Linking Glasgow Central and Queen Street

[matacaster]

How practical, expensive and what would be the benefits of connecting the two main Glasgow stations with a short bit of track. This might involve permanent road closure between the two or perhaps a tunnel.

Views please!

 

[Carntyne]

You can't run above ground track between the two.

I'm yet to be convinced of why we need rail between the two, travelator tunnels maybe though.

 

[delt1c]

Always wonderded if closing St Enochs was the right thing. OK never as biog as Central but had access to North and South , so could provide limited iterchange

 

[Mag_seven]

You could only practically do that via a tunnel which would be far too expensive and complex (the southern bore would have to be well south of the Clyde) - they would be better getting on with Glasgow Crossrail.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

Always wonderded if closing St Enochs was the right thing. OK never as biog as Central but had access to North and South , so could provide limited iterchange

Buchanan Street also had north/south access by reversal.
But long distance and regional services were scaled back so much that it simply died, with remaining local services via Stepps taking a tortuous route into Queen St.
You can use Glasgow Central in that way too (was used for Aberdeen services during GLQ closure).

 

[route101]

Cant see them ever connecting the two stations . Would be massive task . Edinburgh is better for them connections .

 

[AverageTD]

Perhaps it would benefit Sleepers to fort William but unless Balloch or Mailaig get bigger demand for southbound services I don’t see the point

 

[Clansman]

Redevelopment of the Glasgow Central low level concourse with a direct walkway to St. Enoch subway station would probably be the cheapest realistic option. Anything involving expanding the rail network would be mighty expensive.

 

[NotATrainspott]

A heavy tunnel is not out of the question. It has been proposed before by SPT back in the 80s/90s, and has been included as a concept in a variety of transport planning documents since devolution.

Unlike Edinburgh, Glasgow isn't really on the way to any other city. While the ECML logically passes through Edinburgh between Newcastle and Aberdeen, Glasgow is quite out on a limb. If you do want to go from the WCML up to Stirling, Perth and onwards, you would go via Coatbridge. By the time you've gone into Glasgow city centre, you've added enough time to a long distance journey for it not to be worthwhile.

Accordingly, the plans for a tunnel revolve around suburban and regional trains. Glasgow has plenty of them, heading into both Queen Street and Central high level stations. Usefully enough, after EGIP there won't be much of a technical distinction between these services, as they'll both be run with 100mph 23m 6-8 carriage EMUs with doors at 1/3, 2/3 positions. A tunnel just wouldn't work without one type of train being able to run services on either side of the river, since there's no space to run extra trains.

The primary justification moving forward for a tunnel is that it can relieve both high level stations at once, without having any negative impact on passengers. Alternative heavy rail schemes like Glasgow Crossrail all involve some amount of disadvantage, with connections being lost and stations further from the places where people want to go. Central HL can plausibly see extra trains being run with new surface infrastructure (i.e. new platforms or tracks over the Clyde) but there's nothing that can really be done for Queen Street. My ever-favourite plan to dump tram-trains on Glasgow can only take 2 trains an hour out of Queen Street HL - maybe enough for 2030, but not enough for 2100.

A heavy rail tunnel would be one big investment for railways in Scotland. It would be of comparable scale and importance to the Queensferry Crossing, so it should be perfectly feasible for the Scottish Government to fund and organise it. Like the Queensferry Crossing, it will have an impact well beyond the local area. I've pointed out a few times before that there really aren't many trains across Scotland which don't end up at Central, Queen Street or Waverley. Adding extra trains between Inverness and Perth, or Aberdeen and Dundee, quite often depends on being able to run them all the way down to the Central Belt. If Edinburgh's too full, and people want to head down to Glasgow, then capacity in and out of Queen Street is going to be very relevant.

 

[najaB]

A heavy tunnel is not out of the question. It has been proposed before by SPT back in the 80s/90s, and has been included as a concept in a variety of transport planning documents since devolution...

Wot he just said. Making through journeys possible between places north and south of the Clyde opens up a lot of new work and recreational possibilities. The cross-Glasgow walk isn't the end of the world (many on the forum can do it in under 10 minutes) but it's definitely an inconvenience, especially when it's raining or snowing.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Wot he just said. Making through journeys possible between places north and south of the Clyde opens up a lot of new work and recreational possibilities. The cross-Glasgow walk isn't the end of the world (many on the forum can do it in under 10 minutes) but it's definitely an inconvenience, especially when it's raining or snowing.

That was of course true of Liverpool as well...and that got a heavy rail tunnel.

 

[DarloRich]

How practical, expensive and what would be the benefits of connecting the two main Glasgow stations with a short bit of track. This might involve permanent road closure between the two or perhaps a tunnel.

Views please!

it would be very expensive and quite impractical. That doesn't make it impossible however.

 

[Shaw S Hunter]

That was of course true of Liverpool as well...and that got a heavy rail tunnel.

And then the money ran out and Manchester failed to get its tunnel. Years later Metrolink came along and pretty effectively killed off such an idea with the Ordsall chord surely being the final nail in that particular coffin. Relating this to Glasgow the question has to be what is the demand, both current and future, for a cross-Glasgow link. Since this has been studied many times without a major scheme going ahead it would seem a safe assumption that the demand is not as great as some people think. It may well be that in the long term a Metrolink style solution will prove the most appropriate answer though tram-trains would surely be the best vehicle type.

 

[najaB]

Since this has been studied many times without a major scheme going ahead it would seem a safe assumption that the demand is not as great as some people think.

London Crossrail was first proposed in the 1930s. It took 50+ years of studies and false starts for it to finally come to fruition. As someone who has had to make the cross-Glasgow jog on *many* an occasion, I can assure you that the demand is there.

 

[Shaw S Hunter]

London Crossrail was first proposed in the 1930s. It took 50+ years of studies and false starts for it to finally come to fruition. As someone who has had to make the cross-Glasgow jog on *many* an occasion, I can assure you that the demand is there.

I certainly don't dispute the existence of some demand. I have made the "jog" myself enough times (as a visitor) to be utterly familiar with it. The question is whether the level of demand justifies the expense of meeting it by building expensive infrastructure hence my comment. Costs vs benefits.

 

[clc]

Most of the demand is from passengers who are travelling to Edinburgh. If Glasgow-Edinburgh HSR ran from Central there’d be no need for these passengers to transfer to Queen Street.

 

[najaB]

Most of the demand is from passengers who are travelling to Edinburgh. If Glasgow-Edinburgh HSR ran from Central there’d be no need for these passengers to transfer to Queen Street.

I'll agree with you there. Some serious money needs to be spent, either on HSR or linking up the two halves of the conventional network.

 

[takno]

Most of the demand is from passengers who are travelling to Edinburgh. If Glasgow-Edinburgh HSR ran from Central there’d be no need for these passengers to transfer to Queen Street.

Aren't the Shotts trains getting a bit faster once it's electrified? Seems like between that and the XC services you could just go to Central anyway.

 

[najaB]

Seems like between that and the XC services you could just go to Central anyway.

There aren't that many XC services - just over 1tp2h.

 

[clc]

Aren't the Shotts trains getting a bit faster once it's electrified? Seems like between that and the XC services you could just go to Central anyway.

Shotts might get more passengers using the semi-fast service but that’s only 1tph, so crossing to Queen St will still be preferable for the majority of passengers.

 

[takno]

Shotts might get more passengers using the semi-fast service but that’s only 1tph, so crossing to Queen St will still be preferable for the majority of passengers.

I'm fairly sure I'll still be doing the walk on the very rare occasions I need to depart from Central. I would have thought getting a Shotts semi fast would be about as fast as changing onto some kind of cross-city line for the journey though.

 

[Shaw S Hunter]

One measure of current demand would be to check how many people are already taking advantage of the through trains between Ayr and Edinburgh. Sure it'd be just a small snapshot but if there are people staying on-board during the reversal at Central it would at least demonstrate that demand for through rail services genuinely exists.

 

[edwin_m]

Unlike Edinburgh, Glasgow isn't really on the way to any other city. While the ECML logically passes through Edinburgh between Newcastle and Aberdeen, Glasgow is quite out on a limb. If you do want to go from the WCML up to Stirling, Perth and onwards, you would go via Coatbridge. By the time you've gone into Glasgow city centre, you've added enough time to a long distance journey for it not to be worthwhile.

But is it any less on the way to anywhere else than Edinburgh? Stirling is about equidistant, Perth is shorter via Ladybank but some trains still use the Stirling route.

If the Victorians had built a through station in Glasgow then I think it's quite likely that trains from the south would continue northwards every few hours just as they do in Edinburgh. The route via Coatbridge is a bit quicker but without the Glasgow patronage it's difficult to fill a train so there have never been more than a handful taking that route.

My ever-favourite plan to dump tram-trains on Glasgow can only take 2 trains an hour out of Queen Street HL - maybe enough for 2030, but not enough for 2100.

My own tram-train scheme, which nobody seems the least bit interested in, would be to drop some of the routes going into Central on the street south of the Clyde, with platforms on street near Central itself then up Buchanan Street and Sauchiehall Street, perhaps to use some of the former Caledonian routes to pick up some of the North Clyde lines somewhere further west. Although I've never worked it up into a detailed proposal. This wouldn't connect to Queen Street of course, though it could perhaps take some trains out of Low Level to be replaced by others via Springburn. Is Queen Street in its extended form really still facing a capacity crunch?
​

That was of course true of Liverpool as well...and that got a heavy rail tunnel.

Liverpool's a bit different as it already needed tunnels to get under the Mersey and there was the opportunity to sweep away a largely redundant terminus at Exchange as well as integrating and re-opening suburban routes (not all of which happened).

 

[InOban]

This is crayonista territory. Several miles of tunnel from south of the river, under it, under CS-LL, under QS LL, and climbing up to rejoin main lines somewhere beyond Cowlairs. Much of it through hard rock.

Once egip is complete to Stirling, I expect some services from there bypassing Glasgow.

Scotrail are already running some Ayr trains through to Edinburgh via Carstairs for those who don't want to walk or get the free bus. There's no worry about missing your train - the next one is in 15 minutes.

There are countless public transport projects in the Glasgow area which would have a better cost benefit score.

 

[najaB]

I would have thought getting a Shotts semi fast would be about as fast as changing onto some kind of cross-city line for the journey though.

The idea is that you wouldn't have to change twice - services from the south would either run through to Queen Street and terminate there, or continue on to Edinburgh or the north.

 

[najaB]

This is crayonista territory. Several miles of tunnel from south of the river, under it, under CS-LL, under QS LL, and climbing up to rejoin main lines somewhere beyond Cowlairs. Much of it through hard rock.

You do realise that hard rock is a tunneler's dream come true?

 

[NotATrainspott]

And then the money ran out and Manchester failed to get its tunnel. Years later Metrolink came along and pretty effectively killed off such an idea with the Ordsall chord surely being the final nail in that particular coffin. Relating this to Glasgow the question has to be what is the demand, both current and future, for a cross-Glasgow link. Since this has been studied many times without a major scheme going ahead it would seem a safe assumption that the demand is not as great as some people think. It may well be that in the long term a Metrolink style solution will prove the most appropriate answer though tram-trains would surely be the best vehicle type.

That's not how transport planning works. Inherently sound ideas aren't forgotten unless the justification for them falls through completely. What can happen is that the world changes and other things become higher priorities. In Glasgow, we had decades of motorway construction when the railways stagnated. All of the growth we've seen in rail travel has been easily provided for by the largesse of the Victorians building stations so large and so grand. We only need to think about taking things beyond the Victorians once their infrastructure is no longer enough, and that's what will be happening in the next few decades.

But is it any less on the way to anywhere else than Edinburgh? Stirling is about equidistant, Perth is shorter via Ladybank but some trains still use the Stirling route.

If the Victorians had built a through station in Glasgow then I think it's quite likely that trains from the south would continue northwards every few hours just as they do in Edinburgh. The route via Coatbridge is a bit quicker but without the Glasgow patronage it's difficult to fill a train so there have never been more than a handful taking that route.

Glasgow is the westernmost city. While Stirling might not be too far away, anywhere beyond the Tay isn't practical. Sure, if Edinburgh didn't exist, then we might see trains running through, but the country that exists is one far more easily accessed via Edinburgh. I doubt the Victorians would have bothered with through services anyway, because in a time of variable carriage rakes it would have been more effective just to have the train split at Motherwell. The post-privatisation railway with its fixed formations and desire for same-direction through running makes Edinburgh unbeatable.

My own tram-train scheme, which nobody seems the least bit interested in, would be to drop some of the routes going into Central on the street south of the Clyde, with platforms on street near Central itself then up Buchanan Street and Sauchiehall Street, perhaps to use some of the former Caledonian routes to pick up some of the North Clyde lines somewhere further west. Although I've never worked it up into a detailed proposal. This wouldn't connect to Queen Street of course, though it could perhaps take some trains out of Low Level to be replaced by others via Springburn. Is Queen Street in its extended form really still facing a capacity crunch?

The rebuild provides longer platforms and a slightly more optimised station throat. That's an improvement, but it's not going to enable any additional trains. The original 6tph EGIP scheme required the Anniesland service to be removed from Queen Street HL somehow.​

This is crayonista territory. Several miles of tunnel from south of the river, under it, under CS-LL, under QS LL, and climbing up to rejoin main lines somewhere beyond Cowlairs. Much of it through hard rock.

Once egip is complete to Stirling, I expect some services from there bypassing Glasgow.

Scotrail are already running some Ayr trains through to Edinburgh via Carstairs for those who don't want to walk or get the free bus. There's no worry about missing your train - the next one is in 15 minutes.

There are countless public transport projects in the Glasgow area which would have a better cost benefit score.

Again, it's come up several times in official government transport planning documents. It's not just some daft idea a bored train enthusiast came up with one day.

It's natural that it hasn't been discussed much up until now, because the lines out of Queen Street HL haven't been electrified. Until then, the plans for the tunnel would also need to include works all the way to Dunblane and Alloa. The wiring of the lines out of Queen Street is a sufficiently large project on its own, and can deliver worthwhile benefits independent of any tunnelling project. Crossrail should have been the same, with the GWML suburban routes wired up well in advance of tunnelling, but that was not to be.

It's not just about people getting to Edinburgh, either. Building a tunnel means that the region south-west of Glasgow gets a high-quality link to the region north-east of Glasgow. Today these sorts of journeys are only practical by car, via the M8 motorway through the very middle of Glasgow city centre. It's quite plausible that Edinburgh trains would continue running into the high level station until any HSR line opens up.

 

[clc]

Interestingly a TBM has just finished boring a 3 mile long, 4.65m diameter tunnel under Glasgow for Scottish Water:

https://stv.tv/news/west-central/1399866-three-mile-tunnel-dug-under-glasgow-to-stop-flooding/

 

[47271]

Funnily enough in the Highlands I hear more complaints about changing trains at Waverley than making the dash between Queen Street and Central. Kerbs aside, and so long as you've set aside enough time, there's nothing you can't do on the level between the two High Level stations. No lifts, no stairs, no escalators, fewer last minute platform changes.

Considering the phenomenal cost of a cross Glasgow link I'd suggest a wide range of better uses of strategic rail investment in Scotland than this.

 

[clc]

A 3 mile long tunnel from Shields to Cowlairs with an underground city centre station would be well worth doing, not so much for the cross city journeys it would enable as for the massive amount of capacity it would create ie. 20tph north and 20tph south, albeit not all of the additional northbound paths would be used. Likely cost £2billion.