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Campaign for Calder Valley Electrification

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jayah

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True but say up hill winding terrain in a bitter cold mid winter - hopefully you get the drift.

There is plenty of power available for a mundane interurban duty and plenty on points to recharge during the day. Hybrid, Bi-Mode take your pick, just don't waste £500m.
 
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edwin_m

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No, ALARP is a measure of where you stop within ERIC. Let me elaborate.

OLE at stations is a specific hazard. This risk that this hazard becomes a problem can be physically mitigated. The best way is to increase the distance between the OLE (and all other live parts such as pantographs, etc.) until the possibility of anyone being to reach disappears completely (Eliminate). Many stations have a road bridge over them. This bridge places an upper limit on wire height. Raising the wires to eliminate the risk may now require removal of the bridge. This will have a cost. In some cases this cost will be pretty astronomical and disproportionate to the risk.

We could raise the wires and the bridge as far as possible; less costly, but with higher residual risk. We will still have reduced the risk (raising the wires by any amount does this, mathematically) - Reduce - job done. However, the cost of these works (Fishergate at Preston, Trinity Way at Bolton) may still be significant when they achieve little.

In this situation, Isolation is deeply impractical (clearing the platforms before turning the OLE back on and the reverse) and would introduce other risks, control in this case is similar.

Where would you stop? Surely the question is, what is the magnitude of the risk?

There has been (IIRC) one passenger death and a few minor injuries caused by persons legitimately using a platform and coming into contact with live OLE, in about 45 years. Even allowing for a massively inflated (x 10) value of preventing a fatality, that's about £160m (ignoring the span of time it covers, too). I suggest that this would go nowhere near eliminating the risk, reducing the risk significantly or funding any kind of control or isolation. In conclusion, GL/RT1210 imposes controls that go massively beyond ALARP and thus artificially inflate the cost of electrification schemes. Yes, BritGov failed to renew its National Exemption, but that doesn't mean we should continue to punish ourselves!
I think we're in agreement - perhaps I didn't word my previous post very well. If it is reasonably practicable to raise the wire to the new standard height then this should be done. But if this would involve an expensive and otherwise unnecessary rebuilding of a bridge, or other disbenefits, then it might not be reasonably practicable to do so and the wire should be raised as high as reasonably practicable so the risk is as low as reasonably practicable (!).

I believe this has been done in places, justified by risk assessment which presumably includes that ALARP argument, but of course anything that involves a risk assessment is a project risk and the project may choose just to spend the money rebuilding rather than face the possibility of having the assessment rejected and having to replace the bridge later when it's probably on the critical path.
 

furnessvale

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Spending £500m achieving nothing but saving a few trifling co2 emissions is bad policy and a waste taxpayers money.
The Government is currently looking at making trains use white diesel instead of red.

If that happens that could well change the economics of diesel v electric.
 

edwin_m

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Buses aren't self powered in some cities nor have they been in the past. Nor are trams for that matter.

If you researched what is going on you will find even sizeable batteries e.g. 80KWH are charged in a 6min not to mention the very large numbers of trains that are in fact idle outside the peaks. You already have practical applications of everything from once a day to once a stop charging and everything between.
I take the definition of self-powered meaning not requiring a continuous power supply. All buses including battery buses but excluding trolleybuses are self-powered. Trams are not self-powered.

While a bus may have a short enough route to charge in a few minutes turnaround, most train routes don't. As I've said already the electric commuter routes in the south have spare trains between the peaks, but this is much less so for the likes of the Calder Valley.
 

jayah

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A reminder of what the electrification task force found: https://transportforthenorth.com/wp-content/uploads/EFT_Report_FINAL_web.pdf Calder Valley got a weighted score of 84 which was the highest overall score. Although it did score lower on economic benefits than Chester to Stockport which surprisingly got the 4th highest overall score.
Somewhat lacking in quantified benefits. Well totally lacking.

Also a completely fallacious assumption that electric trains are faster which is absolutely not true on this sort of route. MML and Cardiff to Swansea were both binned thanks to the reality that since Bi-Mode this simply isn't true.
 

Joseph_Locke

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I think we're in agreement - perhaps I didn't word my previous post very well. If it is reasonably practicable to raise the wire to the new standard height then this should be done. But if this would involve an expensive and otherwise unnecessary rebuilding of a bridge, or other disbenefits, then it might not be reasonably practicable to do so and the wire should be raised as high as reasonably practicable so the risk is as low as reasonably practicable (!).

I believe this has been done in places, justified by risk assessment which presumably includes that ALARP argument, but of course anything that involves a risk assessment is a project risk and the project may choose just to spend the money rebuilding rather than face the possibility of having the assessment rejected and having to replace the bridge later when it's probably on the critical path.

Ah, but there's a funny thing - it seems possible to justify the "old" rules in every case by risk assessing everything anyway, so why do we bother? If we can prove (by risk assessment) that the "old" rules were safe enough (e.g. had a risk that was ALARP) why on earth are we bothering? Scrap /1210 and go back to the pragmatic approach, which in cosmic terms re-introduces an infinitesimal risk.
 

Joseph_Locke

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A reminder of what the electrification task force found: https://transportforthenorth.com/wp-content/uploads/EFT_Report_FINAL_web.pdf Calder Valley got a weighted score of 84 which was the highest overall score. Although it did score lower on economic benefits than Chester to Stockport which surprisingly got the 4th highest overall score.

And all that does is rank things by benefit, not by benefit vs cost. if you included a weighting to adjust for difficulty (Hope Valley will require slab-tracking 6 miles of tunnel, whereas Ormskirk - Preston could be done in a few weeks) then the list would look very different indeed.
 

jayah

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The Government is currently looking at making trains use white diesel instead of red.

If that happens that could well change the economics of diesel v electric.
Given that current bill for diesel is £300m nationally and they have already pledged to remove diesel trains by 2040 there would be little point and nor much effect on the economics of electrification.
 

furnessvale

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Given that current bill for diesel is £300m nationally and they have already pledged to remove diesel trains by 2040 there would be little point and nor much effect on the economics of electrification.
£300m per annum, which would treble if white duty were added to the bill, and replaced by what?
 

GRALISTAIR

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And all that does is rank things by benefit, not by benefit vs cost. if you included a weighting to adjust for difficulty (Hope Valley will require slab-tracking 6 miles of tunnel, whereas Ormskirk - Preston could be done in a few weeks) then the list would look very different indeed.

I think about electrification in the middle of the night. ( yes I know I am an anorak/weirdo) One thing I did think was that hopefuly
there will be a refresh of the RUS Electrification document. In that refresh there would be a difficulty factor as a minimum. ABCD were used in original
A primarily passenger
B primarily freight
C useful diversionary route
D new pattern of service

Though BCRs were quoted before modern knowledge/aka recent experience.

While these are good criteria I.e. if a route ticks off all 4 of those boxes it is higher priority. Cost BCR is a huge weighting of course, but yes ease / lack of or very few difficult structures should be a factor. Once that is done it still needs the SoS to put the X factor in - the political factor aka lots of marginal constituencies on the route.
 

GRALISTAIR

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£300m per annum, which would treble if white duty were added to the bill, and replaced by what?

And if crude continues to climb - currently $72 per barrel - all bets are off. If tensions increase and the Straits of Hormuz get blocked you are in an almost existential of the state/economy situation. Make hay while the sun shines is my motto. While crude is relatively low and plentiful have a nice steady electrification program and convert your cars and buses to electric too. My big worry is being able to move freight which is why I would make F2N a priority. But sorry, we are getting way OT. And I am on my hobby horse ! !
 

IanXC

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Can we please try to stay reasonably on topic - discussion of a speculative electrification project will no doubt touch on some wider political issues, however please ensure that these remain related to the topic; please refrain from wider discussions about government priorities which would be best addressed in a separate thread.

Thank you.
 

daodao

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Plans for further GB electrification (outside Scotland) appear to be dead. If the main Standedge trans-Pennine route isn't going to be electrified, what chance for the Calder Valley line? The Westminster govt doesn't care about rail services that aren't to/from London - if they had, the electrified Woodhead line would never have been closed.
 

jayah

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£300m per annum, which would treble if white duty were added to the bill, and replaced by what?
Fuel duty is 58p/l which is not treble. In the context of electrification on secondary routes like this, you are talking about capital cost of hundreds of millions and a fuel bill of a few hundreds of thousands.

All that will happen is fares rise or the government will simply end up paying a higher subsidy to offset the cost. Either outcome would be pretty daft.

Btw - where are these proposals because I can't see them?
 

jayah

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Plans for further GB electrification (outside Scotland) appear to be dead. If the main Standedge trans-Pennine route isn't going to be electrified, what chance for the Calder Valley line? The Westminster govt doesn't care about rail services that aren't to/from London - if they had, the electrified Woodhead line would never have been closed.
The problem on most of these secondary routes is the formation is bad, the signalling is rubbish, the trains are ancient and the permanent way is degraded. Stringing up lots of wiring is not going to get a train into Bradford Interchange any faster and will actually make it more difficult to fix the real problem.
 

92002

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Plans for further GB electrification (outside Scotland) appear to be dead. If the main Standedge trans-Pennine route isn't going to be electrified, what chance for the Calder Valley line? The Westminster govt doesn't care about rail services that aren't to/from London - if they had, the electrified Woodhead line would never have been closed.
The major difference being that the cost of Scottish electrification schemes are considerably cheaper than the current GWML scheme. Or for that matter the considerably delayed Manchester to Blackpool electrification. Keeping to time keeps down the costs. Not helped of course by the new clearance wire height that's frankly not needed. However we are where we are.

Its also funded by the Scottish Government who are more environmentally conscious and have an ongoing plan of 110 miles per annum. Still with quite a few years to run.
 

jayah

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And if crude continues to climb - currently $72 per barrel - all bets are off. If tensions increase and the Straits of Hormuz get blocked you are in an almost existential of the state/economy situation. Make hay while the sun shines is my motto. While crude is relatively low and plentiful have a nice steady electrification program and convert your cars and buses to electric too. My big worry is being able to move freight which is why I would make F2N a priority. But sorry, we are getting way OT. And I am on my hobby horse ! !
The entire food production and distribution network of this country is reliant on diesel fuel.

If oil genuinely becomes scarce you will have real problems to worry about like how to buy milk and bread.

By the time there is an EV petrol tanker, combine harvester or artic lorry, as that is exactly the same application as an Intercity DMU, electrification won't just be paused, it will be 40 fathoms under.
 

jayah

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The major difference being that the cost of Scottish electrification schemes are considerably cheaper than the current GWML scheme. Or for that matter the considerably delayed Manchester to Blackpool electrification. Keeping to time keeps down the costs. Not helped of course by the new clearance wire height that's frankly not needed. However we are where we are.

Its also funded by the Scottish Government who are more environmentally conscious and have an ongoing plan of 110 miles per annum. Still with quite a few years to run.
Really? EGIP has just risen to £900m with diminishing confidence the headline 60mph timing will ever be realised. The scheme has also been endlessly descoped to try and keep close to budget.
 

92002

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Think your information there is way off the mark. The increase in EGIP costs was for the not needed revised wire heights and more money being spent on structures to meet these.

What was taken out of the project were two grade separated junctions that were not required and another diversion route from Winchburgh via the new Dalmeny chord to Edinburgh Gateway.

Dont know where your 60mph figure comes from. The linespeed is 100mph and has been for at least the last 40 years.

The original plan of 6 trains an hour have been replaced by the current 4 trains an hour, but trains have been extended from 6 car to 7 car. When the improvement works at Glasgow Queen Street are finished, this will rise to 8 cars.

The Queen Street works were not part of EGIP and have been separately financed.
All sounds very positive news to me and the end to end time will fall later in the year.
 

jayah

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Think your information there is way off the mark. The increase in EGIP costs was for the not needed revised wire heights and more money being spent on structures to meet these.

What was taken out of the project were two grade separated junctions that were not required and another diversion route from Winchburgh via the new Dalmeny chord to Edinburgh Gateway.

Dont know where your 60mph figure comes from. The linespeed is 100mph and has been for at least the last 40 years.

The original plan of 6 trains an hour have been replaced by the current 4 trains an hour, but trains have been extended from 6 car to 7 car. When the improvement works at Glasgow Queen Street are finished, this will rise to 8 cars.

The Queen Street works were not part of EGIP and have been separately financed.
All sounds very positive news to me and the end to end time will fall later in the year.

Not at all. I am challenging the assertion that electrification is cheaper in Scotland as it is clearly subject to the same regime and cost overruns as everywhere else. The fact you don't agree with the engineers who come up with these regulations is for the birds.

The current timing for 42 miles is around 55mins. The promised 42mins is now in great doubt. The fact that you don't need to spend hundreds of £m to achieve a 60mph timing in much of the rest of the country is further evidence of how pointless money spent on wiring is. How you can assert that a grade separated junction adds no benefit is beyond me. The grade separation was canned because it was either the junctions or the wires that had to go and without Bi-Modes wiring half the route for the original budget wasn't an option.
 

47802

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The problem on most of these secondary routes is the formation is bad, the signalling is rubbish, the trains are ancient and the permanent way is degraded. Stringing up lots of wiring is not going to get a train into Bradford Interchange any faster and will actually make it more difficult to fix the real problem.

If you look at Blackpool - Preston and the amount of other work that was required besides electrification then yes I would agree with the first part of that statement.

But as I see it alternatives to Diesel are not anywhere near enough developed at this stage, so on that basis we probably need to continue to make some commitment to further electrification even if not at the pace of originally envisaged, and Network Rail need to try and find ways of doing it in budget and at reasonable cost, I also don't see much point in the government attacking Diesel Trains at this stage, how else are you going to get from Newbury to Penzance other than Diesel at present?

Meanwhile any electrification of the Transpennine routes is surely dependent on the NPR, if that were to get the go ahead then surely any prospect of electrifying the Calder valley and Standedge goes out the window except where it might use existing parts of a route.
 

92002

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Not at all. I am challenging the assertion that electrification is cheaper in Scotland as it is clearly subject to the same regime and cost overruns as everywhere else. The fact you don't agree with the engineers who come up with these regulations is for the birds.

The current timing for 42 miles is around 55mins. The promised 42mins is now in great doubt. The fact that you don't need to spend hundreds of £m to achieve a 60mph timing in much of the rest of the country is further evidence of how pointless money spent on wiring is. How you can assert that a grade separated junction adds no benefit is beyond me. The grade separation was canned because it was either the junctions or the wires that had to go and without Bi-Modes wiring half the route for the original budget wasn't an option.

The cost of electrification in Scotland is significantly cheaper. It sll goes down to costs per mile.

Dare I mention the GWML electrification at over 3 times the budget and overengineered for 140mph trains.

For the last 40 years trains in France have managed to achieve 186mph with OHL not as over engineered as on GWML. Not to mention in Japan, Germany and Italy.

The 60mph for the rest of Scotland lines has absolutely nothing to do with EGIP which is the Edinburgh to Glasgow Improvement Project. In fact it covers all ways of getting between the two cities. Not just via Falkirk High. Before EGIP started there were 5 trains an hour between the cities. Now there are going to be 14.

Since the limited electric trains on the Glasgow to Edinburgh line started earlier in the year, the planned 52 minutes timing for trains with 3 intermediate stops have regularly been broken. All of which is achieved with the higher acceleration and braking speed of the electric trains. They regulary put in timings of 47/48 minutes. The 55 minutes timing is for trains with 4 intermediate thst continue to be diesel trains for now, but probably not much longer.

The grade separated juctions which were removed from the plan was at Greenhill for3 trains an hour that diverge to Stirling and Dunblane or Alloa and the one train an hour to Aberdeen, which has nothing to do with EGIP. The other was at Winchburgh for the other divetsionary route that was not built. These were dreans from consultants that could not be justified. When a review was carried out.

The 42 minutes timing that you talk about are for trains with one stop, that are not in the timetable. However if they were, they could probably be achieved. In the mystery of time these were achieved with a 47 and push/pull trains.

Returning to the Calder Valley the figures there for electrification don't stack up because of the number of passengers that would benefit. Whereas in EGIP this is ScotRails busiest line in the country.
Clearly too the Manchester to Blackpool project is significantly over budget and many, many months late.
 

geoffk

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[LIST=1 said:
[*]I assume this is the legislation around wiring clearances? If so were there not exceptions that DfT could have used to keep costs down on previous projects, rather than rigidly sticking to legislation that even other EU countries may have more loosely interpreted? If so such exceptions should be used prior to any legislative changes being made to EU regulations adopted into UK law.
[*]
I understand that ORR failed to obtain a derogation from the latest EU regulation on minimum clearances for overhead wires, virtually impossible to comply with in tunnels. They could have done so using the argument of the UK's smaller loading gauge. "Gold plating" again - the EU cannot be blamed if the UK implements clearance requirements in a way that does not take into account the constraints of UK rail infrastructure. There is also the ORR's insistence on a 3.5m OHLE clearance at stations, impossible if there is a road overbridge adjacent without major rebuilding. Where do we go from here?
 

Bevan Price

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Somewhat lacking in quantified benefits. Well totally lacking.

Also a completely fallacious assumption that electric trains are faster which is absolutely not true on this sort of route. MML and Cardiff to Swansea were both binned thanks to the reality that since Bi-Mode this simply isn't true.

Sorry, but I totally disagrree. An emu such as a Class 323 or 350 can outpace any existing dmu on any existing stopping service. Even a 319 can beat dmus if the stops are more than 2 miles apart.

Bimodes are just a very expensive device favoured by the wallies at DfT to try & justify their opposition to electrification. As usual, the government & civil service only consider "short termism". In the long term, the total cost (construction + operation + maintenance) of using bi-modes will almost certainly be more than a carefully planned programme of electrification.

(And that is even before one considers that "events" in the Middle East are likely to cause long-term steady increases in the price of oil,)
 

Bevan Price

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I understand that ORR failed to obtain a derogation from the latest EU regulation on minimum clearances for overhead wires, virtually impossible to comply with in tunnels. They could have done so using the argument of the UK's smaller loading gauge. "Gold plating" again - the EU cannot be blamed if the UK implements clearance requirements in a way that does not take into account the constraints of UK rail infrastructure. There is also the ORR's insistence on a 3.5m OHLE clearance at stations, impossible if there is a road overbridge adjacent without major rebuilding. Where do we go from here?

The best solution would be to sack those in charge of DfT & ORR.
 

Domh245

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I understand that ORR failed to obtain a derogation from the latest EU regulation on minimum clearances for overhead wires, virtually impossible to comply with in tunnels. They could have done so using the argument of the UK's smaller loading gauge. "Gold plating" again - the EU cannot be blamed if the UK implements clearance requirements in a way that does not take into account the constraints of UK rail infrastructure. There is also the ORR's insistence on a 3.5m OHLE clearance at stations, impossible if there is a road overbridge adjacent without major rebuilding. Where do we go from here?

My understanding is that it was the other way around, ie the ORR/RSSB/BSI decided to implement the EU regulation, despite the provision for UK getout clauses. Looking at this article:

The new ENE TSI concerns traction power supply infrastructure and came into force on 1 January 2015. Prior to then, much work was done to align previous standards to this TSI, including the production of Railway Group Standard GL/RT1210 “AC Energy Subsystem and Interfaces to Rolling Stock Subsystem” which contains the UK national technical rules mandated by ENE TSI.

This work was coordinated by RSSB and included the production of a strategy for the implementation of ENE TSI in 2011 which “notes that GB railway is constrained by its small loading gauge which is difficult and expensive to alter” and that “there should be a working presumption that current GB practice should be preserved unless a conscious decision to adopt standard European practice is made by industry through its stakeholder groups, having understood the economic consequences of such a decision”.
...
Perhaps the most challenging requirement of GL/RT1210 is its mandate of Figure 4 of BS EN 50122-1:2011, which only allows live 25kV equipment within a 3.5 metre radius of the platform edge unless a CSMRA compliant risk assessment can justify reduced clearances. Prior to that, GE/RT8025 specified the minimum platform clearances to be those in Annex G, BS EN 50122. This is a UK special condition that takes account of the restricted British gauge by allowing a 2.75 metre radius of a platform edge.

However, in 2013, the relevant British Standards committee, which is not part of the railway standards process, expressed concerns about a minimum 2.75 metres clearance and, in 2013, updated BS EN 50122 with a national forward requiring that, until Annex G is revised, an appropriate risk assessment is essential if clearances less than specified in Figure 4 are used.

The clearance requirements of BS EN 50122 are, in effect, those that must be followed to comply with the Electricity at Work Regulations, which require potentially dangerous conductors to be suitably placed but do not define this requirement. In such cases, compliance with the relevant British Standard is generally the minimum deemed necessary to comply with the law.
...
ENE TSI applies to “new, upgraded or renewed ‘energy’ subsystems”, so it is not concerned with the existing infrastructure. Its clearance requirements specify compliance with the notified national technical rules that are the relevant clauses of GL/RT1210.

For projects at an advanced stage, the 2008 Interoperability Directive allows EU member states to issue a derogation against a new TSI. Although the Department for Transport advised the EU that EGIP was such an advanced project, as it had “reached a significant degree of maturity when the TSI was published in terms of tenders, contracts and detailed design”, the project was not issued with a derogation so had to comply with GL/RT1210.
 

jayah

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Sorry, but I totally disagrree. An emu such as a Class 323 or 350 can outpace any existing dmu on any existing stopping service. Even a 319 can beat dmus if the stops are more than 2 miles apart.

Bimodes are just a very expensive device favoured by the wallies at DfT to try & justify their opposition to electrification. As usual, the government & civil service only consider "short termism". In the long term, the total cost (construction + operation + maintenance) of using bi-modes will almost certainly be more than a carefully planned programme of electrification.

(And that is even before one considers that "events" in the Middle East are likely to cause long-term steady increases in the price of oil,)

Do you really believe the DfT agenda is that they hate electrification for no rational reason?

Voyagers and Pendolinos happily co-exist on the upgraded WCML and between Didcot and Reading both the stopping 387s and 165s seem to be timed for 25mins. Some of the runs with 387s can be 23mins and 165s 24mins but with modern diesel traction any advantage is not material.
 

jayah

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I understand that ORR failed to obtain a derogation from the latest EU regulation on minimum clearances for overhead wires, virtually impossible to comply with in tunnels. They could have done so using the argument of the UK's smaller loading gauge. "Gold plating" again - the EU cannot be blamed if the UK implements clearance requirements in a way that does not take into account the constraints of UK rail infrastructure. There is also the ORR's insistence on a 3.5m OHLE clearance at stations, impossible if there is a road overbridge adjacent without major rebuilding. Where do we go from here?

Sounds like you are really saying that the EU shouldn't really be trying to apply a one-size approach at all in setting such regulations centrally?
 

jayah

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The cost of electrification in Scotland is significantly cheaper. It sll goes down to costs per mile.

Dare I mention the GWML electrification at over 3 times the budget and overengineered for 140mph trains.

For the last 40 years trains in France have managed to achieve 186mph with OHL not as over engineered as on GWML. Not to mention in Japan, Germany and Italy.

The 60mph for the rest of Scotland lines has absolutely nothing to do with EGIP which is the Edinburgh to Glasgow Improvement Project. In fact it covers all ways of getting between the two cities. Not just via Falkirk High. Before EGIP started there were 5 trains an hour between the cities. Now there are going to be 14.

Since the limited electric trains on the Glasgow to Edinburgh line started earlier in the year, the planned 52 minutes timing for trains with 3 intermediate stops have regularly been broken. All of which is achieved with the higher acceleration and braking speed of the electric trains. They regulary put in timings of 47/48 minutes. The 55 minutes timing is for trains with 4 intermediate thst continue to be diesel trains for now, but probably not much longer.

The grade separated juctions which were removed from the plan was at Greenhill for3 trains an hour that diverge to Stirling and Dunblane or Alloa and the one train an hour to Aberdeen, which has nothing to do with EGIP. The other was at Winchburgh for the other divetsionary route that was not built. These were dreans from consultants that could not be justified. When a review was carried out.

The 42 minutes timing that you talk about are for trains with one stop, that are not in the timetable. However if they were, they could probably be achieved. In the mystery of time these were achieved with a 47 and push/pull trains.

Returning to the Calder Valley the figures there for electrification don't stack up because of the number of passengers that would benefit. Whereas in EGIP this is ScotRails busiest line in the country.
Clearly too the Manchester to Blackpool project is significantly over budget and many, many months late.

We are talking about the electrification not the IETs. Scotland - over budget, England overbudget. What are the comparative unit costs that I keep hearing are lower in Scotland, despite the same regulations and the same company project managing? The only reason they will be lower is if the compensation for engineering work is lower thanks to diversionary routes, or the spec is lower because it is a 100mph a railway - in either case that doesn't mean Scotland is cheaper.

My point about 60mph is that you could achieve the times tomorrow by ditching the sloth like Class 170s and replacing with Class 185s or new build and implementing the revised calling pattern - without spending hundreds of millions on wires. 42min was promised, with allowances, not 47min with a following wind and a dry rail. Then you could pay for the approach control, grade separation, level crossing works and things that actually make the trains run faster and with fewer delays. Wires do nothing for speed below 125mph.

Are you saying a grade separated junction on the Edinburgh - Glasgow line that removes conflicts with those trains has nothing to do with enhancing the Edinburgh - Glasgow line? They were not dreams at all - it was all budgeted and costed but something had to come out because the Scottish government unlike Westminster doesn't have unlimited borrowing powers when things go over budget.
 
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