The Anonymous Widower

Could Tram-Trains Be Used To Advantage North Of Manchester?

In A Plea For Help From Lancashire, I said this about creating a better service to Rossendale.

Perhaps one way to do create a service would be use Class 399 tram-trains to extend the Metrolink from Bury, if they are proven to work successfully between Sheffield and Rotherham in the next few years. After all, the first phase of the Manchester Metrolink to Bury was built by converting the old East Lancashire Railway,

I also said that I feel that the Germans and the French would use tram-trains in the area.

So how feasible would it be to extend the trams from Bury? This is a Google Earth image of the centre of Bury around the end of the Metrolink line from Manchester.

Bury Interchange

Note how the East Lancashire Railway from Bolton Street station passes under the A58 and turns east to continue to its next station at Heywood. The Metrolink stop is marked by the blue symbol labelled Bury Interchange and the tram line goes south passing under the A58 and the rail line.

I clipped this route diagram from the Wikipedia entry for the East Lancashire Line.

Bury Rail Lines

My untrained eye says that it wouldn’t be that difficult to have some tram-trains go via Bury South Junction and then up the East Lancashire Railway. A Buckley Wells Metrolink stop and Park and Ride has been proposed and the site is already owned by Transport for Greater Manchester. Although, I would suspect that the lines would run differently to those shown.

If  Class 399 tram-trains or similar going up the East Lancashire Railway were to be proposed, it would certainly result in at least two additional stops in Bury at Buckley Wells and Bolton Street. The biggest problem would be to decide how far the trams would go. Originally the electric trains on the Bury Line as it then was, went to Rawtenstall station. Wikipedia says this.

The Association of Train Operating Companies have identified that the community of Rawtenstall on the East Lancashire Railway Heritage Railway could benefit from services connecting the station to the National Network.

So perhaps this could be a possibility.

One of the advantages of using tram-trains to add a commuter service to the East Lancashire Railway, is that it would reduce the need to find heavy rail platforms at Manchester Victoria. There may be a problem though in the capacity of the current Bury Line, which has a double tram every six minutes. But then a second crossing of the city centre is being built and there are proposals to add all sorts of extensions to the Metrolink network.

Tram-trains are remarkably flexible vehicles in that provided the loading gauge, platform height and track is correct, there is a power supply and signalling system they can use, they can go a vast number of places on the rail and tram network. As an example, here’s one of Karlsruhe’s tram-trains in a platform in the main station alongside a TGV.

So the only thing that limits their use is the correct certification for a route and the training of the staff. Tram-trains also have the advantage that they can run at slowish tram speeds in city centres and at much faster speeds on rail lines designed for such.

In my view all this means that to expand the Metrolink outside of its current network, you need to get a tram-train that can run on the central network in the city centre and then gradually equip and certify all of the branches out of the city for the chosen tram-train.

It would be nice to think in my view, that we could come up with one specification for a tram-train, that could be used everywhere in the country.

To show how tram-trains could be used, I’ll use the example of the new service around the Todmorden Curve from Manchester Victoria to Burnley and Blackburn.

The Caldervale Line through Blackburn, Accrington and Burnley is going to be electrified in the next few years, so it would only be necessary to additionally electrify the line from Rochdale to the Todmorden Curve.

Rochdale where the train and tram lines are close together as this Google Earth image shows, gives two possibilities.

Rochdale Interchange

The tram-train could either go on the current route into Manchester Victoria, provided of course it was electrified or it could run to the city centre on the tram lines.

You pays your money and takes your choice depending on what optimises the network best for the passengers.

May 23, 2015 - Posted by AnonW | Transport/Travel | Manchester Metrolink, Trains, Tram-Train