Elizabeth Line / Crossrail Updates.

[Trog]

It was Euston fields before the L&B station was built, and the station throat was I believe built with space for the GWR lines to parallel the L&B down Camden bank. Also the dual company station needing more space might have already started to spread eastwards across the current gap between Euston and St Pancras. Put the equivalent of Paddington in the gap between Euston and the site of St Pancras Goods and you have the railways owning a continuous plot suitable for a Mega Euston.

 

I suppose some sort of leakage from a parallel universe where Marc Brunel gave the young Isambard a clip round the ear for being too clever by half, and the Euston joint station thus later existed. Could explain the bit in the Harry Potter books that makes the necessary suspension of disbelief needed to enjoy the series so difficult. ie the absurdly unlikely Midland Lake liveried GWR Hall class working out of Kings Cross. 

 

 

[adb968008]

3 hours ago, Michael Hodgson said:

All the main London stations were originally built on a rather different pattern to that now deemed necessary, and they had to be expanded a number of times as demand grew.  Even if they had built a "London Central Station", I doubt they would ever have found room for all the expansion on one site, so they would probably have ended up building satellite stations in remote places, for example in rural Paddington or Liverpool Street.

Personally I think trains should run through London…. Theres no reason Dover to Manchester, Brighton to Bristol etc could not have been a thing.

 

Thats what the golden oppourtunity I think was missed with HS2. Instead of underground palaces at Euston a network of north - south, East - West tunnels with junctions to connecting to major lines. At a minimum Farringdon  could have had a XR southbound spur to TL and designed HS2 to be able to use it for through London and beyond services

 

Theres not a lot in HS2 for dwellers of South, East and North London, which doesn't bode much for encouraging business northwards..even OOC hasn't got connections for those regions… I already highlighted the XR is a PAYG risk heading southwards, with 1 zone less at OC and the shorter timelimit / longer journey that risk increases.

 

As it is, XR is a 1990’s era Hong Kong style metro-tubeline.

Edited May 30, 2022 by adb968008

[RJS1977]

Dover to Manchester would have been a thing if Edward Watkins had had his way!

 

 

Unfortunately ideas like through workings between XR and TL would be doomed to failure almost from the start. Not only would a Paddington (and points west)-Blackfriars (and points south) waste capacity on TL north of Farringdon and XR east of the same place, any delay on the Brighton or Sutton Lines would create delays on the GWML and vice versa, leading ultimately to delays on the MML and  GE as well.

 

 

Looking at a map recently though, one scheme that ought to be possible without too much difficulty would be a 'Mini Thameslink' between Marylebone and Victoria via Park Lane.

[phil-b259]

2 hours ago, adb968008 said:

Personally I think trains should run through London…. Theres no reason Dover to Manchester, Brighton to Bristol etc could not have been a thing.

 

 

Apart from the massive ability to import delays from one route to another (or the chaos which ensures when controllers try and prevent it). Having a 'firebreak' where people have to change (ideally once still) provides most of the benefits of through services.

 

2 hours ago, adb968008 said:

Personally I think trains should run through London…. Theres no reason Dover to Manchester, Brighton to Bristol etc could not have been a thing.

 

Thats what the golden oppourtunity I think was missed with HS2. Instead of underground palaces at Euston a network of north - south, East - West tunnels with junctions to connecting to major lines. At a minimum Farringdon  could have had a XR southbound spur to TL and designed HS2 to be able to use it for through London and beyond services

 

 

Junctions sap capacity, plus one beyond the junction the service frequency gets halved. Not a problem away from London but definitely not something you want to happen within the zone 1 area.

 

Intercity operations have different requirements to urban operations, particularly with stock ! The former needs  more seats, fewer doors (plus those which are there located at the ends of coaches) and suitable dwell times so as to allow those to find their reserved seats. Urban operators by contrast prioritise speedy boarding (hence the 1/3rd  +  2/3rd door positions and keeping platform dwell times short so as to push more trains through. While accepting the principle that through InterCity services from one side of London to another (as happens in Berlin say) is sound, linking / mixing a high speed operation to the same tracks as a high frequency suburban rail setup is downright nonsense (If you do want to do this you have separate tracks for each type of service running alongside each other and no physical interaction)

 

2 hours ago, adb968008 said:

 

Theres not a lot in HS2 for dwellers of South, East and North London, which doesn't bode much for encouraging business northwards..even OOC hasn't got connections for those regions… I already highlighted the XR is a PAYG risk heading southwards, with 1 zone less at OC and the shorter timelimit / longer journey that risk increases.

 

 

There isn't a huge demand for travel between say Brighton or Maidstone and Manchester!

 

That is the problem lots of 'through HS2' advocates don't get!

 

Due top Londons position relatively close to the South East Coast geographically speaking (and the SEs  lack of many of the raw materials needed by the industrial processes which drove the industrial revolution) the towns / cities in the SE region never developed to be the huge economic entities they did in the north of England.

 

That influences the need to travel from one side to another and ultimately from Kent to the NW - which has also been miniscule compared to travel to the economic linchpin of the region (London)

 

This is not the case in France for example - mainly because Paris is a lot more centrally located in France (imagine if Birmingham had become the UKs Capital) and as such you have huge economic centres at virtually all compass point,  meaning the need to travel from one side of Paris to the other in the course of a journey between economic regions is far grater and as such provides far more custom for through rail journeys (just like Birminghams position between regional economic centres means a significant demand for through services on the SW / NE or SE / NW axis)

 

2 hours ago, adb968008 said:

 

As it is, XR is a 1990’s era Hong Kong style metro-tubeline.

 

And?

 

It provides badly needed E-W capacity through central London and as such is a critical piece of infrastructure for the capital.

 

Personally I would have preferred it to be more of a Thameslink style operation with some trains extending further east and west  (say Colchester / Ipswich and Didcot / Oxford) but I am also enough of a realist that if people had pushed for that then it would still be a planners dream rather than a railway I can use.

 

note:- HM Treasury tried to kill the project in the aftermath of the 2008 banning crash - the ONLY reason they didn't was having effectively handed the project over to TfL (and requiring TfL to help pay for it) the prospect of having to refund all the millions of businesses and council tax payers who had been paying a 'Crossrail levy' to TfL on top of all their other taxes to help fund the scheme meant the 'men (and women) from the ministry' decided it was too politically difficult to stop.

[phil-b259]

2 hours ago, RJS1977 said:

 

Looking at a map recently though, one scheme that ought to be possible without too much difficulty would be a 'Mini Thameslink' between Marylebone and Victoria via Park Lane.

 

IIRC there was at least one attempt in the Edwardian era to build a tube line between the two - but various wealthy / influential bodies got Parliament to reject it.

 

However one thing you need to consider is the ability to match branches on either side of the core.

 

Thameslink has this problem in that the MML doesn't have any branches off it while the inner suburban stations on the GN route are well served by trains to / from Moorgate. As such Thameslink services south of the river via London Bridge only serve outer suburban destinations which can be linked up to outer suburban destinations north of the river

 

The Elizabeth line also has this 'lack of balance' problem where the lack of a second outlet from the core means at least half the services will have to turn round at Paddington / old Oak - in an ideal world they would be directed elsewhere but there isn't any route suitable for 12tph.

 

The proposed Cr2 has this problem - a huge number of SWR suburban routes to absorb at one end - but nowhere to distribute them at the NE end due to going via Dalston. Linking with outer suburban routes at either end would solve this problem to a degree - but would you really want such trains calling at Chelsea,, Balham, Dalston, etc plus bypassing Waterloo and Liverpool Street

 

A Victoria - Marylebone link would face the same problem....

[KingEdwardII]

6 hours ago, phil-b259 said:

owns / cities in the SE region never developed to be the huge economic entities they did in the north of England.

I'd point out that now, long after the industrial revolution, the South East area (Kent, East & West Sussex, Surrey, Hampshire) has a total population of 6.68M

 

This is bigger than Yorkshire (5.2M) and not far short of the North West (6.8M) (excluding Cumbria).

 

It is also an area containing a lot of railways - many dominated by commuting, admittedly. However, there is also here a demand for longer distance travel.

 

For the folk living in the SE region wanting to travel longer distances, London is less a transport hub and more an obstacle course. The lack of connecting routes is the major issue, a result of the Victorian insistence on keeping railway stations out of the centre of the city. Thameslink and associated north/south services do help to some extent.

 

Elizabeth line helps a little bit, although it is not particularly well integrated into the network serving the SE region.

 

Neither are the HS1 services to Kent integrated with the new HS2 services...

 

Yours, Mike.

[Michael Hodgson]

9 hours ago, phil-b259 said:

imagine if Birmingham had become the UKs Capital

 

Heaven forfend!

 

Instead of Lord Reith's newsreaders sounding like they have a plum in their mouth, they'd all sound like Jasper Carrott!

[Paul.Uni]

The 15 Billion Pound Railway, BBC2 12 June 8PM.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0018c8k

[corneliuslundie]

As a matter of curiosity I checked what that £15 billion was equivalent to in 1850: £1.6 million. How much railway did that build in 1850?

Jonathan

[Trog]

2 hours ago, corneliuslundie said:

As a matter of curiosity I checked what that £15 billion was equivalent to in 1850: £1.6 million. How much railway did that build in 1850?

Jonathan

 

The L&B had a capitalisation of £5.5 million for 112 miles of double track route, so pro rata £1.6 million buys you 32.48 miles, so welcome to Tring. However as a lot of the more difficult and expensive bits like Roade cutting, Kilsby tunnel etc are north of that perhaps you might get to Leighton Buzzard.

[jamie92208]

The Settle and Carlisle cost about £3.5 Million in the early 1870's from memory. That bought you 72 miles of 90 mph railyway with rather a lot of tunnels and viaducts.m, 

 

Jamie

[Ron Ron Ron]

A straight comparison between then and now, allowing for inflation, will give a totally skewed result.

The comparative cost of things is totally different. 
Materials, labour, environmental mitigations, heavy plant and equipment etc.

One obvious item being the relative cost of labour.

Navvies and other manual labourers were paid little and lived very modest or poor lives, lived in hovels etc.

Todays skilled labour, earns a lot more in real terms, own their own houses and cars, take foreign holidays and can afford luxuries that the labourers of the Victorian era could never have dreamt of, in their wildest dreams.

 

.

[corneliuslundie]

But in fact the Elizabeth Line comes out as pretty good value for money bearing in mind that it is mostly (all?) in tunnel. So you don't even have to allow for cheaper labour or lower safety standards on site.

The trouble is that £15 billion sounds an awful lot of money and will be used in that way by the press.

Jonathan

[Ron Ron Ron]

Just to repeat something I posted earlier in the thread.

The approved budget at the start of the project, was cut back by almost £2B compared to the original cost estimate.

Surprise, surprise, it ended up costing more than the bean counters and politicians we’re willing to approve at the outset.

 

The final bill has only escalated a relatively small amount over what that initial estimate set out.

Not bad after 14+ years worth of inflation, plus the additional costs incurred due to unforeseen engineering and tunnelling difficulties, not to mention the delays and extra cost resulting from COVID.

 

.

[andyman7]

2 hours ago, jamie92208 said:

The Settle and Carlisle cost about £3.5 Million in the early 1870's from memory. That bought you 72 miles of 90 mph railyway with rather a lot of tunnels and viaducts.m, 

 

Jamie

The Victorians didn't have to contend with modern planning and construction laws, health and safety rules, training standards, minimum wage etc...

[Mike Storey]

7 hours ago, corneliuslundie said:

As a matter of curiosity I checked what that £15 billion was equivalent to in 1850: £1.6 million. How much railway did that build in 1850?

Jonathan

 

Not sure where you got that figure from?

 

Using the ONS CPI data and the officialdata.org site, I get a rather different result - £105 million (rounded).

 

That would buy rather more railway than is being indicated, notwithstanding all the additional costs that modern schemes have to contend with, as cited above.

 

4 hours ago, jamie92208 said:

The Settle and Carlisle cost about £3.5 Million in the early 1870's from memory. That bought you 72 miles of 90 mph railyway with rather a lot of tunnels and viaducts.m, 

 

Jamie

 

Which was a 50% overspend from the original estimate (£2.3 m), and nearly broke the company. Nothing new under the sun!

 

[adb968008]

On 24/05/2022 at 12:12, Ron Ron Ron said:

You’re right. It certainly wasn’t until two and a half years ago, when the project management team were completely replaced with a more competent, experienced senior management and new project management team.

 

A large part of the blame also goes on the inappropriate timescales and setting of  “target dates”, with associated budgets.

No project of this type, which is mostly underground, in a complex subterranean environment, could be completed in that way.

The experts brought in from other similar projects around the world, as part of the project recovery, told them so when they took over.

Hence the more pragmatic, focussed and realistic approach from that point on, until today.

Interesting insight.

I wonder, where did the last lot decamp to, 2 and a half years ago ?

And if you think they were that bad, does it not concern you ?

 

Iirc About 2.5 years ago another much larger, lucrative railway project started.

 

Edited May 31, 2022 by adb968008

[Ron Ron Ron]

13 minutes ago, adb968008 said:

Interesting insight.

I wonder, where did the last lot decamp to, 2 and a half years ago ?

And if you think they were that bad, does it not concern you ?

 

I believe they went on to organising and running corporate and social events in Westminster.

I’m not sure how that worked out though.

 

 

.

[Northmoor]

15 minutes ago, adb968008 said:

Interesting insight.

I wonder, where did the last lot decamp to, 2 and a half years ago ?

And if you think they were that bad, does it not concern you ?

 

Iirc About 2.5 years ago another much larger, lucrative railway project started.

 

The CEO of Crossrail was also urged out of his role at HS2.  The "willful blindness" he demonstrated in late 2019, clearly having no clue what he was looking at on each construction site ("NO WAY is that less that 3 months from finishing") suggests he was greatly out of his depth.  Mark Wild has shown an admirable grasp of his brief since taking over; he will be a great loss to TfL as I believe he left this week.

[Ron Ron Ron]

14 minutes ago, Northmoor said:

The CEO of Crossrail was also urged out of his role at HS2….…

 

Wasn’t it both the former Chairman and the CEO who were moved on rather rapidly?

 

 

.

Edited May 31, 2022 by Ron Ron Ron

[corneliuslundie]

I used the Bank of England calculator

Doc1.doc

Jonathan

[adb968008]

3 hours ago, Ron Ron Ron said:

Wasn’t it both the former Chairman and the CEO who were moved on rather rapidly?

 

 

.

 

Was your comment aimed at 1 or 2 ?

 

Quote

when the project management team were completely replaced with a more competent, experienced senior management and new project management team.

Which is considerably larger in size, and lower level management than the CEO & Chairman ?

i’m confused ?

From my view, the industry seems a very small world, and one job started hiring rapidly at better rates before the other job finished, and consequently a lot of people jumped ship from one project to another, leaving the first project unfinished, unbudgetted and unstaffed… and who likes to join a project under those circumstances, especially when the other down the road has money, need staff and is just starting ?

 

 

 

Edited May 31, 2022 by adb968008

[The Stationmaster]

As an aside it has always struck me that Paris is a heck of a lonh way from the centre of France.  the map below shows the physical situation but Paris is very far removed from many parts of France in various other ways.  Just I suppose as London is in Great Britain - let alone in the UK.  Simply put -  London is bottom right hand corner in Britain and Paris is top left hand corner in France, neither are anywhere near 'central'.

 

Incidentally contrary to a recent comment by a well know 'Sunday Times' columnist about Crossrail and nobody wanting to travel from Reading to Abbey Wood last Saturday my son actually travelled  an almost exactly similar distance from west of London along the GWML thence by Liz Line to Abbey Wood.  He thought the 345s make rather good UndergrounD trains but still aren't much good for anything west of the GLC boundary on the GWML

 

And I see from our local 'paper that the Chair of our Branch User Group has written, in effect further to my letter they published last week, but now raising the question of why (London) Freedom Passes are allowed on Liz Line  trains out to Reading but there is no sort of  free travel on TfL for holders of Senior Railcards.  Someone else putting our local MP on the spot after I tried it last week about rail closures by stealth - sorry to verge away from Liz Line and onto alocal issue there.

 

https://about-france.com/france-rail-map.htm.

[phil-b259]

16 hours ago, The Stationmaster said:

 

And I see from our local 'paper that the Chair of our Branch User Group has written, in effect further to my letter they published last week, but now raising the question of why (London) Freedom Passes are allowed on Liz Line  trains out to Reading but there is no sort of  free travel on TfL for holders of Senior Railcards.  Someone else putting our local MP on the spot after I tried it last week about rail closures by stealth - sorry to verge away from Liz Line and onto alocal issue there.

 

 

Because the London Mayor is prepared to spend London taxpayers council tax cash on journeys outside the capital.

 

Thats why the freedom passes are only valid on TfL rail services and not GWR - with the Elizabeth line the GLA are effectively paying TfL  and as both are effectively the same organisation its very easy to effectively write off the missing fare revenue and does not involve the DfT / HM Treasury

 

Senior Railcards by contrast are a DfT regulated product and as such the rules around them are set by them / HM treasury. Any extension of them into TfL proper would no require TfL to be compensated for lost revenue (and the same would be true in reverse no doubt if TfL tried to get Freedom passes accepted by GWR).

 

Given the open hostility from this Government towards the mayor and TfL (largely driven by Londoners having the nerve to elect the 'wrong' colour party to office it has to be said) and the way the Pandemic has devastated TfL finances there is zero appetite for either side to come to a compromise.

 

As such I wouldn't hold out much hope complaining to your Westminster MP - joined up public transport requires coordination and cooperation between state entities - not political vendettas based on the 'wrong' party being in control or the slavish following of the 'free market competition is best' doctrine so beloved by the blue party.

Edited June 3, 2022 by phil-b259

[Mike Storey]

3 hours ago, The Stationmaster said:

As an aside it has always struck me that Paris is a heck of a lonh way from the centre of France.  the map below shows the physical situation but Paris is very far removed from many parts of France in various other ways.  Just I suppose as London is in Great Britain - let alone in the UK.  Simply put -  London is bottom right hand corner in Britain and Paris is top left hand corner in France, neither are anywhere near 'central'.

 

https://about-france.com/france-rail-map.htm.

 

Maybe, but you are forgetting that some very major centres of manufacturing, commerce, banking and insurance lie North of Paris, such as Lille, Dunkerque, Rouen and to a lesser extent now, around Amiens, to which people south (Orleans), south west (Tours, Bordeaux and Toulouse) and south east (Lyon, Marseille) of Paris, need access. Not to mention Belgium and the Netherlands (and to a lesser extent now, Britain). 

 

Incidentally, someone earlier stated that all the industrial might of Britain was dominated by the North and  the Midlands. Up to the early 20th C, London was one of the largest and most diverse manufacturing centres in the UK! 1 in 6 people in manufacturing worked in London - no other single city could claim that. It had coal (from Kent and elsewhere), iron (from Surrey) and plenty of water. It had a very skilled workforce. It also had 50% of the country's imports/exports (until WW1). But much more money was to be made from other activities, and it was much cheaper to locate heavy industry in the Midlands and the North after, say, 1900. A regionalisation policy after WW2 also accelerated the decline of London's industrial base. History is complicated and does not necessarily fit the narrative.