Could The Golden Mile In Houslow Get A Station?
A couple of words in Modern Railways led me to this article on the Hounslow Council web site, which is entitled Restoring Great West Rd to former golden glory. This is said.
He said: “We need a big improvement to the public transport links to realise our vision. We want to see a brand new station near Sky’s HQ by using an under-used freight line and create a new station – the Golden Mile’s very own station – and link it to Southall which will be on Crossrail.”
This Goggle Map shows the area.
Sky HQ And Possible Golden Mile Station
Note the following.
- Sky’s HQ is indicated by a red arrow.
- The rail line behind the Sky HQ is the Brentford Branch Line.
- The main road is the A4.
- The other rail line running parallel to and south of the A4 is the Hounslow Loop Line.
There are certainly possibilities to create a station here.
At the other end the Brentford Branch Line used to terminate at Southall station.
Around Southall Station
Note.
- The Brentford Branch Line curves into the Great Western Main Line to the East of Southall station.
- Trains on the branch could terminate in a bay platform in Southall station.
I have deliberately taken the Google Map over a wide area, so that I bring in the Southall Gas Works site, which is currently used for long term valet parking at Heathrow.
The site is to be developed and I just wonder, if the businesses and houses could be served by an extension of services on the Brentford Branch.
Perhaps a tram could run from the Gas Works site, through Southall station and then down to the Golden Mile.
- I have suggested a tram, as this would mean that extra stops would be more affordable.
- If it needed to cross the Great Western Main Line, a single-track bridge for trams would be more affordable.
- Trams could also go walkabout at either end of the core section.
- If the line was just used as a shuttle between Southall and the Golden Mile, to get sufficient capacity with trains might be an expensive solution.
- Perhaps a tram could sneak down to Syon Park and the River Thames.
I think that there are possibilities for a well-designed solution in the area to connect the Golden Mile to Southall station for Crossrail.
Railways In North East Poland
Look at this Google Map of the Polish town of Goldap, where we stopped for supplies on our holiday.
Goldap
Just to the North of the main road, it appears that there is the recognisable scar of a multiple-track railway.
Our Polish guide confirmed that Goldap had a large station with several platforms, and that it is still there.
Until the end of the Second World War, this area was East Prussia and was part of Germany. The railways were connected to the Prussian Eastern Railway, which connected Berlin to the major East Prussian city of Koningsberg. The Prussian Eastern Railway still exists as far as Braniewo on the Polish side of the Border, but there doesn’t appear to be a rail connection onward to Kaliningrad as Koningsberg is now called. This Google Map shows the area from Braniewo in Poland to Mamonova in Russia.
Braniewo To Mamonova
The white line across the map is the border.
You can pick out the old railway from Braniewo to Mamonova.
If we lived in a sane and reasonable world, which I’m afraid that President Putin doesn’t, it would appear that some form of direct rail connection could be created, which would connect Russia and the Baltic States to Poland.
There is the problem of gauge as like Spain, Ireland and India, Russian railways don’t use the same gauge as everybody else. At one time the platforms in Kaliningrad-Passazhirsky station, were arranged so that those facing Poland were standard gauge and the others were Russian gauge.
As a train enthusiast, wouldn’t it be nice to travel from Berlin to Kaliningrad by luxury train, spend some hours in the city, before taking a train on to St. Petersburg.
It would sadly appear that Putin doesn’t have the commercial nous to run the Russian equivalent of a whelk stall.
It is a long term ambition of the European Union to connect the Baltic States and Finland to the rest of the European Union by rail, they have funded the creation of Rail Baltica. This map shows the route.
Rail Baltica
The objectives are broadly as follows.
- Build a 200 kph double-track standard gauge railway all the way.
- By-pass Russia and Belarus.
- Put a lot of the extensive freight traffic in the area on the railway rather than the roads.
The overall aim is to finish by 2025, although rumours persist that the section from Warsaw to Kaunas in Lithuania could open this year.
An interesting take on the project is given by this article on the Latvia Public Broadcasting web site, which is entitled Rail Baltica hits buffers at Polish border. This is said.
Even though Poland has allotted €16 billion to modernizing its railroads by 2023, not a single zloty has been earmarked to be spent on developing the connection to Rail Baltica at the Polish side of the border with Lithuania. Without this 200-kilometer section, the planned high-speed European gauge rail from Tallinn through Rīga through Kaunas won’t be connected with the rest of Europe, reported LSM’s Russian-language site on Friday.
It does appear that the section between Bialystok and Trakiszki isn’t up to scratch.
There is an interesting take on Rail Baltica in this article on a blog, which is entitled Rail Baltica Project Directed against Russia’s Security, Pavlovsky Says. This is said.
The Rail Baltica project, eventually intended to link Berlin with Helsinki via Poland and the three Baltic countries is “extremely doubtful from an economic point of view” but has obvious security implications for the region and Russia’s interests there, according to Moscow commentator Igor Pavlovsky.
The project, which will allow trains to pass from one end of the line to the other without changing from Western to Russian gage track, may never carry as many passengers or as much freight as its boosters claim, he writes on Regnum.ru; but it can carry troops and materiel from the West to the border of Russia.
Ever since I first heard of Rail Baltica, I’ve been rather surprised on the silence from Putin and his merry thugs!
The Anonymous Widower 