East West rail, Bletchley to oxford line

[rodent279]

13 hours ago, 1E BoY said:

 

Plenty of work in evidence on Bletchley flyover earlier today.

 

The first image shows the work site in the old Telephone Rentals building car park with work on-going on the flyover. Note the road vehicles on the track bed and the considerable clearance of vegetation which previously dominated former railway land in this area.

 

The second shows the removed side walls whilst the retained ones are in place for the crossing over Buckingham Road. This view shows the Park public house and the fenced off work site at the end of Duncombe Street.

Have any of the former TR buildings been demolished?

[stivesnick]

8 hours ago, Mike Storey said:

 

To an extent, but which phase are you discussing? 

 

I was referring to the western section - Bicester to Bedford works. 

 

In the section between Bedford and Cambridge, now the route corridor has been selected, further design work can take place to decide the actual route and to establish what work is actually required. This will then be subject to further consultation and review. 

 

If government is still happy, then an outline design will be produced that would be subject to further consultation and some sort of planning inquiry. 

 

At a rapid pace, this is still 3 years work. 

 

Nick  

[lmsforever]

there is talk of an MK sized city nr Calvert so it will become an urban railway alongside the motorway Oxford Cambridge  at least it will probably bring the wires.

[Edwin_m]

9 hours ago, lmsforever said:

there is talk of an MK sized city nr Calvert so it will become an urban railway alongside the motorway Oxford Cambridge  at least it will probably bring the wires.

In which case it does make sense to make provision in the HS2 design for a station to be added later.  If the local population increases enough to justify six trains calling per hour then it can be done without reducing the throughput of trains of HS2, although it might put pressure on the seating capacity and it would slow down those trains that stopped there.  Possibly by the time all that happened a moving block signaling system might be available that allowed a few more trains per hour to compensate.  

[1E BoY]

23 hours ago, rodent279 said:

Have any of the former TR buildings been demolished?

 

The former Telephone Rentals (later Cable & Wireless) buildings still stand on the corner of Water Eaton Road / Buckingham Road but they are in poor condition and look very unloved. There is redevelopment taking place elsewhere in Bletchley town centre although I know of no plans currently for this site. The car park, however, as shown earlier in this thread is very active as one of three East - West work sites in the immediate area.

 

This view was taken about an hour ago!

 

 

Edited February 13, 2020 by 1E BoY
insert word buildings

[1E BoY]

23 hours ago, rodent279 said:

Have any of the former TR buildings been demolished?

 

A further view showing some damaged windows to the former Telephone Rentals building.

 

[1E BoY]

Vegetation work viewed from Water Eaton Road, Bletchley this morning.

 

The West Coast Main Line is behind the photographer. This view shows the flyover heading off towards Oxford.

[Pete the Elaner]

4 hours ago, Edwin_m said:

In which case it does make sense to make provision in the HS2 design for a station to be added later.  If the local population increases enough to justify six trains calling per hour then it can be done without reducing the throughput of trains of HS2, although it might put pressure on the seating capacity and it would slow down those trains that stopped there.  Possibly by the time all that happened a moving block signaling system might be available that allowed a few more trains per hour to compensate.  

Adding an HS2 station near Calvert sounds useful, but the whole point of the line is to have few stations requiring different stopping patterns. It is the many different stopping patterns which cause capacity issues.

I find the idea of a new town near Calvert a little strange. Milton Keynes was built where it is because it is very close to both M1 & WCML. Calvert is not very close to either.

[Joseph_Pestell]

13 minutes ago, Pete the Elaner said:

Adding an HS2 station near Calvert sounds useful, but the whole point of the line is to have few stations requiring different stopping patterns. It is the many different stopping patterns which cause capacity issues.

I find the idea of a new town near Calvert a little strange. Milton Keynes was built where it is because it is very close to both M1 & WCML. Calvert is not very close to either.

 

Calvert as a new town location only makes sense with:

1) East-West rail corridor (Oxford - Bletchley - Cambridge)

2) New east- west trunk road (linking M40 to M1).

3) a station on HS2.

[lmsforever]

The idea of the new motorway is just that but 

[lmsforever]

The idea of the new city and road are being floated to test if there is a ground swell of protest and how it can be overcome but with the so called shortage of homes it could well happen.But you wonder just where the doctors teachers and possible  jobs for the inhabitants will come from in fact the length of the motorway is going to be one housing development.If the city is built  the area from Aylesbury Bicester Winslow down to Oxford will become overrun by housing.Okay for builders but not so good for people ,looking at the quality of build of houseing around the town and there there are lot of poorly constructed houses.Not much in the way of amenities are being built as it takes profits away and no extra roads to take traffic away from the centre of town are being built.There don't seem to be any good ideas as to go forward just fantasing god help the the people in thirty years time.

[Nearholmer]

There are several ‘build another MK’ ideas being floated, including the one mentioned and a scheme that effectively fills all the land between The actual MK and Northampton, a great deal of which is what might be termed ‘MK Rural’ already, being part of the unitary authority area.

 

Aside from not being too happy to see endless concreting-over, when what the country is supposed to be doing is revitalising the North, I “don’t get” any of these schemes, because the ‘secret’ of MK was the Development Commission. 
 

The DC was hugely controversial, but it worked, by ensuring that infrastructure provision and services were created in advance of need (only now are they hitting capacity) using huge wedges of public money, and it created and applied a holistic vision, which again has worked surprisingly well in the long term.

 

I hear no talk of a DC for any of these other schemes, and without a body with those sweeping (actually un-democratic in many ways) powers, all that will arise is an endless sea of mid-range housing, under-provided with infrastructure and services.

 

If you think MK is dystopia (it actually isn’t, it’s just very different from most other places), a version of it without a ‘guiding mind’ would be true misery.

[Davexoc]

Interesting fact I picked up from browsing Bucks Rail on Flickr, that the Bletchley flyover was built with every other support for the structure slightly wider, for guess what?

OHLE to installed at a later date.....

[lmsforever]

The MK DC was an excellent body I used to go every month  totheir HQ and always something new was happening but these devolpments are builder driven  and if the houses are crap who cares.The DFT and other government depts. are culpable in not caring about how development happens and what is left to disfigure the areas.

Edited February 13, 2020 by lmsforever
bad spelling and missed words

[jonny777]

23 minutes ago, Davexoc said:

Interesting fact I picked up from browsing Bucks Rail on Flickr, that the Bletchley flyover was built with every other support for the structure slightly wider, for guess what?

OHLE to installed at a later date.....

 

But surely that was not surprising; seeing as the electrification to Euston had been agreed before the flyover was completed? 

[Davexoc]

5 minutes ago, jonny777 said:

 

But surely that was not surprising; seeing as the electrification to Euston had been agreed before the flyover was completed? 

 

There must have been some big plans for Swanbourne Sidings to even consider it necessary. Was someone planning another hump yard, and in rural North Bucks?

[Edwin_m]

13 minutes ago, Davexoc said:

 

There must have been some big plans for Swanbourne Sidings to even consider it necessary. Was someone planning another hump yard, and in rural North Bucks?

The flyover also connects to the WCML slow lines northwards.  It would be entirely reasonable to expect freight to and from further north to be electric-hauled and to change traction at Swanborne.  Even if there was no such plan at the time, they would expect the flyover to be electrified at some point in its many years of expected life and it would have cost very little extra to include provision for OLE mountings in the structure.  Look at how lavishly the 1960s WCML electrification wired every last loop and most of the sidings, and how many freights changed locos when joining an electric line (virtually unheard of these days!).  

 

Unfortunately, should electrification of EWR be needed in the future, it's almost certain that structural deterioration or changes in standards mean that those mountings couldn't be used.  

[Andy Kirkham]

26 minutes ago, Davexoc said:

 

There must have been some big plans for Swanbourne Sidings to even consider it necessary. Was someone planning another hump yard, and in rural North Bucks?

 

There certainly were big plans: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swanbourne_railway_station

 

At Swanbourne, it was planned to redevelop the sidings and land near Swanbourne station as a marshalling yard where trains could be sorted into the order required for their destinations on the Southern and Western Regions.[31][37][38] This would enable smaller goods yards in those regions to be closed, with the freight traffic concentrated at Swanbourne which, like the other proposed marshalling yards, would be equipped with the latest automation technology.[39] Swanbourne was one of seven proposed sites on green field land, the others being Carlisle Kingmoor, Perth, Edinburgh Millerhill, Margam, Brookthorpe and Walcot.[40] In September 1958, work started on the upgrade of the Varsity Line with the construction of a flyover at Bletchley to separate local and long distance traffic.[36][41] Compulsory purchase orders were issued for the proposed site including Horwood House, then a boarding school, which was intended by BR to become a training school for the new yard.

 

I'm sure I remember seeing in a 1950's magazine a map of the (then) proposed LMR electrification, and it showed the line to Swanbourne as electrified.

Edited February 13, 2020 by Andy Kirkham

[jonny777]

13 hours ago, Edwin_m said:

The flyover also connects to the WCML slow lines northwards.  It would be entirely reasonable to expect freight to and from further north to be electric-hauled and to change traction at Swanborne.  Even if there was no such plan at the time, they would expect the flyover to be electrified at some point in its many years of expected life and it would have cost very little extra to include provision for OLE mountings in the structure.  Look at how lavishly the 1960s WCML electrification wired every last loop and most of the sidings, and how many freights changed locos when joining an electric line (virtually unheard of these days!).  

 

 

 

 

That's right. When I used to go spotting at Watford Junction in the 1970s it was a rarity to see a diesel loco on the mainline. 

[rodent279]

19 minutes ago, jonny777 said:

 

 

That's right. When I used to go spotting at Watford Junction in the 1970s it was a rarity to see a diesel loco on the mainline. 

Aye. Spotting at LB in the late 70's/early 80's, the only regular diesel turns were class 25's on bricks and local cement workings, emu drags to/from Wolverton and the St Alban's DMU returning to BY for servicing. More or less everything else was electric. Even the cement sidings at Tring were wired, though I'm not sure there was ever a regular electric turn there.

Edited February 14, 2020 by rodent279

[lmsforever]

Used to lot the weed covered sidings at Swanbourne and think what If they did see occasional traffic and storage uses but that was all also don't forget the brick traffic that originated at Bletchley.

[Fat Controller]

2 minutes ago, lmsforever said:

Used to lot the weed covered sidings at Swanbourne and think what If they did see occasional traffic and storage uses but that was all also don't forget the brick traffic that originated at Bletchley.

Weren't the sidings at Swanborne used during the WCML upgrade to stable works trains?

[Trog]

4 hours ago, Fat Controller said:

Weren't the sidings at Swanborne used during the WCML upgrade to stable works trains?

 

No there was some work done much closer to Bletchley more Newton Longville by the West Coast Route Muddle project. But I seem to remember something about them not being able to use the facility because of the gradient it was built on.

[Pannier Tank]

41 minutes ago, Trog said:

 

No there was some work done much closer to Bletchley more Newton Longville by the West Coast Route Muddle project. 

 

The "Run Round" Loop was located near the site of the former London Brickwork Sidings / Newton Longville Signal Box. It was named Swanbourne Siding the western end being near the Newton Road Bridge.

[D826]

My Dad, a London Transport driver - (see Red Panniers), and who also drove Met E and F classes - on PWay and other trains used to tell me strings of coal wagons for Neasden Power Station used to get picked up from Swanbourne sidings.  Whether LT locos  went up to Calvert and the Bletchley line I don't know.  

 

Amusing story about the signal man at Aylesbury giving him the road about 25 minutes before the Master Cutler was due through Aylesbury.  Dad 'encouraged' a normally lazy fireman to set to hard work as steam pressure was dropping and he was economising on the driving style as they climbed the gradients round Missenden.  He had visions of the A3 hauled express bearing down on him.  

 

'Encouragement' - code for language best not repeated on this forum.

 

Best regards

 

Matt Wood