From Leeds To Rotherham
This was not what you would call a quality journey.
By train it took 56 minutes, which is about nine minutes longer than it would take in the average car according to various web sites.
There are also nine stops in another Cook’s Tour of Yorkshire.
It was also in a Class 142 train or Pacer.
The map clipped from Wikipedia shows the Wakefield Line, which is the route the train took.
These pictures were taken on the journey.
In this day and age for a journey of an hour a better train is needed, especially as the two end points are Leeds and Sheffield,where the two cities have a joint population of about 1.3 million.
The fastest trains between Leeds and Sheffield are run by CrossCountry and take forty minutes using the Wakefield Line.
As the fastest Rotherham Central to Sheffield trains take 14 minutes, I think it is reasonable to assume, that the right train could do Leeds to Rotherham Central in 26 minutes.
This route could become a Northern Connect route, run by new Class 195 trains.
As the route is electrified between Leeds and Fitzwilliam station, I wonder if this could be a route for a Class 319 Flex train.
Both trains are 100 mph units, as against the 75 mph of the Class 142 train, which probably defines the timetable.
From my observations, the route is not particularly arduous and I suspect that either train could do the journey in just over forty minutes, even with all the stops.
Certainly, the current service is truly dreadful and inadequate.
It appears that the overhead wires are going up for the tram-train to Sheffield. Or at least the gantries!
The Rebuilding Of Rotherham Central Station
Rotherham Central station was rebuilt in 2012, but it seemed no-one thought about electrification, so the low bridge over the railway for College Road wasn’t touched.
Now that bridge is being rebuilt.
This article in the Rotherham Advertiser is entitled Tram works mean four-month closure for town centre road.
This is said.
A major town centre street will be closed for more than four months to allow key work in the pioneering tram-train link to go ahead.
College Road will be shut from tomorrow until August 18 as the bridge over the railway is being demolished.
Engineers from Network Rail will replace it with a higher one so that overhead lines which will power the tram-trains can be safely installed underneath.
Why wasn’t the bridge raised earlier, when the station was rebuilt?
I suppose someone in the Treasury looked at Rotherham on a map and said that was a place that will never need electric trains.
