First up, Thameslink 2000 (the £6bn north-south cross-London railway line, which has been undergoing massive upgrade works to increase its capacity from four trains an hour to 24) will be delivered in its entirety -- though slipped two years to 2018. The original project name shows it's already slipped by nearly two decades, so I guess a couple of years more won't hurt.
As predicted, a solution has been found to what seemed to be severe problems with the remodelling of London Bridge (London's first railway terminus, and now a hugely busy junction for almost every train arriving from the south-east and many from the south).
Thameslink will also get a fleet of brand-new trains, consisting of "up to" 1,200 carriages which will be joined into units of four: these will usually operate as 8- or 12-car trains.
The brand-new fleet of trains for the £15bn Crossrail project was also confirmed, totalling 600 new carriages.
There was confirmation of the major station reconstructions and revamps at Reading (at a cost of £850m -- yes, you read that right)...
... Birmingham (£600m), Gatwick Airport (though that's a relatively modest scheme at £53m) and London King's Cross (£500m, though since the latter is already underway and about half-built, it's difficult to see how that could have been stopped). This is Birmingham:
There was also an "announcement" of unspecified "investments" on "the East Coast Main Line and Midland Main Line, and improvements in Yorkshire, on trans-Pennine routes, around Manchester, and in South Wales". I'm hoping the ECML includes the grade separated crossing to be constructed on a flyover at Hitchin, to end conflicting movements between northbound London-Cambridge trains and the southbound ECML: we'll find out in the New Year.
Further electrification of the MML is still, apparently, not entirely ruled out (and if you ignored the urgency of the need to replace the venerable diesel-powered High Speed Trains, the business case for electrifying the MML was substantially stronger than the GWML -- though, in truth, both should be electrified already, along with most of the rest of the network). This is Liverpool South Parkway, a station belying a recent grumpy comment on this blog that "The North" doesn't get any new station buildings:
A £300m electrification scheme in north-west England goes ahead, connecting Liverpool and Manchester, and Preston and Blackpool (a key project to enable the conversion of Manchester-Scotland trains from all-diesel to all-electric). New Anglo-Scottish trains will also be provided (rather than refurbished cast-offs from the current Thameslink fleet, which was the original plan).
And commuter electrification of GWML goes ahead -- from Heathrow Airport Junction, outside London's Paddington, to Oxford, Didcot and Newbury (the latter in turn makes it almost certain that the western terminus of Crossrail will be Reading, which it should have been all along, rather than Maidenhead). The current trains used on Thameslink will be refurbished and cascaded to these newly electrified commuter services.
This GWML electrification is scheduled to be completed in 2016 and, with any luck, the team can then simply roll-on to electrification of the remainder of the same route.
The other consequence of this decision is that large numbers of relatively modern diesel multiple units can be taken off this route and cascaded to other parts of the country, to replace incredibly elderly and frankly miserable equipment such as the evil Pacers and some of the more spartan Sprinters. That can't happen soon enough.
But -- decisions on the electrification of the remainder of the GWML (London-Bristol-South Wales) and on the replacement for InterCity 125 high speed trains were delayed until "early" in the New Year.
The Hitachi Super Express Train (oo-er, Missus), is still in contention even following the devastating Foster report, earlier this year. The government has "ruled out the option of requiring passengers to interchange from electric to diesel trains, recognising the value to passengers of preserving through-journeys", as well as ruling out "the option of a wholesale refurbishment of the existing diesel InterCity 125 fleet, some of which dates back to the 1970s".
The options left are, firstly, a simpler and lower-cost Hitachi proposal: some all-electric trains, and some electric trains which are also equipped with underfloor diesel engines (giving the worst of all worlds); or, secondly, a fleet of new all-electric trains which could be coupled to new diesel locomotives where the overhead electric power lines end. The Foster Report referred to the Class 444s currently operated by SouthWest Trains as an example of a suitable long-haul express electric train:
Government argues that both options would allow through-journeys between London and parts of the rail network which are not electrified, and both would deliver faster journey times: "for example, we expect to see a time saving of at least 15 minutes for the journey between Cardiff and London bringing it below 2 hours".
Given the praise doled out to Hitachi by DfT at the time of the Foster report, and the particular praise for the financial structure, I suspect that, even though it's the crummiest solution in terms of passenger comfort, we'll be riding Super Express Trains within the decade, the diesel engines under the floor vibrating away, the low ceilings cramming us into airless, tube-style spaces. Super.
The announcement which gathered all the headlines was for "2,100 additional carriages on the rail network", although once you deduct the Thameslink and Crossrail fleets that adds up to just 300 new carriages (or roughly 50-70 new trains), sometime before the end of the coming decade, with a similar number over the eight subsequent years. This is far fewer than the 1,300 new carriages promised by NuLab, although that turned out to consist in large measure of lies and mirrors rather than actual, real trains. It's not a huge number, but with Crossrail, Thameslink and the 1,800 new InterCity carriages it represents a really startling number of new trains.
The railways are, so far, doing much better under this administration than I had feared. This £8bn (US$12.5bn, €9.5bn) of capital works is on top of the £14bn allowed for Network Rail over the next four years, and £0.75bn for the first stages of planning the new north-south High Speed Rail.
5 comments:
How on earth does Network rail manage to get through over £3.5bn a year and provide such an overwhelmingly mediocre service!?
With the trains, couldn't they take the approach BR was taking 50 years ago, and produce electric locomotives for the electrified lines, and diesel locomotives for non electrified lines, with comfortable, quiet, spacious rolling stock that is compatible with both and simply switch them as/when required?
Or are locomotives now truly a thing of the past?
At least things still seem to be moving forward, with much needed improvements for the north still on the cards.
Completely agree with you.
It's a mystery to me how the dynamic and efficient private sector railway now costs four to five times more to run than inefficient old British Rail. Which, it turns out, was extremely efficient and cost-effective.
Given BR's successes with relatively tiny amounts of money (Thameslink 1, HSTs, Waterloo Intl, East Anglia electrification, the Mk3...), what could they have achieved with this level of funding and none of it being squeezed out for profits at every level, for legal fees in contracting, for compensation regimes between all the parties, all like a giant game of post offices where cash is siphoned off at every transaction and the public picks up the bill.
My understanding is that, as a rough rule of thumb, the economics of locomotives+carriages are better than multiple units once you have more than five carriages.
There is no shortage of modern European designs of both diesel and electric locos, including rather nifty high-speed jobs from Siemens and heavy-duty mixed traffic jobs from Bombardier. I can see why EMUs are popular (though I always prefer the ECML and GEML electric loco+carriages+DVT set-up, for comfort and quiet and space), but I struggle with our obsession with DMUs -- Voyagers really are an abomination.
Super Voyagers may be noisy with motors which throb away beneath the carriages and appalling layout with the carriages (windows not aligned with seating, lack of tables, aircraft seats with no room to read a newspaper) but they do have oodles of torque and can make Nuneaton from Euston faster than the electric Pendolino if the signals are right and the driver shows some spirit. Even so I'd far rather ride in a comfortable 125!
@ Anonymous
Every Voyager I've ever ridden in has also stank of sewage. Something to do with the location of the A/C intakes I'm told. Not pleasant.
I'll agree HSTs are far more pleasant.
Pendolino's though remember, are actually 140mph units, but are limited to the blanket 125mph, as per the voyagers, due to lack of on-board signaling systems on the WCML. They could otherwise be usefully quicker then they are.
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