Heathrow Express proposal to run to St Pancras?

[Fat Controller]

I've been doing a bit of tidying up of files in the 'office' and happened upon some Network Management Statements dating from the late 1990s. Much of what was on those 'wishlists' has come to pass, or has been superceded by events (or even both, in the case of the short-lived Royal Mail terminals). However, one project I had not seen mention of previously was a Heathrow Express service to St Pancras- has anyone else heard of this, or knows when it was abandoned?

[The Stationmaster]

I've been doing a bit of tidying up of files in the 'office' and happened upon some Network Management Statements dating from the late 1990s. Much of what was on those 'wishlists' has come to pass, or has been superceded by events (or even both, in the case of the short-lived Royal Mail terminals). However, one project I had not seen mention of previously was a Heathrow Express service to St Pancras- has anyone else heard of this, or knows when it was abandoned?

 

Cor, I haven't heard of that one for years.  In the latter part of the 1990s it seemed to be a very 'solid' scheme although if I remember rightly it was going to be the stoppers which would run from St Pancras while the Express service was still intended to run from Paddington (but there was probably more than one version?).  I think quite a bit of work had gone into it as there was an outline plan for a new flying junction off the Poplar Line ('up the bank') at Acton although that was hedged around by all sorts of difficulties due to problems with bridges.  It was also intended to enhance Airport Junction at Stockley - more or less as is now being done and there was a very early stage proposal floating around for adding an additional pair of running lines between Acton Main Line and Airport Junction but I don't think much work had been done on that.

 

It was to some extent a BAA scheme (they possibly funded some of the development work?) but I think the main reason - as far as the WR end was concerned - for it being dropped was the extreme problems on the Poplar Line between Acton and Acton Wells where electrification was found to be virtually impossible except at a massive cost (the bridge involved having since been rebuilt for non-railway reasons).  That apart I suspect pathing problems elsewhere plus the developing platform restraints at St Pancras might not have helped it - if it really was a serious proposal in the first place of course.

[TheSignalEngineer]

Several Heathrow pigs flying past my window in the late 1980s/ early 1990s when I was doing signalling works on the southern end of the LMR, possible destinations including Milton Keynes, Euston, Luton, Stanstead, and St Pancras.

[phil gollin]

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As part of the CTRL there was a requirement to "tidy up" the North London line connections, as well as putting in possible connections to North Pole Depot (as well as later Temple Mills).

 

One possibility in all this was the running of Heathrow Express trains into St Pancras, BUT CTRL was just implementing requirements made by others (unknown).  At the beginning there were lots of fanciful ideas about huge numbers of connections (including ECML) and expansions which gradually dwindled and died  -  whether because of "lack of vision" (a favourite moan at the time), a lack of finance, or a requirement to use The Kings Cross Lands as development sites to make money (a favourite moan at the end of the Project) I was MUCH too far down the pecking order to know.

 

As Yes, Minister had it  -  it was "The (lack of) Vision Thing".

 

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[Fat Controller]

Thanks for all that; I knew about the 'tidying up' of the various connections, as Lynne was involved with some of the signalling and train-describer aspects for that, but hadn't heard of the Heathrow proposal. I had heard of something called 'Project Isambard', which originated when BAA were part-owners of Eurostar (or perhaps were interested in buying a part of it?); this would have involved using a splitting 'NOL' set to serve Heathrow, then joining up with the other half somewhere (not specified) before running on to Paris. Would the units have been called 1/2 NOLs on the third-rail bits, I wonder?

[The Stationmaster]

Thanks for all that; I knew about the 'tidying up' of the various connections, as Lynne was involved with some of the signalling and train-describer aspects for that, but hadn't heard of the Heathrow proposal. I had heard of something called 'Project Isambard', which originated when BAA were part-owners of Eurostar (or perhaps were interested in buying a part of it?); this would have involved using a splitting 'NOL' set to serve Heathrow, then joining up with the other half somewhere (not specified) before running on to Paris. Would the units have been called 1/2 NOLs on the third-rail bits, I wonder?

 

It was not called 'Project Isambard' by anyone I ever came across Brian but Railtrack had their fingers in various parts of the pie and Halcrow were also involved so any one of them could have invented the name - and it took place when BA were part shareholders in the original Eurostar privatisation - beyond that my lips are sealed (probably) but that was about the time that the St.Pancras - LHR proposal was around a year or so old. (in fact it was 1998 and it post dated the St Pancras - LHR proposal as one idea was that it would pay for electrification between Acton Wells and Acton mainline plus create the various new junctions.  One Eurostar set did of course actually get to Heathrow (and incidentally the set splitting idea came rather later than the initial proposal but had more than a few difficulties to solve and it never involved joining up with another train or half - it was intended purely as a way of creating additional sets rather than building them.

 

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As part of the CTRL there was a requirement to "tidy up" the North London line connections, as well as putting in possible connections to North Pole Depot (as well as later Temple Mills).

 

One possibility in all this was the running of Heathrow Express trains into St Pancras, BUT CTRL was just implementing requirements made by others (unknown).  At the beginning there were lots of fanciful ideas about huge numbers of connections (including ECML) and expansions which gradually dwindled and died  -  whether because of "lack of vision" (a favourite moan at the time), a lack of finance, or a requirement to use The Kings Cross Lands as development sites to make money (a favourite moan at the end of the Project) I was MUCH too far down the pecking order to know.

 

As Yes, Minister had it  -  it was "The (lack of) Vision Thing".

 

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All the various connections around St Pancras were in the original CTRL spec ('the base case') and by the time that St Pancras design was in hand (c.2000) the idea of the LHR link wasn't even mentioned.  I was working at that time for a signal engineering company and we had the initial contract for the S&T design on the basis of the original spec and I worked on it in respect of various [=numerous] operational issues arising out of trying to interpret the spec (I think I've still got copies of some of the drawings stashed away somewhere as we finished up having to do masses of detail stuff right down to IRJ plans and cable and loc positions).  The whole spec was a masterpiece of someone's extremely vivid imagination with each side of non-international St Pancras accessible from the other plus the various NLL connections and so - utterly ludicrous and we kept on pointing out to our client that the costs would be horrendous and that much of the ironwork would spend most of its live rusting away as there would be too many conflicts to enable it to be used.  I think that is probably why they then asked for detailed drawings so everything could be costed at the maximum before they started showing how much they were saving by cutting stuff out  Basically stuff was chopped to save money although some of it never really had much chance of ever being used.

 

The story over White City was rather different and as I've related before was largely tied up with/prompted the decision to come out of North Pole at the same time as coming out of Waterloo - the original intention had been to provide a long reversing siding in the vicinity of White City to avoid reversing on the gradient at North Pole and to offer some pathing flexibility but it would have also involved all the original 'Three Capitals' Eurostar sets having to be fitted with BR 25kv ICMUs so coming out f NPI represented quite a saving.

 

We didn't do any of the work on the plans for the adopted scheme but we did run the SPAD risk assessment sessions on all the stage works for the contractors who did that work and the final installation and we did most of the SPAD risk assessments meetings for that.

[Ron Ron Ron]

....I had heard of something called 'Project Isambard', which originated when BAA were part-owners of Eurostar (or perhaps were interested in buying a part of it?).....

 

 

....and it took place when BA were part shareholders in the original Eurostar privatisation

Brian, Mike, neither BAA or BA were shareholders in the original Eurostar AFAIK.

 

BA were a small shareholder (10%) in the management company (Inter-Capital and Regional Rail) who were drafted in (from 1998) at the government's insistence to run the UK's bit of Eurostar on behalf of LCR.

 

Inter-Capital and Regional Rail were just contractors and not owners or part owners of Eurostar, although some of ICRR's other shareholders (SNCF & National Express) were also shareholders in LCR, before it was taken into government ownership.

 

 

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[The Stationmaster]

 

 

Brian, Mike, neither BAA or BA were shareholders in the original Eurostar AFAIK.

 

BA were a small shareholder (10%) in the management company (Inter-Capital and Regional Rail) who were drafted in (from 1998) at the government's insistence to run the UK's bit of Eurostar on behalf of LCR.

 

Inter-Capital and Regional Rail were just contractors and not owners or part owners of Eurostar, although some of ICRR's other shareholders (SNCF & National Express) were also shareholders in LCR, before it was taken into government ownership.

 

 

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The original UK private companies involved (it could well have been a management contract but it wasn't presented like that at the time) were Virgin, National Express, and BA - the latter having a  small share as you said and they were the ones who prompted the investigation into operating rail services vice aircraft from LHR on the Paris route (was London Electric also involved - I've an idea they might have been but with a very small stake or were they part of LCR, maybe the latter?).  ICRR in fact took over the management of Eurostar from the Dept of Transport although as you say they were effectively running it on behalf of LCR.

 

The principal movers and shakers were Virgin - who put in three senior staff (replacing ex BR people) although one of them went under a very black cloud after a few months following misuse of a company Amex card while NE very firmly grabbed a lot of the financial reins which resulted in cancellation (at very short notice) of the original Regional Eurostar plan plus getting rid of the night service plan.  Virgin spent some months trying to devise various alternatives to the Regional plan using - at one stage - Chris Green as a consultant and they also put in a former BR man (Theo Steele) in a similar role subsequently although none of the various ideas got off the ground.  Incidentally reportedly Branson's personal interest evaporated fairly quickly when the French told him, in fairly terse terms, that he couldn't repaint and rebrand the trains in Virgin livery and that he had to comply with the existing inter-railway agreements;  I think the loss of his most senior placeman also didn't do much to encourage him and in fact that person's only idea which ever came to fruition was the splitting and downgrading of 1st Class on-board service levels.

[Ron Ron Ron]

The original UK private companies involved (it could well have been a management contract but it wasn't presented like that at the time).....

The management contract is something completely different and quite separate to the original LCR set-up.

Also, the "management contract" was not a matter of presentation, but a proper contractual arrangement where LCR were required to hand over the running of the UK's bit of Eurostar to the contractor.

 

 

The original shareholders of LCR were Virgin, National Express, and BA - the latter having a  small share as you said....

I didn't say that at all.

BA were not and never were shareholders of LCR, according to all the documentary info out there, including a book on the subject, nor from personal recollection.

The original shareholders of LCR were Bechtel (19%), Warburg (19%), Virgin (18%), National Express (17.5%), SNCF (8.5%), London Electricity (8.5%), Arup (3.5%), Halcrow (3%) and Systra (3%).

 

BA were involved as a small partner in the management company (ICRR), hired in at the governments insistence to run the UK bit of Eurostar on LCR's behalf.

That contract continued after the UK government took LCR into public ownership and lasted until 2010, when the UK portion of Eurostar (like the French and Belgium slices) were handed over to today's stand-alone company, Eurostar International.

 

 

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[Fat Controller]

The preamble to the report says that it was prepared in 1998 for the BA/National Express (would this have been where Virgin came in?)/SNCF consortium's bid for Eurostar, not as part of a bid for the construction/operation of CTRL. There are some proposals for different routes which have a certain entertainment value, but are largely impractical.

The most realistic option was by using the route used by Cross-Country services to Brighton at the time, i.e.Acton East Jct- Acton Wells Jct, then on the curve past the scrapyard on to the West London Line.

The other options included a curve following the original North Pole Junction, which would have bisected North Pole depot, and most radically, via the Southall- Brentford Goods line, thence with a connection to the Barnes/Hounslow line. This latter had the slight problem of the Great West Road in its way; a bridge was ruled out as requiring too steep a gradient, so a tunnel was proposed instead. I can't see what was wrong with my proposition for a level crossing..

All-in-all, a very silly project..

[The Stationmaster]

The management contract is something completely different and quite separate to the original LCR set-up.

Also, the "management contract" was not a matter of presentation, but a proper contractual arrangement where LCR were required to hand over the running of the UK's bit of Eurostar to the contractor.

 

 

I didn't say that at all.

BA were not and never were shareholders of LCR, according to all the documentary info out there, including a book on the subject, nor from personal recollection.

The original shareholders of LCR were Bechtel (19%), Warburg (19%), Virgin (18%), National Express (17.5%), SNCF (8.5%), London Electricity (8.5%), Arup (3.5%), Halcrow (3%) and Systra (3%).

 

BA were involved as a small partner in the management company (ICRR), hired in at the governments insistence to run the UK bit of Eurostar on LCR's behalf.

That contract continued after the UK government took LCR into public ownership and lasted until 2010, when the UK portion of Eurostar (like the French and Belgium slices) were handed over to today's stand-alone company, Eurostar International.

 

 

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I'm getting a bit confused here Ron as you quote me as saying BA were shareholders in LCR but looking back at the post you quoted from I didn't say that  - i was referring to you mentioning ICRR.

 

The preamble to the report says that it was prepared in 1998 for the BA/National Express (would this have been where Virgin came in?)/SNCF consortium's bid for Eurostar, not as part of a bid for the construction/operation of CTRL. There are some proposals for different routes which have a certain entertainment value, but are largely impractical.

The most realistic option was by using the route used by Cross-Country services to Brighton at the time, i.e.Acton East Jct- Acton Wells Jct, then on the curve past the scrapyard on to the West London Line.

The other options included a curve following the original North Pole Junction, which would have bisected North Pole depot, and most radically, via the Southall- Brentford Goods line, thence with a connection to the Barnes/Hounslow line. This latter had the slight problem of the Great West Road in its way; a bridge was ruled out as requiring too steep a gradient, so a tunnel was proposed instead. I can't see what was wrong with my proposition for a level crossing..

All-in-all, a very silly project..

 

It was indeed prepared in 1998 and the instigator was basically BA - as far as I know Virgin had nothing at all to do with it and NE went along with it to keep BA on-side so to speak but it had nothing at all to do with any sort of bid for CTRL - it was a straight BA approach regarding their involvement in ICRR although CTRL was mentioned in connection with the proposal (purely from an impact on journey time viewpoint).

 

The Report you have doesn't seem to mention all the proposed routes - and possibly has one wrong or one which didn't make full discussion let alone examination.  The initial proposal was to run West London Line then South West Sidings and Acton Wells Jcn - Acton Main Line (taking advantage of the ohle for the St Pancras - LHR link for the latter part.

 

 

The Brentford route was originally suggested by Railtrack Southern and Halcrow were not keen on it from the start (possibly NIH syndrome?) - that was when they first suggested going through North Pole Depot and connecting into the GWML at the west end of the depot.  Halcrow's proposal - in order to reduce journey time - was to go through North Pole Depot but that was rejected outright by Railtrack GW because of track geometry problems and the fact that any facing crossover in the GW Main Lines would be at least 0.25 of a mile from the potential connection location Halcrow had come up with (which still didn't fit in any case).  So there was a counter proposal to that using the former Victoria branch tunnel and site of connection at North Pole although GWML capacity was a major problem - at that time the actual line usage on the Down Main Line past OO Common exceeded its theoretical capacity by 1 or 2 trains per hour.

 

Subsequently Halcrow set out with a major demolition of the Brentford proposal by raising concerns about the condition of Barnes Bridge (allegedly in an even worse state that Chelsea Bridge on the WLL).

 

In the end the route seems to have been left hanging but basically set around the original idea of going WLL/South West Sidings and all the journey times were based on that  then taking into account CTRL Phases 1 & 2 (with trains running via the NLL after Phase 2 opened).

 

I think Brian's final sentence sums it up admirably - somehow I don't think BA considered a potential end-to -end journey time of around 3.5 hours a serious proposition  

[Ron Ron Ron]

I'm getting a bit confused here Ron as you quote me as saying BA were shareholders in LCR but looking back at the post you quoted from I didn't say that  - i was referring to you mentioning ICRR......

Maybe we are talking with crossed wires here Mike? Sorry for that, however that previous post prompted me as you seem to have muddled up a couple of things and I was attempting to clarify matters..

 

The original UK private companies involved (it could well have been a management contract but it wasn't presented like that at the time) were Virgin, National Express, and BA - the latter having a  small share as you said

"Original UK private companies involved" - Involved in LCR or in ICRR?

Compounded by talking about the management contract ("...it could well have been..." - you don't sound sure?) and including Virgin and BA as in the same grouping, which they weren't in either case (LCR or ICRR).

Virgin were shareholders in the original formation of LCR, until LCR was taken into public ownership. They were not shareholders in ICRR.

Where as BA were not involved in the ownership of LCR (i.e. were not shareholders), but were shareholders and involved with ICRR.

 

(was London Electric also involved - I've an idea they might have been but with a very small stake or were they part of LCR, maybe the latter?).  

Just to clarify, London Electric were one of the original shareholders in LCR (until it went into public ownership). They were not involved in the later ICRR group.

 

ICRR in fact took over the management of Eurostar from the Dept of Transport although as you say they were effectively running it on behalf of LCR.

I'm not sure if "effectively running it on behalf of LCR" is a good choice of words, as that is precisely what was intended.

My understanding is that ICRR were brought in at the governments insistence, explicitly to manage and operate the UK portion of Eurostar on LCR's behalf, thus releasing LCR to concentrate solely on building the CTRL and its station infrastructure.

 

I hope we can reach an accord on this?

 

Cheers

Ron

 

 

 

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[Xerces Fobe2]

Why not build a spur off CrossRail to at St Pancras as this will be quicker and will not clog up an already busy NLL as well as not impacting freight traffic from Acton Yard

 

XF

[Edwin_m]

Crossrail will be full between Paddington and the City.  Adding a tunnel branch would be very difficult especially as no provision has been made for a junction, and fitting tunnels and an underground terminus in the busy area underneath St Pancras would be virtually impossible.