Great Western Coffee Shop

DaFT announced today the sparking of Bolton to Wigan, and a wider study of electrification in the North of England. The route announced today appears to have come out of the blue, and given that it was a national announcement, I'm surprised that Newbury to Bedwyn wasn't included. However, the rail element of the announcement does appear to have had a somewhat northern bias. Well, exclusively northern to be precise.

Makes sense once you've got the teams rigging the wires they might as well just keep rolling.

Wigan Bolton makes sense it  gives another electrified route to the WCML from Manchester are they going on to Southport?

No (or at least, not yet.)

What prescient posters we all  are.

Much of this was discussed in "More North West Electrification", back in August.

The DfT seem to be responding to our pearls of wisdom.

Seasons greetings,

OTC

I suspect it is still going through the costing exercises, likely to be tacked on to the Thames Valley and Cardiff Valleys electrification project or the So'hamton / Nuneaton scheme

It needs to go to Westbury, to end the ridiculous situation where trains terminate at Bedwyn in the middle of nowhere, meaning random HST have to cover stops at Westbury and Pewsey.

If everyone boarding trains at Westbury wanted to go to Paddington that would be fine.
In practice, many passengers are heading towards Devon and Cornwall (perhaps having arrived from the Southampton direction).

Westbury is a very useful interchange. It is let down at the moment by the poor service to/from the South West, and often poor connections. If there were more frequent, reasonably timed connections at Westbury off trains to/from the South West it would be useful. Generally if you're already on a train from Plymouth or Penzance it will be quicker to go to Salisbury or Southampton via Westbury than on SWT via Yeovil Junction, but the currently the SWT service is often more attractive as it offers a clockface timetable.

I'm for Westbury being included, if only to give Bath to Westbury a chance of being included in the next phase.

In a logical progression one would hope to see Bedwyn - Westbury, Bristol -  Exeter/Plymouth, making Westbury - Bristol next as adiversion, folowed by Trowbridge - Chippenham (possible reinstatement of Bradford North curve) .

If Reading - Southampton is going to be 25Kv then Basingstoke - Salisbury/Exeter follows. Which leaves Southampton - Salisbury/ Westbury, Eastleigh - Romsey and Castle Cary - Yeovil. More problematic is Yeovil - Dorchester but it might as well be done to eliminate diesel traction

With Network Rail currently sitting on ^32,000,000,000,000 of national debt ......... opps I mean that's what NR's borrowing is, DfT will not rush in and do all these schemes at once, Westbury to Bathampton and Thingley will be driven by the need of an alternative route for perturbation and fright.

We are looking at possibly 10 years or more for many of these to get done

^32 Trillion?

Indeed so, ET. The time for planning for any further infill in this current phase, and for what the HOOP train and team do when the current planned upgrades are complete is now. I would hope that a timetable of the next phase is worked out and published at least a year before the GWR and Northern projects are complete. It would be good to have a formal conduit for local transport authorities or rail users' organisations to be able to make representations as to what would be the best next step.

The ultimate aim should be for as much of the railway to be electrified as possible. Commuter services, such as the proposed Greater Bristol Metrorail, will always work most efficiently with electric trains. Also, we are just over a year away from the start of the South Yorkshire tram-train trial. That could turn out to be a game-changer in local rail transport, bringing commuters into city and town centres rather than just to stations. But it needs electrification to make it possible.

The worst thing that could happen would be for DafT to see the current projects to the end, then sell the HOOP kit to some other country, and stop there.

And you are right in saying that ^32 trillion is a fright. (I'm no George Osborne, but is that the correct number of zeros?)

Network Rail's Accounts say ^37,091 Million (i.e. ^37,091,000,000) of non current liabilities of which only ^29,000 million is borrowing.  I am not sure which components to add up to match your figure, but I am certain that you a factor of 1,000 to high! 

I would settle for ^32 billion (using the American definition).  A similar number to the estimated cost of HS2. I believe the UK water industry has a similar debt. That compares to the 2008 UK government bank bailout of ^500 billion.

I leave others to judge how scarey these numbers are.

Only ^37 billion then. Phew! That's a relief!

The Office for Budget Responsibility's Economic and Fiscal Outlook (http://cdn.budgetresponsibility.independent.gov.uk/Economic-and-fiscal-outlook-December-2013.pdf) report from December 2013 gives Network Rail's debt as ^30 billion.

Page 103 (http://cdn.budgetresponsibility.independent.gov.uk/Economic-and-fiscal-outlook-December-2013.pdf#page=103):

ESA = European System of Accounts
ONS = Office for National Statistics
PSND = Public Sector Net Debt
PSNB = Public Sector Net Borrowing

I used the English vernacular as I am aware of the aversion to Americanise (or is that Americanize)

Anywho its still a lot of dosh that both the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Prime Minister of this and the pervious Government quietly leave off of the National bank statement  ;D

Pedant alert

^32,000,000,000,000 (^32 x 10¹²)was what you said, and that, according wikipedia is ^32 trillion in US. ^32 Trillion UK would be ^32,000,000,000,000,000,000 (^32 x 10¹⁸).

As I said, I think the correct number is however ^32,000 million (^32 x 10⁹) which is ^32 billion (US) or ^0.032 billion (UK)

I too have an aversion to Americanisation, but we seem to have lost the battle on billion and trillion. I though to use the UK term would simply confuse.

I agree it is still a lot of money.  Incidentally the water industry's ^30 billion they are not even thinking of putting on the public sector net debt, because it is privatised.  Of cause it is still part of the national debit as is everyone's mortgage and credit card debt if they have one.

Short scale for billion (10⁹) and trillion (10¹²) have been in official usage in the UK since 1974.

That's 40 years of official use, teaching and media use.

The battle, if ever there was one over such an abstract concept, is already lost. And I contend it is not the fault of the USA. Short scale numbers were widely used in Europe through the Enlightenment, and then taken to America.

The fact remains that if you owe the bank ^1000, you have a problem. If you owe the bank ^1,000,000,000, then the bank has a problem. If you owe the bank Rs500 crore, you are in India, and have an entirely different problem, but the principle of shifting the money borrowed to support investment in rail infrastructure off the bottom line of the public accounts seems to be universal.

Looks better as ^0.32E+11

OTC

Question - would the ^32 billion (if you believe the latest number) to be spent on HS2 be better spent on rolling out further electrification/signalling improvements across the Network? Excepting Scotland of course until we see which way they vote next year.

No.

Yes.

As you might have guessed "yes"

Yes.

yes,  but I don't think it is a choice of one or the other.  We might be able to have both

Further electrification would be good, but it won't provide any additional capacity on the ECML or the WCML will it. 

Of course the now abandoned Great Central re-opening/extension proposed over many years until recently - when the promoter died - might well have solved the problem as it would have taken freight from the North/Midlands to the Channel Tunnel.

But I question whether the High Speed rail link will actually take that much traffic. The price of travel is likely to be higher and people may decide to stick with the WCML or not travel

If the present fast trains are all moved onto the HS2 then it will release considerable capacity as if all trains on a line trains travel at the same speed increases capacity. If passengers still want to use the classic route then they will probably have to travel on semi-fast trains and their journey may be slower than it is now.

If the high speed trains are over-priced then of course no one will use them and the line will not make money.  However, I have never been on an empty train on HS1 even if I do have to buy an advanced purchase ticket to get the best price. 

One question about re-opening the GC though.  Where would all that freight go when it got to the London end? Since it was never closed it cannot be reopened and I didn't thionk there was much capacity left of the Chiltern route.

The 'reopening the GC' bit was basically north west of the M25.  Once within the M25 there was going to be a sharp right turn onto a completely new orbital route hugging the M25 from somewhere near Denham all the way round to the southeast of London, with various tunnels, embankments and cuttings to suit the terrain - mostly in green belt IIRC.   

I suspect the reason it got the thumbs down from the DfT was that the headline grabbing 'reopen the GC' was the straightforward bit...

Paul

It's true that the easy bit of "re-opening the GC" is the stretch from Calvert (or really Aylesbury) to Rugby.

At the Rugby end the GC and WCML cross at right angles, so a new curve would be needed to gain access to the Trent Valley slow lines.

South of Aylesbury there are two routes into London, with disused formation in parts of each. One would deposit freights at OOC W Junction and would presumably need a route onto the N London line and then into Willesden. The other would need a curve at Wembley, again into Willesden.

The idea of paralleling motorways with new rail routes is excellent, except it needs to have been included at the planning stage, when the transport corridor was identified. We pay a lot for politicians' tunnel vision.

Tying up the ends of a new GC would not be simple or cheap, especially in inner London. In my view it's probably needed anyway, even if we do get HS2.

Thoughts,

OTC

But HS2 takes much of the GCR formation north of Aylesbury doesn't it?

There used to be a very detailed website for the Great Central project - don't know if it's still accessible. Nearer London I recall the proposal was to try and use the old West Drayton to Ruislip and the existing line south from West Drayton. Don't know if that's still feasible.

Certainly, a fee years back the website had detailed plans and explanations.

As HS2 involves a belt of land 75m wide, there is plenty of space for retaining an existing trackbed, even if displaced slightly.

A right-of-way is a precious asset in a crowded island, be it the Icknield Way, Roman road, dried up canal or disused railway. There is even a closed piece of the M4 (the original East to North curve at Maidenhead)!

Happy Christmas,

OtC

 

Very little, I believe.   The detailed maps on the HS1 part of the DfT's website show a minor coming together for a few miles between Calvert and a few miles north of there.

Maps are here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/hs2-revised-line-of-route-maps

Heading north map 12 shows the convergence, 13 and 14 are the sections where the routes are either nearby or close together, (but you'll see the curves are different, HS2 would be much longer radius) and by map 15 they have separated again for good. As a proportion of the overall scheme it is probably less than 5% where the formation is used.

"HS2 uses the GC route" was an early example of totally misleading politician's spin, I reckon...

Paul

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/journalists/andrew-gilligan/10406562/HS2-now-Labour-look-at-an-alternative-scheme.html

Two months old article, and a very simplistic analysis IMHO.   

Doesn't go to Birmingham, doesn't have a feasible London terminus, needs a new route from north of Aylesbury towards London anyway.   Presumably the nimby element would want it in a tunnel, and why not - they've already been offered one for the current plan...

Paul

By the time all the assessments have been carried on any remaining earthworks, bridges, tunnels etc and then all the remedial work done to them it will be cheaper to build a new route

Don't believe anything Gilligan writes.....shame really, used to be a good journalist, but his rail stuff is regularly refuted by the folks in the Rail press