Reading redevelopment unveiled

[whole diary]

[willc]

The French have a much larger country than us, with far fewer people in it, so building brand new railway lines around places like Reading is pretty straightforward.

The Reading project is a combination of extending a major station and improving one of the most important junctions on the entire rail network, as well as moving a train depot - all this on a constricted site in the middle of a town, so it needs a lot of time for proper preparation. No-one is doing any consulting. What needs to be done is agreed. What they are doing now is making sure they sort out the most efficient way to get there.

For example, until the new Didcot signalling centre is complete and the Reading signalling panel there is working at the end of next year, you can't close the existing Reading signal box, which is sitting on the northern edge of the site where the northernmost new island platform and associated track will go.

Short of shutting down the entire area to rail traffic for months on end, it can't be done any faster.

[Boppy]

This morning flyers were being handed out at Reading station printed and published by the Reading and District Labour party.

The flyer has some facts about the upgrade and also describes how the Conservative MP^▸ (Member of Parliament) for Reading East has requested in the House of Commons that the upgrade not be brought forward.

There is then a survey asking the following 3 questions:

• I want the upgrade of Reading Station to go ahead as soon as possible:  (YES/NO)
• I agree with the local Conservative MP that Reading station upgrade should not be brought forward:  (YES/NO)
• I would like more information about the station upgrade:  (YES/NO)

You can then fill in your details and post it off to the Local Labour MP.

[Btline]

You can spend years working out the quickest way of doing something. But by this time, it would have been more efficient to have done it a slower way. That's why travelling salesmen only work out lower bounds for a journey, not the actual quickest route - because it is quicker.

[eightf48544]

Flyer is probably a Martin Salter initiative.

November Modern Railways has the proposed new track plan, by and large it's very impressive but there still appear to be some potential bottlenecks caused by single lead junctions and crossovers which are possibly either in the wrong place or the wrong way round.

The worst seems to be WT WS at Reading New Junction, which is West of the junction (WK) but is shown as an Up crossover from Down Main To Up Main. This means that trains from teh station to Reading New Jn have to travel to wrong line Up the Down Main from points XA and XC^▸ (Cross Country Trains (franchise)) at Vastern Road.  Whilst I realise that Reading New Jn will not be as important as now, given the new flyunder it should still be usable with the minimum disruption in times of failure/engineering work, especialy given the flyunder is single line and could possibly flood. To that end I would suggest reversing WT WS plus a new crossover linking the Down Relief to the Up Main to allow trains from platforms 14 to 12 to access Reading New Junction.  

With WT WS where it is also means that any Down train crossing from the Down Relief to Down Main via points WG WH will have travel wrong line Down the Up Main for some distance. So if WT WS is reversed then a new crossover near WH will be required to link Up and Down mains.

Also platfrom 15 only seems usuable as a bi-derectional platfrom by trains off the Southern by the new flyunder, it does not seem accessible  from the Down Relief from the Paddington direction.

Also not sure what the purpose of the third line is from points NC at Oxford Road junction to points NH at Cow lane. It's marked as Westburys but it appears to be accessible only from the Up line. Making parallel moves of Up and Down Westburys over Oxford Road Junction impossible.

I would have thought that wherever possible parallel moves at junctions should be the norm in any new layout even at the expense of  additonal crossovers. Why build in a bottle neck when it could be avoided?

Otherwise it looks pretty good and should dramatically increase station capacity.



 

The French have a much larger country than us, with far fewer people in it, so building brand new railway lines around places like Reading is pretty straightforward.

As the people of Amiens found to their cost when the LGV^▸ (Large Goods Vehicle) Nord was built. At least Reading will still have a very busy station close to the edge of the Central Busines District.

As an aside has anyone worked out how many stations are directly served from Reading? 

[Chris from Nailsea]

"A ^400m project to transform Reading station has been given the green light by the Office of Rail Regulation."

For full details, see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/berkshire/7699703.stm

[eightf48544]

The one thing that worries me about the scheme is that it could suffer from the Leeds Hauptbahnhof syndrome of the late 50s for those of us that remember such things.

For those of you that aren't familiar with the scheme, it was to close Leeds Central which was a terminal station and concentrate all traffic in the Joint Staion on the through line to York. The main work was putting in links around Whitehall Jn area to allow GN services from Wakefield and Bradford access to Leeds Joint.

In some ways it was the reverse of Reading instead of a flyover, the bridge into Central  over the lines into the Joint staion was removed and lines to Central  dropped down to link with lines into the Joint.

It suffered from rising costs and the start stop syndrome. So cost a lot more and took far too long. However, would there have been the growth of rail traffic through Leeds if there were still stations in the city? It probably prevented the closure of the Leeds suburban services to Harrogate, Ikely, and Bradford (both ways) under Beeching.

However, it also probably prevented other schemes where such rationalisations could have been carried out from being considered because of the uncertainty of whether they would take too long and cost too much.

Networkail has to get Reading right, keep up to the timescales or even decrease them and keep a lid on costs or even lower them.

They are going to need some very tough contracts which expect great things from the contractors and very astute contract managers to enforce them. It mustn't become a gravy train for the contractors like the WCML^▸ (West Coast Main Line).

[Chris from Nailsea]

"A ^400m project to transform Reading railway station has been given the backing from the public.  More than 2,000 people responded to a consultation on the plans with 95% declaring their support."

For the full report, see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/berkshire/7758632.stm

[mjones]

When I went through Reading this morning there seemed to be some sort of work going on on the route of the old dive-under at the eastern end of the station. This is to be re-opened as part of the re-development, but I didn't think there would be any work on the ground for a while yet. Is this likely to be preparatory clearance or something entirely unconnected with it?

[Electric train]

When I went through Reading this morning there seemed to be some sort of work going on on the route of the old dive-under at the eastern end of the station. This is to be re-opened as part of the re-development, but I didn't think there would be any work on the ground for a while yet. Is this likely to be preparatory clearance or something entirely unconnected with it?

Posible its either being cleared for surveying or it has been used by track renewals in the past as a depot.

There was something on the internal NR^» (Network Rail - home page) web today about NR seeking a partnership to work for NR in the Reading development and Crossrail west of London, these two schemes at high level in NR are treated as one, they are looking for a 10 year partnership

[Lee]

There was something on the internal NR^» (Network Rail - home page) web today about NR seeking a partnership to work for NR in the Reading development and Crossrail west of London, these two schemes at high level in NR are treated as one, they are looking for a 10 year partnership

More on this in the link below.
http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?topic=4163.msg33486#msg33486

[Chris from Nailsea]

Station area's ^4.3m cash boost
A Berkshire town has been given ^4.37m by the government to transform the run down area around its railway station.
The cash for Reading's Station Interchange scheme is set to improve transport links and generate more jobs.
Meanwhile, another ^400m is being spent on Reading railway station itself and preliminary work has already begun.

See http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/berkshire/7969695.stm