North Wales main line electrification, from 4th October 2023

[whole diary]

[grahame]

From the BBC^» (British Broadcasting Corporation - home page)

The UK^▸ (United Kingdom) government has given "a cast-iron commitment" that the electrification of the north Wales main rail line will happen.

Welsh Secretary David TC^▸ (Train Crew, or Travelling Chef, depending on context) Davies said the full business case is still to be done but the line will be built.

Welsh ministers dismissed the £1bn cost announced as a "back of a fag packet figure" and a transport expert has put the cost at about £1.5bn or more.

Mr Davies admitted the cost would "probably be a bit higher" than £1bn.

On Thursday, Rishi Sunak announced that £1bn would be provided to electrify the north Wales main line, following his decision to scrap the second leg of the HS2^▸ (The next High Speed line(s)) high speed rail line between Birmingham and Manchester.

I look forward to reading ongoing reports of this electrification and look forward to connecting off an electric train at Holyhead onward to the ship for Dublin.  At the other end, a link into the English network at Crewe would seem obvious; will we see electric trains from Bangor to Manchester and from Llandudno to Liverpool?

[Mark A]

Should the line to Holyhead be electrified, the sparks effect will exacerbate capacity issues south of Crewe. This increases the value of HS2^▸ (The next High Speed line(s)) phase 2a between Crewe and Lichfield

Not that it doesn't have value in the first place, it's the 'Dawlish avoiding line' of the Midlands, with the capacity constraints of the WCML^▸ (West Coast Main Line) there replacing the increasingly frequent woes bought to the coastal line by changing weather patterns.

Mark

[grahame]

WalesOnline has been researching the North Wales electrification announced last month by Risha Sunak

However promises have been made about upgrading Wales rail infrastructure before. The electrification of the south Wales mainline to Swansea was ditched and this is to say nothing to the billions of pounds Wales has been robbed of since HS2^▸ (The next High Speed line(s)) was first envisioned.

To see how serious the UK^▸ (United Kingdom) Government was about electrifying the line in north Wales, WalesOnline submitted a Freedom of Information request to Network Rail to see how much prep work had gone into the project. We requested access to any estimates for the cost of electrifying the North Wales Coast Mainline dating back to 2011.

Network Rail responded saying: "The only estimated costs of electrifying the North Wales Coast mainline we hold were developed in 2015 and were very high level, so are now quite out of date. The costs at this time were estimated at between £232,180,000 - £293,280,000. This was first exclusively revealed in The Will Hayward Newsletter which you can sign up for here.

So the only official costing of the project was done eight years ago and since then we have had very high inflation. Professor of Politics at Cardiff University's Wales Governance Centre Ed Poole suggested that we can not take the UK Government pledge seriously.

[infoman]

Not my next of the woods,but how much of the route Crewe Chester Flint and beyond is electrified?

[Mark A]

Chester has third rail into it from the Birkenhead direction - extended from, was it Hooton, in the fairly recent past, but Crewe via Chester to Holyhead, no electrification.

Mark

[Electric train]

WalesOnline has been researching the North Wales electrification announced last month by Risha Sunak

However promises have been made about upgrading Wales rail infrastructure before. The electrification of the south Wales mainline to Swansea was ditched and this is to say nothing to the billions of pounds Wales has been robbed of since HS2^▸ (The next High Speed line(s)) was first envisioned.

To see how serious the UK^▸ (United Kingdom) Government was about electrifying the line in north Wales, WalesOnline submitted a Freedom of Information request to Network Rail to see how much prep work had gone into the project. We requested access to any estimates for the cost of electrifying the North Wales Coast Mainline dating back to 2011.

Network Rail responded saying: "The only estimated costs of electrifying the North Wales Coast mainline we hold were developed in 2015 and were very high level, so are now quite out of date. The costs at this time were estimated at between £232,180,000 - £293,280,000. This was first exclusively revealed in The Will Hayward Newsletter which you can sign up for here.

So the only official costing of the project was done eight years ago and since then we have had very high inflation. Professor of Politics at Cardiff University's Wales Governance Centre Ed Poole suggested that we can not take the UK Government pledge seriously.

Since 2015 NR^» (Network Rail - home page) have done quite a bit of work with the DfT^» (Department for Transport - about) and ORR^» (Office of Rail and Road, formerly Office of Rail Regulation - about) on the cost and type of electrification, especially around the performance spec the DfT and ORR placed on NR for GWEP^▸ (Great Western Electrification Program) and the costs that performance requirement had.   Third rail is now seen as permissible again subject to a number of safety control measures.

[Oxonhutch]

Third rail is now seen as permissible again subject to a number of safety control measures.

Would be nice to see the North Downs gap infilled.

And Merseyrail extended to Skelmesdale...

[Electric train]

Third rail is now seen as permissible again subject to a number of safety control measures.

Would be nice to see the North Downs gap infilled.

And Merseyrail extended to Skelmesdale...

Such schemes are on the list.  However they will not happen under the normal Control Period funding determination, they will need a regional / local authority, business enterprise zone or similar to raise / seek the necessary funding.