The welsh government are pushing for the Crewe - Holyhead line to be wired along with Wrexham Central - Bidston so I wouldnt be surprised if these get the go ahead since the uk government can argue that you could have potential service from north wales to London via hs2 and wales is not being neglected.
North Wales is currently set up the wrong way for electrification. Currently, you'd have to wire Cardiff/Wolverhampton - Shrewsbury - Wrexham - Chester in order to get the hourly
ATW▸ service west of Llandudno Junction converted to electric. Personally, I think Llandudno/Holyhead should have hourly ATW services to Crewe/Manchester, with a view to extending the Crewe services to Birmingham if/when the wires go up. The Cardiff/Birmingham - Wrexham servcies would terminate at Chester instead of continuing to Holyhead.
As for
HS2▸ , they are doing it wrong. They have a terminal syndrome. I like the 'Euston Cross' proposals in Modern Railways (a new London through station in tunnel, linking HS2 to
HS1▸ ). Similarly, I think the Birmingham and Manchester stations should be through stations, allowing trains to Manchester, Scotland and Liverpool to call at Birmingham etc.
Going back to north Wales, HS2 trains will apparently be 200 metres or 400 metres long. I assume the former would be used on north Wales runs, if at all. 200 metres divided by 23 metres is equivalent to roughly 8 mark 3 coaches. Few trains on the north Wales coast are longer than 5 coaches, and most of the ones that are that long are Voyagers (low seating capacity per train length). London may be a focal point of rail demand, but filling a 200 metre train from north Wales to London (at least at any sort of meaningful frequency) would be alot easier if it could call at Birmingham on the way. You might even be able to provide the hourly north Wales - Crewe - Birmingham electric service I proposed as London services over HS2, but that might be over the top. Still, making a northern rail exit from the HS2 Birmingham station, turning it into a through station, is an essential prerequisite for that.
Initially it was not considered that it would be economic to electrify to Swansea with only an hourly service.
Of course, I considered that a nonsense from day one. Firstly, the hourly service in question was a long 125mph Intercity train, not a 2-car
DMU▸ . An Intercity train surely drinks more diesel than a little DMU, so in my book an hourly Intercity service should warrant electrification. Secondly, and more importantly, the frequency on that section is already greater than hourly. There's a 2-hourly Cardiff-Swansea stopper as well, plus an hourly service which runs through onto diesel lines but this might not survive electrification.
Exactly and I think Network rail etc know this true and are pushing for more electrification behind the scenes. I expect the crosscountry spine from Derby/Birmingham - Plymouth will be up for electrification during CP6▸ hopefully including Bedwyn- Taunton and Bristol local branches along with the remaining unelectrified sections of the GWML▸ network such as Swindon - Gloucester - Severn Tunnel Jct.
...
The problem I feel is that there is just so much of teh network that is crying out for electrificcation but there is not enough resources available to do it all and it will take time. I do wish Network rail would take on and train extra staff along with ordering a 2nd HOOP train which would enable more electrifcation to be done in a shorter time frame
Yes, speed of wiring is a problem, and I fear it could be a fatal one when combined with another problem (TSI
PRM▸ ).
Intercity 125s are not compliant with TSI PRM (Technical Specification Interoperability, Persons Reduced Mobility, or something like that) and a lot of work would need to be done to make them so. Therefore, the Department For Transport (aka
DaFT» ) have decided that most will need to be replaced with new diesel Intercity stock (bi-mode
IEP▸ ) by the end of the day on 31st December 2019, since TSI PRM comes into force on 1st January 2019.
The wires cannot go up fast enough to convert several routes with (in my view) a strong case for electrification (Hull, Swindon - Cheltenham and Bristol - Weston-Super-Mare) by 2019, so under DaFT's plans we'll have brand new bi-mode IEPs on those routes. Personally, I think those three routes at least (plus linking the
MML» to the
ECML▸ to complete the 'electric spine') should be right at the top of the list for Control Period 6, but I fear the presence of brand new IEP bi-modes on these routes will kill the case for wiring them ASAP. And IEPs cannot be cascaded to
XC▸ without guage clearance works for 26m carriages, something that's probably most efficently done alongside clearance works for electrification and/or larger freight wagons.
Much better, in my opinion, to give some IC125s a derrogation from TSI PRM for a year or two to allow those routes to be electrified in 2020/21 so that electric IEPs (instead of bi-mode ones) can replace the IC125s.
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