Borders Railway Extension: suggestions on how this should progress

[Bald Rick]

Yes I realize you can't assume a structure will be fit for purpose and the structures would require remediation before use, but in the end of the day the vast majority of the large iron bridges on the old Waverley line in the Gala Water valley were refurbished and are used on the reopened line. I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that the Thistle Viaduct and the Kershope bridge could be reused as well as they're used today for farm vehicle access and they appear to be in reasonable condition.

Also, are you really suggesting £20M per mile for essentially a basic siding with a 25mph speed restriction, no loops other than a ground-frame operated run round loop at the railhead, no signalling or associated support infrastructure, and no stations? If the Borders line could be rebuilt as a fully signalled 90mph line speed railway in 2014 with a 1/3 of it double track and 10% of it on an entirely new alignment at £12 million per mile based on published costs (and yes I realise you dispute the official published figures but still...), I would have thought reinstating a basic low speed single line on an essentially unobstructed solum could be done for a fraction of that cost. You wouldn't need a gold-plated spec for a freight siding operating a handful of trains per week.

Yes, I’m seriously suggesting that, because I have been involved in building railways for most of my career, and have spent much of my life pouring through detailed costings of the same.

The cost of a new, double track railway to be built in future (and not in the past) is around £30m/mile, much, much more in some cases. Where does this cost go?

There’s a significant proportion of the cost that is incurred regardless of what the specification of the railway is. Consents. Land purchase. Clearing the route (de-vegetation, fencing, environmental mitigation, land remediation). Stakeholder management and communication. Utilities. And not least, in this case, assessing the integrity of the existing infrastructure.

Next, there’s another category of expenditure that is not directly proportional to route spec. Take track for example. By far the majority of costs of installing track are in the the costs of labour, plant, and the logistics of getting the materials there. There’s not really such a thing as ‘low spec’ new track. Sure you can buy second hand sleepers, that would save you about £15k a mile, and you might only put 200mm of ballast down rather than 300mm (although I wouldn’t recommend it there), that would save perhaps the same again. Thats it - everything else is the same. That’s set against total costs of new track of well over £1million per single track mile.

Civils is in the same category. The cost of installing a new bridge / culvert for a little used freight line isn’t much different to installing a new bridge /culvert on a new high frequency conventional passenger line. The civils works for this line would have to be to a higher spec than the existing Borders route, because it would see regular (albeit infrequent) heavy axle load traffic. Notably the existing Borders line doesn’t, which is one of the reasons why some of the existing structures could be retained. I’d be very surprised if structures that have laid dormant for more than half a century and carry the occasional tractor could accommodate 1000t freight trains with 20t axle loads several times a day with significant structural remediation.

Signalling is a fair point. Nevertheless, installing modern low spec signalling on a new railway is relatively cheap. The reason re signalling existing railways is so expensive is firstly that a significant part of the job is removing the old kit, secondly that the new kit has to interface with old kit either side, and thirdly that most of the work is done in 4 hour windows overnight, amd/ or in intense working periods at weekends and Bank Holidays, with extremely dire consequences if it goes wrong (and thus extra resources and contingency are planned). None of this applies to a new line. The costs of signalling the Borders line was relatively small.


Then on top of all of this, you would have hordes of people, most of whom who have never been to that part of the world, whinging that you were spending all the tmoney to open a freight only line, but that it wasn’t ‘future proofed’ to passenger standards.

Expensive business, building railways. Underestimate it at your peril!

 

[Pinus contorta]

I was thinking more about the paper factory in Hexham right next to the railway. Already chipped timber in containers would be no more difficult to transfer from a train in a siding than transferring and storing logs from a lorry in the chipboard factory.

I am aware of a Strategic Timber Transport Scheme which exists in Scotland. I don't know whether the equivalent exists in England. Would that be paying out grants to assist with feasibility study for things like this?

 

[Meerkat]

I was thinking more about the paper factory in Hexham right next to the railway. Already chipped timber in containers would be no more difficult to transfer from a train in a siding than transferring and storing logs from a lorry in the chipboard factory.

Which factory? From google aerial view the obvious suspect is the other side of the Tyne from the railway.

 

[Pinus contorta]

Which factory? From google aerial view the obvious suspect is the other side of the Tyne from the railway.

The one with all the logs stacked up and the wood chip. It may well have a plant there for generating electricity as well. I can't remember.

 

[Meerkat]

The one with all the logs stacked up and the wood chip. It may well have a plant there for generating electricity as well. I can't remember.

That’s the one the wrong side of the river

 

[oldman]

There is the Fourstones Paper Mill upstream from Hexham, right by the railway.

 

[Paul Kerr]

Yes, I’m seriously suggesting that, because I have been involved in building railways for most of my career, and have spent much of my life pouring through detailed costings of the same.

The cost of a new, double track railway to be built in future (and not in the past) is around £30m/mile, much, much more in some cases. Where does this cost go?

There’s a significant proportion of the cost that is incurred regardless of what the specification of the railway is. Consents. Land purchase. Clearing the route (de-vegetation, fencing, environmental mitigation, land remediation). Stakeholder management and communication. Utilities. And not least, in this case, assessing the integrity of the existing infrastructure.

Next, there’s another category of expenditure that is not directly proportional to route spec. Take track for example. By far the majority of costs of installing track are in the the costs of labour, plant, and the logistics of getting the materials there. There’s not really such a thing as ‘low spec’ new track. Sure you can buy second hand sleepers, that would save you about £15k a mile, and you might only put 200mm of ballast down rather than 300mm (although I wouldn’t recommend it there), that would save perhaps the same again. Thats it - everything else is the same. That’s set against total costs of new track of well over £1million per single track mile.

Civils is in the same category. The cost of installing a new bridge / culvert for a little used freight line isn’t much different to installing a new bridge /culvert on a new high frequency conventional passenger line. The civils works for this line would have to be to a higher spec than the existing Borders route, because it would see regular (albeit infrequent) heavy axle load traffic. Notably the existing Borders line doesn’t, which is one of the reasons why some of the existing structures could be retained. I’d be very surprised if structures that have laid dormant for more than half a century and carry the occasional tractor could accommodate 1000t freight trains with 20t axle loads several times a day with significant structural remediation.

Signalling is a fair point. Nevertheless, installing modern low spec signalling on a new railway is relatively cheap. The reason re signalling existing railways is so expensive is firstly that a significant part of the job is removing the old kit, secondly that the new kit has to interface with old kit either side, and thirdly that most of the work is done in 4 hour windows overnight, amd/ or in intense working periods at weekends and Bank Holidays, with extremely dire consequences if it goes wrong (and thus extra resources and contingency are planned). None of this applies to a new line. The costs of signalling the Borders line was relatively small.


Then on top of all of this, you would have hordes of people, most of whom who have never been to that part of the world, whinging that you were spending all the tmoney to open a freight only line, but that it wasn’t ‘future proofed’ to passenger standards.

Expensive business, building railways. Underestimate it at your peril!

Thank you for the in depth reply. Much appreciated. With regard to cost per mile, how were they able to rebuild the Borders line at a much lower unit rate per mile, especially given the fact that they had to build about 3 miles on new alignments and they had several large structures that had to installed as new build or have new decks installed (e.g. the A720 City Bypass underpass, the A7 underpass at Falahill, the viaducts at Hardengreen and Gore Glen, the Gala Water bridges at Galashiels and Torwoodlee)? Pretty much all of the smaller girder underbridges (which were intact before the project started) were also replaced with concrete structures to improve the overall project life cycle cost. Other than building to RA3, did they make additional savings with the line spec, or are there additional buried infrastructure costs that are not included in the advertised final cost of £353M for the project?

Also with regard to the bridges and freight trains, is it not the case that if you have a very tight speed restriction that helps negate the concerns with axle loading? For example, the only reason why they allowed RA8 locomotives on the WHL was with 20 or 30 mph restriction on all the girder viaducts. Also loco-hauled trains (and also freight if a market ever arises for it) are allowed on the Borders line, just with a 20mph restriction on all the refurbished wrought iron bridges.

Sorry for all the questions; I am a chemical engineer and definitely not a civil or structural engineering expert

As far as the people you mention who complain about line spec, I'm very much a glass-half-full kind of person. For all its perceived limitations, I'm just glad the Borders line was built at all and would be delighted if even a bare-bones freight siding was put back to take trucks off the road in the borderlands area. I very much doubt it will happen though... I'm more hopeful a case can be made to extend the Borders line southwards from Tweedbank. All the talk of the feasibility study seems to have gone very quiet in recent months so I guess we just need to wait for the report, whenever it comes out.

 

[HSTEd]

Far better to use the existing solution with zero infrastructure cost.

Well the premise is that the current solution of road haulage is no longer acceptable for other reasons.

 

[Bald Rick]

Well the premise is that the current solution of road haulage is no longer acceptable for other reasons.

And that premise is wrong!

 

[Bald Rick]

Thank you for the in depth reply. Much appreciated. With regard to cost per mile, how were they able to rebuild the Borders line at a much lower unit rate per mile, especially given the fact that they had to build about 3 miles on new alignments and they had several large structures that had to installed as new build or have new decks installed (e.g. the A720 City Bypass underpass, the A7 underpass at Falahill, the viaducts at Hardengreen and Gore Glen, the Gala Water bridges at Galashiels and Torwoodlee)? Pretty much all of the smaller girder underbridges (which were intact before the project started) were also replaced with concrete structures to improve the overall project life cycle cost. Other than building to RA3, did they make additional savings with the line spec, or are there additional buried infrastructure costs that are not included in the advertised final cost of £353M for the project?

Also with regard to the bridges and freight trains, is it not the case that if you have a very tight speed restriction that helps negate the concerns with axle loading? For example, the only reason why they allowed RA8 locomotives on the WHL was with 20 or 30 mph restriction on all the girder viaducts. Also loco-hauled trains (and also freight if a market ever arises for it) are allowed on the Borders line, just with a 20mph restriction on all the refurbished wrought iron bridges.

Sorry for all the questions; I am a chemical engineer and definitely not a civil or structural engineering expert

As far as the people you mention who complain about line spec, I'm very much a glass-half-full kind of person. For all its perceived limitations, I'm just glad the Borders line was built at all and would be delighted if even a bare-bones freight siding was put back to take trucks off the road in the borderlands area. I very much doubt it will happen though... I'm more hopeful a case can be made to extend the Borders line southwards from Tweedbank. All the talk of the feasibility study seems to have gone very quiet in recent months so I guess we just need to wait for the report, whenever it comes out.

Yes you can have speed restrictions for heavier trains, and indeed the Borders line has that now. Lots of them. However, speed is just one part of it, frequency of use is another.

How did the existing Borders line get built for £353m? Well, it didn’t. It was more. But of course that isn’t advertised (and I’m not at liberty to say how much it was, but let’s just say you need to include all costs incurred from the initial studies onwards). And, of course, most of that cost was incurred 5-8 years ago. With construction inflation since then it would be 30-40% more. Any line through the Borders now would be built 5-10 years from now, so you could add another 30-40% on top of that. +40% x +40% is just about a doubling. If you were starting the process of developing a case for building the existing Borders line now, you’d be looking at a cash cost in the region of £800m, or put another way, around £30m/mile, which is the benchmark ‘low’ cost for new railways that I mentioned some way upthread.

 

[HSTEd]

And that premise is wrong!

Well that depends on your criterion.

In my field we see the continuation of significant fossil fueled powered road haulage as fundamentally incompatible with the UKs treaty and domestic law commitments.

So the choice then becomes, hope battery electric artics become practical machines, or try and bear down on road haulage wherever we find it.
Or embrace the Siemens eHighway.

 

[Bald Rick]

Well that depends on your criterion.

In my field we see the continuation of significant fossil fueled powered road haulage as fundamentally incompatible with the UKs treaty and domestic law commitments.

So the choice then becomes, hope battery electric artics become practical machines, or try and bear down on road haulage wherever we find it.
Or embrace the Siemens eHighway.

Or accept it will continue, and find other, much cheaper and easier, methods of reducing and eliminating this country’s carbon footprint.

 

[HSTEd]

Or accept it will continue, and find other, much cheaper and easier, methods of reducing and eliminating this country’s carbon footprint.

There are very few, and likely zero, cheap and easy methods to reach net zero, as people who do research/studies like mine find out.

 

[Dr Hoo]

Has there been any serious consideration of whether the demand for wood/timber in its various forms is even likely to continue? With the development of paperless bureaucracy, use of plastic recyclates in 'mock wood' alternatives to divert from landfill, banning of wood-burning stoves, etc. why will we still be chopping trees down, transporting them tens or hundreds of kilometres, using more energy in pulping and sawing them up, mixing them with chemicals and so forth?

 

[Pinus contorta]

Has there been any serious consideration of whether the demand for wood/timber in its various forms is even likely to continue? With the development of paperless bureaucracy, use of plastic recyclates in 'mock wood' alternatives to divert from landfill, banning of wood-burning stoves, etc. why will we still be chopping trees down, transporting them tens or hundreds of kilometres, using more energy in pulping and sawing them up, mixing them with chemicals and so forth?

Still likely to be lots of demand for pallets and curiously in recent weeks toilet roll!!!

And to sit down. I hate sitting on a plastic seat myself.

 

[deltic08]

Has there been any serious consideration of whether the demand for wood/timber in its various forms is even likely to continue? With the development of paperless bureaucracy, use of plastic recyclates in 'mock wood' alternatives to divert from landfill, banning of wood-burning stoves, etc. why will we still be chopping trees down, transporting them tens or hundreds of kilometres, using more energy in pulping and sawing them up, mixing them with chemicals and so forth?

Think! We cannot do without paper and cardboard products especially now with paper disposable PPE gowns used in intensive care wards, face masks, paper hats, paper towels, disposable bed pans and urine bottles, boxes of tissues and toilet paper. Think of all the foodstuff that comes in cardboard boxes and cartons and virtually everything ordered online.

 

[Bald Rick]

Has there been any serious consideration of whether the demand for wood/timber in its various forms is even likely to continue? With the development of paperless bureaucracy, use of plastic recyclates in 'mock wood' alternatives to divert from landfill, banning of wood-burning stoves, etc. why will we still be chopping trees down, transporting them tens or hundreds of kilometres, using more energy in pulping and sawing them up, mixing them with chemicals and so forth?

Plenty of timber will be used in construction, for as long as there is construction. Arguably its use will increase, as it is much more carbon efficient that steel and concrete.

 

[Paul Kerr]

Yes you can have speed restrictions for heavier trains, and indeed the Borders line has that now. Lots of them. However, speed is just one part of it, frequency of use is another.

How did the existing Borders line get built for £353m? Well, it didn’t. It was more. But of course that isn’t advertised (and I’m not at liberty to say how much it was, but let’s just say you need to include all costs incurred from the initial studies onwards). And, of course, most of that cost was incurred 5-8 years ago. With construction inflation since then it would be 30-40% more. Any line through the Borders now would be built 5-10 years from now, so you could add another 30-40% on top of that. +40% x +40% is just about a doubling. If you were starting the process of developing a case for building the existing Borders line now, you’d be looking at a cash cost in the region of £800m, or put another way, around £30m/mile, which is the benchmark ‘low’ cost for new railways that I mentioned some way upthread.

Thanks again for the explanation. I totally understand on not being able to divulge true costs, but I think I get the idea where the extra costs come from. In the semiconductor industry where I work we have to deal with about 30% additional costs for “indirects” (programming, preparatory work, design and project management) on top of materials and labour; it sounds like the hidden costs are about the same order of magnitude in the rail industry as well. Again, thanks for the detailed explanation; much appreciated

 

[HSTEd]

Has there been any serious consideration of whether the demand for wood/timber in its various forms is even likely to continue? With the development of paperless bureaucracy, use of plastic recyclates in 'mock wood' alternatives to divert from landfill, banning of wood-burning stoves, etc. why will we still be chopping trees down, transporting them tens or hundreds of kilometres, using more energy in pulping and sawing them up, mixing them with chemicals and so forth?

The apparent rise of plyscrapers seems to presage a huge demand for timber in the future.

In addition equilibrium forests are not really CO2 sinks, so in some cases the optimum for carbon sequestration is to harvest timber and then pile it up in the Dry Valleys of Antarctica (or similar location) where it won't rot.
Also wood pulp is a potential feed source for ruminant livestock which could be important later.