Crewe-Chester HS2

It has been mentioned that 25kV OHLE electrification of Crewe to Chester would be relatively expensive because of the many ancient bridges. Even to the extent that DC 3rd Rail might be considered.

But the benefits, including to North Wales, might be sufficient to make it worthwhile nonetheless.

Since it is so expensive, and since all or many of the bridges would need replacing, I wonder whether anyone has compared the cost of 25kV OHLE upgrade (and presumably signalling upgrade also) with rebuilding the entire Crewe to Chester line to HS specifications and be done with it. Then, when belatedly HS2 comes to Crewe it will be immediately ready to provide services beyond Crewe to Chester. Excellent future-proofing.

I have a feeling that the costs of the two schemes might close enough to make it worthwhile. There are other benefits too, for example an earlier start. Anyone care to hazard a guess at the two costs?

Actually HS2 phase 2 plan includes that HS2 classic compatible services would run to Chester if Crewe-Chester was electrified. That would preclude doing it as third rail.

I believe someone has done work on discontinous electrification for the line. The pan would need to drop 34 times making the journey slower than under steam 100 years ago.
You may be right in that it may be better to just build a line, but the consultations would be expensive and very long and imagine that the people of cheshire may not appreaciate it. I imagine them to be vocal and wealthy, a dangerous combination.

Any attempt to reconstruct the line to high speed standards would be better served by just dropping the whole thing into a tunnel.

Tunnels are almost cheaper than consultations and are also immune to tresspassers and the weather.

It would be nice if we could get captive cleared lines to secondary destinations, although the one that comes to mind is Aberdeen and Inverness after extensions to the central belt and also the GWML spur lines....

When you say a high speed line do you mean a large enough gauge to fit high speed trains or do you want the trains to be going at high speed as well? As I understand it's only 20 miles between the two towns so not really worth getting the line set up for over 125 mph IMHO.

Ironside said:

When you say a high speed line do you mean a large enough gauge to fit high speed trains or do you want the trains to be going at high speed as well? As I understand it's only 20 miles between the two towns so not really worth getting the line set up for over 125 mph IMHO.

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Well, the question is more along the lines of -
if you are going to have to demolish lots of bridges anyway, then is it that much more expensive to also upgrade to HS loading gauge and 400kph?

Obviously speed would be limited to Pendolino speed until HS2 arrives in Crewe.

Agreed it will be expensive to upgrade to 25kV OHLE. The question is "How much more expensive would it be to rebuild to HS2 captive standards instead?" I think local opposition is overstated, there is no new railway right of way involved. Little or no land to be acquired.

20 miles you would barely reach any reasonable speed before slowing down, may as well just create a new 140 mph route.

YorkshireBear said:

20 miles you would barely reach any reasonable speed before slowing down, may as well just create a new 140 mph route.

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So is "may as well" the same as significantly cheaper?

And it wouldn't be 20 miles after HS2 reaches Crewe, not if HS Captive trains are used all the way from London.

Well as Mrs SDA tells me when she sets off on one of her shopping trips 'It's 20 minutes running time from Crewe to Chester'. As the Bear says you'd not get up to HS2 running speed before having to apply the brakes.

I don't know Chester Station, but has it room for 400m long double decker trains that are wider than normal? Current platforms certainly couldn't cope. So as well as rebuilding the line and all its bridges you'd probably need a new station. And then the line couldn't be used by 'normal' trains so they'd have to go the long way round (Shrewsbury or Warrington maybe) or you'd have to build four tracks, two 'normal' and two high speed.

Of course you could run Compatibles at high speed into Chester and that would allow the existing station to be used and you wouldn't need such a big loading gauge and maybe ordinary trains could run on it as well. Working that way you'd save, maybe, 4 or 5 of the 20 minutes. But why not just upgrade the line to modern Classic standards and be happy that Compatibles could go there anyway and probably quicker than they do now if they have up to date track and signalling.

As to costs I've no idea.

How long does it take to get up to running speed?

When I am travelling around China the trains claim to be up to 300km/h on what is basically an 8 minute journey from Suzhou to Kunshan or Wuxi (for example)

I am not sure that makes a case for Crewe to Chester mind.

steamdrivenand said:

Well as Mrs SDA tells me when she sets off on one of her shopping trips 'It's 20 minutes running time from Crewe to Chester'. As the Bear says you'd not get up to HS2 running speed before having to apply the brakes.

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Series N700 Shinkansen are supposed to reach 270kph in under three minutes of acceleration.... but they are rather fast accelerating even for high speed trainsets.

steamdrivenand said:

I don't know Chester Station, but has it room for 400m long double decker trains that are wider than normal? Current platforms certainly couldn't cope. So as well as rebuilding the line and all its bridges you'd probably need a new station. And then the line couldn't be used by 'normal' trains so they'd have to go the long way round (Shrewsbury or Warrington maybe) or you'd have to build four tracks, two 'normal' and two high speed.

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There seems to be a rather large number of platforms at Chester... you would only need two for captive high speed trains, and there are several platforms that could be stretched to 400m if you chose.
There is also the railway land north of teh station that could fit the required two platforms on (unfortunately it would be impossible to align them to allow for future expansions of the loading gauge further west without building a curved platform which I believe is now verboten.... but in the short term to allow captives to Chester it would do).

The width of the trains themselves is not a great deal of different with what we have here.... the Eurostar has 2.81m width trailers and teh TGV Duplex has 2.9m width trailers.

While the different platform heights would require seperate platforms it is unlikely the horizontal structure gauge woudl need significantly adjusting, especially as in this case there are no intermediate stations between Chester and Crewe as far as I am able to determine using Google Earth.

This means that you can rebuild the line itself to the larger structure gauge and then assign High Speed captive trains an appropriate routing prefix... (9Xxx?) so that Automatic Route setting can't mistakenly route Captive trains into the non Captive platforms.

steamdrivenand said:

Of course you could run Compatibles at high speed into Chester and that would allow the existing station to be used and you wouldn't need such a big loading gauge and maybe ordinary trains could run on it as well. Working that way you'd save, maybe, 4 or 5 of the 20 minutes. But why not just upgrade the line to modern Classic standards and be happy that Compatibles could go there anyway and probably quicker than they do now if they have up to date track and signalling.

As to costs I've no idea.

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Because compatibles waste space on the more intensively used parts of the network. 400m Double decker trains are the future for low ticket prices and the like.
While you won't be able to run much above 110mph-125mph due to the curvature of the line you gain the ability to run full length trainsets into the station.

The cost of the conversion will depend on whether a several month shutdown to do all the reconstruction work is acceptable or if it has to be done in stop-starts.
In central chester it is likely you would have to dig out the cutting it is in to be 1-2m deeper while outside central chester it is more likely that bridge reconstructions to greater heights would be feasible.

If massive bridge reconstruction/digouts is required anyway it might not be massively more expensive than electrification would be.

EDIT:

I have now found a Network Rail document about curved platforms.
They can be permitted by waiver if "Platforms on horizontal curves with radii of less than 1000m may be permitted if due consideration has been made of stepping distances and visibility issues". Since ~300+m of the platform would be straight I think getting disabled passengers aboard would be accomodated on the straight portion of the platform no matter the stepping distances on the curved portion, however provision of equipment on the platform to bridge the gap at a door to allow access to a wheelchair space could be provided. Dispatch could be handed through appropriate video equipment.

So yeah, you can have a through pair of captive platforms.

Just thought of another issue that might affect things and that's passenger volume. How many direct Chester to Euston trains and return are there these days? If it's only the odd one then there's little point putting in all that infrastructure and creating a 'no go' line for Classics that use the current line.

Since HS2 isn't going to reach Crewe for another twenty years, I think that any upgrade of the Crewe - Chester line would be better tied into electrification of the Holyhead line, which is more likely to happen before then.

Getting that section to overhead lines and 125mph would do. it will require a lot of work so they may as well max out the loading gauge for the future that's the expensive part anyway.
also be nice to remove the Chester to Crewe shuttle and stick that duty onto something terminating at either station additional changes put people off.

Holly said:

It has been mentioned that 25kV OHLE electrification of Crewe to Chester would be relatively expensive because of the many ancient bridges. Even to the extent that DC 3rd Rail might be considered.

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I think the issue is electrifying only Crewe to Chester, which a few years ago was being touted as a possible low-cost infill project for WCML bidders - the high cost per mile yet limited benefit doesn't make it viable, hence why it was used as a case study for 'alternative solutions' such as discontinuous electrification.

The simple solution is to make this section part of a larger electrification scheme, allowing more services to use electric traction and improving the overall business case - efforts are already underway to put together a business case for wiring the NWCL.

Chris

eps200 said:

Getting that section to overhead lines and 125mph would do. it will require a lot of work so they may as well max out the loading gauge for the future that's the expensive part anyway.
also be nice to remove the Chester to Crewe shuttle and stick that duty onto something terminating at either station additional changes put people off.

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How much time would be saved against cost, not much I would say! It is 90mph currently with a curve at Beeston that would probably need reprofiling as well, waste of money I recon!
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WatcherZero said:

Actually HS2 phase 2 plan includes that HS2 classic compatible services would run to Chester if Crewe-Chester was electrified. That would preclude doing it as third rail.

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I was led to believe that 3rd rail new fix is out of the question. To be honest it wouldn't save anything on timings if it was 3rd.

3rd rail would be totally pointless, as would upgrading this to HS. A 125mph speed would reduce journey times by about 5 minutes, and Pendos/Voyagers could benefit from it too. There are a couple of curves, but I'm not sure how much it could benefit from EPS?

cle said:

3rd rail would be totally pointless, as would upgrading this to HS. A 125mph speed would reduce journey times by about 5 minutes, and Pendos/Voyagers could benefit from it too. There are a couple of curves, but I'm not sure how much it could benefit from EPS?

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Would the 5 minutes quicker run merit the cost? Very much doubt it.

As much as I like the idea I just can't see how 3rd rail would be of any benefit. Any money saved by not having to modify/remove the bridges on the route would probably be outweighed by the cost of installing the 3rd rail itself and all the associated gubbins.

I imagine speed would be another issue too, there's a reason why there's no 125mph 3rd rail units dahn sarf.

TDK said:

Would the 5 minutes quicker run merit the cost? Very much doubt it.

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Probably not on its own, no.

Possibly in conjunction with similar works along the route to Holyhead to reduce journey times and increase capacity (loops/platforms/quadding).

This could tap into some EU money maybe, given that it is linking England, Wales and Ireland.

It is strange that HS2 Limited claim they can deliver a new high speed line between York and Newcastle for a similar price to GC clearing the ECML along the same route....

The figure they quote is £3.5-4bn .... which is £34m/km.... which is rather lses than what the current HS2 project costs.

If we can deliver routes at that price.... the prospects for a national network improve drastically.

HSTEd said:

It is strange that HS2 Limited claim they can deliver a new high speed line between York and Newcastle for a similar price to GC clearing the ECML along the same route....

The figure they quote is £3.5-4bn .... which is £34m/km.... which is rather lses than what the current HS2 project costs.

If we can deliver routes at that price.... the prospects for a national network improve drastically.

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Ah but does the price per include building new termini and stations plus other infrastructure or is it just line building?

Unless costs fall drastically they won't be looking at rebuilding the line and station for Captive services. At just one train an hour it could not be worth the cost.

Why not have Crewe be the point where classic compatible services join/split to various regional destinations such as Blackpool.

Rational Plan said:

Unless costs fall drastically they won't be looking at rebuilding the line and station for Captive services. At just one train an hour it could not be worth the cost.

Why not have Crewe be the point where classic compatible services join/split to various regional destinations such as Blackpool.

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Because then the Blackpool residents would miss out on the Crewe to Wigan HS2 stretch time savings.

Rational Plan said:

Why not have Crewe be the point where classic compatible services join/split to various regional destinations such as Blackpool.

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With six lines running to/from it the possibilities for Crewe and Compatibles are very wide and there's 20 years to build the business cases for all the options. Having said that of course two of those lines don't have electricity so couldn't run Compatibles unless upgraded.

I'm wondering whether there's business to be had running a Compatible service from MAN via the Stockport/Alderley Edge/Sandbach line to Crewe and collecting passengers who'd rather not get embroiled with travel to MIA?

steamdrivenand said:

Ah but does the price per include building new termini and stations plus other infrastructure or is it just line building?

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Probably just line building with no new stations, but frankly you could assign a billion pounds to the construction of new stations at York and Newcastle and still come out far ahead of what HS2 Phases 1 and 2 will cost.

Building Haute-Picardie stations at places like the Teeside Airport is unlikely to be expensive either. (I say there to link in with the proposed Tees Valley Metro)

EDIT:

Running on the WCMl from Crewe to Wigan takes 25-30m at the moment.
Running non stop through Crewe to Wigan on HS2 would take a grand total of 11 minutes at 320kph.
If you must stop at Crewe a north facing 'slip' onto the line would be a neccesity to keep the journey time loss within reason.

HSTEd said:

Tunnels are almost cheaper than consultations and are also immune to tresspassers and the weather.

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Not completely immune to tresspassers: remember what happened to the "overhead tunnel" that was the Britannia Bridge: burnt down by a fire started by tresspassers sheltering from the rain.

eps200 said:

Getting that section to overhead lines and 125mph would do. it will require a lot of work so they may as well max out the loading gauge for the future that's the expensive part anyway.
also be nice to remove the Chester to Crewe shuttle and stick that duty onto something terminating at either station additional changes put people off.

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That's the point really. Upgrading to OHLE has various benefits, biggest one being electric trains to London. But upgrading to HS is not that much more expensive than upgrading to OHLE if all those road bridges have to be replaced anyway. That's where much of the cost lies, build it oversize.

There is no reason why this should all not be done before HS2 Phase 2 is planned to start construction. OHLE then continuing on into Wales.

I don't think anyone has come up with a comparison cost between OHLE and HS, just assertions that they may not be so different. If Liverpool and Stoke don't warrant HS2 then I don't see Chester having a claim, especially when the speed/time differential is so tiny over such a short bit of line.

The best option you could hope for would be OHLE and a compatible service that does or doesn't stop at Crewe on its way south. After all it would only be 3 or 4 minutes slower over Euston to Chester than a through Captive train.

Holly said:

There is no reason why this should all not be done before HS2 Phase 2 is planned to start construction

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It'd be a 250mph line between Crewe and Chester unconnected to any other "High Speed" line for many years

steamdrivenand said:

If Liverpool and Stoke don't warrant HS2 then I don't see Chester having a claim

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Agreed