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Chase Line electrification

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The Planner

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Sorry Planner, but a speed upgrade from the pitiful Victorian 60 mph to the 75mph I read was planned, (& why not 80 mph) would have been worthwhile. Here is why. For about 10 miles of the approx 15 miles north of Walsall a diverted express would have saved 12 seconds a mile, about 2 minutes.
Before you scoff at this as trivial, remember the two main time based costs of running an expensive train like a pendalino are lease & crew costs. I have been told by people higher up the chain that these may total £150 an hour, that is £2.50 a minute.
If two expresses in each direction each hour were diverted via the Chase line an 80 mph speed upgrade would save £150 a diversion day, plus passenger time saving, plus a small time saving for local electric trains.
Of course the speed upgrade doesn't benefit Network Rail in the short term. It may add to their costs, but it benefits the rail industry & passengers. But this appears not to enter Network Rail planners' consideration. If the operators made the decisions rather than Network Rail the line speed would be raised perhaps to 80 mph & some curves eased. Network Rail making the decisions in their sole interest explains why our Rail industry needs such a stomping subsidy.

The line speed has nothing to do with diversionary capability, it is about delivering a half hourly service to Rugeley which 60mph does. Also answer me why Virgin had no objections at all to the proposal? Who would pay for the upgrades over and above what delivers the output for very little return?
 
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Bald Rick

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Sorry Planner, but a speed upgrade from the pitiful Victorian 60 mph to the 75mph I read was planned, (& why not 80 mph) would have been worthwhile. Here is why. For about 10 miles of the approx 15 miles north of Walsall a diverted express would have saved 12 seconds a mile, about 2 minutes.
Before you scoff at this as trivial, remember the two main time based costs of running an expensive train like a pendalino are lease & crew costs. I have been told by people higher up the chain that these may total £150 an hour, that is £2.50 a minute.
If two expresses in each direction each hour were diverted via the Chase line an 80 mph speed upgrade would save £150 a diversion day, plus passenger time saving, plus a small time saving for local electric trains.
Of course the speed upgrade doesn't benefit Network Rail in the short term. It may add to their costs, but it benefits the rail industry & passengers. But this appears not to enter Network Rail planners' consideration. If the operators made the decisions rather than Network Rail the line speed would be raised perhaps to 80 mph & some curves eased. Network Rail making the decisions in their sole interest explains why our Rail industry needs such a stomping subsidy.

That's not how it works. Rolling stock lease costs are based on time (usually 4 week period, although it can be less, but never by the minute), and distance travelled. 2 minutes saved on the Chase line affects neither.

Even then, £150 a day is a trifling amount to save. Even if it happened every day, it's About £50k per year, and that wouldn't pay for the cost of the upgrade by a long, long way. You can't say it benefits the rail industry if it costs more to provide than the benefit it brings back.

Network Rail is required by its licence to make decisions that benefit the whole industry. That does rely on those that benefit chipping in of course.
 

XDM

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Even then, £150 a day is a trifling amount to save. Even if it happened every day, it's About £50k per year, and that wouldn't pay for the cost of the upgrade by a long, long way. You can't say it benefits the rail industry if it costs more to provide than the benefit it brings back.

Network Rail is required by its licence to make decisions that benefit the whole industry. That does rely on those that benefit chipping in of course.

You will see from my first post that more than £150 a diversion day will be saved. Passenger time saved, on local as well as diverted Pendolinos, could add another £300 saved per diversion day.
And I bet Network Rail did not properly compute the extra cost of fettling the track to 80mph rather than the Victorian 60mph. Instead there were NR press office murmurings about old mine workings, which have taken max axle load coal trains for 40 years with regular hammer blows far greater than an electric express at 80mph.
It is true that Virgin did not object the Network Change.
If you knew the daily battles & exasperations all the TOCs & freight companies have with Network Rail you will understand why they only focus on challenging the major miseries inflicted on them by Network Rail's planners every day.
 

The Planner

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Again, why would we do that if it delivers nothing over and above the defined output, it was done for 75mph and that was not required. Virgin could have objected much earlier on in the development of the scheme, not just at the Network Change which is just a box tick.
 

Dr Hoo

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Again, why would we do that if it delivers nothing over and above the defined output, it was done for 75mph and that was not required. Virgin could have objected much earlier on in the development of the scheme, not just at the Network Change which is just a box tick.
Why don't Network Rail have the Network Change process earlier in scheme development? Surely it might elicit some sensible ideas for scheme improvement from actual users!
 

The Planner

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Network Change is for the final option, you cannot do it for multiple ones. It is down to the scheme sponsor to do the stakeholder option selection bit earlier in the GRIP process.
 

Bald Rick

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Why don't Network Rail have the Network Change process earlier in scheme development? Surely it might elicit some sensible ideas for scheme improvement from actual users!

Almost all schemes are developed in conjunction with the freight and train operators. Network
Change is the formal bit at the end of the development process, and it has to wait until then in case there are any late design changes for technical reasons (.which there usually are)
 

Bald Rick

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You will see from my first post that more than £150 a diversion day will be saved. Passenger time saved, on local as well as diverted Pendolinos, could add another £300 saved per diversion day.
And I bet Network Rail did not properly compute the extra cost of fettling the track to 80mph rather than the Victorian 60mph. Instead there were NR press office murmurings about old mine workings, which have taken max axle load coal trains for 40 years with regular hammer blows far greater than an electric express at 80mph.
It is true that Virgin did not object the Network Change.
If you knew the daily battles & exasperations all the TOCs & freight companies have with Network Rail you will understand why they only focus on challenging the major miseries inflicted on them by Network Rail's planners every day.
 

Bald Rick

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I do know the 'daily battles' within the industry very well. I've been living them for over 20 years.

To make a scheme like this pay, you would be looking for daily benefit of tens of thousands of pounds. And as the TOC would be the beneficiary, they would need to help pay for it. Ring up your broadband supplier, and ask them to upgrade your connection to 200Mbps, suggest that they pay for it all as it benefits the telecomms industry, and see what happens.

Ps still haven't got the hang of the new forum.
 

Lurpi

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I do know the 'daily battles' within the industry very well. I've been living them for over 20 years.

To make a scheme like this pay, you would be looking for daily benefit of tens of thousands of pounds. And as the TOC would be the beneficiary, they would need to help pay for it. Ring up your broadband supplier, and ask them to upgrade your connection to 200Mbps, suggest that they pay for it all as it benefits the telecomms industry, and see what happens.

Ps still haven't got the hang of the new forum.

Pedantic point (and I don't disagree with the thrust of what you're saying) - but TOCs don't, by and large, pay for upgrades on a project by project basis do they? In fact do they contribute at all, if their access charges are lower than the cost even of OM&R? Apart from the Chiltern Evergreen schemes, and that's not been replicated.
 

Class 170101

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TOCs won't pay you only have to see how much GTR are actually losing Govia in money terms when the actual bid was based on a 'profit' for shareholders. As is is oftne quoted returns tend to be around 3% GTR was a loss and doubtless most operators are somewhere in between.
 

absolutelymilk

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So do we think this will be ready for electric trains by December 2018? Has anyone seen much activity recently?
 

59CosG95

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More possessions between Tame Bridge/Walsall and Rugeley TV coming up:
No trains between New St and Walsall/TBP/Rugeley TV on Xmas Eve, in conjunction with New Street's resignalling. (Dec 24th)
Reduced service between New St and Walsall/TBP/Rugeley TV from 27/12/17 to 2/1/18, in conjunction with the resignalling.
Buses replace trains between Walsall/TBP and Rugeley TV on 13th and 14th of January '18.

20th and 21st of January, along with 27th and 28th of January:
Buses between Walsall & Rugeley all day Saturday.
Buses between Tame Bridge Parkway & Rugeley all day Sunday.

Hope this helps!
 

twpsaesneg

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Sorry Planner, but a speed upgrade from the pitiful Victorian 60 mph to the 75mph I read was planned, (& why not 80 mph) would have been worthwhile. Here is why. For about 10 miles of the approx 15 miles north of Walsall a diverted express would have saved 12 seconds a mile, about 2 minutes.
Before you scoff at this as trivial, remember the two main time based costs of running an expensive train like a pendalino are lease & crew costs. I have been told by people higher up the chain that these may total £150 an hour, that is £2.50 a minute.
If two expresses in each direction each hour were diverted via the Chase line an 80 mph speed upgrade would save £150 a diversion day, plus passenger time saving, plus a small time saving for local electric trains.
Of course the speed upgrade doesn't benefit Network Rail in the short term. It may add to their costs, but it benefits the rail industry & passengers. But this appears not to enter Network Rail planners' consideration. If the operators made the decisions rather than Network Rail the line speed would be raised perhaps to 80 mph & some curves eased. Network Rail making the decisions in their sole interest explains why our Rail industry needs such a stomping subsidy.

Except that the scope of these large infrastructure projects is decided by the DfT, not Network Rail. And to upgrade linespeed generally means a greater scope of signalling design, easing curves will require earthworks and potentially land-take, which gets into millions of pounds. Plus if you wanted to divert your two expresses an hour on the Chase lines what happens to the existing passenger service? Or do we resignal for 4 trains an hour at even greater cost?

Your £150 per diversion day, assuming that this was done 100 days a year (so pretty much every weekend) will generate a "saving" of £15000 per year. Unfortunately this would be offset by the greater maintenance costs of a higher speed railway, and more signalling infrastructure required, before you even start to look at the capital costs of installing it in the first place.
 

twpsaesneg

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Instead there were NR press office murmurings about old mine workings, which have taken max axle load coal trains for 40 years with regular hammer blows far greater than an electric express at 80mph.

Driving a 8m long tubular pile into a shallow mine working tends to cause nasty things to happen. NR RAM teams are also uneasy about the effects of mass gravity foundations over such workings as well.

Unfortunately if a collapse were to happen, you can't hide behind "Well it was fine for 40 years so we decided that it would stay that way". You end up in the coroner's court trying to explain it and also in front of the Judge trying to explain how that approach was fine under the Health & Safety at Work act and many others. Not many of the people who sign on the dotted line would do it.
 

dangie

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ChrisHogan

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It would enable trains to/from Manchester, diverted via the West Midlands for whatever reason, to regain the WCML before Colwich Jcn so it could have some use.

I doubt whether route knowledge retention could be justified for a another, slower, diversionary route in the West Midlands for VWC.
 

The Planner

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It would enable trains to/from Manchester, diverted via the West Midlands for whatever reason, to regain the WCML before Colwich Jcn so it could have some use.
I don't deny that, but unless the Trent Valley is shut and Bushbury Stafford, there is no reason for them to use it.
 

XDM

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Yes, though it will be a blue moon event if they use it.
But if the Chase line had been upgraded to 80 mph & not to a pitiful 60mph it would have been more attractive as a main line diversionary route. And the speed upgrade would have benefited the local trains too which will be capable of 100 mph. Limiting the line to 60 mph is what early Victorians would have done, two centuries ago!
Long stretches could have been raised to 80 mph without any land take. Network Rail & its hopeless bosses have much to answer for as I & my colleagues always tell opinion formers. It must be depressing being a talented person working at NR.
 

The Planner

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I have already explained why it is what it is and unless Virgin are paid to route learn it, they won't. The linespeed is to deliver a half hourly service to Rugeley, nothing more.
 

dangie

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I can clearly remember Intercity 125's using the Chase Line during weekend diversions. I have pictures somewhere, I'll try to dig them out. In the meantime I found this on Wikipedia.

"Passenger services on the line between Walsall and Rugeley Trent Valley were withdrawn in 1965, and the intermediate stations closed as part of the Beeching Axe. The line however remained open to freight, although until the 1980s it was not unknown for diverted Inter-City passenger services from Birmingham to Manchester, Edinburgh, Glasgow, etc. to use the line in the event of the Wolverhampton-Stafford route being shut for Sunday or late evening engineering work.
Passenger services were restored to the line and most of the stations reopened between 1989 and 1998."


I guess it was the restoration of the stations which ended the route being used as a diversion.
 

edwin_m

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I think the point being made here is that there are already multiple diversion routes available in this part of the country. There are existing electrified alternatives for Rugby-Stafford and Birmingham-Wolverhampton, so Wolverhampton-Stafford is the only section for which the Chase line provides the only electrified diversionary routes. Using the Chase line as an alternative to that section means that buses would also be needed to serve Wolverhampton.
 

59CosG95

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But if the Chase line had been upgraded to 80 mph & not to a pitiful 60mph it would have been more attractive as a main line diversionary route. And the speed upgrade would have benefited the local trains too which will be capable of 100 mph. Limiting the line to 60 mph is what early Victorians would have done, two centuries ago!
Long stretches could have been raised to 80 mph without any land take. Network Rail & its hopeless bosses have much to answer for as I & my colleagues always tell opinion formers. It must be depressing being a talented person working at NR.
Given the large number of abandoned mine workings under the route, I think 60mph is as good as the Chase Line's due to get, sadly.
The last thing NR and its contractors want is a PR disaster involving a collapsed shaft, triggered by excessive oscillations from trains running faster over vulnerable ground.
In a situation like this, it's way better to be safe than sorry.
 

Class 170101

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I could see a Pendolino or two going there during testing to push the OLE to its limits but thats about it.
 
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