East West Mainline interchanges

[stuu]

If it's coming from Southampton or Tilbury - again why would you put it on EWR ?

There are trains today from Southampton to/from Doncaster and East Midlands Gateway. Both those destinations could be sensibly be accessed via EWR (although clearly it wouldn't need any extra curves in Bedford)

 

[richieb1971]

We know that EWR want 6 tracks at Bedford and freight was mentioned as a potential (future) excuse for that along with the x amount of passenger trains per hour in each direction.
We know that Felixstowe representatives were in the consultations at some point as i've had people correct me on the subject before.
The Ely / Peterborough route is a very busy route and not heavily upgraded over the years. If expansion to 100 trains a day is expected thats going to hit our supply chain hard if the Ely to Peterborough section is shutdown.

EWR has no use as a freight line at all in its current state.

The Cambridge bottleneck for freight is built into the design of the southern approach option.

A northern curve from the East will probably not be required on day 1, but in the next 100 years, i'd put money on it being put in somewhere on the line. Its hardly worth putting it on the ECML as that only has 2 lines north of Huntingdon and it doesn't do much different from the Ely line.

Bedford has the advantage because it has 2 under utilized lines all the way to Corby. Can access new depots at Northampton via Wigston junction/Hinkley route and only needs a few hundred feet of track to make it work.

Bletchley is too congested apparently.

Anywhere west of there is pointless and will require longer than necessary routes to reach anywhere desirable.

What have we learnt? That East-West rail paths are heavily restricted by a lack of investment, with low rated gauging, out of date signalling and the reason why we can't do this and that.

I get the feeling that folk on here don't believe half of what is said in the consultations, that much of it is pipe dreaming. There must be a history talking up things that never happen and the newcomers have just entered a world of naivety.

 

[tspaul26]

We know that EWR want 6 tracks at Bedford and freight was mentioned as a potential (future) excuse for that along with the x amount of passenger trains per hour in each direction.

I don’t know how many times I have to explain this on here, but the issue at Bedford is that EWR Co has to design the new infrastructure so as not to reduce existing capacity for freight and passenger services in order to meet the project objectives. It is not about future freight capacity.

This is not possible north of Bedford Midland unless two additional tracks are constructed between the station and the point where the MML and EWR lines diverge.

It is not a “potential (future) excuse”, but simple reality.

I get the feeling that some folk on here are wilfully obtuse if the facts don’t suit their pet preferences.

 

[richieb1971]

I don’t know how many times I have to explain this on here, but the issue at Bedford is that EWR Co has to design the new infrastructure so as not to reduce existing capacity for freight and passenger services in order to meet the project objectives. It is not about future freight capacity.

This is not possible north of Bedford Midland unless two additional tracks are constructed between the station and the point where the MML and EWR lines diverge.

It is not a “potential (future) excuse”, but simple reality.

I get the feeling that some folk on here are wilfully obtuse if the facts don’t suit their pet preferences.

Maintain current capacity for rail freight and make appropriate provision for anticipated future growth. I didn't write this.. its in the package.

 

[tspaul26]

View attachment 109444

Maintain current capacity for rail freight and make appropriate provision for anticipated future growth. I didn't write this.. its in the package.

Wrong document. Those are the strategic objectives from 2020.

The current project objectives (including as to freight provision) are set out in Appendices A and B of the 2021 Technical Report.

 

[Bald Rick]

Bedford has the advantage because it has 2 under utilized lines all the way to Corby. Can access new depots at Northampton via Wigston junction/Hinkley route and only needs a few hundred feet of track to make it work.

there is no way that you would have Felixstowe - Daventry traffic running via Cambridge, Bedford, Wigston and Hinckley. It would take hours longer than the current route, and would need to run round on the WCML at Nuneaton. If you were going to build a east to north chord for that traffic you would do it at Bletchley.

But in any event that traffic doesn’t exist. There are no trains from Felixstowe to Daventry. The boxes are on the A14.

 

[A0wen]

There are trains today from Southampton to/from Doncaster and East Midlands Gateway. Both those destinations could be sensibly be accessed via EWR (although clearly it wouldn't need any extra curves in Bedford)

Which offers little or no practical advantage over the current routes.

 

[stuu]

Which offers little or no practical advantage over the current routes.

It avoids the busy sections north of Aynho Junction, and takes diesel powered freight away from inner city Birmingham

 

[tspaul26]

It avoids the busy sections north of Aynho Junction, and takes diesel powered freight away from inner city Birmingham

The Bedford Tories and NIMBYs will be pleased to hear that, I’m sure: Tories in row over “freight doom”

 

[The Planner]

It avoids the busy sections north of Aynho Junction, and takes diesel powered freight away from inner city Birmingham

NR has over the last few years spent a lot on the Southampton to West Mids 775m project. Oxford to Aynho has been resignalled, you can loop at Banbury, Fenny Compton, Hatton, and Dorridge. East West could move or allow some flexing but at the end of the day a FOC will bid for whatever is best for them. As for diesel in Birmingham there are many more elephants in the room there than a few freight paths.

 

[Elecman]

But in any event that traffic doesn’t exist. There are no trains from Felixstowe to Daventry. The boxes are on the A14.

and there’s an excellent reason to build the necessary infrastructure to remove those lorries off the roads from an environmental point of view

 

[75A]

and there’s an excellent reason to build the necessary infrastructure to remove those lorries off the roads from an environmental point of view

Not to Daventry, but plans are afoot for a Freightliner depot to be built to the east of Hinckley with a capacity of 18 trains per day.

 

[richieb1971]

Not to Daventry, but plans are afoot for a Freightliner depot to be built to the east of Hinckley with a capacity of 18 trains per day.

Thankyou. And m1 jct 15. I'm sure all these depots sprouting up will use pre existing routes when there is no alternative.

Right now EWR seems to support Oxford to Eastern / Northern services really well. Where as Cambridge gets almost nothing except western connections.

If I were a PR person for EWR and my answer was "yes this is a new railway, but as far as freight goes the pre existing routes are all better" would make sad to say it. Imagine a new motorway being built and the builder said it was only for cars. Lorries have to use the pre existing motorways.

 

[zwk500]

Not to Daventry, but plans are afoot for a Freightliner depot to be built to the east of Hinckley with a capacity of 18 trains per day.

Thankyou. And m1 jct 15. I'm sure all these depots sprouting up will use pre existing routes when there is no alternative.

Hinckley won't use EWR due to the lack of paths between Leicester and Kettering - the connections at Nuneaton face away from EWR, so traffic will probably run via Birmingham. The M1 J15 will probably use EWR if it's heading to Southampton, although finding paths from Bicester all the way through to the terminal will be fun (there's nowhere a freight could be held indefinitely once you get past Bicester MOD).

Right now EWR seems to support Oxford to Eastern / Northern services really well. Where as Cambridge gets almost nothing except western connections.

If I were a PR person for EWR and my answer was "yes this is a new railway, but as far as freight goes the pre existing routes are all better" would make sad to say it. Imagine a new motorway being built and the builder said it was only for cars. Lorries have to use the pre existing motorways.

EWR is not a rail equivalent of a motorway, and there are many, many roads built to facilitate local housing that are not anticipated to carry significant cross-country freight. HS2 is the rail equivalent of a motorway, and freight is a fundamental part of why it's being built (but that's a different thread).

 

[75A]

Hinckley won't use EWR due to the lack of paths between Leicester and Kettering - the connections at Nuneaton face away from EWR, so traffic will probably run via Birmingham. The M1 J15 will probably use EWR if it's heading to Southampton, although finding paths from Bicester all the way through to the terminal will be fun (there's nowhere a freight could be held indefinitely once you get past Bicester MOD).

EWR is not a rail equivalent of a motorway, and there are many, many roads built to facilitate local housing that are not anticipated to carry significant cross-country freight. HS2 is the rail equivalent of a motorway, and freight is a fundamental part of why it's being built (but that's a different thread).

The new terminal near Hinckley will be connected to Jcn 2 of the M69 (links the M1 with the M6)

 

[zwk500]

The new terminal near Hinckley will be connected to Jcn 2 of the M69 (links the M1 with the M6)

Once the containers are on the road, they are very unlikely to stop again to be put on a train instead of driving directly to Southampton. My point was strictly about rail traffic to Hinckley, if there is any - it won't go via EWR.

 

[Pigeon]

An east to north curve from the Marston Vale over land taken up by low cost industrial units (so no NIMBY issue) to MKC plus an extra track (for which there is room) would largely provide this.

I agree... but I suggested such a curve myself on here a few years ago and everyone jumped down my throat screaming "You can't knock those units down!!!" - and I'd even figured it out so you'd only have to knock one or two down anyway. I didn't feel like starting it again...

Wrong document. Those are the strategic objectives from 2020.

The current project objectives (including as to freight provision) are set out in Appendices A and B of the 2021 Technical Report.

Isn't that half the point of this thread? We keep getting plans which include obviously sensible and beneficial things and then next moment other plans supersede them which don't have those things. Stuff like that has been going on ever since the project was first raised, and it's a good bit of the reason why it's taken such a silly amount of time for anything to happen. Now we find we can't even rely on a plan from 2020 still being followed, even though it's basically yesterday.

A good deal of the problem with shortage of capacity on the railways in general is down to features which improve capacity and flexibility being constantly pared back until there's only the bare minimum required to operate the very specific service pattern which applies right now - as long as no units fail and no staff fall ill and all other interoperating services run perfectly to time, etc. etc. Then when the need arises to increase the level of service somewhere, there's no longer any way to fit it in, and reinstating the lost capacity always becomes a saga and a half and may not happen at all, even though it doesn't require anything actually new as opposed to just replacing what always used to be there anyway.

Now we have a new route being created but with the same principles being applied despite the internal contradiction involved. Only the effect on the future state is that much more severe, because de-restricting it can't be done by reinstating removed bits, it means building the extra bits from scratch at vastly greater hassle than building them from the start at the same time as all the rest of it. And the service pattern to which it is being more and more tightly optimised doesn't even exist: the pattern is nothing but speculative proposals, and they keep on changing as people speculate something different.

Sooner or later if the thing is to be built at all it will be necessary to freeze this constant change to be able to tell the contractors "here are the plans, build this". As things are, this will mean freezing on one specific bit of speculation and building a line that can handle that and only that. But there is no reason to believe that a speculative idea which is thought to be realistic at the time of freezing will continue to be thought realistic as time goes on, any more than the ones that have come and gone already have; and there is even less reason to believe that whatever correspondence the speculation does have with actual reality will continue to hold.

If the speculation turns out to have been wrong, or if it was near enough right to begin with but becomes inappropriate as other circumstances change, then we will be stuck. A line designed to be useful only in one specific way is unlikely to be entirely useless for anything else, but it almost certainly will be a lot less useful than one which is designed to allow for things not turning out as expected and other things turning out differently in future.

Instead of designing down to a bare minimum which isn't even currently represented in reality by anything, we should be recognising that such a route has a multitude of potential uses which we can't predict, and current uses beyond the narrow limits of one speculative service pattern; we should be taking note of other bits of railway that have become useful or potentially useful in ways not considered when they were built, and what factors have allowed them to thus become useful or constrained their usefulness to remain potential or underexploited - such as junctions pointing the right/wrong way, good/poor possibilities for passenger interchange, presence/ease of electrification, etc - and taking the opportunity presented by the large scale of the basic construction project to anticipate these potential future needs without the massive additional hassle and disruption of patching more bits in later.

Something like an east-to-north curve at Bedford is a piddling bit extra on the scale of building a whole new line all the way to Cambridge, and it does not matter if someone advocating it hasn't got 50 million quid to pay some bunch of fat-arsed "consultants" to dream up a fantasy service that would make intensive use of it from the moment it's built (and then change their minds next year). It would have at least some immediate usefulness even if only for diversions, if it exists other minor uses will be found that wouldn't have been thought of otherwise, and if it isn't there it's as likely as not that its absence will become a serious impediment under some currently unforeseen circumstance, whereas its presence never can be.

But in any event that traffic doesn't exist. There are no trains from Felixstowe to Daventry. The boxes are on the A14.

So the traffic does exist, it's just using the wrong mode. This indicates that means to facilitate it using the railway instead should be provided, not that they needn't be considered.

 

[tspaul26]

Isn't that half the point of this thread? We keep getting plans which include obviously sensible and beneficial things and then next moment other plans supersede them which don't have those things. Stuff like that has been going on ever since the project was first raised, and it's a good bit of the reason why it's taken such a silly amount of time for anything to happen. Now we find we can't even rely on a plan from 2020 still being followed, even though it's basically yesterday.

I think you have misunderstood me: the strategic objectives set in 2020 remain in place.

The project objectives from 2021 put the flesh on the bones e.g. what is meant by “appropriate future provision for freight”.

In any event, the requirement for six-tracking north of Bedford Midland station is in order to deliver the EWR passenger service even if EWR carries (and has capacity for) no freight paths at all.

But if it is going to be delivered anyway, then the project objectives require that it be freight capable.

 

[richieb1971]

I agree entirely with what Pigeon has said. The EWR company is working with restrictions built in.

Again -
No northern curve from the East
Forcing Cambridge to accept entrance of EWR from the south (Which no doubt is where most of the bottlenecks currently exist).
Bedford Midland requiring super huge investment to accomodate all this expansion

£100+ billion for a railway that can't do this, can't do that.. And then having Nimby's screaming at the top of their voices. Folk on here accepting everything as "it is what it is". My home town of Bedford is already a major congestion area and this railway needs infrastructure improvements that hit most of the road arteries.

If this railway is trying to sell itself, its not doing a great job. You can piggy back all the fluff around housing development, town centre modernization and all that, but the railway has to be great on its own merit as well.

 

[Bald Rick]

and there’s an excellent reason to build the necessary infrastructure to remove those lorries off the roads from an environmental point of view

err, no, because the necessary infrastructure already exists - it’s called the GEML, NLL and WCML, and is the quickest route by rail from Felixstowe to Daventry. Building new curves that enable a longer journey time is not going to do anything to encourage modal shift, whatever the objective.

the reason the boxes are on the road is because for journeys of that length, by the time an intermodal train is loaded in Felixstowe and ready to go, the boxes can be already in Daventry via the A14, being unloaded.

There’s not many rail intermodal flows of that journey length where the road alternative is good, or the boxes are not specialist.

 

[tspaul26]

£100+ billion for a railway that can't do this, can't do that..

What utter tosh. Where on earth did you get this figure from or are you just talking out of a certain part of your anatomy?

And then having Nimby's screaming at the top of their voices.

NIMBYs gotta NIMBY. And if you think your proposals won’t stir up NIMBY opposition then you are very naive.

Or are you just being tendentious?

My home town of Bedford is already a major congestion area and this railway needs infrastructure improvements that hit most of the road arteries.

So we eight track MML and build bypass lines both north and south of the town, then.

Forcing Cambridge to accept entrance of EWR from the south (Which no doubt is where most of the bottlenecks currently exist).

There is insufficient capacity on the West Anglia Main Line from both the north and the south.

The key difference is that the south can be expanded to four tracks without acquiring and demolishing residential property.

Not that the NIMBYs really care about that: much better for someone else’s home to be demolished than for a railway to be built near theirs.

Bedford Midland requiring super huge investment to accomodate all this expansion

So should we expand Bedford Midland or not? You can’t have it both ways.

 

[Pigeon]

I think you have misunderstood me: the strategic objectives set in 2020 remain in place.

In that case, I did misunderstand you, completely: I thought you were saying that richieb1971 was wrong because the 2020 document he quoted no longer applied, having now been superseded by a 2021 document which contradicted him. Thank you for the clarification.

err, no, because the necessary infrastructure already exists - it's called the GEML, NLL and WCML, and is the quickest route by rail from Felixstowe to Daventry.

I thought the NLL was full, and that part of the reason for EWR had always been to provide an alternative route for freight because lack of capacity on the NLL has been a concern for ages.

 

[richieb1971]

What utter tosh. Where on earth did you get this figure from or are you just talking out of a certain part of your anatomy?

I should have put £1 billion, was at work on night shift, probably got HS2 on the brain.

NIMBYs gotta NIMBY. And if you think your proposals won’t stir up NIMBY opposition then you are very naive.

You are naive if you think NIMBY's are NIMBY's if their only agenda is stopping construction of a major project. From what I have seen almost all of them have constructive arguments that EWR is not a great project that delivers on what people want. Maybe they use what narrative works, but to me they have some valid points. The fact that Bedford had 2 bridges out for a year each and now we are going to go through this episode ALL OVER AGAIN gives argument to that. Do EWR know what they are doing? Is there joined up thinking between MML OHLE and EWR? I say not. Could have done the whole lot in one go at a fraction of the cost. The EWR team drumming up these ideas of a massive Bedford expansion at the cost of homes just adds fuel to the fire. The plans were not there 5 years ago, then suddenly we have these route E plans. For the record I see benefits for route C and E, but I see E as a major headache for Bedford. Even MML OHLE to Sheffield, its on, its off, its on, its off. HS2 north, its on, its off... Do you see a pattern here?

Or are you just being tendentious?

No I am not. I just want the BEST railway, something Britain can be proud of that ticks as many boxes as possible from the get go. Its not everyday the south of the UK gets a brand new railway, so I am very interested in its outcome. Consider me intrigued with interest. So far not impressed.

So we eight track MML and build bypass lines both north and south of the town, then.

Draw diagrams please I have no idea what this means.

There is insufficient capacity on the West Anglia Main Line from both the north and the south.

So another "Lets make sure the main station is connected but the caveats are this, this and this....."

The key difference is that the south can be expanded to four tracks without acquiring and demolishing residential property.

Not that the NIMBYs really care about that: much better for someone else’s home to be demolished than for a railway to be built near theirs.

My arguments were solely based on Bedford, I haven't read too much into the Cambridge area of things. Sounds like they are having a tough time there as well.

So should we expand Bedford Midland or not? You can’t have it both ways.

If Route E is built there is no choice. I am more worried about if they will do it well. Personal prefs are that they move the station south of Ford end road bridge. Or at least some of it. Plenty of room south of Ford end road bridge for a up fast platform. EWR have plans for Jowitt sidings to be repurposed for EWR so building platforms there shouldn't be too hard. From what I can tell at the moment BDM will have more platforms but not sure where they are going. I am pretty sure both Bromham road bridge and Ford end road bridges will be both shut again for up to a year. If they did them at the same time Queens park would only have access in and out through congested parked housing back streets.

err, no, because the necessary infrastructure already exists - it’s called the GEML, NLL and WCML, and is the quickest route by rail from Felixstowe to Daventry.

By road its 157 miles (London) vs 134 miles (A14). EWR is supposed to move traffic away from London among its other selling points. I see freight is not among those selling points now.


Since Bedford expansion is such a high priority, what about St Neots? Do they benefit from all of these EWR forecasted benefits that it offers?
All the other stations on the north south axis have stuff written about what exactly is being done there. Bedford and Bletchley are much more documented.

I wrote to EWR regarding junctions at these north south axis stations and they had nothing to give me. So either they are independent lines of the main trunk routes or they don't know what they are doing yet. The OP question really depends a lot on this outcome, anything we say is speculation.

 

[zwk500]

No I am not. I just want the BEST railway, something Britain can be proud of that ticks as many boxes as possible from the get go. Its not everyday the south of the UK gets a brand new railway, so I am very interested in its outcome. Consider me intrigued with interest. So far not impressed.

This highlights a key issue - you want any new line to have absolutely every bell and whistle that can possibly be thought of.
The reality is that the line has a budget, and it must focus on delivering the tasks it is instructed to do within that budget. I have made the point, several times to no avail, that EWR is conceptually regional not national infrastructure.
The trick (which a lot of very good people are working very hard on) is to leave as many options open for those who may come after you, without making your project too ambitious that it never moves forward.

Better than something Britain is proud of would be something people find useful. Better than ticking as many boxes as possible is something that ticks all the right boxes and none of the wrong ones.

 

[tspaul26]

You are naive if you think NIMBY's are NIMBY's if their only agenda is stopping construction of a major project. From what I have seen almost all of them have constructive arguments that EWR is not a great project that delivers on what people want. Maybe they use what narrative works, but to me they have some valid points.

They are by and large NIMBYs (at least, insofar as they are willing to say publicly).

Even if they were BANANAs, their underlying motivation is that they do not want new infrastructure built near them and are using any convenient argument to try to achieve that.

What are these valid points? Please provide specific examples so that we can assess them.

The fact that Bedford had 2 bridges out for a year each and now we are going to go through this episode ALL OVER AGAIN gives argument to that. Do EWR know what they are doing? Is there joined up thinking between MML OHLE and EWR? I say not. Could have done the whole lot in one go at a fraction of the cost.

Should electrification have been delayed until the EWR project was fully designed and consented, then?

The EWR team drumming up these ideas of a massive Bedford expansion at the cost of homes just adds fuel to the fire. The plans were not there 5 years ago, then suddenly we have these route E plans.

So do you oppose the expansion of Bedford Midland or not? Do you reject the need to add extra tracks north of the station? If so, why? Why are these infrastructure upgrades not required?

For the record I see benefits for route C and E, but I see E as a major headache for Bedford.

Bedford Midland and St John’s have to be expanded in order to accommodate extra services even if route option C were to be taken forward as there is not enough capacity.

Or would Bedford town centre be left with only an hourly stopping train to Bletchley (when it runs, that is)?

No I am not. I just want the BEST railway, something Britain can be proud of that ticks as many boxes as possible from the get go. Its not everyday the south of the UK gets a brand new railway, so I am very interested in its outcome. Consider me intrigued with interest. So far not impressed.

@zwk500 appears to have dealt with this:

This highlights a key issue - you want any new line to have absolutely every bell and whistle that can possibly be thought of.
The reality is that the line has a budget, and it must focus on delivering the tasks it is instructed to do within that budget.

Draw diagrams please I have no idea what this means.

Oh no, you are the one saying that something different to the current published proposals should be done. The onus is on you to explain and justify that change of course.

So another "Lets make sure the main station is connected but the caveats are this, this and this....."

Should the proposed new services call at the main Cambridge station or not?

If so, how do you propose to get them there without upgrading the West Anglia Main Line?

If Route E is built there is no choice. I am more worried about if they will do it well.

Bedford Midland would have to be expanded in order to accommodate the new EWR services even if a different route option was selected.

I note that you have not answered my questions as to what your proposals would entail and how these would meet the project objectives.

EWR have plans for Jowitt sidings to be repurposed for EWR so building platforms there shouldn't be too hard

What are these plans? I’m sure it would be useful if you were to share the source of your information on this.

I am pretty sure both Bromham road bridge and Ford end road bridges will be both shut again for up to a year. If they did them at the same time Queens park would only have access in and out through congested parked housing back streets.

This is what construction management plans and traffic management plans (agreed with and enforced by the local planning authority) are for.

Since Bedford expansion is such a high priority, what about St Neots? Do they benefit from all of these EWR forecasted benefits that it offers?

Don’t try to change the subject with ‘what-aboutery’.

I wrote to EWR regarding junctions at these north south axis stations and they had nothing to give me. So either they are independent lines of the main trunk routes or they don't know what they are doing yet.

The project objectives have been published in full. They are to design the infrastructure in order to deliver the passenger train service specification and one freight path every two hours between Oxford and Bletchley (in each direction).

No other freight provision is in scope although the infrastructure that is being built must not preclude freight operations in the future.

As such, your proposed junctions will almost certainly have been outwith the scope of the project.

Or, to put the matter another way, you are arguing that EWR Co should design a different project to the one they have been asked to take forward. You need to write to and persuade DfT in order to achieve that.

The trick (which a lot of very good people are working very hard on) is to leave as many options open for those who may come after you, without making your project too ambitious that it never moves forward.

Exactly right. Unlike allowing the perfect to be the enemy of the good as some on here seem to favour.

 

[William3000]

What utter tosh. Where on earth did you get this figure from or are you just talking out of a certain part of your anatomy?

NIMBYs gotta NIMBY. And if you think your proposals won’t stir up NIMBY opposition then you are very naive.

Or are you just being tendentious?

So we eight track MML and build bypass lines both north and south of the town, then.

There is insufficient capacity on the West Anglia Main Line from both the north and the south.

The key difference is that the south can be expanded to four tracks without acquiring and demolishing residential property.

Not that the NIMBYs really care about that: much better for someone else’s home to be demolished than for a railway to be built near theirs.

So should we expand Bedford Midland or not? You can’t have it both ways.

The southern approach also means that trains don’t foul up platforms and have to do lengthy reversals as the three key onward destinations: Norwich, Ipswich, and Felixstowe all enter Cambridge from the north so trains entering Cambridge from the south are facing the correct way for onward connections. If they approached from the north they would either have to miss Cambridge altogether or spend several minutes reversing along already congested lines.

 

[Nottingham59]

to me they have some valid points. The fact that Bedford had 2 bridges out for a year each and now we are going to go through this episode ALL OVER AGAIN gives argument to that. Do EWR know what they are doing? Is there joined up thinking between MML OHLE and EWR? I say not.

Totally agree.

Yes, I know that EWR wants six tracks to accommodate "future growth" in MML freight traffic, but actually that's a problem with the EWR project specification. If HS2 can decide to drop 6tph onto the MML slow lines south of East Midlands Parkway and (so they say) not build 6 tracks through EMD, then why can't EWR do the same at Bedford? Where is this future growth going to come from?

And in any case, four tracks is plenty to carry the combined traffic on the MML and EWR north of Beford station for the foreseeable future. Given that 4tph Thameslink trains terminate at Bedord, there must be at least that much capacity north of Bedford to carry EWR traffic. How many tph will EWR carry towards Cambridge?

 

[tspaul26]

Yes, I know that EWR wants six tracks to accommodate "future growth" in MML freight traffic, but actually that's a problem with the EWR project specification.

As I have previously explained, the six tracking north of Bedford Midland is not about future growth in freight traffic, but the requirement to avoid reducing existing freight capacity. This can only be achieved with an extra pair of tracks.

And in any case, four tracks is plenty to carry the combined traffic on the MML and EWR north of Beford station for the foreseeable future. Given that 4tph Thameslink trains terminate at Bedord, there must be at least that much capacity north of Bedford to carry EWR traffic.

Only if the existing freight capacity is reduced to one path an hour (and potentially none during ‘rush hour’).

How many tph will EWR carry towards Cambridge?

In terms of passenger services, the Bedford to Cambridge would have 4tph in each direction, with an option to increase to 6tph. That increase is not in scope, but the infrastructure has to be designed so as not to preclude it.

 

[DarloRich]

An east to north curve from the Marston Vale over land taken up by low cost industrial units (so no NIMBY issue) to MKC plus an extra track (for which there is room) would largely provide this.

I agree... but I suggested such a curve myself on here a few years ago and everyone jumped down my throat screaming "You can't knock those units down!!!" - and I'd even figured it out so you'd only have to knock one or two down anyway. I didn't feel like starting it again.

I have never said it is impossible. Far from it. I simply want people to acknowledge the difficulties and the costs associated with solving those difficulties in the real world. It is far more than just knocking down one or two units.

As an example: From a railway operational point of view where between Euston & Northampton would you move the depot capacity removed by demolishing Bletchley depot. In particular where do you propose to stable OTM in that section? All existing locations are full.

EDIT - from a personal point of view this curve suits my needs but requires quite a bit of additional funding in what is becoming a "difficult" funding environment.

 

[Class 170101]

err, no, because the necessary infrastructure already exists - it’s called the GEML, NLL and WCML, and is the quickest route by rail from Felixstowe to Daventry. Building new curves that enable a longer journey time is not going to do anything to encourage modal shift, whatever the objective.

Not exactly much room on all three, a longer route might actually be more viable simply because there is capacity on it.

the reason the boxes are on the road is because for journeys of that length, by the time an intermodal train is loaded in Felixstowe and ready to go, the boxes can be already in Daventry via the A14, being unloaded.

There’s not many rail intermodal flows of that journey length where the road alternative is good, or the boxes are not specialist.

But a 30 Box train needs one driver at a time as where as by road it requires 30 drivers. In terms of distance whilst its a fair point it assumes that the HGV drivers exist to move said boxes by road. I seem to recall recently comments being made along the lines of Freightliner was running a flow between Liverpool and Birmingham and that was the case because of a shortage of HGV drivers.