Farewell To The Old Gospel Oak To Barking Line
Today is the last day, that you can ride the Gospel Oak to Barking Line to the East of South Tottenham station, until after the wires are erected in a few months time.
So I took some pictures.
I must say I have not been impressed with progress so far.
- It looks like a large proportion of the piles are in the ground.
- If the piles are in the ground securely, why aren’t more masts erected?
- There would appear to be no start on clearing the platform extensions.
- Only in one place did I see a work-site.
- I didn’t see anyone actually working.
- There is masses of litter
- There’s no sign of how the stations will be electrified.
With my limited experience of looking at large projects that are in trouble, this project has the air of something not being up to scratch.
What has really puzzled me about this project, is that the information coming from Network Rail and especially TfL, has not been up to the usual standard.
The Longer Overground Platfortms At Whitechapel Station Are Now Visible
This picture shows the Northern end of the Overground platforms at Whitechapel station.
Overground Platforms At Whitechapel Station
It would appear that they have grown enough extra platform length to accommodate all five cars, once some finishing work is completed.
It has been said that after Crossrail opens, these platforms will be at full size!
Have You Heard about…the New European Transport Strategy?
That is the title of an article in Georgia Today, which gives a solid overview of the strategy. This is the first two paragraphs of the article.
In 2013, the European Commission, in a EUR 250 billion European strategy which gives priority to the creation of an integrated transport network and seeks to level the imbalance between the Member States of the European Union, proposed the creation of international transport corridors, bringing together Western and Central Eastern Europe. In order to overcome traffic imbalance in the EU, nine multimodal corridors will be created, each of which has to combine at least three types of transport and connect three states.
The new infrastructure policy will unite 28 EU states under trans-European transport network (TEN-T). Nine transport corridors will be provided: Baltic – Adriatic Sea, North Sea – Baltic, the Mediterranean Corridor, Middle Eastern Corridor, Scandinavia – the Mediterranean Sea, the Rhine – Alps, the Atlantic Corridor, the North Sea – the Mediterranean Sea, and the Rhine – Danube. They will be grouped into three general areas of “East – West”, “North – South” and “Diagonal” corridors. The project is scheduled for completion in 2030. The transport corridors will receive priority funding to connect the east and west of the European Union. To finance the first phase of the project, EUR 26 billion was allocated.
I suppose that the Brexiters will say, that all it will do is bring more migrants to the UK.
But, think of the news a couple of days ago, when the Swiss opened the Gotthard Base Tunnel as is reported in this article on the BBC. This tunnel will have passenger trains, but one of it’s main purposes, is to get trucks from the roads through Switzerland, by moving a million tonnes of freight a year onto the trains. The tunnel removes a bottleneck on the Rotterdam-Basel-Genoa corridor, which has been named the Blue Banana by a group of French geographers.
This is the introduction to the Wikipedia entry.
The Blue Banana (French: banane bleue, also known as the European Megalopolis or the Manchester–Milan Axis) is a discontinuous corridor of urbanisation in Western Europe, with a population of around 111 million. The concept was developed in 1989 by RECLUS, a group of French geographers managed by Roger Brunet.
It stretches approximately from North West England across Greater London to the Benelux states and along the German Rhineland, Southern Germany and Switzerland to Northern Italy in the south.
Since when have Greater London and Manchester been in mainland Europe?
I also didn’t realise that I lived in a megalopis of 111 million people.
We are doing our bit to create the freight rail corridor from Manchester to Milan, by improving rail routes between the Channel Tunnel and up the spine of the country to Manchester and eventually to Scotland.
This must bring benefits to the UK in terms of freight and trade.
- At the Northern end of the route, Liverpool is creating one of the largest container ports in the world.
- Our car factories can export direct to Europe using massive trains, as I wrote about in What A Lot Of Minis!
- British Steel’s renowned long products from Scunthorpe can’t be exported easily other than by train.
- Mediterranean produce can be delivered fresher to the UK.
- Scottish food and drink will have fast access to the heart of Europe.
And these are just five small examples.
One fifty kilometre tunnel in Switzerland has just made trade for the UK, easier.
Some of the other transport corridors will greatly help Eastern Europe, of which some parts need all the help they can get. The article says this about Rail Baltica.
There is a priority project in the railroad Rail Baltica. The Trans-European railway Rail Baltica, linking Helsinki – Tallinn – Riga – Kaunas – Warsaw and continuing on to Berlin, is to be developed within the territories of the co-operating EU Member States. Rail Baltica will support the wider EU goals of parity of access to services and infrastructure of EU Member States and development of sustainable modes of transportation, improved balance and interoperability between different means of transportation, and the establishment of links with the rest of the EU rail network. Even as far back as the 1990s it was in the works to build an underwater railway tunnel between Tallinn and Helsinki, but the project was delayed due to financial constraints. This corridor also involves the development of river waterways and canals (Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands), as well as ferry traffic (between Finland and Estonia). The project cost is estimated at over EUR 3.6 billion, including 50% from the EU budget (program TEN-T), and 50% from the budget of the project participants. In the Baltic countries there is no such means, and there are discussions about the feasibility of building a high-speed road which will pass by numerous settlements.
I feel very strongly, that good rail and road links through an area, improve its prosperity. If we look at that small project of the Borders Railway, can anybody deny that it has been a success and that it has helped to enhance the place of the Scottish Borders on the UK Tourist Map.
As I write this Radio 5 Live is hosting a discussion on Brexit from Cardiff. Some of the issued raisded include steel and agriculture.
The Welsh may not like it, but an electrified Great Western for freight and passengers, will make South Wales fully part of the Blue Banana, which can only be positive for the Principality.
The Longest Underwater Electrification In The UK Since The Channel Tunnel
It may only be a tunnel seven kilometres long and a lot shorter than the Channel Tunnel, but the Severn Tunnel has two tracks, which both have to be electrified, so that the Great Western Railway can run electric trains to and from South Wales.
But the Severn Tunnel was built between 1873 and 1886 and it posed various problems during its construction with water ingress and since with operation because of its length, profile and the pumping of constant water. There is a section in Wikipedia, which is called General, which gives more details.
The Severn Tunnel is probably one of those places, sane engineers wouldn’t want to electrify a railway.
So I was interested to read this article in Rail Engineer, which is entitled Preparing For Severn Tunnel Electrification. The article gives this overview of the project.
The electrification project now moves on to probably one of its biggest challenges: the electrification of the 7.012km long Severn Tunnel. The tunnel will be closed to trains between 12 September and 21 October for the work. It is referred to as the “Severn Tunnel Autumn Disruption” or STAD for short and, just to make it a bit more interesting, included in the STAD are the Patchway Tunnels –1.139km Old (Down); 0.057Km Short (Down); 1.609Km New (Up).
Some facts about the tunnel and the work already done.
- More than 76.4 million bricks were used in the construction.
- Between 10 and 20 million gallons of water have had to be extracted every day to prevent flooding.
- There is also a ventilation shaft through which 80,000 cubic feet of fresh air can be forced into the tunnel each minute by means of an eight- metre diameter fan at the top.
- The contractors first had to scarify 2,500 square metres of tunnel lining to remove more than 35 tonnes of soot.
It is not a small job. But at least the tunnel was in better condition than expected.
The article gives a deep insight into how the Severn Tunnel electrification is a collaboration between several major contractors, who are installing a Swiss system from Furrer + Frey called Rigid Overhead Conductor Rail System in the roof of the tunnel. The ROCS system uses a rigid aluminium rail supported on appropriately designed fittings fixed to the roof of the tunnel. There is more on the ROCS system in this article in Rail Technology Magazine.
To makes things more difficult, the engineers have only got thirty-nine days to do the work.
And if it all goes wrong, there are two sets of politicians who will get very angry!
Is The New Bay Platform At West Ealing Opening On August 1st?
I heard a rumour that the new bay platform at West Ealing station was going to open on the first of August, but I have just found a change in the timetable, that could mean that it is true.
If you look at the on-line timetables, you will find the following.
At present the first two trains after 07:00 from Greenford to West Ealing, are the 07:16 and the 07:46, which go on to Paddington in twenty-six minutes.
From the first of August, they are the 07:13 and 07:43 which are shown as only going as far as West Ealing, where you change for Paddington and do the journey in twenty-eight minutes.
The strange thing is that these two trains are the only ones before nine, that require a change for Paddington.
The times of trains from Hayes and Harlington to Paddington appear to change on the first too!
There is also an additional electric service leaving for Hayes and Harlington at 07:18.
Could it be that electric services are starting on the first of August too?
The Anonymous Widower 