The Anonymous Widower

Will Merseyrail Rescue Croston?

Like everybody, I have been watching the news and in particular the floods in the North.

There have been several reports from the village of Croston, which has suffered particularly badly!

I don’t know the village, but I looked it up on Wikipedia and found that there is a Croston station serving the village.

This Google Map shows the village and the station.

Croston Station

Croston station lies on the Ormskirk Branch Line, which connects Ormskirk on the Mersetrail network around Liverpool, to Preston and the the West Coast Main Line. The Ormskirk Line one of those terrible and neglected pieces of infrastructure, left behind after the cuts of the 1960s and 1970s,

Merseyrail have ambitions to connect Liverpool to both Preston via Ormskirk and Manchester via Kirkby with new electric trains. I wrote on this in Is Liverpool Planning To Invade Manchester By Train? I said this.

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In the October 2015 edition of Modern Railways, there is an article about Merseytravel looking for a new fleet of trains for their 750V DC network, which is entitled New Trains For Liverpool. This is said.

Merseytravel has indicated that it will be seeking ‘innovative proposals’ from manufacturers, with considerable emphasis being placed on the overall cost of operating the fleet rather than just the basic cost of the trains themselves. Options such as regenerative braking and onboard systems to store energy under braking to be used for acceleration will attract particular interest. The independently-powered EMU (IPEMU or battery train) concept evaluated earlier this year on a modified Class 379 in East Anglia ,might see an application here.

It does appear on a quick look, that a version of the new Aventra train, which comes with an IPEMU capability as standard might be suitable for Merseyrail, as it could connect Preston to Ormskirk and Manchester to Kirkby, without any more electrification.

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Some of my thoughts in the Invading Manchester post, is based on this document, which is entitled Liverpool City Region Long Term Rail Strategy, so it is not idle speculation.

A half-hourly four-car service through Croston and other stations in the area linking to Liverpool and Preston using IPEMU trains, would not help directly with the floods, but would get people into and out of the area without needing to use a vehicle on flooded roads.

I’m sure that the engineers from Bombardier and Network Rail will ensure that an IPEMU can operate some kind of service in conditions as we’ve experienced over the last few days.

Intriguingly, I have just been reading this article in Rail Technology Magazine, which is  entitled Bombardier enters key analysis phase of IPEMU. In a section entitled Market Applications, this is said.

Bombardier has started assessing potential customers for battery-powered trains, looking first at branch line applications. Batteries could be a solution allowing non-continuous electrified infrastructure, and emergency rescue and last-mile opportunities. 

Although emergency rescue is probably more about power loss than floods, Bombardier obviously feel that an IPEMU has some genes inserted from a cross-country vehicle.

Knowing the way Liverpudlians think, I suspect that what was said about IPEMUs for Merseyrail in the October 2015 edition of Modern Railways will happen.

December 30, 2015 - Posted by AnonW | Transport/Travel | Floods, IPEMU, Liverpool, Merseyrail, Preston