Crossrail 2 October 2015 – Capacity On The West Anglia Main Line
The West Anglia Main Line is an overcrowded line from Liverpool Street to Cambridge, Ely and Stansted Airport.
This Crossrail 2 document is entitled Services at Broxbourne, Cheshunt and Waltham Cross.
It says this about creating more capacity.
To create the extra capacity needed to run more services along the West Anglia Main Line, Crossrail 2 would require the addition of more tracks along the route from south of Tottenham Hale station to north of Broxbourne station. This would also allow for a further four trains per hour from all stations on the line to Stratford, in addition to Crossrail 2. In addition, the new tracks could also enable an increase in the number of faster longer-distance services between Liverpool Street, Bishop’s Stortford and Cambridge. We are still at a very early stage in the development of our proposals for the new tracks. We will carry out further consultation in the local areas about these proposals as they develop.
This is the first time, I’ve read that services all Lea Valley stations like Brimsdown, Cheshunt and Broxbourne will have a four trains per hour service to Stratford.
At present there are just a few trains per hour from Stratford to Bishops Stortford, but with the opening of the new Lea Bridge station next year, this may be turned into a more frequent service.
There is also talk of a service called STAR that links Stratford to Angel Road station.
There is a lot of circumstantial evidence on the Internet that mainly because of the need for more and faster longer distance services, whether Crossrail 2 is built or not, that the West Anglia Main Line will be given extra tracks from South of Tottenham Hale station to North of Broxbourne station.
If four tracks were provided this would allow the separation of slow and faster services.
But it would not be a trivial project as all the stations from Tottenham Hale to Cheshunt would need to substantially modified, with most given one or more extra platforms.
Although once it was finished, it would have created the tracks andreadied the station sites for the buildimng of the North-Eastern branch of Crossrail 2.
Crossrail 2 October 2015 – Tottenham Hale Tunnelling Site
This Crossrail document is entitled Tunnelling Worksite At Tottenham Hale.
This is said.
A new Crossrail 2 portal at Tottenham Hale would include the following:
A retained cutting approximately 300 metres long where the surface railway gradually descends to the tunnel entrance
The tunnel entrance, where the surface railway enters the tunnel and the tunnel boring machines would start from during construction
A worksite for building and equipping the tunnels
It’s all quite simple really and this Google Map shows the area.
Tottenham Hale Tunnelling Worksite
The worksite is the triangular area, bounded by rail lines, north of the Markfield Beam Engine and Museum. The rail lines are.
- The North-South West Anglia Main Line.
- The East-West Gospel Oak to Barking Line.
- The curve that allows trains to pass between the two other lines.
You can get a good view of the site from both of the first two lines.
The site seems to be mainly a site that collects London’s demolition rubbish. Some of the pictures came from Could This Be Where Crossrail 2 Is Dug?
In addition to the tunnel portal here, it may also be the starting point of the four-tracking of the West Anglia Main Line to increase capacity.
I have always assumed that the two new slow lines that are being built alongside the West Anglia Main Line will be built on the Eastern side of the current two tracks. I could have made a wrong assumption, but if this is the case, there will need to be tunnels under the main lines so that Crossrail 2 can join up with the slow lines.
The Anonymous Widower 