DOCUMENTARY: The Fifteen Billion Pound Railway

[whole diary]

[Surrey 455]

DOCUMENTARY: The Fifteen Billion Pound Railway
On: BBC^» (British Broadcasting Corporation - home page) 2 (2)   
Date: Monday 22nd May 2017 (starting in 6 days)
Time: 21:00 to 22:00 (1 hour long)

The Final Countdown.
This series follows more than ten thousand engineers and construction workers as they race to complete the brand new railway directly underneath the city - Crossrail, London's new Underground. Costing fifteen billion pounds, it is the biggest engineering project in Europe. Linda Miller, an engineer more at home constructing space launch complexes, must build what will become Britain's busiest station - Farringdon - an underground structure longer than the Shard is tall. Linda and her team battle ancient fault lines, race to build emergency access tunnels to alleviate congestion and piece together a giant geometric jigsaw that will form a cathedral-sized station entrance. The episode ends with a very special visitor arriving on site to give the railway its new title.
(Stereo, Widescreen, Subtitles, Audio Described, 5 Star)
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Marked By: 'Category: Documentary' marker
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Excerpt taken from DigiGuide - the world's best TV guide available from http://www.getdigiguide.tv/?p=1&r=51610

Copyright (c) GipsyMedia Limited.

This was just advertised on BBC2 so would appear to be a new programme rather than a repeat.

[JayMac]

Yes, a second series of 2 episodes. The first series of 3 episodes was first broadcast in July 2014.

See also: http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?topic=818.msg157129#msg157129 et seq.

[TonyK]

I have set the magic sprite capturing machine to record it! Sounds like an update on the earlier series, and gives the impression it might even open one day!

[chuffed]

Haven't watched the first programme yet, but watched the second one live.
I was just amazed at the skill, patience, dedication,ingenuity and vision shown by everyone in the programme. Have often moaned at the disruption. Never again. If we can do all this underground in London, why can't we do the same in other parts of the country which the challenges are easier ?

[paul7575]

Have often moaned at the Crossrail disruption outside Victoria.

Not Crossrail surely?  Have you accidentally written Victoria for somewhere else?

Paul

[Adelante_CCT]

Perhaps chuffed was posting from the future, and was describing Crossrail 2? 

[Electric train]

If we can do all this underground in London, why can't we do the same in other parts of the country which the challenges are easier ?

Because it would not be as much fun without the challenge 

Its pure economics outside London perhaps where there is more space, easier to divert existing services / infrastructure it makes economic sense to do so, for example although not Crossrail no one in their right mind would rebuild a station as busy as London Bridge and keep it open but economics and space dictate it

[onthecushions]

If we can do all this underground in London, why can't we do the same in other parts of the country which the challenges are easier ?

I imagine that the answer lies in the immense passenger flows in London and the high average productivity of each worker. The aggregate "benefit" thus still exceeds Crossrail's £16bn cost (for just 6 miles of new railway!) by several times, justifying the investment.

There have been some provincial achievements over the years: Merseyrail's loop and link (which probably saved its city from economic collapse) and the Glasgow "Blue train" network (which now reaches Edinburgh) spring to mind. Manchester and the North West is having a lot of current investment in the NWEP. The LRT systems should probably also  count.

It does seem that quite small schemes take unreasonably long times to progress, such as Tavistock. Other obvious links are cast aside such as Newquay - St Austell and Bradford Crossrail (where c700m separates two terminal stations) etc.

OTC

[grahame]

If we can do all this underground in London, why can't we do the same in other parts of the country which the challenges are easier ?

It does seem that quite small schemes take unreasonably long times to progress, such as Tavistock. Other obvious links are cast aside such as Newquay - St Austell and Bradford Crossrail (where c700m separates two terminal stations) etc.

Is that because those are quite small schemes, or because they're in the South West? What was the last big new railway infrastructure scheme in the South West?

[ellendune]

If we can do all this underground in London, why can't we do the same in other parts of the country which the challenges are easier ?

It does seem that quite small schemes take unreasonably long times to progress, such as Tavistock. Other obvious links are cast aside such as Newquay - St Austell and Bradford Crossrail (where c700m separates two terminal stations) etc.

Is that because those are quite small schemes, or because they're in the South West? What was the last big new railway infrastructure scheme in the South West?

I don't think the Bradford that OTC quoted was on Avon and it is not in the South West.

Never-the-less it is a good question.

To answer it you need to answer other questions though:

1) What is the South West (Government region?, The South West Peninsula?, GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) & SWT^▸ (South West Trains) franchise areas?)
2) What is big new infrastructure (Does electrification and Requadrification of Filton Bank count? Reading Station as it had a big impact on services to the South West?)

[grahame]

If we can do all this underground in London, why can't we do the same in other parts of the country which the challenges are easier ?

It does seem that quite small schemes take unreasonably long times to progress, such as Tavistock. Other obvious links are cast aside such as Newquay - St Austell and Bradford Crossrail (where c700m separates two terminal stations) etc.

Is that because those are quite small schemes, or because they're in the South West? What was the last big new railway infrastructure scheme in the South West?

Never-the-less it is a good question.

To answer it you need to answer other questions though:

1) What is the South West (Government region?, The South West Peninsula?, GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) & SWT^▸ (South West Trains) franchise areas?)
2) What is big new infrastructure (Does electrification and Requadrification of Filton Bank count? Reading Station as it had a big impact on services to the South West?)

Those are excellent questions that I had thought of, but decided not to complicate my post like I do too often!  As you ask ...

I was thinking of the South West region being Gloucestershire, Wiltshire, Dorset and west thereof - so that's Bath and Bristol, Somerset, Devon and Cornwall too. Basically beyond the main London commuter-land (though I know we have some)! I considered mentioning Reading, but I decided it was South East [London outer] rather than South West.

In terms of "big new infrastructure" I was thinking of new lines / perhaps new curves, etc, as a minimum. So adding back extra tracks (loops, single to double, two to four) and upgrading to change from diesel to bimode trains doesn't reach the level I was thinking of.

I'm also thinking of new track / routes in daily use.  So Worgret to Norden / Norton Fitzwarren to Bishop's Lydiard don't really count.   Was the connection at Westerleigh that trains use north of Bristol Parkway new when the old Midland line was closed?   Was there a new connection added in when Plymouth was rationalised to allow the Gunnislake train to carry on operating?  But these both strike me not as improvements, but rather the side effect of rationalisations.  The most recent thing that compares to these other schemes we've talked about was the Westbury avoider line and that's a very long time ago ... my best attempt to answer my own question, but surely there's got to be something more recent?

[ChrisB]

As soon as you head west from Reading, the number of pax beneffiting from any of these sufgestions falls rapidly compared to projects innthe highly densley populated south-east. So the cost per tax-payer gaining a benefit rises exponentionally the fewer it benefits.