Bletchleyite
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There's plenty of room to add capacity on the car park and potentially in the depot area. The main thing it needs is a platform on the up fast.
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East-West Rail (EWR): Consultation updates [not speculation]
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It was, but I was sure that @Bald Rick or @ChiefPlanner had noted that it would be relaid as single track. Forgive me if I've misunderstood/misremembered.
I'm sure a Bedford North station would make a lot of sense by keeping commuter road traffic away from the town centre, but as mentioned, if platform occupancy is your only concern then a central turnback siding solves that easily enough, surely?
70014IronDuke
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I suggested this about 6,000 posts ago as a way to cut through the Gordion knot that is Bedford. But not "just to turn" Thameslink - but to act as a station in its own right to enable commuters to London (et al) living in Clapham and surrounds north of Bedford to avoid driving into the town.
Ultimately some sort of stations at Clapham-Oakley, Sharnbrook and Irchester will be opened/reopened, I'll be my life on it - though I'll probably be gone by then anyway.
swt_passenger
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There was a discussion you took part in back in August 2019 to do with areas of single track, but it looks like it was specifically to do with the route towards Fenny Stratford, which includes a number of single track road overbridges. But the main WCML flyover was built as a double track route towards the WCML, and remains so today.
Many thanks
Or at least crossovers so you can call at Platform 3 in the Up direction directly off the Up Fast without having to touch the Slows at all between Bedford North and South.
That can soetimes be worse - a train via the siding then requires two platform occupancies, once on the way in and again on the way out.
Dunnyrail
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You are missing some points here, first all of the Town Councillors in St.Neots are already salivating about the possibility of the long planned Transport Interchange at South St.Neots. For this to occur a Junction will be required on the new bit of the A428 in the Little Barford aree, together with a massive Oark and Ride Car Park. Currently not planned but you can bet the Councillors that are also District and County ones will be pressing very hard for that now.
Any Junction Station called perhaps St.Neots Parkway? Would provide a good service to Cambridge for the residents, certainly the Hospital at Adenbrooks now including Papworth would be much more accessible for Patients and Visitors. However at the cost of a drive from Town, if Another Station were built then a change may work better. Not so good for London as a drive and park would be required if the existing St.Neots Station were to close, bad I agree with you but in a mad world where climate change is currently only given lip service I can still see it being a likelyhood. Though I sincerely hope not.
My concerns go back to the serious proposals not a year gone by when as you said about Sandy potential closure for a new moved Station at Tempsford, this was a real proposal that common sense has passed by thankfully for the residents if Sandy. The thinking behind that location was at the time a proposal for a massive Garden Village at Tempsford with a Thameslink and East West Interchange Station serving 2 purposes.
incidentally if you draw a straight line between Bedford and Cambridge you pretty well come into a line that follows the old original route much of which could have been used as seen below, serving Cambourne is a near irrelevance as the Combined Mayors ‘Cam’ Electric dedicated Bus Road will be serving that and possibly St.Neots as well if it ever gets built.
edwin_m
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The straight line is a bit of a diversion (no pun intended) as it goes through the centre of Bedford which was never going to happen. Your start point needs to be either north or south of Bedford, and once north is chosen the straight line falls much closer to Cambourne.
What's to stop Thameslink being looped round to Cambridge (via Cambourne), once the sensible thing is done and EWR is electrified?
Or would that be a massive overprovision of capacity
Massive overprovision of capacity, adding operational complexity and not really adding any useful direct connections.
What's Town Councillors wanting sliproads off the proposed expressway for the station got anything to do with it being an idea that has very little usefulness for St Neots as access via the existing road network would be shorter and easier to use than slip roads off a road designed to give the town a wide berth?
I'm not missing points here - it's the opposite: you've found points that I'm not making, changed what my argument is on the basis of these fictional points, then gone back and looked and wondered why I don't discuss the issues that the fictional points I don't make suggest that I need to do.
As I clearly said, it was the dead option of Sandy North, not Tempsford, that was possibly going to close Sandy station. Your concerns are ill-founded and exist only because you keep deciding that people said things they didn't.
Said serious proposals have been rejected, and only existed because the station was going to be close to the existing one which doesn't apply for St Neots South or Tempsford.
As well as the key word being if, so what if it interchanges with the tram/metro/whatever at Cambourne?
It's little different from Thameslink stopping at Finsbury Park - a station already very well served with trains to Central London, but gets stops from all Thameslink trains (even if the next stop is Stevenage some long miles away) passing through so that people can change there and go to places on the metro lines.
Has any type of passive provision been made for this eventuality - or perhaps to put it another way has any construction taken place since closure to preclude re-building/re-opening?
https://www.networkrailmediacentre....tween-oxford-and-bletchley-given-the-go-ahead
CGI projections of the next phase.
CGI projections of the next phase.
D365
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The lack of OHLE in those rendered images is really jarring in the current environmental situation. The ban on petrol/diesel cars has been bought forward to 2035 (and hybrid cars will now be banned too!), and yet we're planning to open up a railway route (which, for all intents and purposes, should be considered brand new) without any form of provision for electrification.
P.S. The less I hear about hydrogen, when it comes to rolling stock options for EWR, the better.
Mikey C
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"East West Rail promises to provide a greener, low carbon transport system"
Indeed have EWR or anyone actually indicated what type of units will be running on the new route?
swt_passenger
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11 x 3 car “self propelled” MUs, according to Rail magazine quoted in this thread. No wiring is planned.
eastdyke
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Yes, seen nothing recently. A fleet of standard size, limited by Bedford P1A presumably.
Seems EWR will also be the TOC, for the initial services at least. Not sure where the units will be maintained, perhaps depends upon what they turn out to be.
If up-to-date, Linkedin lists Maria Cliff as Rolling Stock Executive at East West Railway Company.
Link back to Rail Magazine:
https://www.railmagazine.com/news/network/tender-set-to-be-issued-for-east-west-rail-rolling-stock
Dunnyrail
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I believe that the cancellation of electrification was done by Grayling in his paranoia about electrification after massive cost uplifts during GW electrification out of Paddington. I recently read somewhere that Ox-Cam may now be revisiting electrification since the government are beginning to take climate change (or at least low carbon economy) seriously.
PhilipW
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Is passive provision being made during the build for future electrification ?
Mikey C
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With Cambridge being a high tech City, it would seem very retrograde to have more diesels chugging into its station
Oxford is likely to be wired eventually, Bletchley to MK is wired, Bedford is wired and Cambridge is wired. Would there be scope for battery units with some selective wiring on route to keep the juice levels up?
Elecman
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Certainly Bicester to Bletchley ( and presumably Bedford) was to have passive provision yes. But i5 is infinitely cheaper to carry out Electrification on a closed route than it is once open to traffic
It's quite pathetic. As frankly, are 3 car units. They will be completely packed from the beginning.
They should really coordinate the Didcot-Oxford folks to continue onwards, at least to Bletchley, in one go - and ideally Bedford too.
The route to Cambridge being from scratch, it should be criminal to build without wires.
They should really coordinate the Didcot-Oxford folks to continue onwards, at least to Bletchley, in one go - and ideally Bedford too.
The route to Cambridge being from scratch, it should be criminal to build without wires.
D365
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Exactly my thoughts, that's a key point that Mr Grayling seemed to have missed during his previous tenure. No amount of bi-mode wibble is going to get away from the fact that the government is going to look a bit foolish authorising the purchase of further diesel or hybrid trains in light of the new legislation for road-based passenger vehicles.
Another tick in favour of electrification; plenty of PRM-compliant Class 321s will soon be available to get electric services rolling.
ashkeba
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How is using dated 30+-year-old "bins" with their unreliable heating/cooling going to look as a way to launch a new railway route? Flirts should be thoroughly reliable by the time EWR reaches Cambridge and capable of coping with any gaps in the wires.
Make that 40-45 years old by the time Cambridge is reached...
D365
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Well yes, but the lead times that manufacturers promise when it comes to new build stock are all too often over-optimistic...
This was the very basis for the "Electric Spine" proposal (25kV AC Southampton all the way to Leicester, Derby and beyond).
The Planner
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Not sure anyone has finished scratching their heads about how they get them to work at Oxford with the existing layout yet. It benefits them more in the up direction than the down, plenty of loops to dive in and out of in the down direction currently.
a good off
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Taking out the DPL (as it was then) to DM crossover at Oxford North Jn was suprising to us at the time.
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