The Halton Curve: Small Piece Of Track, Big Rail Ambitions
The title of this post is the same as that of an article on the Rail Technology Magazine web site.
The Halton Curve will create a link between Liverpool and North Wales. This page on the Network Rail web site gives more details.
Work has started on the 1.5 miles of rail track, known as the ‘Halton Curve,’ that will unlock leisure and business opportunities between the Liverpool City Region, its airport, Cheshire and North Wales.
Vital upgrades to signalling and track will enable new services between Liverpool and Chester, serving Liverpool Lime Street, Liverpool South Parkway (for Liverpool John Lennon Airport) Runcorn, Frodsham and Helsby.
The existing line, which currently only runs a one-way passenger service once a week in the summer, will be upgraded to provide an hourly service in each direction from December 2018 with the potential for connections to North Wales in the future.
Restoring the Halton Curve is similar to a number of smaller projects that have been executed in the last few years, to improve connectivity and efficiency in the UK rail network.
- Allington Chord – A short section of track removed a bottleneck at Grantham on the East Coast Main Line.
- Bacon Factory Curve – A 1,415 metre link at Ipswich, that improves the operation of freight trains to and from the Port of Felixstowe and speeds up services on the Great Eastern Main Line.
- Hitchin Flyover – A flyover at Cambridge Junction on the East Coast Main Line, that cut delays to expresses on the East Coast Main Line.
- North Doncaster Chord – A flyover to take freight trains between Immingham and Drax over the East Coast Main Line.
- Todmorden Curve – Four hundred metres of reinstated railway, that now allows direct services between Burnley Manchester Road and Manchester Victoria stations.
Most seem to have been worthwhile. But look back a couple of decades and it was unlikely that some of these projects would ever be needed.
As the economy grows, freight moves from road to rail and more people travel a lot more by rail, it is very difficult to predict what will happen in the future. I feel we should address the following.
If we remove a railway line, we should not destroy the ability to reinstate the line. Rebuilding the Waverley Route and the Varsity Line would be a lot easier, if this rule had been followed.
Network Rail appear to have a tendency to kick smaller projects into the future. A simple example is the creation of a bay platform at Stevenage station to turn back services on the Hertford Loop Line which seems to have been pushed back until after the new Class 717 trains arrive.
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