Improvements To The East Coast Main Line Through West Yorkshire
This article in Rail Technology Magazine is entitled West Yorkshire to agree £3bn ‘whole route ethos’ investment in ECML.
The article doesn’t go into much detail, but it does explain how a lot of work is needed not only to improve London to Newcastle and |Edinburgh times, but to accommodate high speed services across the North of England.
Looking at the East Coast Main Line on Wikipedia, throws up these improvements.
- Creation of a platform 0 at Doncaster station, which was completed in December 2016.
- Improvements through York station.
- South of Newcastle to Northallerton (which is also predominately double track), leading to proposals to reopen the Leamside line to passenger and freight traffic.
- Electrification of Northallerton to Middlesbrough.
- Electrification the line between Leeds and York (Neville Hill Depot to Colton Junction) as a diversionary route and a route for Liverpool to Newcastle services via Manchester and Leeds.
- Upgrade the line for 140 mph running under ERMTS.
I also think that the Treasury-specified economy electrification should be upgraded to a modern standard. They didn’t make much of a saving as upgrading the line to a modern standard will cost £1.3billion.
Hopefully, these improvements will allow London to Edinburgh in four hours.
Also helping with this goal is the project announced in this article on the Rail Magazine web site, which is entitled NR seeks fourth track north of Huntingdon. The article indicates that this work together with improvements at Werrington Junction, which I wrote about in To Dive Or Fly At Werrington, would improve capacity on the East Coast Main Line.
Driver Only Train Operation In Yorkshire
One of my readers has just sent me this story from the Yorkshire Post, which is entitled Commuter chaos in Yorkshire after train driver leaves conductor behind.
No-one seems to have been hurt in this demonstration of Driver Only Operation, so perhaps as a matter of honour, the RMT should look at more efficient ways of train operation.
Trump Shoots The Messenger
This article on the BBC is entitled Trump sacks defiant acting attorney general.
This is said.
Donald Trump has fired the acting US attorney general, after she questioned the legality of his immigration ban.
I think that the only winners on this spat will be American lawyers.
Should Brexit Mean A Return To £sd?
Why not?
I wouldn’t have a problem, as I honed my £sd skills in a pub, where a bottle of Guinness was one shilling and eight pence or three for five shillings.
Those were the days!
Worcester Parkway Station Given The Green Light
According to this article in the Worcester News, Worcester Parkway station has been given the green light by the Government.
Clearing of the site will start this winter.
This is another station project to be given the go-ahead, since I wrote Government Focuses On New Stations And Trains. So it could be that Chris Grayling has changed direction at the Department of Transport.
The Worcester News article gives more details of the station.
- New Class 800 trains will go direct on the Cotswold Line to Oxford and Paddington.
- Services between Gloucester and Birmingham will also stop.
- The station is close to Junction 7 of the M5.
- The station will have 500 parking spaces.
It should be noted that Worcester Foregate Street station is on a restricted site and has no parking and Worcester Shrub Hill station has only 121 spaces. I suspect that the two current stations don’t probably encourage mode shift from car to train by travellers.
The article says this about funding.
The majority of the budget for the scheme will be self-funded through station car park fees and access charges levied on the Train Operating Companies, along with £8.3 million from the Worcestershire Local Enterprise Partnership through the Government’s Growth Deal.
Worcestershire Local Enterprise Partnership is very hopeful that the new station will be good for the local economy and employment.
It certainly looks like it will improve the journey of commuters and travellers from the Worcester area to Birmingham and London.
I also wonder, if once the station is built, there will be opportunities for the train companies to use trains more efficiently and add extra services to and from Worcester. Could some of these inefficiencies release valuable development land in the centre of Worcester?
Worcester Parkway is not a normal station project reliant on a lot of local and central government funding, but one with several different ways of raising the finance.
Will Passengers Step Up Into Scotland’s New Trains?
Obviously, I’ve not seen a new Class 385 train in the metal yet, but I despair at this picture.
As I wrote in A Design Crime – Class 395 Train Platform Interface, which is about another Hitachi product; the Class 395 train, it appears that the train-platform interface is no better.
It could be that the train was not in one of the platforms that it will actually serve, but if the Overground and its Class 378 trains were able to get it substantially right in 2010, then surely new trains and a rebuilt railway should be tip-top.
A Visit To The Design Museum
I visited the Design Museum yesterday.
It is an interesting concept and I think as it settles down it will be worth visiting again.
One problem, I had with the Museum is getting to and from the site in Holland Park.
I went by the Underground to High Street Kensington station and took about ten minutes to walk along to the museum.
Coming back, I thought I’d go a different way after a walk.
But after emerging from the Museum, there were none of London’s excellent Legible London maps and signs to be seen.
Eventually, I walked through Holland Park, but it was the same story on the other side of the Park; no maps or signs to the Underground. There were several fingerposts in the Park, but none pointed to the Underground.
I suppose if you’re in a Chelsea Tractor, many of which were rushing around the area, you’re not interested in walking maps and are against your Council spending monry on them, as it might attract more visitors.
UK ‘Need Not Fear Electricity Blackouts’ Says Ex-National Grid Boss
This is the title of another article on the BBC.
This is said.
The UK has enough energy capacity to meet demand – even on the coldest days when demand is highest, says Steve Holliday, the man who ran National Grid for a decade.
He said news stories raising fears about blackouts should stop.
The article goes on to say how gas and coal-fired plants that would have been scrapped will fill any gaps.
They may do, but I have this feeling that energy users and especially big ones are much more savvy than they used to be and I wouldn’t be surprised to see the UK manage next winter without using coal, which produces a lot more CO2 and pollution, than natural gas.
I also think that after 2018, we’ll start to see new technologies and projects generating electricity or bringing it to the UK.
We might even have seen a start on the ICElik or Atlantic Superconnector, which will bring green electricity from Iceland to the UK.
Trump’s Executive Order: Amateur Hour At The White House?
The title of this post is the title of this article on the BBC.
The article compares President Bush’s reaction to Hurricane Katrina, with Trummkopf’s immigration executive order.
It says this.
History will judge the long-term impact of Mr Trump’s Friday afternoon immigration order, but his early praise for its implementation will not easily be forgotten.
I don’t think we’ll even need to wait until the history is long enough to judge.
I suspect the BBC article will be denounced as fake news.
But I do wonder, if his immigration policy will be good for the nice holiday places to visit in the rest of the world.
If say, you were thinking of going to Florida for a holiday, will you now be thinking about Greece or Spain?
The Anonymous Widower 