Forth Road Bridge In Trouble
The Forth Road Bridge has not been in the best of health for some years. Wikipedia has a section called Structural Issues and this is said.
2003 saw an inspection programme launched (at a cost of £1.2 million) to assess the condition of the bridge’s main suspension cables after excessive corrosion was discovered in a number of older bridges in the United States of a similar design and size. The study, which was completed in 2005, found that the main cables had suffered an estimated 8-10% loss of strength. Future projections highlight the likelihood of an accelerating loss of strength, with traffic restrictions to limit loading required in 2014 in the worst-case scenario, followed by full closure as early as 2020.
But now a different problem has arisen, as is reported in this article of the BBC. This said.
The Forth Road Bridge is to be closed until the new year because of structural faults, Transport Minister Derek Mackay has said.
This morning, there were long tailbacks on alternative routes.
It strikes me that this part of Scotland is in for not a very good Christmas.
At least the Forth Rail Bridge is its usual sturdy iconic self and I suspect that can cope with a few extra shuttle trains to help take the pressure of the roads.
The Revival Of Sleeper Services In The UK
I like sleeper trains and have used them three times in recent years.
The Deutsche Bahn sleeper between Munich and Paris, had one big disadvantage compared to the two Scottish trips – Customer service was not up to the standard First Class passengers expect and get on the Caledonian Sleeper.
The biggest problem, was that there was no waiting facilities at Munich station, as everything closed a couple of hours before the train left.
The last trip I did down from Scotland was during the Commonwealth Games and after an evening session, I couldn’t find a hotel room in Glasgow. I got a First Class sleeper cabin all to myself for just over a hundred pounds, so it was probably cheaper than getting a room in the city and coming down by train in the morning.
Every time, I go North of the Border in future, I’ll always look into the possibility of taking a sleeper down after my visit.
In the UK, sleeper trains seem to be having a revival with both the Caledonian Sleeper and Night Riviera going through a process of upgrading with either new or refurbished carriages.
But in Europe, they seem to be declining.
I wonder what Nigel F***** would make of that one!
We certainly have a different attitude to railways in this country.
Where Does The Borders Railway Go Next?
My Borders correspondent, who lives near Selkirk, says that the Borders Railway has been generally well received. Certainly if you search Google News for Borders Railway, you don’t find many problems or complaints, except one about the singing of the National Anthem for the Queen.
A friend in Edinburgh has just told me, that the trains are too crowded at times. So what’s new? New railways are always crowded, especially if they fulfil a need.
The most common articles on the web, are ones like this one from the Border Telegraph, entitled Next Stop Hawick….
So what will effect this line in the next few years and what do I think will happen?
The Me Too Effect
Now that Galashiels has a reliable half-hourly service to Edinburgh, I suspect that the inhabitants South of Tweedbank, will say that if Galashiels and Tweedbank can have this, why can’t Melrose and Hawick?
Cross Border Co-operation
The Borders area of Scotland and the neighbouring area of England are very similar and probably have the same strengths, problems and needs.
In some ways they are very economically linked now.
- Carlisle is economically tied to the Scottish Borders for shopping and transport links.
- Newcastle is a major airport for the area.
- There is even a rail service between Glasgow and Newcastle, that goes via Kilmarnock, Dumfries, Hexham and the Metro Centre.
- Area rail tickets for North West England include Lockerbie.
- Carlisle and Newcastle are the two major places to catch trains to the South, unless you go North to Edinburgh and Glasgow..
Surely this togetherness should be built on to develop the Borderlands, provided the politicians can be kept out of their way, in their offices in London and Edinburgh.
Increasing Railway Capacity Between England And Scotland
At present, the East Coast Main Line and the West Coast Main Line do not provide enough capacity between England and Scotland, for both passengers and freight.
Tourism And Other Economic Effects
I live in the Dalston area of Hackney, which is an area that has been uplifted by the creation of the London Overground from the rather decrepit railways that used to run through the area.
Unless you have lived through the process, most people will not understand how regular trains, running on a frequency of at least two an hour, can bring economic benefits to an area.
The Borderlands, probably have an economic profile not unlike the areas of East Anglia away from the large towns and cities that I know well.
- Both areas are ringed by a series of large towns and cities
- There is a lot of farming.
- There are a lot of tourism-related businesses of all sizes.
- In the summer, visitors take days out into the areas.
- There is a certain amount of specialist manufacture.
- Housing is being developed for those who have retired, who live and work locally and who commute to major towns and cities nearby.
All of these activities will increase the need for better transport links to the major cities that ring the areas.
The latest East Anglian Rail Franchise will mandate the franchisee to provide much better services all over the area and especially on the branch lines.
I can’t believe that the areas on both sides of the Border would not be worth developing in a similar way to that proposed for East Anglia.
Extending The Borders Railway To Melrose, Hawick And Carlisle
Scottish Borders politicians are all in favour of this extension, as are probably the good citizens of the area. My Borders correspondent and his family certainly appear to be.
Just as I have seen an economic uplift in Hackney because of the London Overground, I think it would be unlikely that the Borders Railway running through Melrose and Hawick, would not increase economic activity in the area.
This extension would certainly happen if Scotland stayed in the United Kingdom, as in some ways, this reopening, would help develop tourism in the wider area of the whole Borderlands, the Lake District and North Yorkshire.
Carlisle is probably the big winner in this activity and becomes a city with important or picturesque railway lines going everywhere.
- The West Coast Main Line, links England to Edinburgh and Glasgow.
- The Glasgow And South Western Line to Glasgow via Dumfries and Kilmarnock
- The Settle and Carlisle Line
- The Cumbrian Coast Line around the Lake District to Barrow and Preston
- The Newcastle and Carlisle Line
- The Borders Railway to Edinburgh
The Borders Railway provides the missing link in the railways of the Borderlands.
So when the Scottish politicians discuss the project, they should take into account, the positive affects a complete line would have on England!
Should The Borders Railway Be Electrified?
This question could legitimately by asked about all the other lines meeting at Carlisle, that are not electrified.
But as Carlisle, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Newcastle , Preston and Skipton are all electrified, I suspect all of the Carlisle lines have enough electrification to be run by modern four-car Aventra IPEMU trains, charging their batteries where overhead power is available and running on batteries as needed.
Some of the lines, including possibly the Borders Railway, are probably ready for Aventra IPEMUs now, with a bit of modification to platforms, track and signalling! Some like probably the Cumbria Coast Line would need some electrification or other means to charge the batteries en route.
So the answer to the electrification question must be yes, if Aventra IPEMUs are used.
But it would create a local railway network, as good as any in Europe, in an environmentally-friendly but totally affordable way.
It would be a showpiece of British technology and an attraction to rail enthusiasts from all over the world.
The network also connects to four World Heritage Sites and the Lake District, Hadrian’s Wall and the major cities of Edinburgh, Glasgow and Newcastle.
Would An Extended Borders Railway Provide Extra Capacity Between England And Scotland?
The Borders Railway has a limited number of paths for trains and when a steam special is run, one of the diesel multiple units has to give up its slot. Read various criticisms on Wikipedia.
My scheduling experience, does suggest to me, that if the line was run by the faster and better accelerating electric trains, including Aventra IPEMUs, that this might create some extra capacity on the line.
Unless the line was fully electrified, it wouldn’t be a route for using the electric trains that run up the East and West Coast Main Lines.
But it would be able to take services run by Aventra IPEMUs or any diesel-hauled passenger or freight trains.
These capacity arguments would also apply to the Glasgow and South Western Line, so with a bit of selective electrification and Aventra IPEMUs, some extra capacity might be squeezed in.
I certainly think that a railway time-tabling expert could certainly find some extra capacity.
But it might be overnight freight trains?
Are There Any Branches To The Borders Railway That Could Be Created?
The original Waverley route had several branches including to Peebles and Hexham.
Midlothian Council have also thought about a branch to Penicuik.
Extra branches are up to the economics and the politicians.
Conclusion
In my view, not to extend the Borders Railway to Carlisle by way of Melrose and Hawick, would be total stupidity.
The problem is that despite being totally in Scotland, extending the Borders Railway to Carlisle, has substantial benefits for England too!
What will Nicola think?
Scotland’s Weather
Carol Kirkwood, the BBC’s Scottish weatherwoman with the large wardrobe of dresses, has just given statistics to show that Scotland is having a very wet summer.
It’s funny that the weather should get worse, after the General Election, where so many Scots voted for a party that believes in total independence.
If they do leave the UK, I hope they take all that wet weather with them.
It looks like she has made her decision, as I think Carol lives somewhere in the South of England. But then she has access to all the data!
Perhaps, now is the time, for people like me, who don’t particularly like hot weather, to take a holiday North of the Border.
Racing Trains To Scotland
As a child, I was never a great reader of books, except for encyclopaedias and other factual books. In an effort to get me to read more, my mother got me a book from the library about how the various train companies in the late 1800s tried to outperform each other to Edinburgh in 1888 and Aberdeen in 1895.
All of this has come back to me, as this month’s edition of Modern Railways is talking about developments in the services to Scotland, that could happen over the next few years.
The Press of the time, dubbed this Victorian rivalry as the Race To The North and in the section in the Wikipedia entry about the rivalry to Aberdeen in 1895, this is said.
In his 1958 book about the series of races, Oswald Nock wrote of the 22/23 August journey, “And at that astonishing average speed of 63.3 mph made sixty-three years ago the London–Aberdeen record still stands today”
The time was even more astounding, when you consider it wasn’t beaten until the 1970s by an InterCity125, which still work the route today.
The time on the night of the 22nd/23rd of August 1895 was eight hours forty-two minutes with Victorian steam locomotives and today the 200 kph diesel train takes just a few minutes over seven hours. But the modern train takes the shorter East Coast route!
The East and West Coast routes obviously don’t race each other these days, but according to Modern Railways, it looks like travel between London and Edinburgh is going to get faster and more interesting, as Virgin are aiming for quite a few four-hour trains throughout the day and two new companies are applying to run direct services between the two capitals.
If I understand the article correctly, by 2020 Virgin will be running three trains an hour between London and Edinburgh. The train from London on the hour will stop at Newcastle with York in alternate hours. The one stoppers will do the journey in four hours with the others just a few minutes slower.. Hopefully by 2020, the new Class 800 and Class 801 trains will be running the semi-fast services in four hours twenty-three minutes. The fastest trains now take four hours and twenty minutes.
Two new operators are applying to run trains on the route.
GNER which is ultimately a subsidiary of Deutsche Bahn is planning to use 12×9-car Pendelinos to provide an hourly ‘fast’ service in three hours forty-three minutes from December 2018. They have said, that they are aiming to tempt passengers to switch from plane to train.
The article quotes that rail has a 30% share of the London-Edinburgh market, where there are 42 flights a day. They want to push rail’s share up to 50%.
In Edinburgh – Train or Plane? I compared a journey up by easyJet from Stansted with a return in First on East Coast. Both journeys cost and took about the same time from Hackney to the centre of Edinburgh.
FirstGroup is aiming to run five trains each way between London and Edinburgh in four hours from December 2018, using new Hitachi AT300 electric trains with three stops en route at Morpeth, Newcastle and Stevenage. First has said it will be targeting passengers from the low-cost airlines.
I’ve only talked about Edinburgh in this piece, but a lot of the analysis will also apply to the West Coast Main Line, which has already hsad a dose of a competing service, in the share of First TransPennine to Manchester.
If these plans come to fruition, it would look like the slowest trains on the Edinburgh route will be the Virgin semi-fasts, which will take just a few minutes longer than the fastest trains today.
Out of curiosity, I looked at trains and flights for tomorrow (today is a Monday). I could get the 08:00 out of Kings Cross, which gets me into Edinburgh at 12:20, just in time for lunch, for a Second Class cost of £33.95 and a First Class cost of £65.95 (both costs third-off with Railcard), whereas the easyJet flight from Gatwick or Stansted costs around £60, but would probably mean leaving home well before five in the morning.
This leads me to think, that if all these train services to Edinburgh come to fruition, that the only losers will be the airlines, especially if the large increase in capacity on the route brings down train fares.
The Iron Lady Rides Again
I don’t think I saw Margaret Thatcher in a debate like last night’s, although I did hear her many times on the radio during Prime Minister’s Questions.
I was speaking to a Scot this morning, and we both felt that Nicola Sturgeon has a lot of Margaret Thatcher about her.
I’ll probably be sent to The Tower for treason or whatever the Scots do, for such a thought!
Mansion Tax To Pay For 1,000 Nurses In Scotland
This is the front page headline in The Times. It is subtitled.
Labour targets southern England to woo north.
These headlines are based on a policy statement by Jim Murphy, the Scottish Labour Leader. The Times also says he didn’t clear it with Ed Miliband.
My house would probably not be worth enough to pay a mansion tax, although knowing politicians, they’d probably change the rules to make most houses in London and the South East pay the tax.
But I thought that the NHS in Scotland was devolved.
One thing I find, is that if I talk about the NHS to people in England and Scotland, those in places like London, Liverpool and East Anglia, are much more satisfied with prerformance than those north of the border.
The Rail Projects Keep Coming
I’ve just been reading the rail news sites like Modern Railways and Global Rail News and over the last few days some substantial projects have been announced.
The project that will affect me most is an upgrade to the Great Eastern Main Line.
It’s not any new features, but an upgrading of track, overhead wires and signalling. Network Rail say this.
As part of the upgrade, one of NR’s ‘high output’ machines will begin replacing ballast along the route to ensure the track bed is safe and well-drained. The machine is currently being used to upgrade the Great Western main line, and will move to the GEML in the New Year.
It will also upgrade one track at a time, so it’s unlikely there will be substantial blockades. Traditionally, this sort of work would have meant weekend closures and buses. So Network Rail seem to be doing sometime better.
Network Rail are also replacing the Scarborough Bridge on the Scarborough Branch Line. The work is described here and this is a paragraph.
The bridge, which was originally built in 1845 and then rebuilt in 1875, is now life-expired. Work will see the bridge decks and tracks replaced and a new walkway installed to improve safety for railway workers. The work is part of a £6 million investment by Network Rail.
So it’s only a small project, but I’m sure it’s important to a lot of travellers.
The extending of Chiltern’s network to Cowley has also been announced. I think we’ll see a lot of projects like this, where old lines are given something to do in the next couple of decades.
Network Rail has also announced a £200million project to do more work on the improvement of lines between Edinburgh and Glasgow.
As with the electrification across the North of England, electrification is another prime example of the failure of Central government to do the right thing to create infrastructure and fuel jobs, businesses and growth. This describes the scope of the work.
The companies will work with Network Rail to electrify the main line between the cities, complete route clearance works at Winchburgh Tunnel, infrastructure works at Glasgow Queen Street and Edinburgh Waverley stations and extend platforms at Croy, Falkirk High, Polmont and Linlithgow.
What will fast electric trains running between Scotland’s two major cities, do for the area? Wikipedia lists several benefits including this one.
Service frequencies between Edinburgh and Glasgow Queen Street increased from four trains per hour to six per hour, with the fastest journey time being reduced to 35 minutes. This would have resulted in a total of 13 trains per hour between the two cities across all routes;
Currently, services take from about 50 minutes to an hour and a quarter.
Global Rail News has announced that funding is in place to extend the Manchester Metro to the Trafford Centre.
An aside here is to look at the list of proposed changes and expansions to the Manchester Metrolink. Every council in the area seems to have its own pet ideas and surely this must be best argument for a peacemaker and decision taker in Manchester, like TfL are in London.
I wonder how many more of these projects will be announced before the General Election in May.
Thoughts On The Borders Railway
I’ve been looking at a page, which describes progress on the Borders Railway.
To my untrained eye, progress appears slow, but as I can’t find anybody saying it is on the Internet, I suspect I’m wide of the mark.
I did find some commentators sceptical about the railway, but unless someone drops a complete haggis, I suspect that the railway will be a success.
Just look what happened with the London Overground, which wasn’t a new railway, but the rebuilding of a zombie line, where the trains smelt like travelling urinals.
Near me, Transport for London took the old East London Railway, which had been part of the old Metropolitan Line and extended it with some new infrastructure to create the East London Line we have today.
They made two miscalculations with the East London Line and its cousin; the North London Line.
In the first place, they underestimated the passenger demand and they have been playing catch-up ever since, my lengthening trains and platforms.
And then, I don’t think they realised how much property prices would rise along the updated lines.
I also think that no-one has found a way to properly model, the novelty factor, which often gets someone to use a new railway or road in the first place.
I know the Scots are canny people and don’t exaggerate, but I would be very surprised if the costs and predictions for the Borders Railway weren’t very conservative, as they had to satisfy so many different politicians, companies and agencies.
East Londoners immediately liked the London Overground and used it, as they’d never seen anything like it. Clean smart trains running to time, even if some of the stations weren’t up to the standard of the trains, got them excited and they recommended it to their friends. Young people got a new way to get to that decent job a couple of boroughs away. New trains were so much more cool than red buses.
I have a feeling that the people of the Borders will embrace their new railway in the same way and in a year or two’s time, they will be clamouring for more trains and extension of the railway all the way to Carlisle.
So at a time when Scotland is probably getting more independence, the railways seem to be getting joined up again!
One final thought concerns the affect a successful Borders Railway may have on England. Will it give further impetus to the reopening of long-closed rail lines?
Is Virgin Atlantic Closing Little Red?
The Sunday Times is leading the Business section, with an article that is saying that Virgin Atlantic is closing Little Red.
I always thought it was an ambitious plan, especially as the airline doesn’t go to Glasgow. This might seem a mistake, but remember Virgin Trains go to Scotland’s biggest city, where probably most London-bound travellers live.
Incidentally, I have only heard of one person, who has used the airline to get to Scotland and they live near Heathrow.
But after my experience with flying easyJet to Edinburgh, where it took as long as the train, due to security delays, I just wonder if flying to Scotland now, is a second class option to many travellers. As an example, one of my Edinburgh friends, who frequently travels down to London, always seems to use the train.
So you have to have a good reason to fly, such as your company is paying and you get the reward points.
Security delays are obviously a problem at some airports and these could get worse, unless terrorism worries actually reduce our desire for air travel substantially.
But two other factors probably have more effect; Manchester Airport and the trains.
Traffic at Manchester Airport has risen by nearly twenty percent in the last few years and this has been substantially helped by better rail connectivity across the North and to Glasgow.
So why would a Glaswegian spend more money to fly to Heathrow, when he or she can do the total journey quicker, by taking a convenient brand-new First TransPennine train to Manchester Airport and getting his flight from there?
But the trains are so much better at journeys a couple of stops short of a full London to Scotland journey. And how many Scots who live in the Central belt want to go to places other than London like Birmingham, Peterborough or Milton Keynes?
The trains are getting better each year and there seems to be no sign of the pace of the improvement slowing. Station upgrades at Edinburgh, Glasgow, Newcastle, Peterborough and Birmingham will be completed and extra paths for more trains will be available, as alternative routes for freight trains become available. The real game-changer will happen at the end of this decade, when in-cab signalling becomes available, allowing the trains to increase maximum speeds from 125 mph to 140 mph.
Presently the fastest London Glasgow trains take four and a half hours, but the improvements could deliver a time around four hours.
As Virgin obviously have all the figures for both train and plane to Scotland, if they are closing Little Red, I suspect it was somewhat of a no-brainer.
The Anonymous Widower 