Northern Powerhouse? Unlikely if this is true.

[Mike Storey]

Grayling made his decision not to extend full TPE electrification back in July 2017 - https://www.rachaelmaskell.com/news_page/2017/07/10/tories_scrap_rail_electrification/

 

I recall the same comments being made at the time, so none of this can be new indignation, unless you have not been following what has been going on?

 

What I find most perturbing is that Northern Powerhouse Rail, acting on behalf of Transport for the North, had not planned to submit their Detailed Strategy and Cost-Benefit Analysis for their consultative strategy published in January, and for which consultation was completed in late Spring. That strategy included many of the requirements which appear to be being dismissed in this article. One can only conclude that DfT (BICC) have done their own calculations, which go for cheapest, lowest risk option, and have already been submitted (and hence, leaked). It may be prudent to allow time to see whether the submission by Northern Powerhouse is also to be seriously considered.

 

Certainly, the final comment, by a DfT rep, that the basis of the article has no foundation, and that "record amounts" are about to be spent (on what?) next year, suggests a mis-match somewhere.....(or, maybe not.)

 

As for the usual wag comment about it being in the Graundiad and therefore of no interest. You had better give up reading the papers then, as no other paper (bar perhaps the Indy) has reported and predicted transport issues with better accuracy over the past decade. You will find the decision previously reported in it, on or around 17 July 2017.

[jonny777]

I'm afraid that I don't subscribe to the accountant-led attitude that if scrapping them is cheaper than storing them, it is the right thing to do. 

 

How long must the cheapness of an action rule over common sense?

 

With railways we are talking long term, and therefore it is not just a question of scrapping/storing; but buying them again in better economic times when the electrification of extra mileage is approved. If we have stored them, those future costs are very small. 

 

Must we always have to live under short-termist rule? 

[The Johnster]

Back from ratting - wind blew away mi cap an't clogs are leaking,  th'whippets geet a cough as well !!

 

Lots of sewer, water, gas, electricity, telecoms etc had to be diverted in many locations (at stations mainly) for Crossrail - evidently not enough to curtail that project. Where there is a will there is a way !!!

 

The Severn tunnel has recently been electrified with a novel system also. Gone a bit rusty recently though !! (can we do nowt reet these days !!).

 

https://www.newcivilengineer.com/latest/severn-tunnel-electrification-system-rusted-after-two-years/10032760.article

 

Brit15

 

The Severn Tunnel uses a solid rail bolted to the roof to carry current, one over each running rail, along which the pantographs run.  This is a Swiss system and used in the Gotthard Base I believe, where it has proved both reliable and effective.  However, if any location is going to expose the weaknesses in a system previously used under the relatively dry Alps, it is the Severn Tunnel, where brackish water enters from the estuary to combine with the best part of a century and a half's sulpherous steam loco soot and diesel deposits to form an acidic black slime that covers everything, and is strong enough to make your hands sting if you get any on them.  As these rails have been installed several years in advance of any trains actually using them, in which case they'd be at least as polished as the running rails below them, some rusting has inevitably taken place!

[E3109]

Wow, in essence 'third rail in the sky', and presumably untensioned.

What an outdated concept! (I'm being facetious of course)

 

Ps Sir Vincent Raven

[Mike Storey]

I'm afraid that I don't subscribe to the accountant-led attitude that if scrapping them is cheaper than storing them, it is the right thing to do. 

 

How long must the cheapness of an action rule over common sense?

 

With railways we are talking long term, and therefore it is not just a question of scrapping/storing; but buying them again in better economic times when the electrification of extra mileage is approved. If we have stored them, those future costs are very small. 

 

Must we always have to live under short-termist rule? 

 

I regret that, whilst your logic is immaculate, the facts do not support it. Long term loco storage, in a state that is reasonably inexpensive to restore to working operation, is a very expensive business (as any preservation group will tell you). The other fact is that asbestos will have almost certainly been a key problem on these locos, plus the fact that spares will have no longer existed, making refurbishment an unlikely competitor to new purchase. That is not even allowing for upgrading the electrical systems to modern requirements.

[jonny777]

The Severn Tunnel uses a solid rail bolted to the roof to carry current, one over each running rail, along which the pantographs run.  This is a Swiss system and used in the Gotthard Base I believe, where it has proved both reliable and effective.  However, if any location is going to expose the weaknesses in a system previously used under the relatively dry Alps, it is the Severn Tunnel, where brackish water enters from the estuary to combine with the best part of a century and a half's sulpherous steam loco soot and diesel deposits to form an acidic black slime that covers everything, and is strong enough to make your hands sting if you get any on them.  As these rails have been installed several years in advance of any trains actually using them, in which case they'd be at least as polished as the running rails below them, some rusting has inevitably taken place!

 

 

 

Are you sure the water entering the Severn Tunnel is brackish? 

 

As I understood it, the water was from a fresh water spring, and nothing to do with the Severn Estuary. 

[APOLLO]

The past - These were the days !!!!

 

 

 

The present

 

 

Cabling up

 

 

 

 

The future ? (can us northerners withhold our tax to pay for this ?)

 

 

We are but Lions led by donkeys.

 

Brit15

[brack]

Your future picture may be about right. They rebore the tunnels, then decide it's too expensive to lay the track.

[E3109]

Apollo sir that painting of 27004 is just superb, not seen it before so much obliged.

[The Johnster]

Are you sure the water entering the Severn Tunnel is brackish? 

 

As I understood it, the water was from a fresh water spring, and nothing to do with the Severn Estuary. 

 

The fresh water from the 'Great Spring', 6 million gallons a minute, is pumped out by the pumping station at Sudbrook, which also deals with the river water which enters the tunnel in what would be considered a considerable quantity until it is compared to that of the Great Spring.  This is in fact potable and can be used as drinking water, but the ingress of seepage is from the river, and is brackish except at high tide, when there is some 70 feet of depth and quite a bit of pressure, when it is more or less salt seawater.  

 

Even at low tide it is fairly corrosive, and becomes highly acidic on percolating through the general filth that pervades everything down there.  The Great Spring is diverted directly into the drainage tunnel built for it, but the river water runs off in the cess in the conventional way, and is dealt with separately.  At one time the fresh water was piped directly to Llanwern steelworks for cooling, and some is, or was, used as domestic supply locally, but the bulk is fed back in to the estuary.

 

The Severn Tunnel is in fact a system of tunnels, with the rail tunnel being supplemented by a runoff drainage tunnel and the Great Spring's tunnel, following the line and gradient of the English Side down to the bottom and continuing in that direction until it is below the Sudbrook Pumping Station, where the original shaft has been used to raise this water to the surface.

 

If you ever get a chance to read it, 'The Severn Tunnel; it's Construction and Difficulties' by A J Walker, the engineer who was responsible for it's building (Brunel suggested it but had no further involvement and was dead before it was started) is well recommended.  Walker has the gift of being an entertaining writer for amateur readers, and very good at explaining some of the engineering problems he and his men had to overcome.  It was quite an adventure!

Edited December 8, 2018 by The Johnster

[russ p]

Why is anyone surprised that chrome dome grayling does something that favours road haulage over railfreight ,everything the man does has an ulterior motive!

[APOLLO]

Bit off thread but a very interesting documentary about the Severn Tunnel

 

 

This shows how REAL engineers solved problems !!

 

Brit15

Edited December 8, 2018 by APOLLO

[The Johnster]

Wow, in essence 'third rail in the sky', and presumably untensioned.

What an outdated concept! (I'm being facetious of course)

 

Ps Sir Vincent Raven

 

Pretty much.  The difficulty is in isolating the power rail from the very damp tunnel structures; once in use the system should be fairly reliable and low maintenance, and of course saves a good bit of space in a restricted area.  Had it not been employed in the Severn Tunnel, the trackbed would have had to either been lowered at very great expense or an unacceptable speed restriction imposed.  It is a solid construction and untensioned.

[Guest Bri.s]

Talking of Woodhead route

Has anyone heard that the National Grid is in consultation to remove some pylons from the Dunford Bridge side and bury the cables in the old trackbed essentially removing the chance of laying tracks above them

A quick quote from a NG representative says if Woodhead isn’t in the TFN plan ,then they’ll bury cables and when buried the railway will not be able to be laid on top due to access and wieght restrictions

On subject of tunnel

By what I’ve read the government always said that if Woodhead was to be reopened it would require a new tunnel bore

 

Brian

[Zomboid]

If a new line is needed between Manchester and Sheffield, it would be better to build a new alignment for higher speeds rather than reusing the old one - I believe the line speed was only 60mph or so, which isn't really going to cut it in 2018. A new, straighter, flatter route would be a much better use of funds.

Edited December 8, 2018 by Zomboid

[Arun Sharma]

Let me see if I've got this right; be patient, I'm a South Walian with only a passing familiarity for the area and it's problems.  A mountain range divides two heavily industrialised areas both with big ports serving them.  It's not the highest mountain range even in England, but it's sides are bl**dy steep, there's no easy way across, and the weather is mostly awful except when it's raining!  Road provision across the mountains is at capacity and subject to closure during winter because of weather conditions.  There are, and/or were, several rail routes through the mountains, but all of these feature either single bore tunnels, or double track ones that are very close to water mains, sewage, canals and other obstructions, so none of the rail routes can be easily upgraded for either large container traffic or electrification, both of which are essential components of the viability of any such scheme.

 

Two rail routes have been abandoned, and one of the tunnels, twin single bores, has been used for power cables.

 

Grim oop north, isn't it!  Answer to one problem might be 3rd rail in the tunnels and Class 92 haulage, though this feels like a bit of a retrograde step.  Is there really such a demand for container traffic here, as the existing tunnels still in use are adequate for all other traffic?

We've been through this argument before in other threads but as I understand it, the sea routes around the British Isles especially the southern part of the North Sea and the English Channel are narrow and congested. The idea is that containers are shipped to the NW coast [Liverpool/Manchester] and the transferred by train to the NE ports - presumably Hull, Grimsby, Felixstowe etc., and loaded onto [smaller] feeder container vessels that take them to e.g., Rotterdam or wherever on the European mainland. The UK thus acts as a transit hub and the chokepoints in the waters around the UK become rather safer and less congested. 

On that basis an East-West [and vv] railway system capable of taking containers from one coast to another makes considerable sense.

It's been some years since I last served as part of a ship's crew but this idea of an E-W rail link between ports [a rail version of the A14 trunk road in fact!] has been around a long time. In fact, you might ask, when the Govt decided to upgrade the A14, why didn't they also stick a railway line on either side of it!

[Enterprisingwestern]

If a new line is needed between Manchester and Sheffield, it would be better to build a new alignment for higher speeds rather than reusing the old one - I believe the line speed was only 60mph or so, which isn't really going to cut it in 2018. A new, straighter, flatter route would be a much better use of funds.

 

There's not a lot of suitable territory to build a higher speed railway between Sheffield and Manchester, that's pretty much why it goes the way it does, some daft chuff put the Pennines in the way.

 

Mike.

[brack]

There's not a lot of suitable territory to build a higher speed railway between Sheffield and Manchester, that's pretty much why it goes the way it does, some daft chuff put the Pennines in the way.

 

Mike.

Just shove the whole thing underground. If they put some tiled white bricks in at the stations, made it smell like recycled sweat and pretended it was an extension to the London underground they'd probably get funding for it.

[Clearwater]

We've been through this argument before in other threads but as I understand it, the sea routes around the British Isles especially the southern part of the North Sea and the English Channel are narrow and congested. The idea is that containers are shipped to the NW coast [Liverpool/Manchester] and the transferred by train to the NE ports - presumably Hull, Grimsby, Felixstowe etc., and loaded onto [smaller] feeder container vessels that take them to e.g., Rotterdam or wherever on the European mainland. The UK thus acts as a transit hub and the chokepoints in the waters around the UK become rather safer and less congested. 

On that basis an East-West [and vv] railway system capable of taking containers from one coast to another makes considerable sense.

It's been some years since I last served as part of a ship's crew but this idea of an E-W rail link between ports [a rail version of the A14 trunk road in fact!] has been around a long time. In fact, you might ask, when the Govt decided to upgrade the A14, why didn't they also stick a railway line on either side of it!

The trend, as has been the case for ever and a day, in shipping is to larger ships. There are limited numbers of harbours in the UK that can accommodate the deepest draft ships. Also, the demand for containers is much larger on the continent than the UK. Therefore ex-far East ships either stop at Gateway, Felixstowe or Southampton and often drop off a small proportion of their boxes (it'd be rare for the largest ships by TEU to be fully discharged in the UK). Other ships will go direct to Rotterdam and then some of their boxes come over to the UK on smaller feeders. The UK call points are small deviations off the main shipping lanes. Liverpool is a comparatively large deviation if your destination is Rotterdam. My understanding is that relatively few boxes are transhipped in the UK. There are a larger number of trailers that arrive in Hull/Immingham on RoRo/LoLo and go to Liverpool to go onto Ireland.

 

If you look at Felixstowe and Liverpool below, you'll get a spot idea in the difference in ship size. The tracker also clearly shows the shipping lanes.

 

https://www.vesselfinder.com

[woodenhead]

I have seen that Peel Ports plans are based around transshipment between the ports of Liverpool and Hull including some traffic by barge to Warrington and Salford for onward movement. Port Salford will be rail linked with a triangle to allow east or west arrival/departures.

 

They clearly see a future in the Standedge route as an access to more business.

[pete_mcfarlane]

The Severn tunnel has recently been electrified with a novel system also. Gone a bit rusty recently though !! (can we do nowt reet these days !!).

 

https://www.newcivilengineer.com/latest/severn-tunnel-electrification-system-rusted-after-two-years/10032760.article

After reading that article I feel sorry for the engineers who designed and installed the system, who've now been basically been described as incompetent by some opposition MP out to score cheap political points. 

[royaloak]

I regret that, whilst your logic is immaculate, the facts do not support it. Long term loco storage, in a state that is reasonably inexpensive to restore to working operation, is a very expensive business (as any preservation group will tell you). The other fact is that asbestos will have almost certainly been a key problem on these locos, plus the fact that spares will have no longer existed, making refurbishment an unlikely competitor to new purchase. That is not even allowing for upgrading the electrical systems to modern requirements.

He is on about storing OHLE stanchions and equipment, not locos.All stuff which is designed to be used outside so storing it outside wouldnt cause any problems.

 

Fayling decreed it had to be scrapped immediately simply to save face when it was 'discovered' in a storage yard in a few years time while diesels are running on the route which should have been electrified.

[royaloak]

If a new line is needed between Manchester and Sheffield, it would be better to build a new alignment for higher speeds rather than reusing the old one - I believe the line speed was only 60mph or so, which isn't really going to cut it in 2018. A new, straighter, flatter route would be a much better use of funds.

And much much more funds besides, your 'new' railway would never see the light of day as it would be far too expensive, this isnt Londinium you know, reinstating the existing line can be done quickly and cheaply which is all you will get funding for.

[frobisher]

The idea is that containers are shipped to the NW coast [Liverpool/Manchester] and the transferred by train to the NE ports - presumably Hull, Grimsby, Felixstowe etc., and loaded onto [smaller] feeder container vessels that take them to e.g., Rotterdam or wherever on the European mainland. The UK thus acts as a transit hub and the chokepoints in the waters around the UK become rather safer and less congested.

There's been quite a bit of discussion about that feeder hub being built at Flotta, Orkney which has the advantage of allowing the transfer to the other vessels purely within the facility, and with a "straight-through" deep water access for the larger vessels which is more fuel economic and avoids that other choke point of the Irish Sea...

 

North West Africa is also under consideration, which is obviously not as good an option for the UK.

Edited December 9, 2018 by frobisher

[Zomboid]

And much much more funds besides, your 'new' railway would never see the light of day as it would be far too expensive, this isnt Londinium you know, reinstating the existing line can be done quickly and cheaply which is all you will get funding for.

It's not going to happen either way, but it would cost a huge amount of money to reopen Woodhead, and the result would be a railway on a Victorian alignment, with all the compromises that entails. It would need land purchases, rerouting of the current contents of the run tunnels and no doubt a large proportion of the bridges would basically need to be knocked down and started again.

 

I highly doubt a brand new 100+mph alignment would be that much more expensive, but the result would be a 21st century railway. There's not really any settlements of note to serve between the outskirts of Manchester and Sheffield, so I really don't see the point of holding on to the old alignment.

 

But in reality, wouldn't upgrading the hope valley line (electrification and maybe some multi-tracking to allow faster trains and more freight) be a more realistic proposal, if it is really necessary to increase rail connectivity between Manchester and Sheffield?