Electrification Of The Midland Main Line Along The Derwent Valley
As I went to Sheffield yesterday, I took these pictures as the train ran along the Derwent Valley on the Midland Main Line between Derby and Chesterfield.
The river from Matlock in the North to Derby in the South, is the centre of the Derwent Valley Mills World Heritage Site.
And Network Rail want to electrify this line, so that fast electric trains can run between Sheffield and London via Derby!
This map shows the Midland Main Line from Trent Junction, South of Derby and Nottingham to Chesterfield.
Note the following about the route of the Midland Main Line.
- My train ran via Derby, Belper and Ambergate stations, up the route on the West of the map.
- Trains via Nottingham would go up the East, before joining the Erewash Valley Line directly up the middle to Chesterfield.
- A new Ilkeston station is being built, between Nottingham and Attenborough stations.
- There is pressure to expand the Robin Hood Line by reopening the Ambergate To Pye Bridge Line between the two stations.
- HS2 is supposed to join up with the Nottingham Express Transit in the Toton area.
- How many of the closed stations in the area will be reopened?
It’s certainly all happening around the Midland Main Line between Derby and Nottingham.
This is said in Wikipedia about the future of the Erewash Valley Line.
Network Rail as part of a £250 million investment in the regions railways has proposed improvements to the junctions at each end, resignalling throughout, and a new East Midlands Control Centre.
As well as renewing the signalling, three junctions at Trowell, Ironville and Codnor Park will be redesigned and rebuilt. Since the existing Midland Main Line from Derby through the Derwent Valley has a number of tunnels and cuttings which are listed buildings and it is a World Heritage Area, it seems that the Erewash line is ripe for expansion.
It would seem fairly logical to perhaps make the Erewash Valley Line an electrified one, with a maximum speed, as high as practically possible and just run self powered trains through the Derwent Valley.
There would be two real possibilities for running the services for the London Sheffield services, including those via Nottingham, up the electrified Erewash Valley Line.
- Class 801 electric trains
- Bombardier’s 125 mph Aventra which was reported as possible by Ian Walmsley in the April 2015 Edition of Modern Railways.
Obviously, other manufacturers would offer suitable trains.
For the London to Sheffield route via Derby, the following trains could handle the twenty miles between Derby and Clay Cross, that could be without electrification.
- Class 800 electro-diesel trains
- Bombardier’s 125 mph Aventra which can probably be modified with an IPEMU-capability.
- Voyagers modified as electro-diesel trains, as was proposed in Project Thor, could probably handle the gap.
- A Class 88 locomotive and a rake of coaches with a driving van trailer.
If all else couldn’t handle it, InterCity 125s certainly could.
Surely though, it would help the train operator to have one fleet, so I think we’ll either see mixes of Class 800/801s or Aventras with and without an IPEMU-capability.
The Class 800/801s could certainly do it, but in his article about the Aventra, Ian Walmsley said this about an order for Aventras.
But the interesting one to me is East Midlands Trains electrics. As a 125 mph unit it could cope well with Corby commuters and the ‘Master Cutler’ crowd – It’s all about the interior.
So the same train could do all express routes and also act as the local stopping train.
The maze of lines shown in the map, would be an absolute dream for such a train!
I also think it would be pushing it to run the Hitachi trains through Derby and the Voyagers and the Class 88 solutions aren’t that elegant and would be very much stop-gap solutions. Loved as the InterCity 125s are, after a lifetime of very hard service, they are probably ready for retirement.
As the gap is only about twenty miles, I suspect that Network Rail’s and Bombardier’s engineers have got the engineering envelopes on the table in a local hostelry in Belper to solve the problem of getting 125 mph Aventra IPEMUs to jump the gap, so that services between London and Sheffield, can stop at Derby.
Why are they in Belper? Look at this Google Map of the railway through the town!
Midland Main Line Through Belper
Note the following.
- There must be half a dozen stone bridges north of Belper station, similar to ones shown in the gallery of this post.
- The River Derwent seems to be crossed by the railway, periodically for fun.
- Get that line right, probably without electrification and their uncluttered design will live for centuries.
- Get it wrong and they’ll be lynched by the local Heritage Taliban!
- If Aventra IPEMUs can’t be made to jump the gap, there’s always the reliable Derby-built InterCity 125.
Just as Great Western Railway use iconic photos of Intercity 125s running through Dawlish in their advertising, I think that East Midlands Trains will use video of 125 mph Aventra IPEMUs speeding with little noise and disturbance, through the towns, villages and countryside of the Derwent Valley.
If this could be made to happen, at an affordable cost, everybody concerned will see positive commercial effects.
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