Resisting the Obvious Headline
In the latest edition of Modern Railways, there is an article entitled East London line goes ’round the corner’, which describes the insertion of the missing link between the North and East London lines.
Should it have used the headline East London line goes ’round the bend’?
Possibly in a tabloid, but the whole exercise seems to have been conducted in a sane and measured manner.
Transport for London actually took the risk for the scheme, by acting as the project manager. The main outcome was that they shaved £2.5 million off a £16 million budget. They also managed to rebuild the bridge that carried Kingsland Road over the railway with a lot less disruption, than traditional methods would have caused.
So all things considered, the team is to be congratulated, when it opens next month, a few weeks ahead of schedule.
The article also says that they will be taking a similar project management approach to the expansion of the East London line to Clapham Junction.
So is this all to the good of passengers?
I use the new East London line occasionally and it got me back from IKEA in double-quick time last week, but then passenger numbers on the line are at levels that had been predicted to not be reached until a year later.
So is there a lesson here? Upgrade railways will new trains and frequent services and they’ll be used and repay the investment.
Trains on the Western Curve
Yesterday, as I went to Stratford and was getting my train at Dalston Kingsland, I saw a train test running on the new Western Curve, which connects the East London Line to Highbury and Islington.
A Train on the Western Curve at Dalston
The train on the right is on the North London Line travelling towards Highbury and Islington and on to Willesden Junction and Richmond.
I think the only problem with these two London Overground lines, is that they are generating a lot of traffic and they might turn out to be victims of their own success.
The Problems of Evening Football at Ipswich
Evening football shouldn’t be a problem, but yesterday meant that I had to travel from Stratford in the rush hour and that means that a cheap day return wasn’t available unless I left before 4:30. In the end I got the 4:09 after taking the North London Line from Dalston Kingsland. The trouble was this got me to Ipswich at about five thirty for a match that starts at a quarter to eight.
Ipswich isn’t too good for eating gluten-free, the only place being Pizza Express and they were full, so in the end I resorted to plan B of eating a packed supper in the rain in the stands. I should say though, that I could have booked myself a gluten-free meal in the restaurant at Portman Road, but I didn’t want to pay the extra to sit away from my friends.
The salad I took was interesting in that it was a Four Bean and Buckwheat Salad from Waitrose.
Waitrose Four Bean and Buckwheat Salad
I ate it with some salami and an EatNakd bar. It was delicious and I don’t seem to have suffered any reaction. But then it didn’t list any allergens on the package. Why can’t they label it with None? Thanks go to the guy in Waitrose in the Barbican for checking the rather small print on the label.
I did make one mistake in that I forgot to take any cutlery, but thanks to Marks and Spencer in Ipswich for letting me have one of their free forks, without making a purchase.
We see a lot of bad service, so when I get good service it should be recognised.
Another Missed Eclipse
In 1999, I went to France to see the total eclipse of the sun. But due to an erroneous Belgian weather forecast, I ended up in part of France that was overcast.
Today there was a spectacular partial eclipse that was visible as the sun was rising. I took the North London Line to Gospel Oak and walked up the hill to the spot where Judy Dench picked up Kate Blanchett in Notes on a Scandal.
As you can see from this picture, I wasn’t the only one who was disappointed.
Waiting for the Eclipse
At least I didn’t lug a heavy telescope up the hill.
The Western Curve Appears to be Going Well
At present there is no link between the new East London Line and the old North London Line, so passengers wishing to transfer have to walk down the busy road, that connects the two stations, as I did yesterday, when I needed to divert because of the snow.
But the Western Curve which connects the two lines appears to be a project that is running to time, if you read this article.
Camden Road Station
I ended up at Camden Road, where I raided the local Sainsburys to get some supplies for my journey to the football at Ipswich.
Camden Road is a typical Victorian station with some nice features including a proper tiled floor.
Let’s hope that they modenise it sympathtically.
A North London Line Panorama
The North London Line from Caledonian Road and Barnsbury to Camden Road is one of those journeys that every visitor to London should go on!
You travel across the city behind King’s Cross and St. Pancras stations, seeing all the new development for the High Speed Line to France and the buildings behind the station.
This video was taken on the trip I took yesterday.
For the best views sit on the south side of the train.
The North London Line is one of London’s hidden treasures, in that it links Stratford and the Olympic Park to Camden with its Market and on to Hampstead Heath, Kew Gardens and Richmond by the River Thames. The best place to start an adventure is from Highbury & Islington station which is also on the Victoria Line.
And to think the line was nearly closed in the 1960s Now that it has been upgraded with new trains, it is a real asset to London.
Reflections on My Journey to Scotland
In my Modern Railways for October, which I bought in Doncaster, there was an heretic article by Chris Stokes, asking if we really needed HS2 or the High Speed Line to the North, which would go to just Birmingham at first. He described it as a vanity project.
Twelve months ago, I was a sceptic on whether we needed a High Speed Line to the North, mainly because I didn’t think it would do anything for anybody in East Anglia where I lived. If I needed to get to the North, I wanted a fast line from somewhere I could drive to easily like Peterborough.
But when it was announced that the route would be to Birmingham in the last days of the disastrous NuLabor experiment, I warmed to it a bit, although I did think it needed to go via Heathrow. I also thought very much that it was a Nimby’s charter.
But Chris’s article has now turned me back to very much a sceptic. Competition being what it is, his argument, that unless you virtually close down the West Coast and Chiltern Birmingham services, no-one will pay a premium to go from London to the Midland’s premier city. My son incidentally always goes by Virgin and has never thought about using Chiltern, as Euston is on the same Underground Line as where he lives.
Chris also argues, that the amount of First Class traffic will decrease due to austerity, good housekeeping and modern technology removing the need to travel. Some years ago, I installed a Management Information System in a company, which was web-friendly and even allowed the computer-phobic CEO to find out how the company was doing from any computer in the world. But also, the modern traveller will become First Class smart and book it when and where they need it. So if you think there is a premium market that saves a few minutes, forget it!
Put simply, a lawyer say going to Birmingham from London for the day, will choose his route and class dependent on what is best for his needs. Hopefully, when I move to London, it will be in walking distance of Canonbury. Who’s to say that in 2015, someone isn’t running an express to say Milton Keynes, Coventry and Birmingham from Stratford and East London on the North London Line and possibly the Primrose Hill Tunnel?
So what will happen to lines to the North, if we don’t build HS2 on schedule? We’ll get the usual whining, we always get when the investment is cut, but let’s look at the reality of what will happen!
We now have two good and pretty reliable and fast train lines from London to the North of England and Scotland. I was told on my trip to to Inverness that it should be possible to be some minutes under four hours from Edinburgh to London. This compares with a fastest journey now of about four hours twenty minutes, although Operation Peppercorn is aiming for the magic four hours flat for the fastest trains with a stop at Newcastle. Glasgow to London by comparison is now about four hours and twenty minutes. Many of my Scottish friends say this is fast enough to mean they won’t bother to fly to London, as airport checks and delays are getting worse and they can use phones and laptops on the trains.
If there is a problem with the two stiles of a possible ladder reaching up the United Kingdom, is that some of the interfaces to other lines are poor. But the basics and some of the rungs of the ladder are already in place.
There are a succession of large stations on both lines, such as Peterborough, Crewe, Doncaster, York and Newcastle, which can be developed into easy change stations to other places. As I said earlier, Doncaster isn’t bad and I think Peterborough is going to be developed and hopefully linked to the nearby shopping centre, but a lot of work needs to be done.
As I rode out of Edinburgh towards Inverness, I was impressed to see that electrification has started to link Edinburgh and Glasgow. As it is trains now run every fifteen minutes and most take just fifty to link Scotland’s two capitals. I suspect that this will become a very important link between the two fast lines, not only because of level cross-platform interchange from the South to local trains, but also because full electrification would allow fast direct trains from Glasgow to York and Edinburgh to Liverpool. Taking the first journey, my road atlas estimates that at four hours ten minutes, which compares with about four hours by train now with two changes and two different companies. I estimate that something like a Pendelino could do this journey direct with perhaps just a stop at Newcastle in about three hours fofty-five minutes. Who would back against, Peppercorn 2, squeezing more minutes out of the East Coast Line.
A similar situation could exist between Newcastle, York and Doncaster in the East and Manchester, Liverpool and Preston in the West, by expanding and electrifying the TransPennine network. Edinburgh to Sheffield is a journey that uses either a direct diesel service or a change to TranPennine at Newcastle. If TransPennine was a level change at Newcastle from one fast electric to another, there would be a much better service.
London too has a strong link across, although as I said Euston is not a welcoming station, but when you’ve got three world-class stations in Kings Cross, St. Pancras and Euston, as you will have, an innovative transport solution along Euston Road could surely be achieved. For a start let’s have a proper walking route a hundred metres or so north of Euston Road, with cafes and shops. But I’m certain that people should be encouraged to take the Metropolitan Line rather than the Victoria or Northern. Perhaps we need a moving walkway! Euston is supposed to be being developed and also be a terminal for HS2. If the latter does happen, there will be a lot of grief and opposition in that area of London. That development, whether it incorporates HS2 or not, will divert rail passengers to other routes, such as Chiltern for Birmingham and East Coast for Scotland.
There is also another link that might be brought into use, especially if Euston has to be partially closed to traffic, whilst it is rebuilt. That is the link to Manchester out of St. Pancras, which was used reasonably successfully as Operation Rio during the West Coast Main Line upgrade. I’ve always argued that this should have stayed in place, as it interfaces well with the A14 at Wellingborough for those going from East Anglia to the North Midlands,Sheffield and ultimately Manchester.
So what’s missing?
As I found going to Scunthorpe, it’s not what’s missing in this case, but what’s still here; Pacers. All of these links to the two stiles of the ladder must be upgraded to the standard of the diesel trains, I used in Scotland. And where possible, they should link easily to the fast services. I think that this will happen, but in some ways it depends on a strong electrification program to release suitable diesel units.
The real problem though is the lack of a full East-West route between say Peterborough and Birmingham or perhaps Milton Keynes and Stevenage or Cambridge. The Peterborough to Nuneaton route is being upgraded for frieght and passenger trains between the two towns take seventy-five minutes. So it would look like that route could be another rung in the ladder. The other route is the possible Oxford-Cambridge Line, which could be built, if funds were made avaialable.
I believe strongly that the two route ladder offers advantages over just building a speculative line from South to North, which would cost several times the amount needed to build the two route ladder.
For example, as electrification progresses, subsidiary lines like Birmingham to Bristol could be further improved, so that more and more people had less than two hour access to the main network. More rungs could be opened up, by any company that feel there was a niche to be filled.
So should HS2 be built? I think that one day it might be built, so we must safeguard the route, so that at some future date it could be added as another part of the network.
If Beeching made one big mistake it was not in making sure that abandoned rail lines were able to be rebuilt. How many lines hastily abandoned in the 1960s are needed now? But perhaps it would mean knocking down a hundred or so houses and a Tesco’s!
Towards the Match
I was mainly gpoing to London to see Ipswich play at Millwall.
I didn’t take a direct route, as I had time to spare and wanted to do one or two things before the match.
So from Tottenham Hale, I took a couple of stops on the Victoria Line to Highbury and Islington, where I took the North London Line to Canonbury.
A house I am interested in, lies betwwen there and Dalston Junction and I wanted to see which was the nearest station. The first leg took eleven minutes and the second ten, so Dalston Junction is closer and will be a couple of minutes so, when they complete the station. It’s also downhill from Canonbury and flat to Dalston Junction, which means that it is an easy walk to Dalston to travel away and another easy one to get home from Canonbury. In some ways it won’t matter too much, as from May 2011, the two stations will just be two stops apart on the East London Line.
FRom Dalston Junction, I took the East London Line south to Rotherhithe, with the aim of seeing the Brunel Museum; which is one of the many museums on the line. I took this photo of the brickwork on the entrance to the station.
Brickwork at Rotherhithe Station
I’ve always liked good brickwork and in my life, I’ve designed and had built several important brick features including a traditional crinkle-crankle wall at Debach and my round office here. Are we training bricklayers to be able to do the difficult stuff? Ralph who did the wall, used to work in rubber gloves to save his hands and spent his holidays looking at buildig techniques all over the world. His colleagues used to laugh at him, but he certainly knew how to lay bricks.
It’s Just Two Years to the London Olympics
AS it is just two years to the London Olympics, the BBC has had both television and Radio 5 broadcasting from the Olympic Park today.
On the Radio 5 phoe-in this morning, you got the usual doom-mongers and those from Scotland and the North decrying what they think is a waste of money. I got on and spoke badly about what I saw at the weekend and the public transport legacy. Others put it much better about how they were going to enjoy the Games.
I ended by imploring Nicky Campbell to use the North London Line to get home to Clapham. I forgot that he should go to Willesden and then take the West London Line.
The Anonymous Widower 