Great Western Main Line electrification - ongoing discussion

[whole diary]

[devon_metro]

This is excellent news, although we should remember that there is a real threat of a conservative government next year!

Could the same not be said regarding Labour's continual  back peddling regarding every other railway announcement in recent times? There was me looking forward to some nice brand new units for Portsmouth - Cardiff!

[RailCornwall]

Just a thought for the distant future (maybe just a pipe dream) ... Are there the necessary clearances on the Royal Albert Bridge for the Pylons and cabling? All the pictures online seem to me to show insufficient room for such an installation.

[RailCornwall]

... and here's a link to how Railway Gazette International has covered the news. Nice to see an article stripped of the politics and 'inconvenience' elements some media sources have taken.

[willc]

Well sorry to jump back on my sticking up for us media types hobbyhorse again, but Railway Gazette is a specialist industry publication, so a pared-down factual account of the nuts and bolts of the scheme is exactly what its readership expects.

The rest of us are serving a different audience and, whether you like it or not, the first question your average passenger (not people posting here, in the main, I would suggest) is typically going to ask, after such well-publicised fiascos as Rugby at Christmas 2007, is whether the work is going to muck up their journey over an extended period.

And one of the people saying there would be some disruption was... Lord Adonis, so is it surprising this line got picked up, one among many other strands, in the reports of the announcement? And Passenger Focus also used the d-word. It's very easy to shoot the messenger, as many of you seem keen to do, but we didn't make up the disruption line, it came from key players.

Banbury trains will probably have to become shuttles, there will be diesel under the wires for Cotswold trains

Most of the Cherwell Valley stopping service already operates Oxford-Banbury only and the DafT document says the IEP^▸ (Intercity Express Program / Project.) bi-mode will serve the destinations beyond the wires, so no diesel under wires, always assuming the thing can ever be made to perform on diesel power to the level they claim.

As for going to Bedwyn, it may maintain the status quo operationally but it will never get past the Treasury, as the numbers just won't stack up without it being part of a full Berks and Hants wiring scheme - unless the quarry operators around Westbury suddenly decide to fall out of love with big GM diesels and cough up for 25kv power instead. In this connection, I have to say I'm still slightly amazed Adonis got Cardiff-Swansea included, when it will have next to no benefit for ATW^▸ (Arriva Trains Wales (former TOC^▸ (Train Operating Company))) services.

If you have 319s and Turbos aplenty available, then it's surely cost-effective to run a 30-minute electric frequency to Newbury with a Turbo ready and waiting for a cross-platform connection for everywhere to Westbury (or even going on alternately to Frome/Warminster - I leave it to someone else better qualified to determine if you can create a workable timetable for something like this) - if you dug up a strip of the car park at Newbury and created a west-facing bay. Not ideal, as you would lose the through trains, but exchanging them for a 30-minute interval all day might be a fair swop - and electric acceleration would keep overall journey times to places west of Newbury much the same. You could even build a Parkway station for Devizes on the Andover road.

If no-one will stump up for platform extensions - and why not, given that they are doing so across the SWT^▸ (South West Trains) suburban network - then with the amount of work they indicate will be done on the 319s, then surely they could fit SDO^▸ (Selective Door Opening) while they're at it.

II's suggestion of Crossrail to Oxford echoes the broad concept of the Superlink plan from 2004 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/4096667.stm but the government set its face against that idea straight away. Maybe in the brave new world of Andrew Adonis there might be a further outbreak of common sense at DafT, putting paid to the nonsense of turning back dozens of trains at Paddington and doing something useful with them west of London.

[Btline]

Has anyone considered that having empty Crossrail trains turning around at Paddington might be quite useful for the streams of commuters thundering down from the FGW^▸ (First Great Western) HSSs^▸ (High Speed Services)?

And in order to keep the service in the central tunnel reliable (it will need to be with such a high frequency) they won't want the trains straying onto fast lines, or going too far out of London where they can pick up delay. The minute there's a delay - bang goes the Tube style frequecies.

How will hybrids manage on the Cotswold line? All that extra weight plus one less power car actually running...

[willc]

So what do you suggest? A sealed system shuttling back and forwards from Paddington to Liverpool Street? No delay issues there...

One of the key points of Crossrail (and Superlink) was to ease the pressure on the London termini and the Underground by taking people direct from stations further out right into the centre of London. GWML^▸ (Great Western Main Line) punctuality is up with industry standards now, with Reading rebuilding and resignalling (and Cotswold Line redoubling) in hand to address some of the key causes of delay on the route, so why shouldn't it be capable of delivering trains from as far out as Oxford into the tunnel on time? If you're going to Reading with Crossrail anyway, as now seems a certainty, then why not go all the way to Didcot and Oxford too if the wires are there, then people wouldn't need to change trains at all?

The Paris RER system seems to work pretty well, as does Thameslink, which has a sight more complicated network of feeder routes south of the Thames, as far out as Brighton, than Crossrail will, so why shouldn't Crossrail be able to cope, especially in the context of an electrified GWML?

[Oxman]

I believe SDO^▸ (Selective Door Opening) would require guards - existing services are DOO^▸ (Driver-Only Operation (that is, trains which operate without carrying a guard)). Can't see that happening!

[Electric train]

I believe SDO^▸ (Selective Door Opening) would require guards - existing services are DOO^▸ (Driver-Only Operation (that is, trains which operate without carrying a guard)). Can't see that happening!

Do not need guards, a transponder is fitted to the station and trains, the station transponder tells the train the permitted door opening.

Newbury as the end of electrification I suspect is to do with power supply and boundary with signal box areas and all the immunisation that would be required, hopefully the wires will continue from Newbury quite quickly to Exeter or Plymouth.

Bunbury would be part of the "infill" to Brum and the Chiltern Line electrification both of which I suspect is wait for the results of the Oxford Cambridge East West Rail project

[willc]

I think it's pretty clear from what Network Rail and others have said in the past and from the DfT^» (Department for Transport - about) saying this week that MML^» (Midland Main Line. - about) is under further scrutiny that once you have MML and GWML^▸ (Great Western Main Line) wired, doing XC^▸ (Cross Country Trains (franchise)) is the next big step, as it stitches together so much of the network, and the Berks & Hants comes after that, once an XC scheme gets you wires to Paignton and Plymouth. XC also frees up many recently-built DMUs^▸ (Diesel Multiple Unit) for a cascade, hopefully ending with 142s, 143s and 144s disappearing.

The age of its DMU fleet is one of the factors in Chiltern being quite far down the queue for electrification, plus its relatively limited benefits south of Banbury as a diversionary route, since it doesn't go anywhere except London.

Indeed it could even be behind the likes of Southampton-Salisbury-Westbury-Bath, which is being looked at as a diversionary route (via Bristol) to the West Midlands for container trains from Southampton. Even a wired and fully redoubled Cotswold Line offers diversion possibilities for container trains and XC if Oxford-Banbury-Leamington is shut, although oddly the Network Rail electrification RUS^▸ (Route Utilisation Strategy) ignored this possibility - even though BR^▸ (British Rail(ways)) used to run XC services this way in the 1990s.

I believe SDO^▸ (Selective Door Opening) would require guards - existing services are DOO^▸ (Driver-Only Operation (that is, trains which operate without carrying a guard)). Can't see that happening!

Not if you have a system controlled by the on-board computers, like that fitted by Bombardier on Southern's 377 emus, which run DOO on London suburban duties. See below for the relevant sections from Southern's most recent safety certificate application.

The crew (there are conductors on board 377s beyond the suburban area) have nothing to do with the opening process - the system says 'open the doors on however many coaches will fit on the platform at this station', so can't see any reason why you could not fit something similar if you're going to strip the 319 coaches pretty much back to the bare metal during overhaul.

B15.1.4 Rolling stock used on services where some platforms may be shorter than
the train length are equipped with Selective Door Opening (SDO). Classes
377 / 1, 377 / 2 and 377 / 4 units have automatic selection, controlled by the
on-board computer system using a database of platform lengths.  Class 171
units have a manually selected system controlled by the Train Crew.  A list of
stations in Appendix B3 shows those with short platforms. These are the
locations where SDO will be operated if required.

B15.1.5 Routes in the Southern Metro area of operation are approved for Driver Only
Operation (DOO). Class 377 units used on these services have external
CCTV^▸ (Closed Circuit Tele Vision) to give the Driver a view of each doorway. On other classes of unit,
the Driver is able to look out of the cab window.  However, the majority of
platforms (including all those on a curve)  are equipped with monitors or
mirrors to assist the Driver.

[Btline]

The Paris RER system seems to work pretty well...

I was in Paris a few weeks ago, and the RER system was abysmal. Even at peak times, there were 5+ minutes between trains. And that's with a relatively simple network. And if there are longer distance Crossrail trains on the fast lines, where's the space going to come from? At this rate, 6 tracks will be needed to Reading!

The main purpose of Crossrail is to reduce the pressure on the Tube. Namely the Central, H&C/Circle and Jubilee.

[willc]

Well you're entitled to your opinion. I'm entitled to mine. I've often waited a lot longer than five minutes for any kind of a train on the Circle Line platforms at Paddington on a supposed 'metro' frequency route and you clearly never went anywhere near RER Ligne A in Paris, where the peak frequency is every two-three minutes - pretty much the same as Crossrail's 24tph target.

You wouldn't necessarily need to be on the fast lines from Oxford, not with 90mph and high-acceleration electric units available on the relief lines. I remember riding in a 90mph Class 312 EMU^▸ (Electric Multiple Unit) from Birmingham to Stockport put on as a substitute when a CrossCountry train had expired somewhere outside Birmingham in the mid-1980s and it easily kept to time on a duty booked for a 100mph Class 86 - the acceleration from stations was like something flying off a shovel. You could even revive a bit of Victorian thinking and rebuild some stations to put in platform loops to allow faster services to overtake stoppers - rather cheaper than six tracks. And with Reading remodelled and resignalled, along with electric trains, you will have more capacity and paths available anyway.

I don't think anyone is suggesting huge numbers of Crossrail services all the way out to Oxford, but if Oxford and Didcot commuters were able to get a direct train closer to where they worked in central London - and I'll bet most of them travel on beyond the Paddington area - you might very well find yourself able to switch one fast path an hour from Oxford to a train going into the tunnel, with the other fast path being used by a Cotswold Line working ending at Paddington. Or you could just ask Hitachi to build you some more Class 395s if you're that worried about out-and-out top speed.

If all you can think of is replicating current operating patterns but with electric trains, then why bother? Electrification and Crossrail present opportunities to do new things as well. If BR^▸ (British Rail(ways)) had never developed Thameslink, then Eurostar would probably not have been able to go to St Pancras, as the station would still be needed as the terminus for suburban trains from Bedford, which instead drop down into the Widened Lines and take people straight into the City.

Thameslink 2000 (now 2015) adds trains from the Great Northern lines, Ashford and the Sussex coast to the mix across central London and it will have... 24 trains per hour. This is the map showing where all those the trains will be coming from http://www.thameslinkprogramme.co.uk/cms/pages/view/31 but you seem to be suggesting that a far simpler Crossrail system, fed from the GWML^▸ (Great Western Main Line) at one end and the GEML^▸ (Great Eastern Main Line) and a branch to Kent at the other, can't work reliably.

The Norwegians completely transformed long and short-distance operations around Oslo when they bored a main line tunnel under the city centre. It operates at a maximum capacity of 24tph, with everything from local cross-city stoppers, through medium-distance regional expresses and cross-city airport express services to long-distance expresses to Bergen (which used to take a different route out of the city but are now able to serve the main towns to the west before swinging north into the mountains) and Stavanger. Different scale to London maybe, but it shows what can be done if you start with an open mind and a blank sheet of paper to plan your timetables and service patterns.

[Btline]

Willc, you've persuaded me! IMNO (in my new opinion) Crossrail should extend out like the Thameslink proposals.

Let's get some Euston trains into Crossrail at Old Oak Common, freeing up more space for VT^▸ (Virgin Trains - former franchises) HSS^▸ (High Speed Services) or HS2^▸ (The next High Speed line(s)) services.

Lets take the pressure off Clapham Junction/Waterloo with some SWT^▸ (South West Trains) services being diverted (via Airtrack?).

Let's go to Airports like Stansted. A Heathrow to Stansted Express service...

Let's get the Cotswold Line trains into Crossrail.

PS: I used said RER line and it was just as bad! The station dwells were often the best part of 5 minutes. The Metro was quicker....

[Btline]

A la http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superlink_(railway_network)

[devon_metro]

Regarding Crossrail, will there be an interchange where Thameslink and Crossrail meet?

[Andy]

There is nothing in London to compare with the RER system in Paris. London doesn't have a suburban/urban network through/under the city centre yet. That said, Ligne A is about 30 years old and the service is beginning to deteriorate - probably a combination of aging infrastructure and it being stretched to capacity. Moreover, the Paris metro is also streets ahead of the London underground. London is way behind Paris when it comes to public transport.