Toton Remodeling in advance of HS2 Construction

[mwmbwls]

Railway Gazette reports:

The Department for Transport has agreed to work with Midlands Connect and East Midlands Councils with a view to facilitating a partial opening of the East Midlands Hub station at Toton in the 2020s, several years before HS2 arrives in 2033. The DB Cargo depot would be relocated to another site within the East Midlands to facilitate the development of a planned Innovation Campus.

An image of the proposed Innovation Campus can be found here.
http://www.nottinghampost.com/news/nottingham-news/plan-open-new-toton-station-1049057

The construction of such a campus means that Toton Yard facilities will need to be recreated elsewhere. Where do forum contributors think that the "else" ought to be?

 

[edwin_m]

One possibility might be the Staveley area, where there is plenty of railway land and the moribund connection would need restoring for access to the HS2 maintenance depot (and in practice would probably be restored near the start of HS2 construction as it's probably planned to use it as a construction railhead).

Another might be the power station site at Willington. It's brownfield, with four railways radiating outwards, but hasn't been developed probably because of the relatively poor road access. That might be less of a problem for a rail depot than for alternative industrial or housing uses.

 

[158756]

Given the decline in coal and other heavy industry-related freight, would any new facility need to be on the same scale as Toton? Indeed might it be possible to move Toton's activities into redundant or underused sidings elsewhere.

 

[ilkestonian]

Where do forum contributors think that the "else" ought to be?

Given that the replacement site won't need anything like the length of sidings Toton has (had), there might well be enough space at either Stanton Gate or on the old Stanton Ironworks site, much of which is empty and had rail access until relatively recently.

Is there still a Network Rail virtual quarry next to the current depot? Presumably that also needs a new home, but not necessarily near the relocated DB depot.

 

[CW2]

Plans for transport links to Toton HS2 Interchange:
Click here for link to article

More than 20 villages, towns and cities across the East Midlands would have direct access to the HS2 station, including Leicester, Nottingham, Derby, Newark, Matlock, Mansfield and Long Eaton.

The business case for the proposals was funded by local partners and submitted to the Department for Transport in earlier this year. The findings will submitted as evidence to the National Infrastructure Commission’s Rail Needs Assessment, which will inform the government’s High Speed North Integrated Rail Plan to maximise the benefits of HS2 Phase 2b.

’The improvements span traditional rail, light railway, bus, rapid transit, conventional bus and route enhancements, and are all designed to deliver benefits to local people sooner’, said Sir John Peace, Chairman of Midlands Connect and Midlands Engine, during a virtual event to launch the plan on May 28....

 

[D6975]

There will be a need for a new maintenance depot and a new set of sidings, but they don't necessarily have to be in the same place. Toton TMDs geographical location was good for the coal traffic that formed much of the work for its locos, but what is the situation now? Where do locos maintained by Toton mostly work now?

 

[swt_passenger]

Plans for transport links to Toton HS2 Interchange:
Click here for link to article

This news was also posted a few days ago here:

https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/midland-connect-new-master-plan-for-hs2-hub-at-toton.204875/

 

[CW2]

This news was also posted a few days ago here:

https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/midland-connect-new-master-plan-for-hs2-hub-at-toton.204875/

Apologies, hadn't seen that.

 

[swt_passenger]

Apologies, hadn't seen that.

No worries, everything’s so spread about it’s hard to keep up isn’t it...