Part of it involved coasting under some bridges to avoid having to raise them.
Also special arrangements (basically switch the power off) if locos or other non-EMU stock was used.
http://www.railengineer.uk/2012/12/03/paisley-canal-electrification/
It probably wouldn't be allowed in the current regime.
I appreciate that this may seem like a dumb question (and probably is a dumb question!), but I've never understood why we'd need to switch the power off (on the Paisley Canal branch) if a non-electric train was using it - surely they wouldn't be drawing any power from the wires?
I've seen this a few time, but I've never worked out why that's the case.
Totally agree. I thought at the time the decision to do the GW route before the Midland Main line was a mistake
Living in Sheffield, I've wondered about why the GWML was preferred...
Presumably some of it will have been down to the need to replace HSTs being more pressing than freeing up an oddball fleet of relatively modern 222s - in which case the MML has had the short term gain of getting some new trains in 2004 but at the long term cost of potentially taking another decade to be electrified?
(it could be political, of course, there are many reasons to prefer one over the other)
Well in my case its because I disagree with the capital return figures used by the government to produce these project BCRs etc. I believe it should be actual index linked bond rates used rather than arbitrarily selected ones in the Treasury [Colour] Book which are far higher
Everybody complains when BCRs don't give them the answers that they want
Considering the Official Project report has no fatalities and only one serious life changing injury in the 1985-1991 phase of the project. I am not sure the improvements in H&S have actually improved safety much in absolute terms. It wasn't particularily dangerous to start with
You may not think that changes to H&S have been an improvement, but they are the law that all modern construction projects will have to follow. Not optional.
BR existed in a distant era (before AmbulanceChasers4U, before all of the Best Practice that we are currently protected by), so comparisons seem pointless - BR may have wired a line faster and cheaper but then we could say the same about the Victorians who built the lines in the first place - all of whom were building in environments that aren't comparable to today.
To save money on [largely] pointless gold plating
The problem is that these threads get filled with people complaining about "gold plating" when the costs go up and "penny pinching" when they go down.
You make it sound like the ECML is a disaster area where nothing ever works ever. Major wires related incidents on the ECML (beyond those expected to be experienced on other 'higher spec' routes) are still rather rare and probably aren't a major cause of delay minutes on the railway.
SUre the ECML might be less reliable
I didn't say it was a disaster area.
You are admitting that it is "less reliable", however...
Even if it were allowed to build the GWML wiring to the same standards as the ECML, it likely still wouldn't happen. There were to be very few electrified services on the ECML, with many LDHS services still provided by diesel HSTs. On the GWML, in effect every passenger service other than the Night Riviera will be using the wires either in part, in the case of the bi-modes, or exclusively. The effect of something going wrong with the wiring, or when it needs to be turned off for operational reasons, would be far, far greater.
Good points, which need to be borne in mind when someone suggests cutting corners.
Much of the ECML (i.e. north of Peterborough) will have only seen a couple of electric services per hour (when you consider the number of HSTs running services to Aberdeen/ Inverness/ Harrogate/ Skipton/ Harrogate/ Hull etc in the past).
BR was doing this in an era of just hourly London - Leeds services for example.
Quote:
originally posted by tbtc
"Go on then - do tell how you'd have wired it all up on time, on budget and without the need for any bi-modes (whilst maintaining at least a dozen services an hour from Paddington to Reading, not removing direct London links to Worcester etc, finding spare capacity on the SWT/ Chiltern routes for diversions)?"
What a ludicrous comment! The taxpayer has wasted £millions paying 'experts' to tell us how to do it.
What you're implying is that there was no hope of completing the project properly from the start. In which case what was the point of spending £millions in planning. You will use any excuse to defend the indefensible!
This project has been disastrous for the taxpayer, and substandard for the passengers.
So, as expected - you don't have an alternative - you're just going to complain about things going wrong - and use quotation marks around 'experts' - always the sign of someone to be taken seriously.
If someone can explain to me how they'd have electrified the GWML without any bi-modes then fair enough.
The EMU service that started out of King's Cross in late 1977 with 312s to Royston (Moorgate to Welwyn Garden City with 313s was a little earlier in the year) was the "Great Northern Suburban Electrification" and was not connected with the later ECML electrification. The ECML was done on the cheap as it was built to a very tight budget hence, the wires north of Hitchin going walkabout with monotonous frequency yet south of Hitchin where they are much more intensively used have been virtually trouble free.
Thanks for confirming - I just didn't like the idea that BR wired the whole lot in six years becoming Received Wisdom - especially when the heavy lifting (like wiring Kings Cross) was done in the 1970s.
