Two Tram Routes Start Construction In A Week
On The 14th of January I wrote Work Start’s On Extending Manchester Metrolink To The Trafford Centre, about a new line on the Manchester Metrolink.
Today, this article on Global Rail News, which is entitled Midland Metro begins prepping route of extension to Brierley Hill, has been published.
So it would appear, that what’s good for Manchester, is also good for Birmingham.
Admittedly, all Birmingham is doing at the moment is clearing the South Staffordshire Line of vegetation to assess the route, prior to the start of construction in 2019 for opening in 2023, which is probably a couple of years behind the Trafford Line.
Piccadilly Circus Has Gone Dark
Pictures like these of Piccadilly Circus will be all over the media for a couple of days.
It’s only so that the screens can be replaced with ones that are bigger and better.
The New Cardinal Place Entrance At Victoria Tube Station
In The Start Of Change At Victoria Tube Station, I talked about the new Cardinal Place entrance to Victoria tube station.
It opened this morning and I took these pictures as I used it to get to an Eastbound District Line train.
It’s obviously not fully finished and it had only just been opened.
But passengers were able to flow straight through the gates and down the escalators to the Victoria Line platforms. So there won’t many of them, but it was lunchtime.
The Victoria Line platforms now have three sets of escalators.
- The original set of three at the Southern end linking to the original ticket hall and Victoria station.
- The new set of three at the Northern end linking to the new ticket hall and the new Cardinal Place entrance.
- In the middle another bank of three link to cross passages under the District and Circle Line platforms.
Passengers only wanting to change lines at Victoria would appear to be separated from those needing to enter or exit the Underground station.
It’ll be interesting to see, how passengers distribute themselves between the two station entrances.
- If you are coming from or going to Victoria station, you’ll probably still use the existing route.
- If you are coming from or going to Victoria Street, Westminster City Hall, Westminster Cathedral or Cardinal Place, you’ll probably use the new Cardinal Place entrance.
- Travellers to and from the Victoria Palace and Apollo Victoria rheatres, who want to use the Underground, will probably have better access.
A guy who worked in the station, felt that passengers wanting to get to or from the District and Circle Lines could be the major beneficiaries and he should know his passenger flows better than most.
As this is only an interim solution until the rest of the Underground station opens in 2018, it is certainly a quality improvement.
Wikipedia also says this about improvements at the main line station end of the Underground station.
The work will also enlarge the existing Victoria line ticket hall serving the railway station and add a new relief bank of escalators there. This aspect of the scheme has been criticised as access to platforms from the new escalators will be very long and indirect compared to the direct access using the existing escalators.
On the other hand, with all the new routes and escalators in Victoria tube station coupled with substantial capacity improvements on the Underground Lines through the station, I suspect that it’ll all even out, as passengers find their own best routes.
Incidentally, I arrived at Victoria station on a 38 bus from Piccadilly Circus and although it was the middle of the day, the access couldn’t be faulted.
Once all the building work is complete, I suspect the buses will have a bugger part to play.
The Holloway Road Bridge Is Now Open
I took these pictures this morning of the reopened bridge by Upper Holloway station.
Note there are no wires on the tracks of the Gospel Oak to Barking Line. But it does look, that the line could be run with the current Class 172 trains
RMT Fights Trains That Might Have Saved Girl
This is the headline on an article in today’s Sunday Times.
It is only for balance that you read the whole article, but I predict there could be an almighty row over over Merseyrail’s new Stadler trains, which as the article describes, are designed totally with safety in mind.
But not the RMT!
Scheduled Steam-Hauled Services For the Settle And Carlisle Railway
The iconic Settle and Carlisle Railway has not had a good recent history.
A section in the Wikipedia entry for the line called 2015–16 Temporary Closures, gives full details of the damage wreaked by various storms. The section finishes with this statement.
The £23 million project is now scheduled for completion by the end of March 2017.
This gives an indication of the serious nature of the damage.
Northern obviously feel that some good publicity is needed to tell everybody that the Settle and Carlisle Line is open for business.
This article in Rail Magazine is entitled Steam to run timetabled Northern trains on S&C.
It describes how Steam trains in the form of the appropriate Tornado will be running two return services on each of February 14, 15 and 16.
This is said.
Steam trains formed of Mk 2 carriages will replace DMUs on timetabled trains over the Settle & Carlisle (S&C) route next month.
A1 ‘Pacific’ 60163 Tornado, completed in 2008, will haul the Northern trains over the S&C between Skipton and Appleby on three consecutive days. The first timetabled ordinary main line passenger steam trains to run in England for 50 years are the result of a pioneering modern and heritage industry alliance, formed to help revive the economic fortunes of the beleaguered S&C.
It is certainly a commitment to the future of the route.
The Start Of Change At Victoria Tube Station
On the early-evening BBC London News last night, the BBC showed preview pictures of the new entrance to Victoria tube station, which they indicated is on Brettenham Place.
The station certainly needs more capacity, as this extract from Wikipedia indicates.
Victoria is currently the fourth busiest station on the London Underground, after Waterloo, Oxford Circus and King’s Cross St. Pancras, with nearly 85 million using the station (not including interchanging passengers) in 2013, of which around 60 million (including interchanges) use the Victoria line platforms. The station was not built for this number of passengers, which results in severe overcrowding. To prevent any dangerous situations like crowds pushing people off the platforms onto the track, crowd control measures are in place at the busiest times. This effectively means closing all the entrances to the Underground platforms and operating as an exit-only station until the overcrowding is relieved. These measures can last anywhere between a couple of minutes (when minor delays are occurring) up to several hours (during major incidents).
As to the layout of lines through the station, Victoria tube station is fairly simple, as this map from carto.metro.free.fr shows.
Note.
- The Circle and District Lines have a typical Victorian layout, with two platforms on the outside of the tracks.
- The 1960s designers of the Victoria Line at least left a lot of space between the two tracks.
- The Victoria Line also incorporates two full sidings, numbered 22 and 23 between the tracks.
As nearly all trains throughout the day run run between Walthamstow Central and Brixton, the use of these sidings must only be for purposes like overnight stabling and parking failied trains.
According to Wikipedia, currently each set of lines have their own ticket offices on different levels and built over a hundred years apart.
Walking between the Circle/District Lines and the main line station is not for the faint-hearted or those with need for step-free access. The 1960s designers at least made walking between the Victoria Line and the main line station a bit easier, but there is still a flight of steps to be overcome.
If I go to Victoria station with a wheeled bag, which is not often, I take the easy route of a 38 or N38 bus from around the corner, direct from around the corner from my house.
So what is happening over this weekend?
This Google Map shows the area to the North of the station.
Note.
- North of Victoria Street is a massive building site.
- The rows of white-roofed red buses on the station forecourt..
Wikipedia says this about the current upgrade.
To provide a lasting solution to this problem preparatory building work has begun on major upgrade of the station. This will include a new northern exit/entrance on the north-west corner of Victoria Street which will be accessible via a new additional ticket office under Bressenden Place that will lead to both the Victoria line and the Circle and District line platforms.
I will go and do some more digging.
The Victoria Line Platforms
Currently, the Victoria Line platforms have two sets of escalators.
- The original set of three, that so up into the Victoria Line ticket hall under the bus station.
- A second set of three, that go from the platforms into a series of passages underneath the Circle and District Line platforms, to which they connect with short sets of stairs.
These pictures show the Victoria Line platforms, various passages and works.
It looks like there are two new sets of works.
One set could just be an extension of the current lobby at the bottom of the original escalators. This would increase the capacity between the Victoria Line and the main line station.
Judging by the sign saying Cardinal Place on the other works at the Northern End of the platforms, it would appear that these works are a new entrance from Cardinal Place.
The Cardinal Place Entrance
On the surface, the Cardinal Place Entrance is clearly visible, outside the Cardinal Place development.
According to a personable member of the station staff, The new entrance will open sometime after ten on Monday morning.
At Cardinal Place, the overall design would appear to be simple, where an escalator shaft has been dug between the Northern end of the Victoria Line platforms and a new entrance hall beneath Bressenden Place, which then has the simple pop-up entrance shown in my pictures
The constructure, appears to have been carried out, without massive closures of the Victoria Line platforms.
The surface building also looks very similar in concept to the new standalone glass and steel entrances at Kings Cross St. Pancras and Tottenham Court Road stations.
So I wonder how many new entrances can be created at existing stations, by using a similar design and building method.
Walthamstow Central Station
Walthamstow Central station suffers very bad overcrowding , with only two escalators and no lifts having to cope with the passengers from over 40 trains per hour.
This map from carto.metro.free,fr shows the layout of platforms at the station.
Note how there is a wide lobby at the Eastern end of the platforms underneath the Overground lines, which is used to accommodate the escalators and the waiting queues of passengers.
The crossover to the West of the station was installed in August 2015 and I suspect that this work didn’t compromise any of Transport for London’s thoughts of improving capacity at Walthamstow Central.
It could be tight to dig a shaft for three escalators into this area, but at least the area on top is mainly grass, market stalls and not the best of buildings, with the exception of the Library.
If you look at the length of the current escalators at the station, they indicate that the Victoria Line is not deep. So that would help.
I suspect we could see a very innovative and simple solution to create a new Western entrance at Walthamstow Central station.
I would also be possible to build the entrance without any disruption to either existing train services or passengers in the existing station.
Work Starts On Extending Manchester Metrolink To The Trafford Centre
This article on the BBC gives some more details.
The Manchester Metrolink seems to be expanding fast and the Trafford Park Line would appear to be planned to be open by 2020. The BBC says this.
The line is expected to open in 2020, increasing the size of the Metrolink network to more than 106.5km (66 miles).
The Trafford Park line will call at six new tram stops – Wharfside, Imperial War Museum, Village, Parkway, EventCity and the Trafford Centre.
There is no word about continuing the expansion to Port Salford. But then there’s no news about sorting out the bridge over the Irwell, that the contractors dropped.
Network Rail Announces Electrification Of The Schotts Line
This article in Rail Technology Magazine is entitled Network Rail awards Carillion £49m Shotts electrification contract.
This is the first two paragraphs.
Network Rail has agreed a contract with Carillion Powerlines Ltd to deliver the electrification of the Shotts Line between Holytown Junction and Midcalder Junction.
The £49m contract will see the delivery of 74km of electrified railway as part of the Scottish government’s wider £169m investment in the line between Edinburgh and Glasgow.
Electrification of The Schotts Line will provide a fourth electrified line between Edinburgh and Glasgow.
From hundreds of miles to the South, it looks a good choice.
- The route is effectively in three sections, with only the central section between Holytown Junction and Midcalder Junction, needing to be wired.
- The bridges that need to be raised are already being worked on.
- The route goes to Glasgow Central rather than Glasgow Queen Street.
- The Class 385 trains needed are already being built in Newtown Aycliffe.
It certainly seems that the planning of electrification in the Scottish Lowlands is being better managed that that on the Great Western Railway.
Not All Rail Improvements Are Spectacular
I found this article from The Enquirer, which is entitled Essex set for faster trains after summer speed restriction is finally lifted.
This is said.
A LONG-STANDING speed restriction in place on the railway between Shenfield and Seven Kings, London, during the summer has been lifted by Network Rail.
The decision was made after the completion of important railway improvement works over Christmas. Network Rail engineers worked around-the-clock for 10 days to replace 12.5km of overhead wires at Gidea Park, untangling the complex web of crossovers, and replacing it with more durable and heat-resistant wires.
Passengers will not see any dramatic physical difference, but if the sun ever beats down again, the trains will still stick to the timetable.
The Anonymous Widower 