Sheffield To Cambridge By Train
As I wanted to have lunch with an old friend in Cambridge I came home the slow way by taking a train from Sheffield and then changing at Ely.
The journey took five minutes over three hours, which included a waits at both Nottingham and Ely of over ten minutes.
I doubt we’ll see any improvements in this service in the next few years, but it really was a slow journey in a two coach Class 158 trains. Perhaps as some of the InterCity 125 are released as the new Class 800 trains are delivered, we might see services like Liverpool to Norwich run by these trains. After all a lot of the route between Liverpool and Norwich in a few years time will allow trains at over a hundred miles per hour.
There has been talk of electrifying the cross-country routes from Ipswich to Peterborough via Ely, specifically for freight. I think it will happen, but until Liverpool to Sheffield and Nottingham to Grantham are also electrified, it could be many years before electric trains cross from one side of England to the other.
Crossrail, HS2 And The Overground Seem To Be Coming Together At Old Oak Common
There has been a report in the Standard, which talks about how Crossrail, HS2 and the Overground could come together at Old Oak Common, which is an area of London ripe for redevelopment.
The report shows this map.
Rail Lines At Old Oak Common
The map is informative and it shows how the West London Line might split from the North London Line at the new Old Oak Common station, rather than at Willesden Junction.
The map though doesn’t show the Dudding Hill Line which joins the North London Line in this area, possibly just south of the new station.
To show the space available in the are, look at this Google Map shoeing the wider area around the proposed station.
Old Oak Common Area – Downloaded 7th July 2015
There are rail lines everywhere. This second image shows the Southern part of the previous one, along the Great Western Main Line and Crossrail.
Old Oak Common Detail – Downloaded 7th July 2015
Working upwards from the bottom (South) on this map, you see the following.
1. The long building is the North Pole depot to be used by the new Hitachi Class 800/801 trains, which will be delivered over the next few years.
2. The Great Western Main Line and the future Crossrail tracks.
3. Depots for Heathrow Express and other trains.
4. I think that the large building surrounded by a large amount of grey blobs is the factory that manufactured the tunnel linings for Crossrail.
5. The Grand Union Canal encircles the site.
So could the imaginative minds of the planners at Transport for London have decided to bring the North London Line, an Extended Gospel Oak to Barking Line, Crossrail and HS2 together at the proposed new large development at Old Oak Common? With a little bit more clever design, they might even be able to tie the Central Line into the mix.
I’m all for this personally, as North East London, where I live, will be given a simple route to get to Heathrow and Reading, by just taking the North London Line or the GOBlin to Old Oak Common for Crossrail.
Reasons To Go Virgin Or East Coast
I went up to the Commonwealth Games on the 08:30 Virgin out of Euston arriving on time at 13:01 give or take a minute or so.
The best thing about going Virgin before 09:00, is that you get a proper breakfast, which includes a gluten-free option. I had plenty of tea, some delicious scrambled egg and smoked salmon and a glass of juice.
I didn’t get my gluten-free roll though!
As I was meeting someone in Glasgow, who’d come through from Edinburgh, I could have gone up with East Coast and then across to Glasgow with her.
But it would have meant an earlier start and I had to see the builders.
I think it’s true to say that if you’re going to Glasgow or Edinburgh from London, it’s probably better to go direct. But even so, the distance between the two big Scottish cities isn’t great, with the fastest trains taking between fifty minutes and an hour.
So as Virgin run twenty trains a day up the West Coast and East Coast run eighteen and the fastest trains take about the same four hours sand a bit, it’s very much a case of you pays your money and takes your choice.
The trains are different with Virgin running tilting Class 390 trains and non-tiliting diesel InterCity 125 and electric Inter City 225 trains. My preference is for the non-tilting trains.
The only certain thing is that in the next few years, train routes between England and Glasgow and Edinburgh will gain more capacity and will get faster.
As an example, over the last year, Transpennine Express has introduced new faster Class 350 electric trains to and from Manchester. I thought I heard several northern families in Glasgow, who looked like day trippers up for the Games.
A Transpennine Class 350 In Glasgow
So is this illustrative of how fast, comfortable, high-capacity railways change our lives?
The biggest changed will be Network Rail moving to in-cab signalling, which will allow running over 200 kph on both the West and East Coast Main Lines. This could bring the journey time from London to Scotland much closer to the magic four hours, using the current trains.
When I went to Edinburgh recently by easyJet, security problems meant that I took five and a half hour from my home to Edinburgh city centre. So a four hour journey will be fast enough to give the planes a run for their money. But not everybody goes between London and the major Scottish cities and possibly the biggest beneficiaries of a faster service will be those who have easy access to intermediate stations like York, Peterborough, Preston and Carlisle.
The biggest problem will be track and train capacity on the East and West Coast routes. On the West Coast, there will probably be a further increase in the Class 390 fleet and on the East Coast the Class 800 and 801 are coming.
As with so much on Britain’s railways, the elephant-in-the-room is freight, which is increasing substantially. So will we see extra routes and tracks opened up to held the freight through, just like we have with the GNGE between Doncaster and Peterborough via Lincoln. Of course, we will!
Perhaps, in Scotland, we might even see the return of freight to a Waverley line extended to Carlisle.
Then there is the Edinburgh Glasgow Improvement Program, a project that seems to have lost its way a bit recently. But the main aim of getting about a dozen services every hour between Edinburgh and Glasgow, with some taking just over half-an-hour must be a goal for Scotland.
The Anonymous Widower 