The Anonymous Widower

Was Baldrick An Essex Man?

I have been looking at Network Rail’s page for Beaulieu Park station.

This is the heading.

Network Rail and Essex County Council are working together to develop proposals for the first railway station to be built on the Great Eastern main line for over 100 years.

These two paragraphs outline the project and where the finance is being obtained.

The new station is part of a wider regeneration of the Beaulieu Park estate in Chelmsford with new road infrastructure and up to 14,000 homes.

Essex County Council, in partnership with Chelmsford City Council, successfully secured £218m of funding from the Government’s Housing and Infrastructure (HIF) fund together with £34m contributions from the South East Local Enterprise Partnership and the developers of Beaulieu, Countryside and L&Q.

These features of Beaulieu Park station are listed on the page.

• Three platforms with a central loop line and new tracks to enable stopping services to call at the station while allowing fast trains to pass through unimpeded
• Step free access to all platforms via 2 lifts
• Accessible toilets, baby change facilities, waiting area and space for retail/catering
• Ticketing facilities, with ticket vending machines and a gate line
• Pedestrian and cycle access routes to the station
• 500 spaces for cycle parking and storage
• A bus interchange including bus stands for local services
• Pick up and drop off area with dedicated taxi bays
• Parking for over 700 cars, 5% of which to be designated Blue Badge bays, and motorcycle spaces, as well as dedicated parking for station staff, emergency services, and a dedicated space for service access.

Note.

1. How many other parkway stations, other than Ebbsfleet International station have 700 parking spaces?
2. The parking at Whittlesford Parkway can only hold 377 vehicles.
3. How many other parkway stations have an overtaking loop for faster trains?

Beaulieu Park is not your average parkway station!

I have a few thoughts.

Which Of The Current Services Will Call?

The Network Rail page says this about services.

It will provide additional access to the railway with regular connections to the capital (only 40 minutes from London Liverpool Street station) and other destinations in the east of England. New tracks will enable stopping services to call at the station while allowing fast trains to pass through unimpeded.

Note.

1. Trains between London and Hatfield Peverel station typically take under forty minutes.
2. Two fast trains per hour (tph) between Liverpool Street and Norwich via Colchester, Ipswich and Stowmarket pass through.
3. Only one of the fast trains stops at Chelmsford.
4. Four stopping tph, one to each of Braintree, Clacton-on-Sea, Colchester Town and Ipswich pass through.

If all the stopping trains stopped, Beaulieu Park would have the following services.

• Braintree – 1 tph
• Chelmsford – 4 tph
• Clacton-on-Sea – 1 tph
• Colchester – 3 tph
• Colchester Town – 1 tph
• Hatfield Peverel – 1 tph
• Ingatestone – 2 tph
• Ipswich – 1 tph
• Kelvedon – 2 tph
• London Liverpool Street – 4 tph
• Marks Tey – 2 tph
• Romford – 1 tph
• Shenfield – 3 tph
• Stratford – 4 tph
• Witham – 4 tph

All trains are new Class 720 electric trains.

I also feel, that Network Rail could be being cunning.

Suppose, the  Liverpool Street and Norwich express, that doesn’t stop at Chelmsford, stopped instead at Beaulieu Park.

• This would give an hourly express service between Beaulieu Park and Norwich, which stopped at Colchester, Manningtree, Ipswich, Stowmarket and Diss.
• It would also enable two tph between Beaulieu Park and Ipswich.

The 700 parking spaces at Beaulieu Park now start to make sense.

• Both Ipswich and Norwich stations are within walking distance of the town centres and the football grounds.
• Ipswich station has a shuttle bus service to the town centre and the hospital.
• Both stations have several local train services.

Beaulieu Park station appears to have been designed as a Park-and-Ride station for the Great Eastern Main Line and all its branches.

Services To And From Lowestoft

In Making Sense Of The New East Anglia Franchise, I looked in detail at Greater Anglia’s promises.

In a section, which is entitled London – Lowestoft – Yarmouth Services, I said this.

There are going to be four direct services between London and Lowestoft each day. This probably initially means two trains to London in the morning peak and two trains back in the evening one.

When, I first moved back to Suffolk in the 1970s, I regularly caught a diesel-hauled train from Wickham Market to London for the day.

This is all motherhood and apple pie for those in Lowestoft wanting to go to London, but I suspect it isn’t the easiest service for a train operator to schedule efficiently and make money.

Would a train operator really want to start a full train at Lowestoft at say six in the morning and then have it wait around all day in London before returning in the evening?

The service hasn’t started.

Services To And From Cambridge Or Peterborough

At some time in the last decade, one of the predecessors of Greater Anglia, used to run a service to Peterborough via Colchester and Ipswich, so that travellers in Essex could catch trains to the North.

Given too that Cambridge has an employment problem, if a service was run, it might attract passengers.

The Class 755 trains Could Serve Bury St. Edmunds, Cambridge, Lowestoft, Newmarket, Peterborough And Yarmouth

Consider.

• A pair of Class 755 trains would leave Liverpool Street.
• They would use electric power to run to Ipswich.
• The trains would run in one of the paths of the current hourly Ipswich service.
• Like their all electric siblings; the Class 745 trains, they would probably run most of the journey at near 100 mph.
• At Ipswich the trains would split.
• One train would go to on to Lowestoft and Yarmouth and the other would go to Cambridge and Peterborough.

If passenger numbers felt it was a good idea, I’m certain, it could be timetabled.

The Chelmsford Avoiding Line

In Will The Chelmsford Avoiding Line Be Rebuilt?, I described the avoiding line, that used to be between the two tracks at Chelmsford station.

It probably saved a few minutes, by allowing fast expresses to pass stopping trains.

Effectively, a new avoiding line is being built at Beaulieu Park, a few miles from the original position at Chelmsford.

So will the fast expresses save a few minutes?

Could The Elizabeth Line Run To Beaulieu Park?

Consider

• The end sections of the Elizabeth Line seem to be busy, as I wrote in Very Busy Lizzie.
• The City of Chelmsford is between Shenfield and Beaulieu Park.
• Paddington and Reading is 35.9 miles.
• Liverpool Street and Hatfield Peverel is 35.9 miles.

So Beaulieu Park is actually closer to London than Reading.

Perhaps, at some time in a few years, passenger traffic between Beaulieu Park and Shenfield will be such, that the Elizabeth Line will be extended to Beaulieu Park.

The ideal service from Beaulieu Park would surely be two tph to Heathrow, as getting to Heathrow from East Anglia by train needs a change at Liverpool Street.

The only drawback is  that to work effectively on the Great Eastern Main Line, a sub-variant of the Class 345 trains will be needed with a 100 mph operating speed. I wrote about these trains in Extending The Elizabeth Line – High Speed Trains On The Elizabeth Line.

But they may have the advantage of being able to take the fast lines between Shenfield and Stratford.

Conclusion

Beaulieu Park may just look like any other station to serve a housing development.

But it’s a lot more than that!

• It’s a Park-and-Ride for the whole Great Eastern Main Line and London.
• It should speed up expresses between London and Colchester, Ipswich or Norwich.
• It should improve local connectivity.
• It could take a lot of traffic off the nearby A12.
• It could give the City of Chelmsford its own local metro.
• It could give Heathrow a direct link to much of Essex.
• How much carbon will be saved by passengers?

We need many more well thought out Park-and-Ride stations.

 

 

 

April 2, 2023 Posted by AnonW | Design, Transport/Travel | Beaulieu Park Station, Chelmsford, Chelmsford Station, Class 720 Train, Class 745 Train, Class 755 Train, Digital Signalling, Ebbsfleet International Station, Elizabeth Line, ERTMS, Essex, Extending The Elizabeth Line, Great Eastern Main Line, Greater Anglia, Hatfield Peverel Station, Heathrow Airport, Ipswich Station, Network Rail, Norwich Station, Parkway Station, Shenfield Station | 2 Comments