Custom House Station – 25th February 2015
I took these pictures today.
The works are showing how long the Crossrail stations will be. As a Crossrail engineer said to me a few months ago, you may get complaints about all the walking the two hundred metres from one end of the train to the other. As she was female, I suspect she was thinking high heels and not her sensible work boots.
Improving Rail Transport In Warwickshire
Warwickshire doesn’t often feature in rail infrastructure, but I was pleased to see that work is poised to start on a new station at Kenilworth, according to an article in Modern Railways. This will be served by new services on the Coventry and Leamington Line.
The council has even put up a blog. From which I clipped this plan of the new station.
New Kenilworth Station Plan
Compare this with the area now from Google Earth.
Kenilworth Now
Note that the current pedestrian bridge is retained. It also appears that the line through the station is going to be double-tracked.
Plans are also in place to upgrade the Coventry to Nuneaton Line, with better services and new stations at Coventry Arena and Bermuda Park, for which work has started in October 2014. Does this Google Eart image of the Coventry Arena, show the work site?
Coventry Arena Station Site
There’s an on-line leaflet describing the station improvements on the Nuckle on the Warwickshire County Council web site. The fenced-off com pound, would appear to be in the fright place for the station.
Fom this leaflet, I think that Bermuda Park station is north of the Griff Roundabout, where the B4113 joins the A444. The leaflet shows the station at some point on St. George’s Way, where the rail line goes close.
Bermuda Park Station
These three new stations and the upgraded lines are the sort of improvements to be welcomed.
As the Coventry to Nuneaton Line connects two electrified main lines, I wonder how long it is before the line gets wired? Or would this be a classic place to use a battery electric multiple unit?
An Ideal Place For A New Station
This map shows the development site at Kirkstall Forge in Leeds.
Kirkstall Forge
The site is being developed between the A65 and the River Aire and the Leeds to Bradford rail line in a £400million scheme. This is from the developer’s web site.
Kirkstall Forge will be transformed into a thriving mixed-use community in a wooded riverside setting. Ultimately it will deliver new homes, a high quality office park, shops, restaurants, a gym, crèche and other facilities. The scheme will create in the region of 2,400 new jobs, boosting the local economy by more than £5 million per year.
The DfT will provide a maximum of £10.3m towards the £16.9m needed to deliver railway stations on this site and at Apperley Bridge. The remaining 40% of the cost is made up of a local funding package comprising a private sector contribution of over £5m, supplemented by funding from the West Yorkshire Combined Authority.
Surely, this is the type of development that is good for everyone.
It will be interesting to know the extra return that developers get, by having a rail station in their plans. In London, a station is being provided at Barking Riverside for developments there, but stations in new developments seem to be fairly rare.
The US Has 2,000 Level Crossing Accidents A Year
This is a chilling statistic, which is stated in this article on the BBC, about this morning’s train crash in California. As 250 of these accidents involve fatalities they are a major tragedy and illustrate how level crossings should be eliminated or at least made safer.
In this country we still have more than 6,300 and get quite a few accidents. At least Network Rail is trying to cut the risk in several ways.
Having ridden in the cab of a High Speed Train, I’ve had a unique view of the dangers as we sped to Inverness, although nothing untoward happened. But as level crossings came into view, you kept your eyes peeled for something that might happen.
Greater Manchester To Control Local Health Budget
\This report on the BBC entitled Greater Manchester Councils ‘to control £6bn NHS budget’, is surely the way for healthcare to go in the UK, as I suspect that health needs in various parts of the country can be very different.
Manchester is getting increasingly like London with an elected mayor responsible for various issues. Some of these issues are related, like the provision of good public transport to and from hospitals, so it is only right that they are dealt with locally. I am lucky in that my three local hospitals; the Royal London, Homerton and University College are all an easy bus ride or train journey away, but what proportion of the UK population, need to get a car or taxi to their local hospital?
The Anonymous Widower 