MML Electrification: progress updates

[Nicholas Lewis]

Because of IRP etc it will go ahead. However the treasury will want to break the scheme into a gazzilion portions and approve each bit.

Thats both the beauty and ugly side of having a BiMode fleet

 

[59CosG95]

The latter 2 quartets.

Thanks for the update!
Based on a skim of Google Maps, there are 76 boosters in total north of Borehamwood, so that knocks the connected total down to 68 tops (although the real number of connected boosters is probably a bit lower now).

 

[PJM]

Gralistair's post makes very interesting reading £1.3 Billion for electrification to Sheffield - 422 track miles. 3 major stations and 120 bridges modified.....and stopped due to cost at that time I presume. Which puts HS2 at what, 100 times that cost, into perspective!
Anyway, I went out in the sunshine today, and there have been a few more cantilevers installed in the country sections. No significant piling or masts through Desborough. Lots of workers starting foundation work ( well, there are steel reinforcement "cages" etc in view) at Harborough Station on the West side.

Today at Market Harborough station. Large pile just north of platform 2.



Again north of platform 2.



Two large piles between the footbridge and the subway.



Live working on a pile, platform 1, removing soil from inside the pile before pouring concrete in - please correct if this is the wrong procedure!

 

[InTheEastMids]

Two large piles between the footbridge and the subway.

View attachment 108924

I'm curious about this photo - obviously the normal distance between OHLE masts is >50m, so can any of our resident electrification experts comment on why you'd have 2 structures so close together?

In summary, the Market Harborough situation seems to be
- A number (perhaps 5) masts North of the station
- piles being installed behind the platforms
- one mast immediately south of the station, then
- a gap of about 200m
- one TTC just South of the River Welland bridge
- one TTC by ATS tyres (Kettering Road)
- a gap of about 275m, then
- About 8 TTCs in various states of completion, 4 North and 4 South of the Glebe road footbridge
- some STCs where the railway runs directly next to Braybooke Road,
Then little, if any steelwork at least to the Braybrooke substation.

 

[gordonjahn]

I'm curious about this photo - obviously the normal distance between OHLE masts is >50m, so can any of our resident electrification experts comment on why you'd have 2 structures so close together?

In summary, the Market Harborough situation seems to be
- A number (perhaps 5) masts North of the station
- piles being installed behind the platforms
- one mast immediately south of the station, then
- a gap of about 200m
- one TTC just South of the River Welland bridge
- one TTC by ATS tyres (Kettering Road)
- a gap of about 275m, then
- About 8 TTCs in various states of completion, 4 North and 4 South of the Glebe road footbridge
- some STCs where the railway runs directly next to Braybooke Road,
Then little, if any steelwork at least to the Braybrooke substation.

Likely a tension run ends here - one will be the mast and another will triangulate some of the tension in the contact wire (shown in this image as "bracing member")

 

[Dave_Cardboard]

Are they using "Series 1" type equipment with Tensorex springs et al rather than weights...?

 

[Flying Phil]

They are sinking more piles along the west side of platform 1 (Northbound) at Harborough station. I was told that they now have the go ahead to Leicester......

 

[59CosG95]

Are they using "Series 1" type equipment with Tensorex springs et al rather than weights...?

Not quite; UKMS (but yes, Tensorex vice weights, although both are available). The closely spaced foundations are indeed for a Series 1 (UKMS 140) 'monoboom' anchor, and will either take Tensorex or a half-tension fixed anchor.

Interestingly, the bracing members (back ties) on conventional anchor structures act in tension, while the Series 1 bracing struts act in compression.

 

[snowball]

Am I right in thinking that no lines electrified in recent years have used weights and pulleys?

 

[59CosG95]

Am I right in thinking that no lines electrified in recent years have used weights and pulleys?

Generally, yes - although renewals in areas of existing are increasingly adopting Siemens' anti-fall weights first debuted on the WCRM. Kings Cross used a couple in the Belle Isle area during the recent modernisation; the Stratford area wire renewals used a few, and there are a few in the Stockley Jn area on the GWML when the junction was remodelled for the advent of Crossrail.

 

[Edvid]

Don Coffey posted another video - this time a Class 66 cab ride from Bedford to Earles Sidings, taken on 10 August 2021.

We get a clear driver's eye view of the now-operational OHLE between Bedford and Kettering North TSC via the Wymington Deviation, plus the Market Harborough-bound bare masts in Kettering (up to 44:30 in all; no masts any further north at the time). The Braybrooke worksite is to the right of picture about 52 minutes in.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

Yes that is interesting and given ECAM process was quite in depth, well was on a project I was on at the time, that ought to have given DofT certainty over project costs which had at that stage increased by 25% to 1.3B. It was then several years after this that Grayling pulled the plug and whether there had been more cost creep isn't clear so was it just by association with the ongoing GWEP debacle everything else got pulled I guess.
Perhaps when RNEP finally gets updated we will get an indication of what the project will cost now.

Grayling essentially told NR the CP5 budget was capped and not to use their borrowing powers to avoid the cap.
So NR had no choice but to down tools beyond Corby.
Going back a bit (2009 RUS), NR claimed the MML BCR was negative - ie it would cost more NOT to wire than to wire, in the long run.
That was before HS2 and the bi-mode order, of course.

 

[Flying Phil]

I don't understand how a BCR (Benefit Cost Ratio) can be negative? I thought it was either a fraction, so the costs are greater than the benefits or greater than 1, where the benefits are progressively greater than the cost and it becomes a better case for doing the job. There was a strong BCR in the 80's and 90's for MML electrification. Then as HS2 was promoted, it was to take some of the MML traffic, and so the BCR went down - but still greater than 1. Now with no Eastern leg of HS2. The MML BCR has gone up again.

 

[Meerkat]

Now with no Eastern leg of HS2. The MML BCR has gone up again.

How much though, seeing as Nottingham will get HS2 trains?

 

[Bald Rick]

I don't understand how a BCR (Benefit Cost Ratio) can be negative?

quite easily, negative benefits and positive costs. Some reopenings are in this territory.

in this case, AIUI the MML Business Case was described as cash positive, which means you don’t have a BCR as such.

 

[jfowkes]

quite easily, negative benefits and positive costs. Some reopenings are in this territory.

What is a "negative benefit" though and how does it differ from a cost?

Are costs the purely monetary spends and "benefits" are more like "effects", good or bad?

 

[edwin_m]

quite easily, negative benefits and positive costs. Some reopenings are in this territory.

in this case, AIUI the MML Business Case was described as cash positive, which means you don’t have a BCR as such.

Isn't it the other way round? Cost savings (at Net Present Value over the appraisal period) were greater than the capital cost plus the NPV of the extra operating costs.

There is some positive benefit too, but because the electric service isn't much different from today, it's probably quite small. So any benefit erosion from HS2 probably isn't vastly significant to the overall case, though it may make a big change to the BCR but as mentioned that's not really relevant here. However using bi-modes means the operating cost savings will be less than assumed in 2009 (more complicated train with higher leasing and maintenance costs). And most importantly capital costs, though not at GWML outturn levels, will still be much more in real terms than assumed then.

 

[Nottingham59]

I don't understand how a BCR (Benefit Cost Ratio) can be negative?

When they talk "costs" for BCR calculations, they actually mean the total expenditure on the project less the income expected additional ticket sales and from reduced maintenance etc. These numbers are discounted to a Net Present Value (NPV) using standard Discounted Cashflow methods.

Any normal business would only ever invest in a project with positive NPV. In the world of railway project finance, these (extremely rare) projects are described as having "Negative Costs", with a correspondingly infinite BCR.*

In almost all railway investments, the NPV of the project expenditure exceeds the NPV of any conceivable ticket income or maintenance saving due to that investment. These have Positive Costs, and the BCR calculation is used to see if the wider public benefits (B) are sufficiently great for the net project costs (C) to be covered by public spending.

* At one point, the "Cost" of MML electrification was assessed as being negative, because the costs of supplying and maintaining electric trains over 60 years was less than the alternative of keeping diesels over that time. This was because the wiring had already been installed to Bedford, so they could get 100% of the electrification benefits to Sheffield with only 50% of the captial costs. But the spreadsheet that made that calculation (which was published at the time) only compared fully electric trains against fully diesel. What that spreadsheet didn't do was test full electrification against the use of bi-modes, which could of course exploit the OHLE to Bedford. If they had done that, I believe the assessed "Cost" of electrification would have been positive after all.

Obviously this was all some time ago, and the advent of HS2 and the ordering of 810's mean that the BCR calculations for future MML electrification will be very different now.

 

[Flying Phil]

Thank you for those explanations and I do appreciate the complexities of semantics as well as finances........But at least I'm glad that we are getting electric trains to Market Harborough.....and on to Leicester....and hopefully up to Sheffield!
In fact there are now approx 80 masts up on the East side, and 70 on the West side between Glendon Jn and Market Harborough. Workers on site around Desborough (South). All the piles and concrete in at Harborough Station.

 

[Mikey C]

I suppose there could be situations where you have spare EMUs and can thus a small amount of cheap fill-in electrification can save money by dumping expensive to maintain old DMUs, giving cost savings, even before any revenue benefits from the sparks effect.

 

[ohgoditsjames]

Weren’t the 91’s rumoured to move across to the MML before the electrification got Graylinged?

 

[PJM]

Don Coffey posted another video - this time a Class 66 cab ride from Bedford to Earles Sidings, taken on 10 August 2021.

We get a clear driver's eye view of the now-operational OHLE between Bedford and Kettering North TSC via the Wymington Deviation, plus the Market Harborough-bound bare masts in Kettering (up to 44:30 in all; no masts any further north at the time). The Braybrooke worksite is to the right of picture about 52 minutes in.

Cracking video, thanks for posting.

 

[Hairy Bear]

Weren’t the 91’s rumoured to move across to the MML before the electrification got Graylinged?

No, they were too heavy. Maximum Ra 5 if you wish to go at 125 due to too many weak underbridges.

 

[InTheEastMids]

Weren’t the 91’s rumoured to move across to the MML before the electrification got Graylinged?

No, they were too heavy. Maximum Ra 5 if you wish to go at 125 due to too many weak underbridges.

There was the proposal to (post Grayling) get around the compulsory retirement of the EMT (as was) HST fleet by using Cl43s with cascaded Mk4 carriages. Perhaps @ohgoditsjames was thinking of that?
A 'challenging' idea at best.

Back on topic, a further recent letter suggests 28/29 January for significant activity between the Braybrooke electrification compound and the North of Harborough station with installation of steelwork specifically mentioned as being on the to-do list.

 

[BelleIsle]

I was told that they now have the go ahead to Leicester......

I was under the impression that Leicester was similar to parts of the Trans Pennine scheme in that they wanted to do the signalling and other infrastructure work at the same time as electrification to avoid rework. Does this mean that reinstating all the lines into Leicester, grade seperation at Wigston etc. has been agreed as well?

 

[Bald Rick]

I was under the impression that Leicester was similar to parts of the Trans Pennine scheme in that they wanted to do the signalling and other infrastructure work at the same time as electrification to avoid rework. Does this mean that reinstating all the lines into Leicester, grade seperation at Wigston etc. has been agreed as well?

no - the remodelling at Leicester will happen first - whatever form it takes.

in this context “To Leicester” almost certainly means “to just south of Wigston Junctions”

 

[Roast Veg]

no - the remodelling at Leicester will happen first - whatever form it takes.

in this context “To Leicester” almost certainly means “to just south of Wigston Junctions”

I'm particularly excited to see what form Leicester is expected to take. Do we know when an announcement about this might materialise?

 

[Verulamius]

I'm particularly excited to see what form Leicester is expected to take. Do we know when an announcement about this might materialise?

The latest information published by Network Rail that I am aware of is the Leicester area strategic advice from July 2020.

https://sacuksprodnrdigital0001.blob.core.windows.net/regional-long-term-planning/Eastern/Leicester%20Area%20Strategic%20Advice%202021.pdf

The main recommendation is to four track Wigston to Leicester, but no flyovers.

 

[Killingworth]

I shall be very interested to see how they remodel Sheffield and down the Sheaf Valley from Dore. That line was opened as 2 tracks in 1870, but they became too congested after the Hope Valley route was opened in 1894 and quadrupling was planned almost immediately afterwards.

Although slow unbraked goods trains have gone there must be almost as many trains now as there were about 1900-5. Short parts are effectively 3 tracks now, but building back an electrified 3 all the way may be too short sighted. Sheffield City Council are looking for a 100% increase in rail journeys by 2040. Putting all 4 back would require really big thinking, like persuading Tesco's that their 25 year old superstore, on the site of former Millhouses MPD and the west side track bed, needs to be modernised and rebuilt on stilts above the bed of those two tracks!

Get that wrong and rail to the south and west of Sheffield will remain restricted for yet more decades. Going north and east to the Don Valley is another bag of worms, but once wires get strung up it will be potentially more restrictive than ever.

 

[GRALISTAIR]

in this context “To Leicester” almost certainly means “to just south of Wigston Junctions”

Yes I am sure I have read that elsewhere too. And with my crayonista hat OFF makes sense too.