or a car ahead slowing down, and you brake. When driving a train, unless you're going no more than about 20mph you haven't a hope of braking on sight, because trains brake much more slowly.<br />
<br />
More starkly: a car doing 70mph can stop in 75m (plus thinking distance); a train doing 125mph takes about 2,050m to stop - nearly a mile and a half. So if a train driver sees an obstacle in front of him, he's going to hit it.<br />
<br />
More than that, though, if the driver doesn't know where the signals are, where the speed restrictions start, or exactly where the stations are, he's not going to know where to brake. As a simple example, a fast train heading towards Coventry station from Birmingham will typically start braking before it gets to Canley station (which is 1½ miles out from Coventry). If it's been raining, there won't be as much grip, so the driver has to brake sooner. There's no sign telling the driver where to brake; the driver has to know. <br />
<br />
The term given to this requirement is <i>route knowledge</i>: before a driver can drive a train unsupervised on <i>any</i> railway line, they must have sufficient route knowledge for that specific route. A typical, reasonably simple, route might require about 60 journeys back and forth before the driver can <i>"sign the route"</i>, meaning he has been assessed as having sufficient route knowledge to drive a train unsupervised on that particular route.<br />
<br />
Some drivers will only sign one or two routes; some drivers will sign hundreds. As an example, drivers based at Oxford sign the Great Western Main Line from London Paddington to Oxford, as well as the branch lines to Banbury and Great Malvern; in total, about 150 route miles. That may sound like a lot, but that means an Oxford driver can't drive a train to Swindon, Bristol or Newbury, all common destinations for a train from Paddington.<br />
<br />
As a result, timetabling trains isn't just a matter of planning where the trains themselves go; it also involves ensuring that it's driven by a driver who signs the route. This isn't too hard to plan in advance, but it makes life complicated when things go wrong: if the controllers at Paddington want to send a train to Bristol and the only people around are Oxford drivers, they're stuffed.<br />
<br />
So surely it would make life a lot easier if all the trains drove themselves automatically? In theory, yes, and we are at the stage where the technology is there that would allow almost all passenger trains to be driven automatically; this is generally called <i>Automatic Train Operation</i> (ATO). However, ATO does have its drawbacks: it's neither easy nor cheap to install the technology, and it involves modifications to both the tracks and the trains.<br />
<br />
The modifications to the trains are particularly tricky: while it's easy enough to build trains with ATO equipment, retrofitting older trains with ATO equipment - even if they're just a few years old - can be a nightmare. It's not nearly as simple as, say, adding an after-market CD player to your car. A reasonable analogy would be converting a manual gearbox car to an automatic gearbox: it's technically possible, but for the amount of trouble it would be to convert the old one, it's often easier to just buy a brand new one.<br />
<br />
Moreover, since one of the advantages of automating the driving of trains is more efficient braking, ATO requires <i>every</i> train on a route to be converted (or replaced) before there's any tangible benefit over human drivers. The capacity of a line is determined by how closely you can run trains together, and that's determined by how well a train can brake. When there's more than one type of train on a line, the capacity is generally limited by the worst-performing train on a given line.<br />
<br />
For example, the line between Coventry and Birmingham has 7 passenger trains an hour in each direction, plus two extra that just run between Birmingham International and Birmingham New Street. Trains can (and do) run as little as 4 minutes apart, so in theory the line could take several more trains. The catch is that they'd all have to plod along as slow as the train stopping at all nine intermediate stations: currently the fast trains take just 20 minutes, while the stopping trains can take 35 minutes.<br />
<br />
Now, ATO might manage to improve that a little, by safely allowing trains to be closer together; but it would require all the trains that run on the line to be converted. However, the trains that run between Coventry and Birmingham aren't self-contained: trains can start their day in Birmingham and end up as far away as London, Liverpool, Exeter or Edinburgh. I estimate there are 250 passenger trains which could, in the course of a week, run between Coventry and Birmingham. (Never mind freight trains, which are even more complicated.)<br />
<br />
However, on self-contained networks with a dedicated fleet of trains, ATO can work wonders. Three London Underground lines have ATO: the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victoria_line">Victoria line</a> has had ATO from when it opened in 1968, and was in fact the first railway line in the world worked entirely by ATO. The <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_line">Central line</a> was converted to ATO in 2001, shortly after the introduction of a new fleet of trains. The Jubilee line was converted to ATO in 2011; in this case the existing trains were modified to work with ATO.<br />
<br />
On the London Underground, the advantages of ATO can be seen very clearly. ATO's principal advantage is that it can stop the train at a station much more precisely: human drivers tend to be a bit cautious, since delaying people a few seconds is much better than crashing into something. Freed from human inhibition, the ATO system knows exactly where to brake, saving vital seconds.<br />
<br />
Once the Jubilee line had been converted to ATO, the previous maximum frequency of 24tph (a train every 2½ minutes) was increased to 30tph (a train every 2 minutes). Now, 30 seconds may not sound like much, but that 30 seconds means a 25% increase in capacity (and, incidentally, a significant reduction in journey times as well).<br />
<br />
The Central and Victoria lines operate at 33tph in the rush hours - about 110 seconds between trains - and are currently the most frequent lines in London; but such is the need for greater capacity that most other LU lines are being gradually converted to ATO: next will be the Northern line, which should be converted by the end of 2014.<br />
<br />
That said, all the LU lines running under ATO still have drivers: although they can drive the train in an emergency, or when the ATO fails, their principal job is to open and close the doors. On the Docklands Light Railway (DLR), which has been completely driven by ATO since it opened in 1987, the doors are opened and closed by "train captains": they don't sit at the front of the train, but they are also available to drive the train in an emergency.<br />
<br />
Truly <i>unattended</i> train operation, while technically feasible, often leaves passengers somewhat uneasy; the efficiency of ATO cannot be denied, but knowing that there's someone on board should everything go wrong affords a peace of mind - both for the operator and the passenger - that cannot easily be dismissed. Nonetheless, it does exist elsewhere in the world; <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_M%C3%A9tro_Line_14">Paris Metro Line 14</a> is completely driverless (and, incidentally, runs at 40tph - a train every 90 seconds!).<br />
<br />
If you want to read more about the debate as to whether the London Underground should go "driverless", I highly recommend <a href="http://www.londonreconnections.com/2014/driverless-trains-piccadilly/">this post</a> on London Reconnections.<br />
<br />
What of Crossrail and Thameslink? In both cases the aim is for 24tph through the core. While many London Underground lines run at 24tph or more without ATO, it was decided to install ATO on Crossrail and Thameslink, with a brand-new fleet of trains brought in to operate the enhanced service from 2018. Due to the complexities of the National Rail network, ATO will only be used on the central core sections: on Crossrail, between Stratford, Abbey Wood and Paddington; on Thameslink, between London Bridge and St Pancras.<br />
<br />
In a sense these are the only parts of the line which justify ATO, since further out the frequency of services is less; nonetheless, having part of the journey run by manual driving and part by ATO is an extra layer of complication, and it remains to be seen how it will work in practice. Crossrail, with only two branches to east and west, should work well. Thameslink, though, will have many more branches and has a much shorter core section; one late train could have significant ripple effects.<br />
<br />
Thameslink will be served by a fleet of 115 trains (designated <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail_Class_700">Class 700</a>), which will be built by Siemens: of these, 55 are 12-car trains and 60 are 8-car trains. While the core will be capable of taking 12-car trains, there will be too many stations (particularly those on the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sutton_Loop_Line" target="_blank">Wimbledon loop</a>) which cannot be lengthened beyond 8 cars. It will be interesting to see how the ATO system copes with different train lengths; all ATO operation in the UK so far is confined to a single type of train.<br />
<br />
For Crossrail, 65 9-car trains (designated <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail_Class_345">Class 345</a>) have been ordered from Bombardier, with the option of a further 18 trains for future extensions. Although built by different firms, the two fleets will look quite similar internally: both will have fewer seats and lots of standing capacity, with full-width gangways between carriages to maximise capacity.<br />
<br />
Of course, Thameslink is already served by a large fleet of about 110 4-car trains, most of which (the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail_Class_319">class 319s</a>) date to the late 1980s and have plenty of serviceable use left in them. Once replaced by the new class 700 trains, these will be surplus to requirements for Thameslink and will be available for use elsewhere. Similarly, once Crossrail opens, it will displace a number of trains from existing services on the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Western_Main_Line">GWML</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Eastern_Main_Line">GEML</a>.<br />
<br />
The ideal solution is for these trains to move to another line to replace some of the oldest trains on the rest of the network, which can then be retired: this kind of "rolling stock cascade" means that more than one line benefits when new trains are introduced. There's just one slight problem: the class 319s are electric trains.<br />
<br />
With the arrival of the new trains for Thameslink and Crossrail, the supply of electric trains will exceed the demand from electrified lines for them to run on. In the next post, I'll look at how electric railway lines work, and the benefits and disadvantages of electric operation; I'll also explain the programme of lines planned for "electrification" to rectify the imbalance.<br />
<br />
One day, no doubt, automation will take over from human drivers in almost all aspects of driving trains. For most of the railway network that won't come soon; Crossrail and Thameslink are but the first tentative steps into automating the entire railway network. In the meantime, the cascade of rolling stock resulting from the new fleets for Thameslink and Crossrail will have more immediate impacts across the country: in the next post I'll begin to explain exactly where the ripples will be felt.<br />
<br />
<i>Previous post: <a href="http://railwaydave.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/what-is-thameslink-programme.html" target="_blank">What is... The Thameslink Programme?</a></i><br />
<i>Next post: <a href="http://railwaydave.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/what-is-electrification.html" target="_blank">What is... Electrification?</a></i>Dave McCormickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16226892437669224991noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2638543736544799966.post-15237433600824330322014-05-06T20:24:00.001+01:002014-05-11T02:09:03.885+01:00What is... the Thameslink Programme?The Thameslink Programme is a £5.5 billion project to triple the capacity of the Thameslink line, which runs north-south through central London via St Pancras, Farringdon, Blackfriars and London Bridge. If you have no earthly idea what Thameslink is, I suggest you start by reading <a href="http://railwaydave.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/what-is-thameslink.html" target="_blank">my previous post</a>, which explains the history and background of the line. In this post, I'll try and explain how the £5.5 billion will be spent.<br />
<br />
Until 2009, the Thameslink core between Farringdon and Blackfriars could only cope with a maximum of 8 trains per hour (tph) in each direction. Furthermore, the platforms at King's Cross Thameslink, Farringdon and Blackfriars were only long enough to take 8-car trains, even though many of the stations further out could cope with 12-car trains. As such, the Thameslink trains are horrendously overcrowded.<br />
<br />
Indeed, Thameslink was horrendously overcrowded within just a few short years of the line opening in 1988: passenger numbers quadrupled within the first year. So in November 1991, a major upgrade, then entitled "Thameslink 2000", was announced. Through numerous delays, first due to privatisation and then to complex planning inquiries, the programme was only approved in 2006 and funding was forthcoming the following year. It was quietly renamed "the Thameslink Programme" to hide the fact that it was running about 18 years late.<br />
<br />
The plan had a simple aim: convert Thameslink into a proper <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RER" target="_blank">RER</a>-style cross-London line with 24 trains every hour, most of them 12 carriages long, running in each direction in the rush hour. This necessitated a variety of modifications:
<br />
<ul>
<li>more destinations, both north and south, were needed to send trains to;</li>
<li>longer platforms were required in the Thameslink core;</li>
<li>the branch to Moorgate had to close;</li>
<li>most importantly, London Bridge had to be rebuilt to give it the necessary capacity.</li>
</ul>
The need for additional destinations was simple: while the core could be upgraded to cope with 24tph, there wasn't any need for 24tph to Bedford or Brighton. To the north, Thameslink connected only to the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midland_Main_Line">Midland Main Line</a> (MML) out of St Pancras, but that took it quite close to the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Coast_Main_Line">East Coast Main Line</a> (ECML) out of King's Cross. Peak-time services on the MML already amounted to 14tph, so a connection to the ECML would provide enough capacity to the north to run 24tph through the core.<br />
<br />
As luck would have it, such a connection used to exist: the lines now used by Thameslink - the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Widened_Lines">"City Widened Lines"</a> - had not one but two historical connections to the ECML (as seen in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:City_Widened_Lines.svg">this diagram</a>), one of which had only closed in 1977. Thought was given to simply reinstating one of these connections, but ultimately it was decided against just putting back the old connection, for one simple reason: it would have to be a flat junction, and that would have constrained capacity too much to ensure that 24tph could be run reliably.<br />
<br />
A flat junction on the railway is much like a right-turning lane on a dual carriageway: trains wanting to turn right must wait for a gap in trains coming the other direction to make the turn. Grade-separated junctions, usually called "flying junctions" on the railway, is akin to a proper motorway junction: the conflicting movements are replaced with a bridge or a tunnel.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-QXn07l6ntWI/U12xfAZ4CBI/AAAAAAAAALw/0Bfho2hmdkM/s1600/Flat-vs-Flying.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-QXn07l6ntWI/U12xfAZ4CBI/AAAAAAAAALw/0Bfho2hmdkM/s1600/Flat-vs-Flying.png" height="177" width="400" /></a></div>
The principal downside to having a flying junction is space: even in the diagram above it can be seen that a flying junction takes up more land, and land in central London is nothing if not scarce and expensive. And while the old connections to the ECML could have been used, there wasn't the space around them to make them into flying junctions.<br />
<br />
Instead, a plan for something much grander came about: St Pancras would be comprehensively rebuilt for the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Speed_1">Channel Tunnel Rail Link</a> so that Eurostar trains could use the station. In the process, two new underground platforms would be provided for Thameslink services under St Pancras, replacing the inconveniently-sited and impossible-to-enlarge King's Cross Thameslink station. Just north of the new station, a flying junction with a connection to the ECML would be built - not an easy task given the incredible honeycomb of tunnels in the area, with six London Underground lines serving King's Cross-St Pancras.<br />
<br />
In spite of the fact that the Thameslink programme still hadn't been finally approved, the construction at St Pancras was given the go-ahead as part of the Eurostar upgrade, with Thameslink services split in two for nine months while the new station was constructed. Thameslink duly moved into its new home at St Pancras in December 2007, with King's Cross Thameslink closing at the same time. The tunnels for the flying junction were bored, but left without track for the time being: they won't be needed until 2018.<br />
<br />
At Farringdon, the platforms were only long enough to take 8 carriages: extending them to the north was impossible, due to the severe gradient. Extending them to the south, however, would entail removing the flat junction to Moorgate. From the point of view of improving Thameslink services this was actually a benefit: without the trains to Moorgate, there would be more room for trains to Blackfriars and beyond. Passengers for Moorgate would still be able to change at Farringdon and get the Metropolitan line to their destination.<br />
<br />
At Blackfriars, there were five platforms, all only long enough for 8 carriages; but three were bay platforms, only accessible to trains terminating from the south. Unfortunately the bay platforms were to the east of the through platforms, meaning any terminating trains had to cross the path of Thameslink services (another flat junction). Ideally the bay platforms would be to the west of the through platforms; to achieve that, the plan involved extending Blackfriars considerably to the south, to permit the through lines to be slued across.<br />
<br />
In fact, extending Blackfriars to the south came up across a large obstacle: the River Thames. The platforms already encroached a little onto the bridge carrying the railway over the Thames; the Thameslink Programme called for them to be extended all the way across the river. Indeed, the plans included a new entrance to Blackfriars station on the South Bank, with the station having four platforms - two bays on the west side, and two through platforms on the east side.<br />
<br />
Phase 1 of the Thameslink Programme, begun in 2009 and finished in time for the Olympics in 2012, involved shutting the Moorgate branch and the bay platforms at Blackfriars and diverting those services through the core (increasing peak services to 15tph) to facilitate the construction works at Farringdon and Blackfriars. In addition, the line was completely resignalled to permit trains to run much closer together. The works were not without disruption, requiring nearly three years of weekend closures through the Thameslink core.<br />
<br />
But the disruption there pales in comparison to that caused by Phase 2: begun in 2013 and due for completion in 2018, Phase 2 is focussed almost entirely on London Bridge. Currently, Thameslink trains currently have to share tracks with trains to and from Charing Cross, and then cross over to the line towards East Croydon in a <i>double</i> flat junction. Prior to the works, the layout looked like this:<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0hlGclAYhJQ/U12xjDTBxsI/AAAAAAAAAL4/Z2Ai71LJX3M/s1600/LBG-2009-colour.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="London Bridge track layout in 2009" border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0hlGclAYhJQ/U12xjDTBxsI/AAAAAAAAAL4/Z2Ai71LJX3M/s1600/LBG-2009-colour.png" height="115" title="London Bridge track layout in 2009" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><u>London Bridge track layout in 2009</u></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
By 2018, Thameslink will have its own dedicated platforms and tracks through London Bridge, and the layout will look like this:<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-J5MKZU3OhGk/U12xlsFvAsI/AAAAAAAAAMA/ciuCad8Wyf4/s1600/LBG-2018-colour.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="London Bridge track layout in 2018 (provisional)" border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-J5MKZU3OhGk/U12xlsFvAsI/AAAAAAAAAMA/ciuCad8Wyf4/s1600/LBG-2018-colour.png" height="116" title="London Bridge track layout in 2018 (provisional)" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><u>London Bridge track layout in 2018 (provisional)</u></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
(To see clearly exactly what's changing, try opening both and flicking back and forth between the two.)<br />
<br />
As can be seen, Thameslink had pretty much no track of its own through London Bridge. In a hugely complex plan, two extra tracks will be constructed between Metropolitan Junction and London Bridge for Charing Cross trains, with Thameslink taking over the existing two tracks. The lines run over the top of Borough Market, and finding space for the extra viaducts has been an absolute nightmare: the formation for the new tracks was put in place in 2011, involving one of the most complicated bridge slides ever done (see <a href="http://londonist.com/2011/05/in-pictures-new-thameslink-railway-bridge.php">these pictures</a>).<br />
<br />
A couple of miles out at South Bermondsey, a flyover will be constructed to permit Thameslink trains to jump over the Charing Cross trains without interrupting them. This involves completely reconfiguring which track is which, and will not be an easy task.<br />
<br />
Crucially, though, there aren't enough through platforms at London Bridge for those lines on their own to actually be any use: there were 6 through platforms and 9 bays for services terminating from the south. That will be turned into 9 through platforms and just 6 bays, through a massive gradual reconstruction; only three platforms will be closed at any one time, and a full peak service will continue to run throughout (though some trains will not call at London Bridge during the works).<br />
<br />
Over the course of 2013 and 2014, the nine old bay platforms will be shut and the six newly-repositioned bay platforms opened in their place. From January 2015 to August 2016, no trains to and from Charing Cross will call at London Bridge, to permit the new through platforms 6-9 to be constructed. From then until early 2018, no trains to and from Cannon Street will call at London Bridge, permitting the rest of the through platforms to be reconstructed. Notably, only five of the six existing through platforms will remain: platform 1 will be removed, permitting all the platforms to be straightened somewhat (they are currently quite curved).<br />
<br />
Perhaps the most annoying thing during the work will be the diversion of Thameslink services. As discussed previously, there isn't enough capacity for Thameslink services to serve London Bridge in the peak, and so instead they run via Elephant and Castle. But for the three years from 2015-2018 when the through platforms are being reconstructed, <i>no</i> Thameslink services will run via London Bridge at all, even in the off-peak.<br />
<br />
But once the rebuilding is complete, Thameslink trains will be able to run through London Bridge all day, with up to 18tph serving London Bridge (with the rest going via Elephant and Castle). Beyond London Bridge most trains will continue to head south towards East Croydon and on to various destinations off the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brighton_Main_Line">Brighton Main Line</a>, but the capability will be there for trains to head towards Kent as well (with a flying junction at Bermondsey). Once London Bridge is completed, the connection to the ECML will finally be opened for use and Thameslink trains will serve a wide variety of destinations.<br />
<br />
You might notice I'm being slightly coy about exactly where it's going: that's because it hasn't really been decided yet. While the infrastructure upgrades for the core are clearly defined, the end network is not (unlike Crossrail). Describing the probable destinations, and the politics involved therein, would be another article in itself; I'll leave it to the good people at London Reconnections, who have a <a href="http://www.londonreconnections.com/2013/whats-it-all-about-thameslink/">fascinating article</a> on the possible destinations of Thameslink post-2018, which I highly recommend.<br />
<br />
In the meantime, though, we are right in the middle of a hugely exciting but also horrendously disruptive upgrade of London Bridge, that will unlock the potential of Thameslink in a way that this country has never seen before. The London railway network post-2019, once both Thameslink and Crossrail are operational, will be quite a different place, and I look forward to it all coming to fruition. To keep track of what's going on, you can check the <a href="http://www.thameslinkprogramme.co.uk/">Thameslink programme website</a>.<br />
<br />
Both Crossrail and Thameslink will achieve their 24tph through brand-new fleets of trains running with Automatic Train Operation (ATO). What is ATO, I hear you cry? Head on over to <a href="http://railwaydave.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/what-is-automatic-train-operation-and.html" target="_blank">the next post</a>...<br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Previous post: <a href="http://railwaydave.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/what-is-thameslink.html" target="_blank">What is... Thameslink?</a></i><br />
<i>Next post: <a href="http://railwaydave.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/what-is-automatic-train-operation-and.html" target="_blank">What is... Automatic Train Operation?</a></i>Dave McCormickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16226892437669224991noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2638543736544799966.post-56141365680397450812014-05-01T13:55:00.000+01:002014-05-07T00:06:44.529+01:00What is... Thameslink?Thameslink is a railway line connecting north and south London via St Pancras, Farringdon, Blackfriars and London Bridge. Think of it as a north-south version of <a href="http://railwaydave.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/what-is-crossrail.html" target="_blank">Crossrail</a>, but it's a bit old and naff by comparison. As such it's undergoing a huge £5.5 billion upgrade called the Thameslink Programme, lasting nine years, that will effectively triple Thameslink's capacity.<br />
<br />
From when it opened in 1988 until 2009, the core section of Thameslink only got 8 trains per hour (tph) in each direction in the rush hours. By contrast, Crossrail will get 24tph in each direction (in rush hours) from the day it opens. But then Thameslink was shoehorned into an existing network not remotely designed for it: two completely separate networks north and south of the river were combined into one, meaning 8tph was the limit.<br />
<br />
But let's start from the beginning. First, here's a map of the central section of Thameslink:<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/--pUjeyhr_EM/U1xwPVDTf6I/AAAAAAAAALg/wM8WVPn7GMc/s1600/TLCore-Base.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/--pUjeyhr_EM/U1xwPVDTf6I/AAAAAAAAALg/wM8WVPn7GMc/s1600/TLCore-Base.png" height="320" width="268" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><u style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; line-height: 14.559999465942383px;">(Map based on <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/" style="color: #015782; text-decoration: none;">OpenStreetMap</a>; © OpenStreetMap contributors)</u></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
The main Thameslink line is in blue; the now-closed lines to Moorgate and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holborn_Viaduct_railway_station">Holborn Viaduct</a> are shown in green, and the connection to the ECML which will open in 2018 is shown in yellow.<br />
<br />
Prior to 1988, suburban services into London on the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midland_Main_Line">Midland Main Line</a> (MML) from Bedford and Luton ran to St Pancras and Moorgate. A few of them went to the high level station at St Pancras, rebuilt a just few years ago for the arrival of Eurostar trains. But most used the the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Widened_Lines">"City Widened Lines"</a>, a remnant of the old Metropolitan Railway, to go underneath St Pancras to Farringdon and Moorgate, which was much more convenient for the multitude of City commuters (hence the name). While trains to Moorgate couldn't call at St Pancras, they called instead at <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King%27s_Cross_Thameslink_railway_station">King's Cross Thameslink</a>, a cramped pair of platforms just east of King's Cross proper on the City Widened Lines.<br />
<br />
South of the river, most of the suburban services from Kent and Sussex used a variety of stations: about half went to Victoria; the other half went to London Bridge and on to either Charing Cross or Cannon Street. Just a small handful of trains used the two stations at Blackfriars and Holborn Viaduct, both lying on the west edge of the City and mostly eschewed in favour of Cannon Street by City commuters.<br />
<br />
But connecting Holborn Viaduct and Farringdon, there lay the disused <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_Hill_Tunnel_(London)">Snow Hill tunnel</a>, built in 1866 to connect the Metropolitan Railway to the lins south of the river, but closed in 1916 to all but a handful of goods trains. The Greater London Council under Ken Livingstone had been campaigning for some time for its reopening, but initially that meant trying to get two completely separate regions of British Rail to work together.<br />
<br />
In the 1980s, however, the railway was restructured: rather than five regions of BR, new "sectors" were created. Most importantly, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_SouthEast">Network SouthEast</a> took over responsibility for <i>all</i> commuter services across London and the south-east, giving the railway network one voice for commuters. And Chris Green, as head of NSE, gave his enthusiastic backing to Thameslink: it symbolised perfectly the uniting of London's commuter routes into one coherent network.<br />
<br />
In 1988, the new Thameslink service began, with trains linking Bedford and Brighton, Luton and Purley, and Cricklewood and Sevenoaks. The service was somewhat tentative at first: the off-peak service consisted of just 6tph, and they ended up clumped so that there were some 20-minute gaps. The morning rush-hour actually had <i>fewer</i> trains through the core, because Thameslink was merely added on top of existing rush-hour service patterns, rather than replacing them.<br />
<br />
For example, while many of the Midland City services from Bedford and Luton now ran through the Thameslink core to Blackfriars, London Bridge and even all the way to Brighton, there was too much commuter demand to Moorgate to just close it outright and force everyone to use Farringdon. As such, Bedford-Moorgate services remained a feature of the timetable for decades to come, at first just in the peaks, but within a few years a half-hourly all day service had returned to Moorgate.<br />
<br />
On the other side of the river, Blackfriars and Holborn Viaduct similarly continued to have rush-hour trains which terminated there and didn't run through the core to Farringdon and beyond. There was, however, a key difference between the two: Blackfriars had platforms for the through Thameslink trains to call, but they skirted Holborn Viaduct without calling, easily visible from the end of the platforms.<br />
<br />
Having two under-used terminals was now rather unnecessary, and the decision was taken to close Holborn Viaduct and divert the remaining peak trains to Blackfriars or through the Thameslink core. But just closing Holborn Viaduct outright would lead to the Ludgate Hill area lacking any kind of railway station; it lay in the no-man's land between the Circle and Central lines, unserved by the Underground at all.<br />
<br />
So, in an audacious plan, Network SouthEast decided to bury part of the Thameslink line just south of Holborn Viaduct - in the Ludgate Hill area, at the east end of Fleet Street - and provide a replacement station on Thameslink, underground between Farringdon and Blackfriars, so that Holborn Viaduct could finally be put out of its misery, releasing the land for valuable City development. This required ripping up the newly-reopened Thameslink line, digging out a tunnel "box" for the station, and then covering it over - not an easy task.<br />
<br />
Holborn Viaduct station was closed on January 26th 1990, consigned to the history books. Over the next four months, the railway around Ludgate Hill was completely rebuilt. Incredibly, services continued to run through the Thameslink core during construction works, with just a two-week closure in May 1990 to finish everything off. The <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_Thameslink">new station</a>, originally St Paul's Thameslink but renamed City Thameslink soon after, opened on May 29th 1990.<br />
<br />
By far the biggest problem for Thameslink, however, was the lack of capacity through London Bridge. With well-established commuter networks ferrying passengers by their thousands into Cannon Street and Charing Cross every weekday morning, all of which had to pass through the seven through lines on the north side of London Bridge station, rail bosses were unwilling to reduce existing services to make room for the new Thameslink services.<br />
<br />
It's not hard to see why: the regimented service of trains arriving at two-minute intervals into Charing Cross has barely changed since the mid-1970s, principally because it works so well at getting commuters into London. Reducing the service would only serve to make overcrowding worse; and since any improvement in Thameslink services had to be matched by a corresponding decrease in services to Charing Cross, the decision was taken to give the incumbent services priority over new ones.<br />
<br />
So from the outset, and to this day, Bedford-Brighton services ran via London Bridge in the <i>off-peak</i> only, when there is room to thread them through the Charing Cross services. In rush hours, the same services ran instead via Elephant and Castle, avoiding London Bridge entirely. Operationally this works reasonably well, but it deprived Thameslink commuters access to one of the biggest London stations.<br />
<br />
In spite of all that, however, Thameslink services were well-used from the outset: those places lucky enough to get a Thameslink service saw a quadrupling in usage within just a year of opening the line. The destinations changed a number of times, but by the turn of the millennium the off-peak service had settled down to 4tph Bedford-Brighton and 4tph Luton-Sutton, the latter via the Wimbledon loop.<br />
<br />
Indeed, Thameslink ended up becoming something of a victim of its own success: with no capacity available to increase peak services, and the platforms at Farringdon and Blackfriars only long enough for 8-car trains, something big had to happen if Thameslink was ever to solve its overcrowding problem.<br />
<br />
Enter the Thameslink Programme: a comprehensive upgrade programme, designed to remove the capacity bottlenecks along the route and give Thameslink capacity of its own, obviating the need to share capacity with other services. Such is the extent of the upgrade that it deserves its own blogpost: <a href="http://railwaydave.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/what-is-thameslink-programme.html" target="_blank">click here</a> to continue reading about the Thameslink Programme. <br />
<br />
In the meantime, if you want to read more into the creation of Thameslink, <a href="http://www.networksoutheast.net/nse-chronology.html">the Network SouthEast chronology</a> is a year-by-year history of NSE with many fascinating tidbits; indeed, the whole site is an invaluable reference.<br />
<br />
<i>Previous post: <a href="http://railwaydave.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/what-is-crossrail.html" target="_blank">What is... Crossrail?</a></i><br />
<i>Next post: <a href="http://railwaydave.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/what-is-thameslink-programme.html" target="_blank">What is... the Thameslink Programme?</a></i>Dave McCormickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16226892437669224991noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2638543736544799966.post-45776560210685245782014-04-28T14:00:00.000+01:002015-03-31T02:46:52.567+01:00What is... Crossrail?Crossrail is a new underground railway line being built in central London: 26 miles of tunnel will link Paddington in the west to Liverpool Street and Canary Wharf in the east, with connections to existing lines at either end permitting trains to Reading, Heathrow, Shenfield and Abbey Wood. Construction is costing £15 billion, and the line is expected to open in earnest in 2019. Here's a map:<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://74f85f59f39b887b696f-ab656259048fb93837ecc0ecbcf0c557.r23.cf3.rackcdn.com//assets/library/image/c/original/crossrail-route-map-geographic-outline-interchange.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://74f85f59f39b887b696f-ab656259048fb93837ecc0ecbcf0c557.r23.cf3.rackcdn.com//assets/library/image/c/original/crossrail-route-map-geographic-outline-interchange.gif" height="120" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><div class="legal sans">
© Crossrail Ltd 2014</div>
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
(<a href="http://www.crossrail.co.uk/route/maps/">You can see more maps on the Crossrail website.</a>)<br />
<br />
Note that I deliberately didn't capitalise "underground" above: Crossrail is <b>not</b> (just) a new <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Underground">London Underground</a> (LU) line, like the Victoria line in 1968 or the Jubilee line in 1977 (extended in 1999). For many practical purposes, it will end up being a lot like an LU line; but there are three key differences between Crossrail and LU:<br />
<ol>
<li>the stations will be further apart, making it more like an "express" underground line;</li>
<li>Crossrail will extend much further out into the suburbs;</li>
<li>the tunnels and the trains will be larger (the same size as mainline trains).</li>
</ol>
Let's start with the first major difference, the distance between the stations. Particularly in the central tunnel, the line is best described as an "express" version of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_line">Central line</a>, and will bring substantial relief to long-suffering Central line commuters. While express underground lines are a radical new concept for London, they're a common feature in many other cities, most notably on the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_Subway">New York Subway</a>.<br />
<br />
Between Ealing Broadway in the west and Stratford in the east, the Central line has 20 stops; Crossrail will have just 7 in the same stretch. They are Acton Main Line, Paddington, Bond Street, Tottenham Court Road, Farringdon, Liverpool Street and Whitechapel. While Bond Street, Tottenham Court Road and Liverpool Street lie on the Central line, the route deviates north to meet the Circle line at Paddington and Farringdon, both of which will provide major interchanges with mainline rail services. It also deviates to the south to meet the Overground and the District line in another major interchange at Whitechapel.<br />
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The presence of Acton Main Line in that list betrays the second major difference: Crossrail will extend much further out than any tube line: the line will be 85 miles from end to end. To do so, it will use the existing <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Western_Main_Line">Great Western Main Line</a> (GWML) between Paddington and Reading, including the branch to Heathrow, and the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Eastern_Main_Line">Great Eastern Main Line</a> (GEML) between Stratford and Shenfield in the east. (The branch to Canary Wharf and Abbey Wood, though, will be all new.)<br />
<br />
Why extend it so far outside London proper? Currently, suburban trains to Reading arrive at Paddington, and sit for up to half an hour before going back towards Reading. That takes up valuable platform space which could be used by other trains. By transferring those trains to Crossrail, the trains can continue through to Shenfield on the other side of London, and free up those platforms at Paddington and Liverpool Street for other services.<br />
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The principle isn't new: we already have Thameslink, running north-south through London (of which more in the next blogpost). But perhaps the best example is just over the channel in Paris: the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RER">RER (Réseau Express Régional)</a> is a network of five lines criss-crossing the French capital, linking the suburbs to central Paris:<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/88/Central_RER_network.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/88/Central_RER_network.png" height="247" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">(from <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Central_RER_network.png" target="_blank">Wikipedia</a>)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
The RER lines connect suburban lines on either side of the French capital through a central tunnel. Indeed, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RER_A">RER Line A</a> (in red) is uncannily similar to London's Crossrail: it connects western and eastern suburbs through a central tunnel, broadly parallel to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_M%C3%A9tro_Line_1">Metro Line 1</a> but with many fewer stations. The RER has been vital in releasing capacity for medium- and long-distance trains to use Paris's six terminal stations like Gare du Nord and Gare de Lyon.<br />
<br />
The same effect will happen at Paddington and Liverpool Street once Crossrail opens: rather than wasting as many as a third of the platforms at Paddington with local services, they will be removed to separate underground platforms and continue through to Liverpool Street and beyond, leaving more platforms at Paddington for long-distance services.<br />
<br />
In order for that to be possible, we come to the third important difference between Crossrail and the parallel Central line: its tunnels will be the same size as mainline railway tunnels, and hence Crossrail's trains will be much bigger than tube trains.<br />
<br />
London has long been hamstrung from being one of the pioneers of "tube" tunnels. The earliest LU lines - the modern-day <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_line">Metropolitan</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circle_line_%28London_Underground%29">Circle</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hammersmith_%26_City_line">Hammersmith and City</a>, and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_line">District</a> lines - were built simply by digging up the road, laying down a railway line, and covering it over. This "cut-and-cover" method of construction was fairly easy, but it entailed colossal disruption to road traffic. Nonetheless, the tunnels were designed and sized for mainline trains, and the four "subsurface" lines remain by far the least claustrophobic part of the LU network.<br />
<br />
Faced with the political impossibility of building more subsurface lines, attention turned from cut-and-cover tunnelling to the more novel method of boring a tunnel, without any need for direct access from above. The innovations of Brunel (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Isambard_Brunel">senior</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isambard_Kingdom_Brunel">junior</a>) in building the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thames_Tunnel">Thames Tunnel</a> led to the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Henry_Greathead">Greathead</a> shield, the first major design of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunnelling_shield">tunnelling shield</a>, and enabled tunnels to be bored through the soft clay of south London: without it, the tunnels would have collapsed under the weight of the soil above them before they could even be lined with iron or steel.<br />
<br />
The <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_%26_South_London_Railway">City and South London Railway</a>, now the Bank branch of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_line">Northern line</a>, was the world's first "tube" line with bored tunnels. It was also the first major railway to use electric traction, necessary if the deep tunnels were not to become filled with smoke and fumes. But the technology of the time allowed a tunnel diameter of just 10ft 2in (3.1m). Over the next two decades, improvements meant that the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_line">Central</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piccadilly_line">Piccadilly</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bakerloo_line">Bakerloo</a> lines were all constructed to a common diameter of about 12ft (3.6m), with extensions to the Northern line following suit and requiring the hugely disruptive enlargement of the original C&SLR tunnels in 1923.<br />
<br />
But there it stayed: any further enlargement of existing tunnels would have been (and would still be) effectively impossible - such is the dependence of London on its Underground that any lengthy closure of one of the lines usually causes chaos. The <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jubilee_line">Jubilee line</a> was essentially an offshoot of the Bakerloo line, so there wasn't much point building the new tunnels any larger since the old ones it had to run through were still only 12ft across.<br />
<br />
However, the decision to build the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victoria_line">Victoria line</a> at the same diameter as the other four tube lines was motivated partly by a wish for compatibility, but mostly it was down to budgetary constraints (some would call it penny-pinching). Indeed, the whole Victoria line was built decidedly on the cheap and it suffers badly for it now, with stations too cramped and trains too small to truly cope with the volume of traffic.<br />
<br />
Fortunately, the designers of Crossrail have learned their lessons: the Crossrail tunnels will be a comparatively giant 6.2m in diameter, giving tunnels with three times the cross-sectional area of the tube lines. Indeed, the impression is that nothing has been skimped from the budget at all: some of the stations will be absolutely huge, in stark contrast to the failings of the Victoria Line.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canary_Wharf_tube_station">Canary Wharf station</a> on the Jubilee line is famous for being almost cathedral-like in proportions; it was built out of a hollowed-out dock from the old docklands, and can quite happily absorb over 130,000 passengers a day. Canary Wharf Crossrail station, to be constructed from another hollowed-out dock, promises to be even bigger: the whole box will be 475m long - over a quarter of a mile!<br />
<br />
Perhaps more important, though, is the upgrade work being undertaken at existing stations to ensure the new Crossrail services don't overwhelm the existing stations. Most notably, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tottenham_Court_Road_tube_station">Tottenham Court Road station</a> is already full to bursting at peak times with just the Northern and Central lines serving the station, and leaving it unaltered with the addition of Crossrail was not an option. So the station is being completely and painstakingly rebuilt, ensuring a total capacity for over 200,000 journeys per day once Crossrail is open.<br />
<br />
From the outset, Crossrail will have 24 trains per hour (tph) in each direction through the central core in the rush-hours, made possible by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_train_operation">automatic train operation</a> (ATO). The parallel Central line has 33tph, but its trains have a much smaller cross-section and are only 130m long, compared to Crossrail's 200m-long mainline-sized trains. It is clear that Crossrail will undoubtedly do wonders for London's transport system, and its knock-on effects will reach all the way to Norwich and Penzance.<br />
<br />
Nonetheless, there are some criticisms that I could make about Crossrail. Most importantly, having extolled the virtues of joining services on either side of the city together, there is something of a mismatch between the service level planned for the central core and the outer extremities: of the 24tph running through the central core, 14 per hour will only run as far west as Paddington, and only 10 will continue onwards towards Heathrow or Reading.<br />
<br />
Partly this is due to lack of capacity on the GWML, and partly due to lack of demand; it's hard to see the GWML core from Paddington to Ealing, Southall and Hayes ever needing more than about 12tph in the near future. The ideal solution would really to be have another branch for the other trains to use west from Paddington; but while many ideas have been proposed, such as branches to Amersham, Kingston and Milton Keynes, none have yet come to fruition and the line will open with one main western trunk and two main eastern branches.<br />
<br />
By contrast to the situation at Paddington, each of the two eastern branches - Shenfield and Abbey Wood - will get 12tph in the rush-hour. This will give Canary Wharf, an area that has been growing for decades, a much-needed capacity boost. The two branches will meet at Stepney Green Junction, which will be completely underground. Nonetheless, one could again argue that Abbey Wood is too close to central London to be an eastern terminus of Crossrail.<br />
<br />
Fortunately, adding an extra western branch or extending the Abbey Wood branch can be done without the need for an underground junction, and is thus easy enough to add later on. In some ways it was more important to get the central core under construction and let the branches figure themselves out later; I cannot imagine Crossrail living past its first decade without any changes in the pattern of services, since the appearance of services on the ground always brings changes that cannot be predicted at the construction phase.<br />
<br />
I could go on, and on, and on about Crossrail, for it is really quite fascinating; but ultimately we are only halfway to actually having a working railway line. So let me leave you with some links should you wish to read more about this epic project:<br />
<ul>
<li><a href="http://www.londonreconnections.com/">London Reconnections</a> is an excellent site covering all aspects of London transport; they have a number of much more detailed posts on Crossrail, but I would particularly recommend <a href="http://www.londonreconnections.com/2014/happens-crossrail-full-part-1-problem/">how quickly will Crossrail fill up?</a>; <a href="http://www.londonreconnections.com/2014/crossrail-piqued-proposed-peak-service/">more detail on the off-peak services</a>; and <a href="http://www.londonreconnections.com/2013/pictures-canary-wharf-crossrail-station/">this</a> and <a href="http://www.londonreconnections.com/2014/pictures-crossrails-eastern-tunnels-canary-wharf/">this</a> provide some fantastic pictures of the new station at Canary Wharf.</li>
<li>The <a href="http://www.crossrail.co.uk/">Crossrail website</a> contains a wealth of information, including detailed maps and plans; perhaps most interestingly, though, is the <a href="http://www.crossrail.co.uk/route/crossrail-from-its-early-beginnings">history</a> of how Crossrail came to be.</li>
<li>The Transport for London website has some <a href="http://www.tfl.gov.uk/travel-information/improvements-and-projects/tottenham-court-road">information about the rebuilding of Tottenham Court Road station, complete with a video walk-through</a>.</li>
</ul>
<i>Next post: <a href="http://railwaydave.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/what-is-thameslink.html" target="_blank">What is... Thameslink?</a></i>Dave McCormickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16226892437669224991noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2638543736544799966.post-29848770071882049902014-04-05T23:08:00.000+01:002014-04-05T23:08:27.376+01:00A Network Rail Success Story: What Next for Dawlish?The winter of 2013/14 will be remembered for quite some time as the stormiest in recent British history. <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-26044323">On the night of February 4th, 2014</a>, one of those storms thrashed the sea wall at Dawlish, in Devon, and the very foundations of the railway line were washed away, leaving 80 metres of track next to Riviera Terrace suspended in mid-air over nothing but the encroaching sea.<br /><br />The railway line in question is the Great Western Main Line between London Paddington and Penzance. More importantly, however, it is the <i>only</i> rail connection between Plymouth and Cornwall and the rest of the country: while most long-distance routes have alternatives, once you get beyond Exeter there is but one route you can take to get a train to Cornwall.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-devon-26874503">On Friday, April 4th</a>, two months after the tracks were washed away, the line reopened. Just eight weeks to rebuild a 100-metre section of sea wall from the very foundations, with workers only being able to work when it's not high tide, is nothing short of incredible and Network Rail deserve every award going for the amazing work they have done.<br /><br />When Network Rail said in the days after the storm that it would be "at least 4-6 weeks" before the line reopened, many people looked at the pictures and thought it would be a lot more than that; the sheer scale of the damage was more or less unprecedented, and was clearly the biggest challenge the Network Rail team in the south west of England have ever faced. But they nearly managed to do it within six weeks; had it not been for <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-26204454">a second storm on February 14th</a>, which washed away another 20 metres of sea wall, they might very well have succeeded.<br /><br />With the line reopened, the short-term panic over trains not running can at last subside. The focus should now turn to the long-term future of the rail network in Devon and Cornwall. On February 26th, Network Rail produced <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/26_02_14_dawlish_jmo.pdf">a list of options</a> that they were considering:<br /><ul><br />
<li>reopening the London and South Western Railway (LSWR) route between Exeter and Plymouth via Okehampton and Tavistock (see <a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ZmXhDVU2_t8/UfheZ_nU9-I/AAAAAAAAAIk/gBVxA2NRYb8/s1600/LSWR.png">this map</a>);</li>
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<li>create a new line between Exeter and Newton Abbot connecting two existing freight lines;</li>
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<li>build one or more cut-off tunnels between Exeter and Newton Abbot to bypass the worst section of the sea wall.</li>
</ul>
<br />However, there is a danger that, now the line has reopened, the impetus to look urgently at such plans will ebb away, and within six months most people will have forgotten that there was ever a problem with the railway line at Dawlish.<br /><br />Frankly, maintaining the railway line along the sea wall at Dawlish has always been a matter of fighting a losing battle with the sea; Network Rail, just like King Canute, cannot stop the tide rolling in. It is, mile for mile, the most expensive bit of railway in the country to maintain, not least because of the salt spray rusting away at the rails. It is almost surprising that it's taken this long to have this serious a breach in the sea wall. Nonetheless, sea levels are rising, and coastal erosion is inevitable; eventually the sea wall - and the railway line that sits atop it - will all fall into the sea.<br /><br />So what should be done? The trouble is that if those three options are the answers, it's not clear what the question is.<br /><br />If the question is whether there should be a diversionary route that can be used as a contingency and otherwise simply provides a reasonable local service, then reinstating the LSWR route between Exeter and Plymouth via Okehampton and Tavistock looks, on paper, to be the "easiest" option: apart from a few buildings, the trackbed is reasonably intact and it wouldn't require any significant engineering works to reopen the line.<br /><br />However, there are some downsides to this. Firstly, what parts of the line via Okehampton that are still open are all single-track; so while it would provide a reasonable contingency, it would be severely limited in capacity. (For more on this, see <a href="http://railwaydave.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/devon-and-cornwall-day-9.html">my blogpost and map</a> from when I went to Okehmapton last summer.) Even getting a train every hour between Exeter and Plymouth on such a route would take some effort.<br /><br />Secondly, the line is anything but a "main line". The existing GWR route via Newton Abbot is built as a mainline; admittedly it has a few steep gradients, but they're short and sharp, and much of the route is reasonably flat and straight. The old LSWR route isn't as steep, with a maximum gradient of 1 in 75 compared to 1 in 38; the difference is that it's a 25-mile climb at 1 in 75, followed by a 25-mile descent on the other side. So if we were to have to divert trains, they certainly wouldn't be as fast.<br /><br />Most importantly, however, it's difficult to justify spending £100 million or £250 million (or however much the reinstatement of the LSWR route might cost) just for the few times a year when you might want to divert trains away from Dawlish. There has long been an argument for local services on the line, but that would probably need to be the main driver if the line were to be rebuilt; network resilience is great, but is it really worth paying £250 million rather than putting up with buses on the few occasions when Dawlish is shut?<br /><br />However, if the question is about providing a <i>replacement</i> for Dawlish, then the LSWR route cannot be considered to be the (whole) solution. There is one simple reason for this: Torbay. The LSWR route provides a very good alternative route between Exeter and <i>Plymouth</i> and onwards to Cornwall; but it does nothing to provide an alternative route between Exeter and <i>Newton Abbot</i>, and I can't imagine that holidaymakers heading for the English Riviera would be willing to make a 50-mile detour via Plymouth.<br /><br />So instead, one must consider a new connection between Exeter and Newton Abbot, more inland and resilient to storms than the Dawlish sea wall. Indeed, in 1933, the Great Western Railway proposed just such an <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dawlish_Avoiding_Line">avoiding line</a>, but while survey and construction work began in Spring 1939, the outbreak of war halted the work and the land was sold off by British Rail after nationalisation.<br /><br />While the second option above suggests using two freight branches which remain at either end, that would probably end up reducing the speed of the trains. With the Dawlish sea wall already the slowest part of the mainline between London and Plymouth (with trains limited to 60mph) it seems sensible to try and build a slightly faster railway as a cut-off. Such an avoiding line, however, would be a much bigger undertaking, especially given the amount of tunnelling that would probably be required. It would be a brand-new railway, and that comes with a much bigger price tag attached.<br /><br />There is another spanner in the works: electrification. Much of the country's rail network is being electrified, with electric wires going up and electric trains replacing diesels. But in the Westcountry, the wires will stop at Bristol, at least for the time being, with services to Plymouth and Penzance being operated by diesel trains for at least a decade to come.<br /><br />It's not clear whether Dawlish would ever be safe for 25kV electric wires, given the amount of sea spray that frequently comes over the trains (see <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FENr4Ak9AQA">this video</a> at 2:15 and 7:00, among many others on YouTube). It may be that if Plymouth is ever to see electric trains, an inland diversionary route between Exeter and Newton Abbot will become a necessity. Then again, the railway line at Saltcoats, up in Scotland, is also exposed to the coast, and it is electrified (see <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgSrwFlJKF4">this video</a> for a storm at Saltcoats).<br /><br />More importantly, however, the South West has done comparatively poorly out of recent railway investment plans; while lines across much of England, Wales and Scotland are being electrified and HS2 will bring far more capacity for long-distance services to the north, barely any investment is heading to Devon and Cornwall. I'd argue that reopening the line via Okehampton <i>and</i> building a faster avoiding route between Exeter and Newton Abbot are both necessary to bring the rail network of Devon and Cornwall up to a 21st-century standard.<br /><br />I would like to see a wide-ranging discussion of the long-term future not just of the line through Dawlish, but the whole railway network in Devon and Cornwall; for too long the South West has suffered from having old trains and a lack of railway lines. Too often it seems like we don't do long-term infrastructure planning in this country; just this once I'd love to be proved wrong.<br /><br />For now, though, I'd encourage everyone to do one thing: take a train along the Dawlish sea wall, preferably an HST with windows you can push down and peer out of. The experience of the sea air and the sight of cliffs on one side and sea on the other is simply magical, and unique to the line through Dawlish. And if this whole thing has taught us nothing else, it's that eventually the line will fall into the sea; so go, while you still can, and take a trip on the maddest, most precarious, most ridiculous, most glorious railway line in all of England.Dave McCormickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16226892437669224991noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2638543736544799966.post-32718373354536340892014-02-12T01:55:00.000+00:002014-02-12T01:55:54.126+00:00East West Rail's Best: A Sneak Peek into the Future of Railways in the Chilterns (on "Chiltern Champion")One of the most short-sighted decisions in railway history was the decision to close the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varsity_Line">"Varsity Line"</a> between Oxford and Cambridge at the end of 1967, just months after the founding of the city of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_Keynes">Milton Keynes</a>. Admittedly, the introduction of faster trains may have made the end-to-end journey faster via London, but intermediate journeys through Milton Keynes have ever since been the preserve of the <a href="http://www.stagecoachx5.com/timesfares.aspx">X5 bus</a>.<br />
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Regardless of what one might think of the only planned city in Britain, Milton Keynes's population of over 200,000 people deserves much better rail connections than it currently has. It has very good connections if you want to head south to London, or north to the likes of Birmingham or Manchester. And, indeed, to Northampton, Hemel Hempstead and Watford, because they lie on <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Coast_Main_Line">the same line out of London</a>.<br />
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But if you want to head east or west - to somewhere on a different line out of London - you're stuffed. Bedford, all of 18 miles away from Milton Keynes, can be reached by train in an hour, if you change at Bletchley. (Driving, or even just taking the X5 bus, is twice as fast.) But you want to get to Aylesbury? Luton? Bicester? Stevenage? You'll need a bus (or a train via London). Or a car.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AEast_West_Rail_Consortium_Western_map.jpg" title="By PeterEastern (talk) using based on data from OpenStreetMap and contributors.PeterEastern at en.wikipedia [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], from Wikimedia Commons"><img alt="East West Rail Consortium Western map" src="//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/43/East_West_Rail_Consortium_Western_map.jpg/256px-East_West_Rail_Consortium_Western_map.jpg" width="256" /></a></div>
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The Varsity Line (see map above) ran from Oxford to Cambridge, through Bicester, Bletchley (now incorporated into the southern part of Milton Keynes), Bedford and Sandy. Having served passengers for over a century, the Oxford-Bletchley section was closed to passenger trains in 1967, and the Bedford-Cambridge section was closed completely at the same time.<br />
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Somehow, the Bletchley-Bedford portion of the line survived closure, as did almost every intermediate station, meaning that the Bletchley-Bedford section has <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marston_Vale_Line">ten intermediate stations</a> in 16 miles. In an urban area this wouldn't be unreasonable, but the largest village on the route is Woburn Sands with all of 2900 people. Ironically, Kempston - once the largest village in England, but now big enough to be a town - had a station, but it closed in 1941.<br />
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The <a href="http://www.eastwestrail.org.uk/">campaign</a> to re-open the whole Varsity line - now rechristened the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_West_Rail_Link">East West Rail Link</a> - has been ongoing for some decades, and until a few years ago seemed to be stuck in the mud. Then, out of the blue, the Chancellor <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2011/nov/29/george-osborne-autumn-statments-transport-projects">announced</a> in 2011 that £270 million would be spent on re-opening the line between Oxford and Bedford. This was subsumed in 2012 into the so-called <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-18851907">Electric Spine</a>, a plan to electrify a collection of routes linking the south coast to the north of England via a reopened Oxford-Bedford line.<br />
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This followed <a href="http://www.chilternrailways.co.uk/">Chiltern Railways's</a> plan to use the Oxford-Bicester line to run trains between London Marylebone and Oxford, via a new chord at Bicester to join the East-West Line to the Chiltern Main Line. Dubbed <a href="http://www.chiltern-evergreen3.co.uk/">Evergreen 3</a>, the plan would see Marylebone-Oxford trains taking just 66 minutes. More importantly, they would serve a new <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford_Parkway_railway_station">"Oxford Parkway" station</a> at an existing park-and-ride site at Water Eaton, in the north of Oxford, which will provide much better access for much of Oxford compared to the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford_railway_station">existing station</a> at the west end of the city.<br />
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Indeed, from the eastern end of the city, getting to the railway station at the west side of the city is difficult thanks to the traffic, so much so that Stagecoach run <a href="http://www.oxfordtube.com/">the Oxford Tube</a>, an express bus service between Oxford and London. Even though it takes 1 hour 40 minutes on average, by the time passengers get to Oxford railway station, take a fast train (taking an hour or so) to Paddington, and get from Paddington to Victoria, the bus is probably quicker. Chiltern's plan for trains between Marylebone and Oxford Parkway should give the Oxford Tube a good run for its money.<br />
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Although it closed in 1967, the Oxford-Bicester line reopened as a single-track branch in 1987 (the track hadn't been lifted), with an intermediate station at Islip following two years later. And thus it has remained for nearly 25 years, with one train shuttling back and forth between Oxford and Bicester roughly every 90 minutes. But now Chiltern want to run trains to London on it, it would be a lot better if it weren't single track, and capable of more than 40mph. In order to facilitate the work, the Oxford-Bicester line is being shut for a year and a half, starting this Friday (14th February).<br />
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As a result, this past Sunday (9th February) <a href="http://www.vintagetrains.co.uk/">Vintage Trains</a> ran a charter train from Marylebone over what remains of the East-West Line (the light blue lines in the map above), for one last look at the lines before they close for over a year. This gave me and my three travelling companions a sneak peek of lines that are now just minor freight lines, but which in a few years will hopefully bring a true rail revival to the Chilterns.<br />
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The "Chiltern Champion" railtour was in two parts. The first part was simply a run from Solihull to Marylebone in the morning, and back to Solihull in the evening; essentially this was to get the train from its base in Tyseley (in Birmingham) to Marylebone to start the railtour proper. The second part was a round-trip from Marylebone via Aylesbury, Oxford and Banbury, traversing as much of the Oxford-Bletchley section of the East-West Line as it is currently possible to do.<br />
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The name "Chiltern Champion" comes from our locomotive, <a href="http://www.westernchampion.co.uk/loco-d1015.php">D1015 <i>Western Champion</i></a>, which hauled us most of the way, with <a href="http://www.tyseleylocoworks.co.uk/tlw/47773.htm">47773 <i>The Queen Mother</i></a> assisting. D1015 is one of an unusual class of diesel-hydraulic locomotives, usually known as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail_Class_52">Westerns</a>, which served high-speed expresses on the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Western_Main_Line">Great Western Main Line</a> for only 15 years in the 1960s and 1970s. It is believed this was the first ever visit of such a locomotive to Marylebone.<br />
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I did the run from Leamington to Marylebone (and back) on my own, joining Matt, James and Paul for the second part at Marylebone. On departure from Marylebone at 12:40, we headed north on the mainline as far as Princes Risborough, turning right to go through Little Kimble to Aylesbury. After a brief stop, we proceeded north on the little-used line from Aylesbury to Claydon LNE Jn, originally built by the Metropolitan Railway! This took us past the new station at <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aylesbury_Vale_Parkway_railway_station">Aylesbury Vale Parkway</a>, the <a href="http://www.bucksrailcentre.org/">Buckinghamshire Railway Centre</a> at Quainton Road, and a waste terminal for the landfill at Calvert.<br />
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The line north from Aylesbury was once the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Central_Main_Line">Great Central Main Line</a>, the last main line in the country to be built, which ran from Marylebone through Aylesbury, Rugby, Leicester, Nottingham and Sheffield across to Manchester. It was controversially closed in the 1960s, with only the section as far as Calvert surviving. At Calvert, we used one of the connections onto the Varsity Line to get to Claydon LNE Junction, the easternmost point of the open section of the Oxford-Bletchley line. (It is hoped this section between Aylesbury and Claydon LNE Jn will also be fully reopened to provide connections between Aylesbury and Milton Keynes once the East-West Line is open.)<br />
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At Claydon LNE Jn, the main locomotive D1015 <i>Western Champion</i> "ran round" the train: it was detached from the front, driven back past the train on an adjacent line, and then backed onto the other end of the train. Having left Marylebone with both locomotives at the front of the train (called "double heading"), the run-round meant we now had one locomotive on each end. This allowed us to proceed west along the East-West Line to Oxford.<br />
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What survives of the East-West Line is not a speedy line: 40mph is the maximum speed, and that only west of Bicester; east of Bicester the line is limited to all of 25mph. Nonetheless, this gave us the chance to admire the views of the fine English countryside, and to see the work already being done at Bicester to build the curve linking the East-West Line to the Chiltern Main Line. We had a brief stop at Islip where people could get out and take photographs, before continuing on to Oxford.<br />
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Due to engineering work at Oxford, it wasn't possible for the locomotive to run round again; hence, the class 47 locomotive that had been on the back of the train took over for the short run up the cross-country route to Banbury, where after a 35-minute break D1015 was back in charge for a fast run up the Chiltern Main Line to Marylebone, where we arrived at 18:06. I bade farewell to the others before heading back to Leamington on the return journey.<br />
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Both times the train arrived at Marylebone, the train was top-and-tailed with D1015 on the front (at the buffers) and 47773 on the rear; both times the train left Marylebone it had both engines on the front. Unfortunately running a locomotive round a train at a terminus is a bit more difficult: in the past there would have been a "loco release", a set of points allowing the locomotive to leave via the adjacent platform, but Marylebone no longer has loco releases.<br />
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So, what happened was D1015 was detached from the rest of the train, and 47773 dragged the eight Mark 2 coaches out onto the Up Main - the track on which we'd just come into the station - while D1015 shunted into the Tunnel Siding. 47773 then propelled the coaches back into the platform: meaning, the driver was driving the train from the back, with a bloke with a radio saying "you're alright, keep going..." looking out the front. Then D1015 came back from the tunnel siding and attached to the other end of the train.<br />
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All in all, the railtour was a lovely day out. The weather even played ball, with a brief let-up in our seemingly ceaseless parade of Atlantic storms giving a day of sunshine to admire the view of... flooded fields. As the <a href="http://www.westernchampion.co.uk/loco-d1015-railtour-archive-2013.php#tour055">review on the Western Champion website</a> says, "[t]he view from the carriage windows often looked like the train was picking its way between large inland seas". Nonetheless, even a chill wind did little to damp our spirits, and we had a very enjoyable day.<br />
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This sneak peek at what the East-West Line gives only a vague idea of what the line will be like in a few years time. Sure, it will run along the same formation, but next time I travel east from Bicester Town it could well be on an electric train on a double-track main line to Bletchley. Alternatively, it could well be on a brand-new railway line linking Oxford to Marylebone.<br />
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After many decades of poor transport connections, the Chilterns are entering a golden age of rail travel - once, that is, the line reopens. In the meantime, passengers will have to endure a year or two of replacement buses... but it'll all be worth it in the end!Dave McCormickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16226892437669224991noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2638543736544799966.post-14739237135670596592013-10-21T19:12:00.001+01:002013-10-21T19:12:30.951+01:00A Bad Week on the Railways?This past week has been, without doubt, the worst week on the railways for months. Thousands of trains have been delayed, cancelled or disrupted, due to a multitude of failures, weather-related incidents, and pure bad luck. Between them, they show just how close to capacity our railway network is, and why we need more investment in it.<br /><br />---<br /><br />We start last Tuesday (15th October), with no fewer than three separate derailments. At about 3am, a freight train, loaded with containers running from Birmingham (Lawley Street) to the port of Felixstowe, had one wagon derail near Primrose Hill in north London. One of the containers fell off the wagon and collided with the supports for the overhead wires, which thus fell down and dangled precariously over the railway and a nearby park. You can see the damage <a href="https://twitter.com/networkrail/status/390137772930891776/photo/1">here</a> in a photo from Network Rail.<br /><br />The train came to a stand over Camden Road Junction, and the incident caused major disruption to London Overground services, which were suspended between Gospel Oak and Highbury and Islington. But more important were the ramifications for freight trains: almost every freight train that crosses London uses the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_London_Line">North London Line</a> to do so, and with a key part of that shut trains had to be diverted wherever possible, with trains in some cases going on a 100-mile detour via Peterborough and Leicester. The line finally reopened on Monday morning.<br /><br />Later that Tuesday, in an uncannily similar incident, a freight train approaching Gloucester had a wagon derail, damaging over a mile of track. Thankfully there were no overhead wires to repair, but the damage to the track took four days to repair. The line between Gloucester and Lydney only reopened on Saturday morning, with traffic diverted via the Severn Tunnel in the meantime.<br /><br />Indeed, the director for the Western region of Network Rail is reported to have demanded the line be reopened by Saturday morning, in order that the planned two-day engineering block of the Severn Tunnel could go ahead as scheduled over the weekend; if Gloucester had remain shut, South Wales would have been virtually cut off. Teams from all across the Westcountry, and some from as far away as London, were drafted in to ensure the line reopened just in time, thus avoiding the costly task of rescheduling the engineering work.<br /><br />The third derailment happened in Neville Hill depot in Leeds, where a passenger train derailed while shunting around the depot. The train was back on the rails in a few hours, but the loss of one East Coast train from service meant East Coast were forced to hire a train in from CrossCountry for a couple of days to cover the shortfall - while it meant the trains could still run, it can't have been popular with East Coast passengers to have had two coaches fewer than normal.<br /><br />I'm not an expert on derailments, and I wouldn't care to speculate as to what caused them. The most common cause of derailments in the past has been when a train encounters a set of points, which move slightly under the train; one axle goes one way, another axle goes the other way, and before you know it the train has effectively jack-knifed. They are, fortunately, a pretty rare event, so getting three in one day is really terrible luck.<br /><br />---<br /><br />This Sunday (20th October), just as the disruption from those incidents was dying down, lightning struck some signalling cabins at Dolphin Junction, just east of Slough on the Great Western Main Line (GWML) between London Paddington and Reading, the main artery for trains to and from South Wales and the Westcountry. All power to the signalling in the area was lost for nearly seven hours, from just after 2pm to 9pm.<br /><br />With no power to the signalling equipment, all the signals went blank, and the signallers lost the information of where trains were, so everything ground to a halt. Worse, though, the fourteen sets of points which make up the junction went "out of correspondence", meaning that signallers didn't know which way they were pointing.<br /><br />To get trains moving while the equipment was fixed, engineers had to go out on track and manually wind the points into the correct position, before physically clipping them so they couldn't move. Once that had happened - and given all the points, that took well over an hour - trains could start to move under "temporary block working", with men essentially acting as signals, relaying instructions between drivers and signallers.<br /><br />With a speed limit of 50mph imposed to protect the engineers out on site still trying to fix the equipment, a huge backlog of trains quickly built up, and the 30-minute journey between Paddington and Reading became, in some cases, a two-hour crawl. The situation wasn't helped by the fact that two of the four tracks in the area were already closed for engineering works.<br /><br />Eventually, technicians managed to repair the extensive damage to the equipment: several transformers had effectively been fried by the lightning and had to be completely replaced. That the work was done in only seven hours was, frankly, a minor miracle; that the disruption caused over 6,000 minutes of delays to trains in the area was inevitable given the extent of the problem.<br /><br />That places the disruption in the realm of incidents which don't happen every week, or even necessarily every month; but that's no comfort to the thousands of people heading home on a Sunday afternoon after a weekend in London or the Westcountry whose journeys were massively disrupted.<br /><br />---<br /><br />There have been several further incidents today (21st October) that make it feel like the walls have come tumbling down. Probably the most serious problem as far as the wider network is concerned is a problem with the overhead wires just north of Peterborough. As a result, the East Coast Main Line (ECML) between London and Edinburgh is effectively shut between Peterborough and Grantham. Some trains are being diverted via Lincoln, but otherwise trains are simply being cancelled, with passengers forced to use alternative routes.<br /><br />One of those alternative routes is the Midland Main Line between London and Sheffield, but unfortunately due to flooding at Chesterfield that was unavailable for passengers to use for much of the day, leaving Virgin Trains services out of Euston as the only reasonable way of getting north from London. (Fortunately the Midland Main Line has now reopened.)<br /><br />Nearer London, over-running engineering works kept three of the six lines between New Cross and London Bridge closed for most of Monday, forcing hundreds of commuter trains from Kent to squeeze into just half the capacity they would normally use. Chaos ensued, with many commuter trains over an hour late and thousands of people late for work; even though it affects a smaller area and trains can be diverted to Victoria and Blackfriars, I would guess that many thousands more people were affected than the ECML problems.<br /><br />The approaches to London Bridge, which feed Charing Cross and Cannon Street, are undoubtedly the busiest stretch of railway in the country, with at one point eleven parallel tracks feeding into London Bridge. During the morning peak they run at well over 95% capacity, and thus as soon as one tiny thing goes wrong the effect ripples through much of Kent within minutes.<br /><br />---<br /><br />All these incidents - particularly the last - show just how badly we need more capacity on our railway network. When it works, the approaches to London Bridge are a sight to behold, being one of the most efficient railways in the world: just standing on the end of the platforms at London Bridge provides a view of dozens of trains wending their way into the capital, filled with commuters heading to work.<br /><br />But it doesn't take much to go wrong to cause chaos, be it a lightning strike, a part falling from an overhead wire, a derailment, or some engineering works taking longer than planned. We simply don't have enough redundancy, enough spare capacity in our railway network to cope when things go wrong.<br /><br />Yes, this is why we're building Thameslink and Crossrail, to free up spare capacity; but it's also why we need HS2, and many other projects big and small, to improve our railway and make it more resilient to the demands we place on it to get us from A to B as fast as possible. And with passenger numbers having nearly doubled since the 1990s, and continuing to increase apace, such investment can't come soon enough.Dave McCormickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16226892437669224991noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2638543736544799966.post-41374613037655853492013-09-15T15:00:00.000+01:002013-09-15T15:00:00.042+01:00How Railway Signalling is Replaced: Summer Engineering Works at NottinghamEvery so often, it is decided that a given station should be "resignalled" or "remodelled". This summer, it was Nottingham's turn, and as a result almost no trains ran to or from Nottingham for the six weeks from July 20th to August 25th. This meant buses, and lots of them - leading to inconvenience for thousands of passengers in the height of summer.<br /><br />In this blog I'm going to try and explain why it was done, and how the railway companies got around it. (This is based in part on my experiences roving round the area over the weekend of Friday 9th-Monday 12th August.)<br /><br />---<br /><br />First of all, what do I mean by "resignalling"? Well, the signals (which act like traffic lights on the railway) are like any other piece of mechanical equipment: they wear out, and must be replaced. All the signals at Nottingham were installed in 1969, and were thus to be replaced in 2013.<br /><br />But it's not just the signals themselves that have to renewed, it's all the equipment that goes with it. The <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railroad_switch">points</a> - movable pieces of rail that allow trains to change between tracks, known as a switch or a turnout in North America - also had to be renewed, and so did the track circuits.<br /><br />A <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Track_circuit">track circuit</a> is a device which measures the flow of current from one rail to another, along a given section of track; when there's no train in that section, (almost) no current will flow, but when a train passes through the section, the axles of the train complete the circuit and current flows. This is the simple yet ubiquitous mechanism by which a train's location is determined across the country.<br /><br />(Incidentally, a "signalling failure" is unlikely to be a failure of the signal itself, although sometimes a bulb will blow. It is much more likely to be either a track circuit failure, usually when a track circuit registers as "occupied" even when there's no train in it; or a points failure, when a given set of points will fail to move into the correct position, perhaps due to an obstruction.)<br /><br />Finally - and perhaps most importantly - the equipment that controls the signals, points and track circuits also has to be renewed. The 1969 installation in Trent Power Signal Box (PSB for short), controlling Nottingham and the surrounding area, was state-of-the-art at the time, consisting of a push-button panel at which the signallers stand, controlling the flow of trains. This was to be replaced with a computer system in the new East Midlands Control Centre (EMCC) in Derby, controlled by a keyboard and trackerball.<br /><br />Behind the panel or computer screen lies the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interlocking">"interlocking"</a>, the fundamental system which prevents the signaller from crashing two trains into one another; a signal may only stop showing red if the route ahead is clear, and if the points are set in the correct position. Interlocking has been around since the middle of the 19th century, after a few disastrous consequences of signalmen failing to ensure the points were set correctly.<br /><br />Trent PSB, in common with most installations at the time, used a complex system of mechanical relays to make up the interlocking: while this has the advantage of being very safe, it's also very cumbersome and takes up several rooms. Instead, the new installation at EMCC has a "solid-state interlocking", where relays are replaced by, essentially, software on the computer, which is just as safe but takes up much less room.<br /><br />---<br /><br />So what's "remodelling"? Once the signalling for a particular area has been installed, the layout of tracks and signals tends not to change unless there's a reason to (a new platform here, a new depot access route there, a branch line closed down, etc.). But when the signalling <i>does</i> need to be renewed, it is usually a good opportunity to ensure the track layout is appropriate for the services that run; often service patterns have changed dramatically over the 40 or 50 years a signal installation might be used for.<br /><br />For example, one of the fundamental differences in operation between the railway of 1969 and the railway of 2013 is the decline of locomotives and the rise of multiple units. In 1969, most services had a locomotive at one end, providing all the power for the train, hauling coaches which had no power to move of their own accord. Only a handful of services (outside the busy suburban networks around London) were run by multiple units, trains with engines under the floor distributed along the train.<br /><br />Quite the opposite is true today: there are very few locomotive operations around, and those that are used (on <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail_Class_91">East Coast</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail_Class_90">Greater Anglia</a>) tend to be in fixed formations with a "driving van trailer" (DVT) on the other end so that the train can be driven from the opposite end without repositioning the locomotive. (Perhaps the only true locomotive operation left is on the overnight sleeper trains between <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caledonian_Sleeper">London and Scotland</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_Riviera">London and the Westcountry</a>.)<br /><br />At Nottingham in particular, though, there was one key part of the layout that was now constraining capacity, namely Mansfield Junction, just to the west of Nottingham where the lines to Mansfield and Sheffield diverge from the mainline towards London. Trains on the north side of the station had to cross over to the south side out of Nottingham station, before crossing back towards the north at Mansfield Junction.<br /><br />This made sense when, in 1969, most trains at Nottingham were through trains, so few trains would want to get from the north side towards Mansfield; they'd already be on the south side. But these days almost all the services at Nottingham - in fact, everything but the Liverpool-Norwich trains - terminates at Nottingham and goes back in the direction it came from. For this reason, it was decided to rearrange the tracks out to Mansfield Junction so that trains could go in and out on any of the four tracks to the west of the station.<br /><br />Furthermore, prior to the remodelling there were two "through roads" at Nottingham, between platforms 3 and 4: tracks without a platform, for trains to pass through without stopping. It was decided to split platform 4 in two, extending the eastern half outwards to meet one of the through roads, creating two platforms where once there was one (though the remainder of the old platform would only be accessible to the west).<br /><br />The end result is a considerably simpler layout at Nottingham station, which should (in theory) be easier to maintain and, importantly, cause less "reactionary delay" - in other words, fewer knock-on effects once one train is delayed. At busy places like Birmingham New Street or Clapham Junction, once one train is running late, that will ripple through many other trains; ensuring a track layout that can be used flexibly is one good way of minimising such delays.<br /><br />---<br /><br />Getting to that end result, however, meant completely ripping up all the points at the west end of Nottingham station and putting in new ones; with the new points and the new layout came 143 new signals. The track itself - six miles of it! - also needed to be replaced, and coupled with various improvements to the station itself, it was decided that the best way to accomplish the remodelling was to do it in one big hit.<br /><br />In theory it would have been possible to do most of the work in a large number - perhaps up to a year - of weekend closures. But given the magnitude of the work, it was decided that a six-week blockade - not just on the weekends, but all week as well - was the best course of action. While there may be some who disagree with that, ultimately it's Network Rail's decision.<br /><br />The high summer period was chosen because there is a notable downturn in commuter traffic - often as much as 20% - during the school holidays, and it would thus disrupt fewer people. However, while commuter traffic falls, seaside traffic rises dramatically - and for Nottingham that means the Lincolnshire resort of Skegness, just over two hours away by train.<br /><br />To ensure the minimum disruption possible, for four of the six weeks an hourly train service between Nottingham and Skegness was maintained. This was made possible by carefully programming the (less substantial) modifications to the east end of the station, which also permitted a train service between Nottingham and Lincoln to run for the last two weeks of the blockade.<br /><br />But with the old signals ripped out and the new ones not yet installed, to get even one train into and out of Nottingham station required a much more basic system of ensuring two trains couldn't crash into one another. This is done with "pilotman" working: one man, and one man alone, could give permission for a train to proceed, and a train wasn't allowed into Nottingham without that pilotman on board!<br /><br />I saw this for myself on Saturday 10th August; while visiting Jonathan in Sheffield, I took a convoluted day trip to Skegness. From Sheffield, I went to Lincoln, and then into Nottingham. All was going well until we were a mile outside Nottingham; we sat for over 15 minutes without explanation, before moving forward half a mile to the next signal and sitting for another 20 minutes. While some of this had been allowed for in the timetable, it wasn't until 15 minutes after we should have arrived in Nottingham that the pilotman finally made it on to our train and we could proceed into the station.<br /><br />It transpired that one of the earlier trains had been a bit late into Nottingham, and due to industrial action by the RMT union the guard had refused to take the train back out until he'd had his requisite 15-minute break. Eventually, the outward train was cancelled, but that meant the pilotman was in the wrong place - he was in Nottingham station, and all of a sudden needed to be half a mile to the east to get on the next train in! <br /><br />The reason it took so long to cancel the train was because the controllers didn't really know what was going on; they didn't know which train was where, precisely because there was no signalling system! Only the pilotman did, and once he had talked to the controllers he was able to rectify the situation and make his way out to the next train, whereupon it was able to go in and come out, and then our train was able to go in.<br /><br />But this lack of information meant that all the usual sources of information were useless: over the last few years, I've got used to using my phone to check the internet to find out when a train is delayed and why. But all that information is powered by the signalling system, and when the signalling system is one man and he's having to run around to get to the right place, there's not much else to do but sit and wait.<br /><br />In the half an hour I had to change trains in Nottingham, I looked around the station, and boy, was it weird looking round what was basically a giant building site. Just one platform - the old platform 5, now renumbered 6 - was open for trains, the rest being in the process of being rebuilt or having their tracks replaced. The track layout was mostly complete, but the platforms themselves were being resurfaced, and that was clearly left to be finished.<br /><br />With just one train allowed into Nottingham at a time, it took over 20 minutes to get each train in, unloaded, reloaded, and out again - and with little margin for recovery, my train back out to Skegness was thus also late. Fortunately, although it left 13 minutes late there was a bit of slack in the timetable and after a pleasant run through the countryside we arrived at Skegness just three minutes late.<br /><br />Notably, though, while the train was not that busy from Nottingham, it got much busier from Grantham. Clearly anyone going to Skegness who hadn't come from Nottingham had been directed to Grantham, with its position on the East Coast Main Line affording links from Peterborough and London as well as the north.<br /><br />---<br /><br />While pilotman operation permitted a basic service to Skegness and Lincoln, the complete block of the west end of the station necessitated a huge fleet of buses and coaches to ferry passengers between their trains and Nottingham itself. When train services couldn't be provided there were buses to Newark and Grantham for onward trains to Lincoln and Skegness respectively; and throughout the block, the line to Mansfield and Worksop was replaced by buses throughout, the opportunity being taken to replace some track on that line too.<br /><br />Most importantly, however, five buses every hour ran to and from <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Midlands_Parkway_railway_station">East Midlands Parkway station</a>. East Midlands Parkway opened in January 2009, ostensibly to serve the nearby East Midlands Airport, but it feels more like it's there to serve Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station, which towers over the station.<br /><br />With the airport still a shuttle bus away most passengers continued to get a bus from Nottingham or Derby. But with Nottingham closed, people were encouraged to drive to East Midlands Parkway - with a large car-park - where they could get their train, with buses provided to ferry those who needed to get to the city centre.<br /><br />As a result, East Midlands Parkway came into its own during the blockade, all of a sudden being one of the most-used stations in the Midlands, with trains diverted to mainly use it in place of Nottingham. The London-Nottingham services were mostly curtailed to just run between London and East Midlands Parkway (with some extending to Beeston, just three miles west of Nottingham), and many of the London-Sheffield trains which usually pass through without stopping were re-timetabled to call and provide connections.<br /><br />In the morning and evening rush hours, there are a few London-Leeds trains which usually run via Nottingham and reverse there before continuing on via Sheffield; these were mostly diverted to use the Erewash Valley, avoiding both Derby and Nottingham but permitting a call at East Midlands Parkway. (It's fairly rare for trains to use the Erewash Valley route in daylight, and I made sure to use one of these trains on the way to Sheffield on the Friday night!)<br /><br />More importantly, though, the Liverpool-Norwich services were diverted from Nottingham and instead served East Midlands Parkway. This meant they couldn't call at Grantham, but instead ran non-stop between Peterborough and East Midlands Parkway via Melton Mowbray. <br /><br />These had an added complication, in that the Liverpool-Norwich trains are usually scheduled to be four carriages west of Nottingham but just two carriages east of Nottingham. With Nottingham closed, the dividing and joining of the units had to be done elsewhere. Due to the signalling arrangements, it wasn't possible to join trains at East Midlands Parkway, or at Chesterfield; the obvious solution of joining the units at Sheffield was precluded by the timetable and the lack of capacity there.<br /><br />Instead, the Liverpool-Norwich trains dropped two of their four carriages in the platform at Chesterfield, and continued via the Erewash Valley to East Midlands Parkway and on to Peterborough and Norwich. The two carriages left in Chesterfield were then taken empty to Derby. Meanwhile the Norwich-Liverpool services, having called at East Midlands Parkway, were sent via Derby to pick up the extra two carriages, before proceeding on to Chesterfield.<br /><br />To avoid too much confusion, the call at Derby was not advertised, so that passengers would think they were running non-stop between East Midlands Parkway and Chesterfield. However, while on board a Norwich-Liverpool train on the Monday afternoon, I was getting ready to alight at East Midlands Parkway in order to get onto a train that actually <i>was</i> calling at Derby, only to hear an announcement that "passengers for Derby should remain on the train"!<br /><br />And indeed, while the Derby stop had not been advertised at Peterborough, where I'd boarded the train, at East Midlands Parkway the displays announced that the train was indeed calling at Derby. And so it did; the doors were released on arrival at Derby, before the train was joined to the other two carriages and it proceeded on its merry way to Chesterfield. The displays at Derby, however, simply said the train was "not for passenger use"!<br /><br />---<br /><br />By far the oddest diversion, though, was that I took on my way back from Skegness that Saturday afternoon. On summer Saturdays, to provide additional capacity, an eight-carriage <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail_Class_43_%28HST%29">HST</a> is provided to run between Derby and Skegness via Nottingham. But with Nottingham closed to the west, it would have to take a rather different route to get from Skegness to Derby...<br /><br />While Nottingham-Skegness trains routinely run via Grantham, the summer HST usually avoids Grantham because trains have to reverse there to run between Nottingham and Skegness. But with Nottingham closed, we proceeded into Grantham, and after waiting our turn proceeded up the East Coast Main Line to Peterborough. This provided the very incongruous sight of an East Midlands Trains HST on what would normally be completely the wrong line!<br /><br />After waiting fifteen minutes outside Peterborough for a platform (as we were timetabled to do), we reversed at Peterborough before heading via Melton Mowbray and through East Midlands Parkway (oddly without stopping) to Derby.<br /><br />All in all it took over three and a half hours from Skegness to Derby, and without the call at Nottingham the train was fairly lightly loaded. As usual, though, for an HST run to Skegness, first class was "declassified": in other words, while there were three coaches marked as "first class" and having very much nicer seats, there was no difference in price between those and the cheap seats further back!<br /><br />So I sat back and enjoyed a relaxing ride through Lincolnshire and the East Midlands. On three occasions, the train went round sharp curves (at Firsby, Allington and Syston); being at one end of the train meant I could see all the way along the train and made the tightness of the curves easily appreciable.<br /><br />---<br /><br />All in all, then, East Midlands Trains and Network Rail went out of their way to ensure that the disruption from closing Nottingham station was kept to a minimum, with most trains diverted, and buses to replace trains where that wasn't possible.<br /><br />I was particularly impressed with the pilotman operation for the Skegness and Lincoln trains. While it didn't work all that smoothly on the day I happened to be there, it's impressive that they bothered at all. It would have been much easier to say "sorry, no trains, go get a bus". But to have to bus holidaymakers to Skegness (or at least Grantham) - many of whom had a fair amount of luggage, to say nothing of many people with small children in pushchairs and prams - would have needed an awful lot of buses to make sure people weren't left behind.<br /><br />Early in September I returned to Nottingham station to see the finished article. The tracks to the west end now permit much higher speeds - allowing trains into and out of the station at up to 50mph - and all the track and signals look new and shiny. The station itself is still in the middle of a much longer rebuilding programme - set to be finished in 2014 - but the really hard work of rearranging the tracks is done.<br /><br />There was one final reason why a blockade was chosen. To facilitate an extension of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nottingham_Express_Transit">Nottingham Express Transit</a>, the hugely successful tram system opened in 2004, a bridge right over the middle of the station was required. With this having been slid into place during the six-week blockade, the bridge can be kitted out and trams will be running by the end of 2014.<br /><br />Once a new tram stop has been provided on this bridge, from next year passengers will be able to look forward to a seamless interchange between train and tram, with trams running not just north to Hucknall and Pheonix Park, but south to Clifton, and west to the University of Nottingham, Beeston, and a new park-and-ride side at Toton Lane.<br /><br />Although effectively closing Nottingham station for six weeks was disruptive, it also paves the way for the next major upgrade of Nottingham's railway: electrification. With the signalling now ready for the electric wires due to be strung up on the Midland Main Line between London and Nottingham by 2019, Nottingham can now look forward to having the kind of transport network the city deserves.Dave McCormickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16226892437669224991noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2638543736544799966.post-87603046874469703952013-08-01T15:00:00.000+01:002013-08-01T15:26:05.407+01:00Devon and Cornwall: The Best of the WestBefore I look back over my week in the Westcountry, here are the links to the various blogposts about each day, should you have missed anything:<br />
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<a href="http://railwaydave.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/devon-and-cornwall-day-1.html">Day 1</a>: the long journey to Bodmin<br />
<a href="http://railwaydave.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/devon-and-cornwall-days-2-5.html">Day 2</a>: family barbecue<br />
<a href="http://railwaydave.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/devon-and-cornwall-days-2-5.html">Day 3</a>: the Lizard, St Michael's Mount, Land's End and St Ives<br />
<a href="http://railwaydave.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/devon-and-cornwall-days-2-5.html">Day 4</a>: Tintagel Castle<br />
<a href="http://railwaydave.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/devon-and-cornwall-days-2-5.html">Day 5</a>: family meal and Dormer Point<br />
<a href="http://railwaydave.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/devon-and-cornwall-day-6.html">Day 6</a>: Paignton and Dartmouth Steam Railway<br />
<a href="http://railwaydave.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/devon-and-cornwall-day-7.html">Day 7</a>: Land's End (again), St Ives and Falmouth branches<br />
Day 8: <a href="http://railwaydave.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/devon-and-cornwall-day-8-part-1.html">Part 1</a> for the Looe branch, <a href="http://railwaydave.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/devon-and-cornwall-day-8-part-2.html">Part 2</a> for Gunnislake and Newquay<br />
<a href="http://railwaydave.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/devon-and-cornwall-day-9.html">Day 9</a>: Barnstaple, Okehampton and the long journey home<br />
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Over the course of the week, I travelled 1200 miles (well, 1202½ to be exact), spending over 29 hours on trains. I did so using a <a href="http://www.nationalrail.co.uk/times_fares/pr61c932f6234171801fb6cdcdc73136.aspx">Freedom of Devon and Cornwall 8 in 15 Day Rover</a>, which cost all of £45.55. That covers everything west of Tiverton and Axminster.<br />
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To get there I thus just needed a return to Tiverton, which cost £55.45. On top of that, I spent £20 on the first-class upgrade on the way down, £18.10 on the first class ticket to Newquay, and £11 on the Paignton and Dartmouth Steam Railway. Finally, I spent £3.95 to excess my ticket from Tiverton so I could come back via Axminster and Basingstoke, for a grand total of £154.05. Even with the first class upgrades that was still 13p a mile - not bad, all told.<br />
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On my travels I used a total of 36 trains. They all had one thing in common: they were all diesel trains. The "far south west", as Devon and Cornwall are sometimes known to distinguish them from the area around Bristol, will not see electrification for a long time, I suspect. One reason is that the Dawlish sea wall, the only currently open route between Exeter and Plymouth, seems incapable of taking electric wires, given the number of times the waves crash right over the trains when it's stormy.<br />
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Most of the trains also had something else in common: they were old, with nearly every one of the First Great Western trains we used being older than <i>me</i> (and I'll be 26 this August). Never mind electrification, it has been a long time since Devon and Cornwall has seen any real investment in the railway network; almost all their trains are hand-me-downs, first used for "better" lines but cast off and given to the backwater of the little branches of Cornwall.<br />
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This, frankly, is rather unfair, especially given the recent upward trends in branch line traffic: all five Cornish branches have seen passenger numbers swelling by 10%, year on year (see <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/road-and-rail-transport/7908251/Staycation-holidays-boost-branch-lines-Beeching-wanted-to-cut.html">this Telegraph article</a>). Anyone who has ever driven to Cornwall on holiday will be able to tell you that the road network can barely cope in the high summer, and without the railways to carry some of the traffic Cornwall would simply be strangled by its own tourism.<br />
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If only that upward trajectory could be propelled into some new trains, or heaven forbid some reopened branch lines: let's start with <a href="http://www.kilbridegroup.com/tavistock/">Bere Alston to Tavistock</a>, a quick and obvious win in Devon, and perhaps reopening the <a href="http://www.focal.org.uk/loop.htm">St Austell to Newquay line</a>, making Newquay accessible from the rest of Cornwall and not just from Plymouth.<br />
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Over the course of the weekend, we went on every surviving branch line in Cornwall, and all but one in Devon (namely the Exmouth branch, which I'd been on before). As if to prove how well they can be used, every one was busy, and some were standing room only. But each one also had their weird little charms:<br />
<ul>
<li>St Ives was the last place I'd have expected a train to have two drivers, just to ensure the very swift turnarounds required to operate a half-hourly service.</li>
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<li>Falmouth (the Maritime Line) has the weirdest passing loop arrangement, at Penryn, that I've ever seen.</li>
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<li>Newquay (the Atlantic Coast Line) is a ridiculously long branch with surprisingly long trains, though justified by the high summer traffic.</li>
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<li>Looe (the Looe Valley Line) is both geographically weirdest and scenically prettiest: nowhere else would you go under yourself just to lose height, but equally nowhere else do you get such nice views of a wonderful river valley.</li>
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<li>Gunnislake (the Tamar Valley Line) is probably the slowest railway line I can remember being on: at just 14mph for the last section from Bere Alston to Gunnislake, it's a wonder it still survives at all.</li>
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<li>Okehampton is very rare in only getting a Sunday service (and only in the summer), and rarer still in getting through trains even though it's not owned by Network Rail.</li>
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<li>Barnstaple (the Tarka Line) is also a ridiculously long branch, so much so it almost feels like a main line to North Devon (I suppose it once was, before the branches were closed).</li>
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<li>Paignton (the Riviera Line) is the only double-track branch line, getting a much more frequent service than the rest.</li>
</ul>
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They all undoubtedly had something to recommend them, but I think the Looe Valley Line has to take the crown as the best branch line: its quirky layout combined with the beautiful scenery make it unbeatable. Don't make me choose which one comes second, it's too difficult...<br />
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The Looe Valley Line undoubtedly contributed to making sure that Saturday on which we went to <a href="http://railwaydave.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/devon-and-cornwall-day-8-part-1.html">Looe</a>, <a href="http://railwaydave.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/devon-and-cornwall-day-8-part-2.html">Gunnislake and Newquay</a> was the best day of the week: it just somehow had everything, both fraught connections to a ridiculous branch line, and the luxury of a first-class trip to Newquay.<br />
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Everywhere we went, the staff were friendly, and only too willing to help. It seemed a world away from the urgency of the railways around London; indeed, the whole of Devon and Cornwall seemed to operate at a slower pace of life, much more relaxing, with all the more time to stand and stare.<br />
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All in all, it was a wonderful week in the Westcountry, even if it was a bit rushed. But when the journey takes so long, it seems natural to try and do as much as you can while you're down there. It's stupid really; I'm sure I'll be back there within a few years, but trying to be "efficient" and tick off all the track in Devon and Cornwall means that I didn't get as much time to actually appreciate the place as much, which is, after all, half the point.<br />
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I'd love to go back to Cornwall in particular, to get some more time to look round Looe, and Truro; maybe go on the Bodmin and Wenford Railway, a heritage railway along an old branch line; but definitely to see my aunt and uncle down in Cornwall once again. Until next time, then...Dave McCormickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16226892437669224991noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2638543736544799966.post-33687657708418612322013-07-31T15:00:00.000+01:002013-07-31T15:00:00.804+01:00Devon and Cornwall, Day 9<i>Sunday 9th June</i><br />
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Bidding farewell to Plymouth, we embarked on Sunday morning for a trip on two rather long branch lines in Devon, to Barnstaple and Okehampton. As last days of holidays tend to be, it was a little more fraught, a little more rushed than we'd have liked it to be, not least because we were on our way home and had to cart our luggage around with us all day.<br />
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<b>1040 Plymouth to Exeter St Davids, arr 1141</b> <br />
<i>Headcode: 1A81, operated by First Great Western using HST rake LA62 with 43012+43172</i> <br />
<i>Distance: 52 miles; walk-up price: £10.05</i><br />
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We started with our last run over the Devon banks, back from Plymouth as far as Exeter. The HST to London, the first one of the morning from Penzance, was fairly busy, and we ended up sat in various parts of the quiet coach at the rear of the train.<br />
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After an hour, the five of us arrived in St David's station in Exeter, where we met up with Paul, who'd come down from Reading for the day to join us in our exploits around Devon. Nearly as soon as we'd met Paul, we said goodbye to one of the Jameses, who wanted to get back to Liverpool relatively early; he'd been to Barnstaple but not Exmouth, so he headed to Exmouth. The four of us plus Paul wished him farewell, before boarding the train to Barnstaple:<br />
<br />
<b>1203 Exeter St Davids to Barnstaple, arr 1314</b> <br />
<i>and</i> <br />
<b>1324 Barnstaple to Exeter St Davids, arr 1433</b> <br />
<i>Headcode: 2B75 and 2R33 resp., operated by First Great Western using Sprinter 153382* + Pacer 143612</i> <br />
<i>Distance: 39 miles each way; walk-up return: £6.20</i><br />
<br />
Barnstaple is easily the longest of the Westcountry branch lines, at nearly 40 miles long and over an hour from Exeter. Even though this Sunday train was calling at all the intermediate stations (relatively unusual for a weekday), we still got some fairly decent speeds up in between the stations. The unlikely combination of a one-car Sprinter and a two-car Pacer was our chariot; we decided to avoid the Pacer and go for the Sprinter, if for no reason other than it had tables.<br />
<br />
The line runs across the centre of Devon, from Exeter on the south coast to Barnstaple on the north coast. Well, nearly anyway; both Exeter and Barnstaple sit at the top of an estuary. The line used to continue north to Ilfracombe, which is actually on the coast, but the line was cut back in the 1960s.<br />
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While the last section between Barnstaple and Ilfracombe was surprisingly hilly, what remains of the line is reasonably flat (at least as Westcountry branches go). The views of the gently rolling Devon countryside were thus comforting, rather than spectacular; the kind of views that bring a contented smile to your face on a warm Sunday lunchtime as you lean back and watch the world go by. <br />
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Our train was a little late into Barnstaple, so we had no time to stand and stare before coming straight back. The way out had been relatively quiet, but the train was a little busier on the way back; nonetheless, after two-and-a-half hours out in the far reaches of rural Devon we were suddenly thrust back into the urban reality of Exeter.<br />
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Upon arriving back in Exeter, we bumped into James who, in the time we had been to Barnstaple had gone to Exmouth and Okehampton, and was now waiting for a train to take him north. After bidding him farewell for the second (and final) time, we grabbed some supplies and headed to our final branch of the weekend, to Okehampton.<br />
<br />
<b>1509 Exeter St Davids to Okehampton, arr 1551</b> <br />
<i>and</i> <br />
<b>1556 Okehampton to Exeter Central, arr 1640</b> <br />
<i>Headcode: 2K08 and 2K09 resp., operated by First Great Western using Pacer 143620</i> <br />
<i>Distance: 25 miles and 25.75 miles resp.; walk-up return: £3.30</i><br />
<br />
The branch to Okehampton is not like any other line in Britain, for many reasons. For one, it's privately owned by the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dartmoor_Railway">Dartmoor Railway</a>, not by Network Rail. There are just five services in each direction on summer Sundays, with one train shuttling back and forth between Exeter and Okehampton. And it's not as if there are many more trains on weekdays: the Okehampton branch <i>only</i> runs on Sundays.<br />
<br />
Let's start at the beginning. First of all, here's a map showing the Okehampton, Barnstaple and Gunnislake lines, together with the now-closed section between Okehampton and Bere Alston (in brown):<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ZmXhDVU2_t8/UfheZ_nU9-I/AAAAAAAAAIk/gBVxA2NRYb8/s1600/LSWR.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ZmXhDVU2_t8/UfheZ_nU9-I/AAAAAAAAAIk/gBVxA2NRYb8/s1600/LSWR.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="340" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ZmXhDVU2_t8/UfheZ_nU9-I/AAAAAAAAAIk/gBVxA2NRYb8/s400/LSWR.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><u>(Map based on <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetMap</a>; © OpenStreetMap contributors)</u></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ZmXhDVU2_t8/UfheZ_nU9-I/AAAAAAAAAIk/gBVxA2NRYb8/s1600/LSWR.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><br />
The line was first built as the London and South Western Railway main line between Exeter and Plymouth via Crediton, Okehampton, Tavistock and Bere Alston. The section between Bere Alston and Plymouth remains as part of the Gunnislake branch, which we traversed <a href="http://railwaydave.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/devon-and-cornwall-day-8-part-2.html">the previous day</a>. At the other end, between Exeter and the former Coleford Junction the line remains as part of the Barnstaple branch. Put another way, the Barnstaple branch used to leave the mainline at Coleford Junction. That's actually no longer a junction, with the two branches now having parallel single tracks for the three miles until they join at Crediton.<br />
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The line between Meldon Quarry and Bere Alston was closed in 1968, and passenger services between Exeter and Okehampton were withdrawn in 1972. Until 1997, though, the line soldiered on with ballast traffic to and from Meldon Quarry. With the ballast traffic winding down, and the branch now owned the quarry owners, they decided to reinvent the line between Exeter and Okehampton as a heritage railway line, with passenger services.<br />
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Aside from the Dartmoor Railway's own trains, which are now rather infrequent, the main such service is the FGW-provided summer Sunday service, which is funded by Devon County Council. Dartmoor Railway still run the stations of Okehampton and Sampford Courtenay, both of which have a well-kept feel of the Southern Railway to them - this was never GWR territory, and thus it shall remain!<br />
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While the LSWR managed to avoid gradients as bad as the 1 in 36 on the GWR main line between Exeter and Plymouth, they didn't manage to avoid them completely: after all, Devon is a rather hilly county. But rather than several steep hills, the 60-mile LSWR route between Exeter and Plymouth was simply one big hill, with 30 miles up at 1 in 75, and 30 miles down at 1 in 75, the summit pretty much dead in the middle at Meldon Quarry.<br />
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As such, our ride in this Pacer along a rather overgrown line to Okehampton was rather entertaining. On the way to Okehampton, the engine struggled constantly up the hill. But on the way down, we were treated to one of the most hair-raising rides on a train I've been on for years: the track, while sound, was not as precisely aligned as, say, the 125mph West Coast Main Line; and with a 1 in 75 <i>downhill</i> gradient to take us most of the way back to Crediton, once the driver got it up to speed we barelled down the hill like we were almost out of control, practically clinging on for dear life. It was great fun.<br />
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All too soon, we left the wonderful backwater of the Okehampton branch, and returned to normality at Exeter. Rather than disembark at St David's - the GWR station - we continued on up the 1 in 37 bank to Exeter Central - the LSWR station, much more conveniently located for the city centre - and headed off to buy some food for the long trip home.<br />
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In keeping with the LSWR theme for the day, we decided that getting a FGW service back to Reading would be hell on a Sunday afternoon, with most of the trains probably ending up full and standing. Having said goodbye to Ian, who was heading back via Birmingham, the four of us decided to go back via Basingstoke instead:<br />
<br />
<b>1730 Exeter Central to Basingstoke, arr 2002</b> <br />
<i>Headcode: 1L62, operated by South West Trains using Sprinter 159001*+159007</i> <br />
<i>Distance: 124 miles</i><br />
<br />
It's been a good few years since I'd been on the South West Trains route between Exeter and Basingstoke - also part of the LSWR mainline to London - and it made a nice change from FGW. With a full two-and-a-half hours' journey to Basingstoke ahead of us, the four of us sat round a table and played our last game of Fluxx, a remarkably addictive card game.<br />
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The two and a half hours passed fairly quickly, and before we knew it we'd arrived at Basingstoke. Ben stayed on the train to head home via Clapham Junction; Paul, James and I alighted for our connection to Reading:<br />
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<b>2007 Basingstoke to Reading, arr 2030</b> <br />
<i>Headcode: 2J62, operated by First Great Western using Turbo 165104</i> <br />
<i>Distance: 15.5 miles</i><br />
<br />
Our five-minute connection at Basingstoke was easily made, and we duly joined our last FGW train of the weekend. But it wasn't a sleepy Westcountry branch, it was a slightly more busy Thames Valley commuter line, which the next morning would be rammed once again with commuters to London. It just didn't feel the same, and it brought home that, slowly but surely, the long holiday was ending.<br />
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Once in Reading, I bade farewell to Paul, a Reading local, and James, who was heading to west London, and joined my final train, the familiar CrossCountry run back to Coventry:<br />
<br />
<b>2041 Reading to Coventry, arr 2152</b> <br />
<i>Headcode: 1M96, operated by CrossCountry using Voyager 221132</i> <br />
<i>Distance: 79.75 miles</i><br />
<br />
Somehow, the very same train we'd been on three days previously from Newton Abbot to Plymouth had made its way to Reading to take me home to Coventry; a little digging suggests it did so via a night in Aberdeen. It's easy to forget just how big CrossCountry's network is.<br />
<br />
Once I was finally home, I collapsed into a chair, and said plaintively to my housemate, "too many trains!". It had been a long week, and a very good one; but perhaps a little too intense, in retrospect...Dave McCormickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16226892437669224991noreply@blogger.com0