Not just yours, Liverpool Council do as well (and it's not a particularly mad idea, if the 777s get Pantographs fitted as they are apparently designed to be able to do so, then they'd be able to run battery to Crewe and charge in the platform, and TfW would potentially be able to withdraw their shuttle).
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North Wales Main Line Electrification
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I thought they could have batteries or pantographs but not both and wouldn't the batteries get them to Crewe and back without a charge?
Ideally I would think you would want to end the 3rd rail north of the triangle to get it away from the junctions, depot and station, and any future OLE.
Would crossing Chester throat be a big congestion issue?
My understanding is that they've been designed for future 25KV OLE operation but it wasn't cost-effective to install it from new because, well, where is the wire? Not sure what the battery range is, but you'd want the ability to charge at Crewe for security's sake, especially given that the infrastructure is already there.
If the 777s go to Battery or OLE then yes, cut it back to Bache and just wire Chester for straight OLE.
Depends which platforms you use, and whether it triggers anything else like resignalling of Chester-Crewe (which would potentially allow remodelling of the east end). Also depends on the frequency that goes through to Crewe - 2tph would be fine, 4tph more difficult but hardly impossible.
Philip
On Moderation
I don't have exact figures to hand but if you take a Stena ferry from Holyhead to Dublin you'll more than likely find it busy. I suspect the ship wins hands down in terms of loadings. You also have to consider that the plane chucks out more pollution and uses more fuel than the ship and carries less passengers per single flights compared with per single crossing. The rail/sea might be slower but it is a more efficient and environmentally friendly mode of transport than air.
The air market far outstrips the ships. A plane can make 2 return trips in the time the ferry hasn't even got to Ireland.
EDIT: To follow this up a bit more, here's the UK Government ferry passenger numbers: https://www.gov.uk/government/stati...stical-data-setssea-passenger-statistics-spas for 2021
Key points: Holyhead-Dublin, 800,000, Liverpool/Cairnryan to Larne/Belfast: 1,000,000 total annual traffic.
According to the Wikipedia 2019 data, London Heathrow to Dublin ON IT'S OWN was 1,855,333. I know the traffic from 2019 will have dropped, but factor in other UK-NI/IRE routes and ferry passengers are a small proportion of the total. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_busiest_passenger_air_routes#Busiest_routes_by_region+
Further Edit: The Eurostat data for 2020 shows total UK-Ire/NI air traffic of nearly 3m in Q1 of 2020 only, times it by roughly 4 and total ferry traffic is approximately 10% of the annual total Air traffic. https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/AVIA_PAR_UK__custom_5935479/default/table?lang=en
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SouthEastBuses
On Moderation
City Thameslink, Farringdon & Drayton Park would like to disagree with you. Additionally, at Chester it will be even easier (more like Reading) because you'll have one platform with third rail and others with AC OHLE
City TL & Farringdon is perhaps a bad example as it requires a lot of very expensive equipment to manage the two different systems. Drayton Park, Mitre Bridge Jn, and South Acton all say hello though.
At Chester Platform 7 is continuous track with Merseyrail only using 1 end of it, so it's not like Reading at all.
SouthEastBuses
On Moderation
Ahh ok I thought Platform 7 was just used by Merseyrail trains
And yes you have a good point, City TL & Farringdon is about dual electrification between two stations whilst Chester would be dual electrification at only station on one platform.
Don't know how authoritative this is but knew I had read it somewhere and it is pretty specific.
https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/merseyrail-class-777.153458/page-23#post-4584124
Is the platform with the 3rd rail only used for Merseyrail trains?
SouthEastBuses
On Moderation
Tbh I'm asking the same question as well.
Nope, Platform 7 can be used along the full length by other trains when merseyrail aren't there (Railtours make use of this every now and again), Northern can platform share on the east end of 7 at times when a Merseyrail is waiting at the west end.
Depending on exactly where the OLE is put up, Euston is perhaps the best example, although it's entirely possible the OLE wouldn't interact with the 3rd rail at all.
Interesting thanks, that does make sense.
AFAIK nothing else is regularly booked to use it and the 3rd rail only goes about halfway down the platform, but it's signalled as a full part of the station and other trains are authorised to use it if they need to.
Philip
On Moderation
A ship can carry a lot more passengers though. If environmental factors lead to planes being restricted for mainly long-haul trips, the sea service market will explode on routes like UK to Dublin, perhaps we need to start planning for this now to meet potential future growth?
And the fact remains, the plane is a lot less environmentally friendly than the train-ferry combination for UK-Ireland journeys.
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Nobody anywhere on the globe is proposing any aviation policy that restricts flights over bodies of water. It is simply never going to happen that what is now an extremely convenient short trip becomes 1 full day of travelling on either end.
Sail-rail is simply never going to provide a justification for electrifying the North Wales Line.
Is it? You can get an electric train to any of the London Airports, then a relatively modern Airbus to Dublin, form where it's a short taxi ride in to town. The train requires a diesel under the wires, then a ferry which are horrific for particulates, and then a taxi from the docks to your hotel. The ferry carries about 1,500 passengers in 3 hours, the Plane about 180 passengers in 45 minutes.
Dr Hoo
Established Member
Are the figures for ‘passengers’ on the ships just for ‘foot passengers’ or do they include any or all of:
Commercial vehicle drivers
Coach passengers on touring holidays
Car drivers and their immediate families or companions (also camper vans, etc.)
Motorcyclists?
If so, it is far from obvious that they are relevant to railway electrification.
It is some years since I last did the crossing but my overwhelming impression was that foot passengers were a very small proportion.
Commercial vehicle drivers
Coach passengers on touring holidays
Car drivers and their immediate families or companions (also camper vans, etc.)
Motorcyclists?
If so, it is far from obvious that they are relevant to railway electrification.
It is some years since I last did the crossing but my overwhelming impression was that foot passengers were a very small proportion.
HSTEd
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The reality is that sustaining current levels of UK aviation fuel consumption is going to be extremely difficult in a zero carbon world.
Producing that much zero carbon aviation fuel is going to consume a comparable amount of electricity to all current electricity consumption in the UK.
At that point I wonder how high air fares are going to have to rise to cover that, given that aviation fuel could easily double or triple in cost. It may even be more than that.
And that's before we consider the industrial difficulties in supplying a 40GW-average load of electrolysis plant.
Then again, the answer to that problem (in the case of Northern Ireland) is not Sail Rail, its the UK Government biting the bullet and paying for a fixed crossing of some description
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Under the 'Strengths and weaknesses' section of the website:
So even less of the market is available for Sail rail
Philip
On Moderation
It was very popular in the 1990s, the HSS provided a competitive crossing time. The time advantage for flying is only such because it is currently available; take these flights away and force people to take the ferry (with faster ones built to provide journey times similar to the initial HSS timings, and cheaper fares) and people will soon re-adjust, particularly people going for leisure.
daodao
Established Member
Rubbish. The future is Ryanair. There is no longer any significant freight traffic along the North Wales coast line and there is a significant case for closing the rail line west of Bangor and converting the Britannia Bridge into a road only crossing of the Menai Straits.
Politically, the flights aren't going anywhere. They tried an HSS but it burned through fuel at such a rate it was completely uneconomic, IIRC.
krus_aragon
Established Member
TfW make significant use of platform 7 in off-peak times, particularly for services heading toward Manchester (or Liverpool these days). Through services are timed to arrive from the west while there's no Merseyrail service in, pulling into 7 or 7A. Then it's no bother if Merseyrail pull in behind them.
An example from this coming Monday's timetable:
09:45 Merseyrail departs P7B westbound for Liverpool
09:51 TfW service arrives from Llandudno into P7, departing eastbound for Manchester at 09:52
09:57 Next Merseyrail service terminates from Liverpool in P7B
(For context, a TfW loco-hauled service from Cardiff to Holyhead reverses in P4 between 0947-0951, a TfW ECS (staff training?) service goes through P3 09:52-09:56, then an Avanti service to Holyhead pulls into P3 at 10:05. The third through platform is needed and used.)
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One would assume that any electrification would only follow the long planned resignal\remodel of Chester station. This has variously added a dedicated platform for Merseyrail and/or extra through platform capacity.
Dr Hoo
Established Member
Yes. Two fast sailings each way per day, optimised for cars, Holyhead-Dun Laoghaire, with rubbish rail connections at both ends, predicated on oil at $16/barrel. Didn’t last at those speeds very long.
The train connections for the Irish sea Crossings are just such a red herring.
Trainbike46
Established Member
Taking the ferry to the island of Ireland is way more sustainable than flying, beyond any doubt
As part of my role on my institutions sustainability committee I looked into the environmental impact of travelling from Belfast to London (a relatively common business trip in my organisation), and the environmental impact of taking the ferry to liverpool plus the train from there to london (Birkenhead square to lime street, lime street to london via trent valley) is 87% lower.
The railway data used is an overestimate on this route, because it averages out diesel and electric traction, and the fully electric traction used on this route is greener than the uk average of diesel and electric traction. (Avanti does not regularly send voyagers to Liverpool). There is also some indication that the airplane data we used was in fact an underestimate, but we couldn't get any better data at that point. In reality, the advantage of ferry and train over flying on Belfast-London is even larger than the 87% we concluded.
On London-Dublin, the diesel under the wires situation will not last much longer, as the bimodes are currently under construction.
Where I think you're going wrong is that you're forgetting that the ferries across the Irish sea are primarily there to move freight, and that everyone else (private cars and foot passengers) is effectively just tagging along. I do think that is how it should be, tbh.
This is undoubtedly true. I don't really want to imagine how a certain community here would react to a serious proposal to end flights to England.
Regarding electrification of the North Wales mainline, it is probably not the highest priority line even within Wales, though most of it would probably be included if Wales were to follow Scotland and come up with a whole-railway decarbonisation strategy. To be honest, regional whole railway decarbonisation strategies are what we need, because currently England in particular just seems to be floating along without a plan.
Is that marginal for the ferry - ie one extra foot passenger on a mainly freight ferry makes little difference?
Thinking in terms of how it would stand up if you were needing to build passenger only ferries because you banned air travel.
This is intersting, thanks.
Of course, the issue of apportioning responsibility is one as old as the argument about pollution itself. Should the foot passenger be credited with emissions of 0 because the ferry is running whether they use it or not? and similar.
I would imagine that Swansea would be the next target after those already announced. Then it depends on strategies and technologies, but even so I really cannot see electrification ever across the Conwy river.
Trainbike46
Established Member
It is not marginal for the ferry, but splits the total emissions from the ferry across average passenger and freight loads, with some agreed formula for splitting the emissions between freight and passengers. Marginal emissions on these ferries, or the extra emissions from taking one more passenger on the ships as they currently are, would be so close to zero as to be impossible to measure.
In reality, very few ferries come anywhere close to max passenger capacity, and if they did changes either to the ferries to increase max passenger numbers would in many cases be possible, or taking foot passengers on all crossings (some crossings currently don't take foot passengers), would be more likely ways of dealing with it
yes, the way in which emissions are apportioned do quite massively influence the result, varying for foot passengers varying from zero (if you used marginal emissions) to absurdly high (if you take the total emissions of the ship and split it evenly across all people on board without considering whether they are foot passengers or with a vehicle, effectively giving the same emissions apportioning for a HGV+driver and a foot passenger). Clearly both of these extremes are unreasonable. We used the government's preferred approach here, which is somewhere in between these two extremes
I agree it would probably end up with some kind of battery bimode solution and partial electrification for the North Wales Main Line.
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Bevan Price
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Ideally the Chester/Crewe shuttles need 90mph stock. When 75 mph stock is used (Classes 153 or 150), there is very little margin to recover from any delays.
A 75mph EMU wouldn't lose as much as a DMU, and if margin is that problematic you can have a longer layover by stepping up the units across the service (which may well be needed for battery charging anyway).
If you're going to run the 777s on battery, they're limited to 60
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