East West rail, Bletchley to oxford line

[1E BoY]

On going work in the old Telephone Rentals car park now a work site for refurbishment of Bletchley flyover. Taken this afternoon around 1500 from the public footpath on Water Eaton Road.

[porkie]

Superb pic. I've noticed that the metal barrier fence that was up just before the bridge at Newton Longville has also been removed on Bletchley rd/ Newton Rd 

[Nearholmer]

This is of contextual interest - I stumbled upon it last week.

 

 

[melmerby]

Problem with that list is it is entirely different to ones produced by other bodies!

Is it based on population growth?

Is it based on economic growth?

[Nearholmer]

I think it is simply population, but that a good question.

 

And, when you delve, there is a fair, but by no means complete, overlap whichever way it is estimated.

 

The broad point being that EWR serves a ‘fast-growing’ area, overheated area some might say.

Edited March 3, 2020 by Nearholmer

[Arun Sharma]

Nearholmer's picture is interesting but being a pedant [pronounced pee-dant], Milton Keynes is not legally a city. It is a town - albeit rather larger than some neighbouring cities [see Wikipedia article on MK for further info if desired]. Similarly, Swindon [named after the hill upon which the good burghers of Wroughton used to walk their pigs] is also [only] a town.

Edited March 3, 2020 by Arun Sharma
addnl info

[jamie92208]

40 minutes ago, Arun Sharma said:

Nearholmer's picture is interesting but being a pedant [pronounced pee-dant], Milton Keynes is not legally a city. It is a town - albeit rather larger than some neighbouring cities [see Wikipedia article on MK for further info if desired]. Similarly, Swindon [named after the hill upon which the good burghers of Wroughton used to walk their pigs] is also [only] a town.

That's probably to do with the definition of a city. IIRC it's a town with either an Anglican cathedral or a royal charter. Thus Leeds and Sheffield without cathedrals had to wait for their charters and much smaller Wakefield got it automatically. This also means that Wells in Somerset is a city and only has a few thousand population.

 

Jamie

Edited March 3, 2020 by jamie92208

[Nearholmer]

All correct , but if it walks like duck, and quacks like a duck ........

[Mike Storey]

4 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

This is of contextual interest - I stumbled upon it last week.

 

 

 

Grate, but were is Milton Kynes exxactly???

[caradoc]

1 hour ago, Arun Sharma said:

 Similarly, Swindon [named after the hill upon which the good burghers of Wroughton used to walk their pigs] is also [only] a town.

 

Where I come from (Oxford) we use another word to describe Swindon, and it is neither town nor city........

 

[Chris116]

14 minutes ago, Mike Storey said:

 

Grate, but were is Milton Kynes exxactly???

Somewhere that used to have a Speedway team.

 

BBC can't spell by the looks of things.

Edited March 3, 2020 by Chris116

[Davexoc]

Its actually the increase in housing and not population. Full article here

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/explainers-51577853

 

Perhaps once EWR is completed, someone might consider linking up more of those places. Swindon - Peterborough could become a through service quite easily. Would be even better if it was all electric.....

[melmerby]

2 hours ago, Mike Storey said:

 

Grate, but were is Milton Kynes exxactly???

 

2 hours ago, Chris116 said:

Somewhere that used to have a Speedway team.

 

BBC can't spell by the looks of things.

?

[The Stationmaster]

20 hours ago, Arun Sharma said:

Nearholmer's picture is interesting but being a pedant [pronounced pee-dant], Milton Keynes is not legally a city. It is a town - albeit rather larger than some neighbouring cities [see Wikipedia article on MK for further info if desired]. Similarly, Swindon [named after the hill upon which the good burghers of Wroughton used to walk their pigs] is also [only] a town.

And neither is Reading - notwithstanding the blind faith of various local politicos that obtaining such status was simply a question of repeating the term often enough.

 

I do wonder about those figures because i'm far from sure there has been a enough housing development in Reading Borough (apart from student flats) to accommodate a growth of that level.  In fact one net source shows the population growth in the wider Reading area (i.e. not just within the Borough) as less than 10% between 2010 and the estimated 2020 number.  Didcot has grown faster than that in that timescale!

18 hours ago, Davexoc said:

Its actually the increase in housing and not population. Full article here

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/explainers-51577853

 

Perhaps once EWR is completed, someone might consider linking up more of those places. Swindon - Peterborough could become a through service quite easily. Would be even better if it was all electric.....

It would be interested to see that one resurrected but while it was a typical Regional Railways idea of what amounted almost to a series of linked local services I don't know if it would appeal  to those involved with developing railway services nowadays?

[Nearholmer]

The trouble with long straggly through services is that they are both very prone to knock-on disruption, and spread knock-on disruption. The linking of local-train services on the southern end of WCML is a good/bad example of how it can go wrong.

 

In a railway-ideal world, every route would be entirely independent of all others, running on fully separate tracks, and the passengers would interchange between routes, not the trains, which is why metros run like that ....... they can't achieve clockwork reliability without separation of routes, which is why the intermingled Met., District, Circle, Hammersmith is a devil to get right on the Underground.

 

Not very acceptable to passengers schlepping lots of luggage, though.

 

 

[Arun Sharma]

1 hour ago, The Stationmaster said:

And neither is Reading - notwithstanding the blind faith of various local politicos that obtaining such status was simply a question of repeating the term often enough.

 

I do wonder about those figures because i'm far from sure there has been a enough housing development in Reading Borough (apart from student flats) to accommodate a growth of that level.  In fact one net source shows the population growth in the wider Reading area (i.e. not just within the Borough) as less than 10% between 2010 and the estimated 2020 number.  Didcot has grown faster than that in that timescale!

It would be interested to see that one resurrected but while it was a typical Regional Railways idea of what amounted almost to a series of linked local services I don't know if it would appeal  to those involved with developing railway services nowadays?

Mike - if you think of E-W Rly as being a sort of outer circle rail route avoiding London and linking [via Didcot] the GWML, OWW, WCML, MML  & ECML and going all the way to Felixstowe/Harwich then it may well be of far more interest to FOCs than passenger TOCs. Even if it carried no passengers al all beyond Bicester Village, it is still worth building as a priority.

[Zomboid]

It'll link to the SWML and Southampton via the GWML too

[Nearholmer]

Yes, I’ve always imagined, for instance, a steady Southampton to Daventry freight flow.

[caradoc]

23 hours ago, Davexoc said:

Perhaps once EWR is completed, someone might consider linking up more of those places. Swindon - Peterborough could become a through service quite easily. Would be even better if it was all electric.....

 

Given that electrification between Didcot and Oxford is not on the horizon, and Oxford/Cambridge will not be electrified either, a simple combination of those two services would at least allow connections at Didcot from Swindon and points beyond.

 

[Davexoc]

1 hour ago, Nearholmer said:

Yes, I’ve always imagined, for instance, a steady Southampton to Daventry freight flow.

 

I'm imagining anywhere between MK and Bedford Marsh Leys, possibly Ridgmont or Stewartby becoming the next IRFT.

Why run to Daventry and mingling with the WCML services once EWR is done?

[Mike Storey]

22 minutes ago, caradoc said:

 

Given that electrification between Didcot and Oxford is not on the horizon, and Oxford/Cambridge will not be electrified either, a simple combination of those two services would at least allow connections at Didcot from Swindon and points beyond.

 

 

It would appear (from a status report on another forum) that electrification (if allowed to proceed) could be done during CP6.

[Mike Storey]

7 minutes ago, Davexoc said:

 

I'm imagining anywhere between MK and Bedford Marsh Leys, possibly Ridgmont or Stewartby becoming the next IRFT.

Why run to Daventry and mingling with the WCML services once EWR is done?

 

Because Daventry International is a prime destination and origin for container traffic, perhaps??

[Bernard Lamb]

8 minutes ago, Mike Storey said:

 

Because Daventry International is a prime destination and origin for container traffic, perhaps??

Quite so and if a new freight terminal is needed then with current political thinking it would need to be much further north.

Bernard

[Davexoc]

9 minutes ago, Bernard Lamb said:

Quite so and if a new freight terminal is needed then with current political thinking it would need to be much further north.

Bernard

 

But when the final delivery goes over to EVs, MK and Bedford would be prime when you consider the population to be served by then. There are already alot of big warehouses that could be served by rail, taking trucks off the M1 and A421.

 

[Nearholmer]

I quite understand what Davexoc is saying ......... the Marston Vale is prime warehouse territory, with large populations in "final ten miles by electric" on the doorstep, so an additional IRFT could easily develop there.

 

Which doesn't alter my point about going to Daventry, the route to which ought to be a tad less busy post HS2, it simply adds another possibility.

 

I'm not clued-up on whether there is an East Midlands IRFT anywhere on the MML or ECML, but if there isn't now, logic would suggest that there ought to be one.

 

While we are at it, lets dot the country with IRFTs, and use them for national as well as international traffic, and shift a lot more freight miles off the roads.

Edited March 4, 2020 by Nearholmer