Yorkshire Cannyness?
The railway between Leeds and York via Harrogate is severely overloaded and is run using the the dreaded Pacers.
Now it is being proposed that the line be electrified using a simple third rail system and reuse ex-London Underground, District Line trains.
It is an idea that might work and provide a better service.
Although I’m generally in favour of overhead electrification, there are lines like this where less intrusive third-rail electrification may be more suitable. On this line there is also a two mile long tunnel, Bramhope Tunnel, which would be prohibitively expensive or impossible to electrify using overhead wires.
Although this proposal is based around using London Underground D Stock, which are generally about thirty years old, there is no reason to believe that as CrossRail and Thameslink progress throughout London, that other suitable trains will be released.
The Anonymous Widower 
The Yorkshire Post said it would need a £25 Billion investment (from HM Gov, not Yorkshire folk of course). Seems a lot to pay for second hand rattlers. Then of course we are owed something from the promised Yorkshire – Channel tunnel route – bypassing London, they even bought the trains for that, then gave them to Richard Branson.
Comment by peter hoskins | July 16, 2011 |
I don’t know where that figure came from. A similar length of track, the North london Line in London from Stratford to Kew with about the same number of stations was upgraded with new signalling and overhead electric, cleaned up stations and completely new trains for a lot less. The total upgrade cost for the whole London Overground, which includes two new lines and complete refurbishment of three others with new trains was budgeted at about £1.5 billion. And this is for a scheme probably three times the size of Leeds to York.
Don’t knock the old District Line trains! They are infinitely better than the crap on Leeds to York at present.
I bet the Yorkshire Post figure included putting overhead lines through the Bramhope Tunnel. Anybody who suggests doing that needs his head examined. Even the Swiss, use clever and less expensive tricks to electrify tunnels, rather than effectively rebore them.
Comment by AnonW | July 16, 2011 |
[…] of Harrogate, who might or might not live up to that Yorkshire stereotype of being canny have proposed that some of these trains be used between Leeds, Harrogate, Knaresborough and […]
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