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Edinburgh to Tweedbank in 3 minutes.


Waverley47708

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  • 1 month later...

Scandal they didn't double track it the complete length.

If.. or when it eventually extends to Carlisle they will be spending millions sorting out the bottlenecks.

Good video though..have a bit of video taken from a 47/7 doing the ton on the push shove to Edinbro..nearly as fast looking.

 

Dave

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Please please please can we see the video of the 47/7.

 

Is it on youtube?

Ill need to dig it out or rather dig them out as there are several tapes taken from both the line side and on board in the last months of the 47/7s.

 

Should have a good couple of hours or more so will see what I can do.

 

I spent as bit of tome back then with the trusty video camera but lost interest after the sprinter/voyager/pendolino revolution.

 

I think the last clip taken on the mini dv was a Virgin 90 propelling its London train at Motherwell and an 87 passing south of same location so not yesterday!

 

Conversley the first video I invested in was a massive 2 piece affair but I did manage to catch the last of the Deltics at York and surrounding area plus other now historic shots of

 

York with no string and through roads and blue HSTs.

 

God I feel old!

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Scandal they didn't double track it the complete length.

If.. or when it eventually extends to Carlisle they will be spending millions sorting out the bottlenecks.

 

 

Yawn......we have been through this before.

 

(1) It wasn't a choice of single or double track - it was a choice of single or NO RAILWAY. The business case for building at all was pretty slim and it only just scraped through all the checks. Doubling expensive new build structures and widening cuttings / embankments (Look at the video and see just how many Gibbon basket retaining walls have been needed to convert the old steep banks to the new MANDATED shallower ones designed to prevent landslips) would certainly have sunk the project before a spade got near the ground. In any case the infrastructure provided will support a half hourly 90MPH DMU service which is perfectly acceptable in terms of service provision.

 

(2) There is no business case for going to Carlisle - only lots of people getting all misty eyed about the past. South of Hawick several large structures are missing or in need of serious repair so cost per mile is vastly more than what was spent on the new railway built on the formation north of Tweedbank. Also there is no population to speak of, no industry to serve and Edinburgh - Carlisle passenger traffic would be faster by the WCML. (Freight has even more options depending on origin and destination - the ECML and GSW cannot be ignored.

 

(3) Talk of impending oil shortages and predictions of the demise of the motor car / lorry (which could be negated by various other future fuel sources) - or other "what if" scenarios, are just that - talk. As things stand there is no evidence that things will change that radically in the next 50 years that will cause there will be a need to have a 3rd / 4th (depending on how you treat the GSW) Anglo Scottish route. If capacity is a problem the spending money on what we currently have is likely to produce a far better return on the investment than rebuilding the boders route south of Hawick

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Having been involved in a couple of complete rebuilds of closed lines, re-instatement of a lot of removed facilities and line speed upgrades, there is no way that many lines could be built to current standards in the land available, for instance the WCML between Camden and Roade has many substandard sections as a four-track railway. Most is only suitable for three tracks at best. 

 

There is already plenty of underused capacity between Central Scotland and the Northern PowerHouseCut region of England, so Carlisle will remain a pipe-dream for the rest of my lifetime and probably that of my children.

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