Great Western Main Line electrification - ongoing discussion

[whole diary]

[IndustryInsider]

It would be nice if a design award was in the pipeline (as a matter of fact I think the design of the small part stuff is rather pleasing, less so the gantries!), but far more important for me is that the wires don't come down when it gets windy and if a pantograph gets snagged up it only pulls down the wires above one track rather than all four so trains can keep running.  The recent installations to a similar design in the North-West seem to be achieving that aim, so I'm hopeful the GWML^▸ (Great Western Main Line) scheme will as well.

[Red Squirrel]

I do appreciate that the BT&CC was a tramway system.   

I don't accept that 25kV is intrinsically ugly: choices are made which result in an ugly appearance. NR^» (Network Rail - home page) seems to be the last bastion of brutalism; the civils on the Borders Railway look quite awful in places. Ugly doesn't necessarily mean cheap either; it can be a sign of bad (rushed?) design.

[Gordon the Blue Engine]

I don't accept that 25kV is intrinsically ugly: choices are made which result in an ugly appearance. NR^» (Network Rail - home page) seems to be the last bastion of brutalism; the civils on the Borders Railway look quite awful in places. Ugly doesn't necessarily mean cheap either; it can be a sign of bad (rushed?) design.

I agree. The railway industry expends a lot of effort into making trains, bridges, stations etc look aesthetically pleasing.  So why doesn^t the same effort go into OHLE^▸ (Over-Head Line Equipment (electrification via catenary)) design?  OHLE is never going to look pretty, but what is going up between Reading and Didcot looks far worse than it need be - just have a look of some earlier OHLE around the country eg at the detail design of the mast/gantry interface.

[JayMac]

If it makes the trains go and doesn't come down in a light breeze I care little what it looks like.

[SandTEngineer]

Does anybody have any photographs of what has been installed in the disputed area?  I don't normally travel that way so haven't seen recent progress.  Is it anything like this http://www.furrerfrey.ch/en/furrerfrey/news-overview/2015/q1/TTC-SIC-MAB.html in which case if it is then I don't really see what all the fuss is about

[Bmblbzzz]

Have nothing on your railway that you do not know to be useful and believe to be beautiful.

But what might be true for the personal seems less so for the public, due to the wide variance in what we believe to be beautiful and even what we consider useful. Despite this, beauty in the public might even be more important than in the private sphere simply because it is public. And function even more so! If a functional object is flawed in its function by attempts to make it beautiful then it cannot truly be said to be either beautiful or functional.

[ChrisB]

Does anybody have any photographs of what has been installed in the disputed area? 

[didcotdean]

When I saw the second photo on the campaign website I thought it didn't make a good case as it showed a built up area.

[SandTEngineer]

Hang on a minute.  Is that a NG^▸ (Natural Gas) Powerline I see in the distance of the second photograph?  The OLE^▸ (Overhead Line Equipment, more often "OHLE") looks quite good compared with that as its obviously at a much lower level.

[ChrisB]

Those lines were likely in place before the AONB^▸ (Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty) was established

[didcotdean]

There have been power lines in the area at least since the 1940s (probably the 1930s) - albeit they would have been a lower voltage grid then.

[TaplowGreen]

I'm a believer in form following function but that second photo looks awful, those stanchions are a blot on the landscape 

[broadgage]

Has the second picture been digitally enhanced I wonder ?
It almost looks as though the trees behind the OHLE^▸ (Over-Head Line Equipment (electrification via catenary)) have been rendered darker than would be natural, in order that the relatively light coloured galvanised steelwork is more conspicuous than in real life.

Or perhaps a similar effect was achieved naturally on a day with intermittent sun and cloud, by waiting for the trees to under cloud and thereby darker, but the steelwork to be in brighter light and therefore more noticeable ?

The viewpoint also looks a little odd, perhaps taken from an aircraft, or drone, or from atop a tower, rather than from near ground level.

[Visoflex]

...Going back to OHLE^▸ (Over-Head Line Equipment (electrification via catenary)), my main point is that there appear to be multiple designs which make sense from cost and engineering, given that a variety of designs have been implemented. It would seem sensible to have involved the locals at an early stage, to try and avoid the suituation we apparently have now with NIMBYs moaning when it really is too late for NR^» (Network Rail - home page) to realisticly do anything.

OHLE doesn't have to be fugly - like everything else, it's a choice:

Something like this perhaps
http://www.ribacompetitions.com/ols/shortlisted.html

[grahame]

...Going back to OHLE^▸ (Over-Head Line Equipment (electrification via catenary)), my main point is that there appear to be multiple designs which make sense from cost and engineering, given that a variety of designs have been implemented. It would seem sensible to have involved the locals at an early stage, to try and avoid the suituation we apparently have now with NIMBYs moaning when it really is too late for NR^» (Network Rail - home page) to realisticly do anything.

I have just come from a Network Rail Stakeholder's briefing in Bath, and (paraphrasing) comments included one that suggested that there were so many different sets of ground conditions, what needs to go on top, and what's around that "nearly every one is different".   A further comment suggested that a great dal of work has been done with interested institutional stakeholders of getting designs right for Bath to smooth the way of final designs through upcoming formal planning applications.  There is a significant issue through Sidney Gardens in terms of protecting both the look and feel of the place, and the safety of the public when electric wires at 25kV are put through and some compromises needed.