Wigan North Western Station Set For Platform Extension Work
The title of this post. is the same as that of this article on Rail Advent.
This is the first three paragraphs.
Wigan North Western is set to undergo a multi-million-pound platform extension to provide passengers between Manchester and Leeds with longer trains.
The work is part of the Great North Rail Project and will see Platform 3 made longer to allow four-carriage trains to call at the station.
Northern can then provide extra capacity for passengers and move trains in and out of its new £46m depot at Ince-in-Makerfield.
This Google Map shows Wigan North Western station.
Note.
- The six platforms are numbered 1-6 from North-East to South-West.
- Platforms 1, 2 and 3 are used for trains that start at the station and go to the Alderley Edge, Leeds, Manchester Piccadilly, Manchester Victoria and Stalybridge.
- Platform 1 is quite long and regularly handles two trains at the same time.
- Platforms 2 and 3 could probably be longer.
- Platforms 1, 2 and 3 appear to have their own private access track direct to Wigan Springs Branch TMD to the South, where multiple units can be serviced and washed.
- The access track sneaks down the East side of the West Coast Main Line, so that trains don’t block the track, when transferring to and from the depot.
- The double-track going North between the station and the large building leads to Wigan Wallgate station.
This picture shows the Platforms 1, 2 and 3 at the station.
If you look at the train movements early in the morning, trains come out of the depot and start their first diagram from one of the three platforms on the left.
Lengthening Platform 3 will make this easier and more efficient.
Wigan North Western Station, West Coast Main Line And High Speed Two
Wigan North Western station is currently served by the following Avanti West Coast services on the West Coast Main Line.
- London Euston and Glasgow Central – Hourly
- London Euston and Glasgow Central or Edinburgh via Birmingham New Street – Hourly
- London Euston and Blackpool – Four trains per day
TransPennine Express also run four trains per day between Liverpool Lime Street and Glasgow Central.
The station is also planned to get two hourly High Speed Two services, which should be delivered in Phase 2a of the project.
- London Euston and Lancaster via Old Oak Common, Crewe, Warrington Bank Quay and Preston.
- Birmingham Curzon Street and Edinburgh or Glasgow via Preston, Lancaster, Carlisle and some other stations, depending on the Scottish destination.
It certainly looks like Wigan North Western station is being updated to have a comprehensive network of local electric services to give a large number of stations, good access to current West Coast Main Line and future High Speed Two services.
High Speed Two Through Lancashire Stations
The direct London and Scotland services are proposed to be as follows.
- They will run at a frequency of two trains per hour (tph)
- They will be formed of two classic-compatible 200 metre long trains.
- They will split and join at Carlisle, to give both Edinburgh and Glasgow a two tph service from London.
- One tph will stop at Old Oak Common, Preston and Carlisle in England.
- The second train will also stop at Birmingham Interchange in England.
Adding the services together, it would appear that the following services will run through Lancashire.
- One tph – London Euston and Lancaster – One 200 metre train
- Two tph – London Euston and Scotland – Two 200 metre trains.
- One tph – Birmingham and Scotland – One 200 metre train
This totals up to four tph.
I will now look, at the High Speed Two traffic through the various stations.
Warrington Bank Quay
I know Warrington Bank Quay is in Cheshire, these days, but High Speed Two trains will pass through.
Current plans include a by-pass round Warrington will be built for Phase 2b.
- Before by-pass four tph will pass through Warrington Bank Quay, with one stopping.
- After by-pass only one stopping train will pass.
If the High Speed Two service replaces the current Avanti West Coast service to Scotland, any problems at the station should be easy to solve.
Preston
Preston would appear to have three tph from High Speed Two passing through, with all stopping.
Phase 2b will add another tph.
Lancaster
Lancaster would appear to have two tph from High Speed Two passing through, with none stopping.
In addition, one service from Euston will terminate.
Phase 2b will add another tph, that passes thrugh.
Conclusion
It looks to me, that this relatively small project will be worthwhile.
How many other projects of this size need being added to the network urgently? I can think of possibly three within a dozen miles of my house, of which at least one is down to Beeching and/or British Rail’s cost cutting of the 1960s or 1970s.
The Lengths Of Hitachi Class 800/801/802 Trains
Hitachi’s Class 800/801/802 trains are part of the AT-300 family of trains, with 26 metre long cars.
- A five-car train is 130 metres long
- A nine-car train is 234 metres long.
Current trains and ones the Hitachi trains are going to replace have the following lengths.
- A twelve-car Class 387 train is 244.7 metres long.
- An eight-car Class 387 train is 163.1 metres long.
- A standard InterCity 225 formation is 245.2 metres long.
- A 2+8 InterCity 125 formation is 219.6 metres long.
- A five-car Class 180 train is 116.5 metres long.
- Two three-car Class 185 trains working as a pair are 142.5 metres long
I think the Hitachi trains will fit platforms designed for these trains well.
Perhaps a five-car train might be a bit short for a eight-car BR standard 160 metre log train. But a six-car Hitachi train is 156 metres long.
Conclusion
Twenty-six metre long carriages seem to work well against BR’s historic standards based on a twenty-metre cars.
Has The Queen Ever Ridden In a Battery-Powered Train?
Countryfile this evening had a special program about the Queen’s Scottish house and estate at Balmoral.
One archive film, showed her arriving at Ballater station in a train hauled by a locomotive with a number that looked slightly familiar. Looking it up, it was a B1 Class locomotive, which I must have seen regularly, when I went train-spotting on the West Anglia Main Line in the 1950s.
So I looked up Ballater station in Wikipedia.
The station, which was on the 43 mile long Deeside Railway from Aberdeen, is now closed but there was this paragraph on Wikipedia under Services.
When the battery multiple unit was introduced, services were doubled to six trains a day from 21 April 1958, and Sunday service reinstated. The line was chosen for testing the unit because the stations were well spaced and the 1 in 70 ruling gradients would require substantial discharge rates.
As someone very interested in railways at the time, I’d never heard of British Rail’s use of battery trains.
Remarkably, the battery electric multiple train, is still in existence and is being preserved at the Royal Deeside Railway, not far from Balmoral.
It looks to me. that a lot of engineers at Derby, made sure that this train survived.
So what was it like?
- It was based on the Derby Lightweight diesel multiple unit.
- The North of Scotland Hydro-Electric Board initiated the design and was a joint sponsor.
- The train had an operating speed of 60 mph.
- The train was powered by two 100 kW traction motors.
- Power was provided by 416 lead-acid cells, giving a total of 440 V and 1070 A hour capacity.
- The batteries weighed nine tonnes.
- There were seats for twelve First Class passengers and a hundred and five in Second Class.
It couldn’t been that bad a train, as it ran between Aberdeen and Ballater station from 1958 to 1962.
There’s more about the train here.
Conclusion
But I can’t help wondering, if the Queen ever used the train!
The Value of Research
Companies are always being castigated for not doing enough research, but in this month’s Modern Railways, an example is given which shows how valuable research can be to both the company’s balance sheet and the man on the Dalston train.
When I worked in simulation using the PACE 231-R at ICI, I seem to remember reading in the literature about the problems British Rail were having with freight trains derailing as the speeds got higher. To try to solve the problems, BR Research Centre at Derby, did extensive computer simulations of wheel dynamics and probably became those with the greatest knowledge in the subject in the world. According to Modern Railways, they were then asked to design a bogie for passenger trains, that was lighter, stronger and required less maintenance.
With all of the privatisation and selling off of the railways in the 1980s and 1990s, the design could have got lost, but it ended up being commercialised and fitted to quite a few trains , including the Networkers and CapitalStars for the London Overground. The deasign team is based in Doncaster and is now part of Bombadier.
If that was the end of the story, that would have been good.
But it gets better in that the next generation of German ICE trains will be using this technology.
This article in Rail Engineer explains a bit more. under advanced bogie design, there is this section.
Whilst ELECTROSTAR is the lightest EMU in the market, weighing in at an average of just 42 tonnes per car, AVENTRA promises to be 20% lighter. This is achieved in no small part thanks to the introduction of Bombardier’s FLEXX Eco inside-frame bogie. It was designed for the UK market as part of the pioneering ‘Advanced Suburban Bogie’ project in the early 1990s. Initially tested in prototype form for two years under Class 320 vehicles (in 1991-92 using trailer bogies) and subsequently under Class 466s using motor bogies, it remains the only lightweight high-performance bogie in the world on main line passenger services.The FLEXX Eco has an extremely credible track record, having travelled 1.5 billion kilometres in the UK under Voyager, Meridian and, more recently, TURBOSTAR units. It has also been exported to Norway, with 122 bogies supplied to state operator NSB. In reducing overall vehicle weight, the bogie makes a significant contribution to the energy saving advantages of the AVENTRA. It is particularly stable at high speed – it has been tested to 275kph under a Japanese Shinkansen and 392kph beneath an ICE2 – and delivers excellent performance through curves.
So a little trumpeted small amount of money invested by British Rail has become a true success story, albeit totally hidden from the man on the Dalston train, unless he cares to look underneath a train in the station.
Sad though, that although design is still in the UK, the bogies are now made in Germany. Here‘s the brochure.
And here’s one of the bogies under a CapitalStar at Highbury and Islington Station.
FLEXX Eco Bogie Under a Capitalstar
I use these trains a lot and can confirm that the ride quality is up with the best.
The Anonymous Widower 