New Train For Romford To Upminster
Until this morning, I didn’t know there was a train line from Romford to Upminster. But there is and it has a comprehensive Wikipedia page, which says it generally has a half hour service run by an elderly Class 315.
Today though, one of my trawls picked by the news that Transport for London has asked for tenders for new trains for the West Anglia and Gospel Oak to Barking services. The story is on Global Rail News. This the last paragraph.
Thirty of the new trains will replace the current West Anglia stock, which will undergo a deep clean and rebranding. Eight more will go the newly-electrified Gospel Oak to Barking route, with the remaining unit going into service on the Romford to Upminster line.
So the Romford to Upminster line gets the 39th train.
This section is on Wikipedia about the future uses of Class 315.
As most duties of the 315s will be taken over by new Class 345 Aventra trains once Crossrail is built, it has been suggested that the 315s could be cascaded to the Wales and Borders passenger franchise to be used on Valley Lines services in the Cardiff area following electrification.
If most of the class do go to Wales, it will be a long way to move the single train on the Romford to Upminster line for servicing.
I can only see one reason why the order will not go to Bombardier to deliver some more of the excellent Class 378 and that would be because the company didn’t feel it wanted to bid.
Searching For George Stephenson’s Bridge
One of the major components of the Northern Hub is the Ordsall Chord. This is so important it has its own web site.
Would you believe that where logically the curve should go, there is a Grade One listed bridge put up by George Stephenson?
The various heritage sites are shown here on the Ordsall Chord web site.
So I went to take some pictures of the area.
There are several bridges there and quite frankly none appears to have much elegance.
The solitary Salford lith was useless, as it only gave details about Salford. I was virtually outside Manchester Victoria station and that wasn’t shown.
Salford and Manchester may be two separate cities, but the rest of the world sees them as one and they should act as such, otherwise visitors will come back with tales of this impenetrable city and discourage their friends from coming.
Why Wasn’t The Picc-Vic Tunnel Built?
The Picc-Vicc Tunnel, which would have been a rail bypass under Manchester. Having experienced the tunnel under Liverpool,earlier in the day, I was wondering, why a similar tunnel hadn’t been built in Manchester.
On the way back from Huddersfield to Manchester, I was discussing with several Huddersfield fans, how the Northern Hub would affect their journeys. All seemed to be welcoming the upgrade, so I asked why the Picc-Vicc tunnel wasn’t built.
One guy, said that he’d been to a lecture at the local historical society. He said that British Rail and the government were planning three tunnels in the 1970s; Liverpool, Manchester and the Tyneside Metro.
So because of cost, one had to be dropped, and Manchester was chosen.
As we’re getting much better with tunnels every year, I wouldn’t say that the Picc-Vicc tunnel is dead. Crossrail was on the back-burner for so long, no-one ever thought it would happen!
Could we for instance see a tunnel under part of Manchester for HS2?
A Walk Along The Beach
I took the Nortern line to Blundellsands and Crosby station from where I walked along the beach and the promenade to Hall Road station.
It was an easy walk of a couple of kilometres, although it was extremely windy.
I was reminded of the story Jimmy Edward told of eating a sandwich on a horse in a high wind, when he missed and took a large bite of ,moustache instead, as I tried to eat my lunch in the small amount of shelter on the promenade.
I was able to get close to Antony Gormley‘s figures called Another Place. I liked them and so did a couple of local dog walkers. On the rest of my trip, I said I’d been to see them several times and everybody I spoke to, said that they liked them!
As the trains run every fifteen minutes, you shouldn’t have to wait long for a train, at the end of your walk.
My only regret was that I didn’t walk it in a Southerly direction, as that way, I would have been blown along in just a few minutes.
Liverpool’s Cross City Underground Railway
Liverpool is unique outside London in that railways on two sides of the city are connected underneath the city with a tunnel. This the Northern line that links the north and south. To get to this line I took the loop of the Wirral line between Liverpool Lime Street and Central stations. I took these pictures as I changed trains.
The trains these days are Class 507, which date from the late 1970s and the slightly younger Class 508. However they have been refurbished and are not of the standard you would expect from an over thirty-year-old train. I’ve travelled on them several times in the last few years and I can’t remember being in a dirty train or one with bits hanging off.
I often decry railway engineering of the 1960s and 1970s, but Liverpool’s Underground lines seems to be something that British Rail got right.
Surprisingly, this was the first time that I have used the Northern line and quite frankly, I was impressed. It has the feel of the Northern City line, that I sometimes use near my home in London. But it is a bit more upmarket with refreshed trains and stations.
What Do You Do With A Problem Like Euston?
Or more particularly, how do you connect Euston station to Euston Square Underground station.
I walked between the two stations today and took these pictures.
It’s a congested route and it involves at least one busy road crossing.
I had wondered if some sort of pedestrian over-bridge could be used with a moving pavement to link the two stations. But it would appear that layout of the buildings plonked in the front of Euston station would probably make this impossible.
Wikipedia does state that Network Rail devised plans in 2005 to link the two stations with a subway. This project seems to have sunk without trace.
The only thing that could possibly be done, is to put a lift to the street on the Northern side of the lines in Euston Square station, to improve access to the Eastbound platform.
I never walk between the two stations and to get to and from the station, I usually use a 30 or 73 bus, as the tube station underneath the mainline station is a dark warren of tunnels and escalators.
The trouble though with the buses, is they get stuck in the traffic on the Euston Road.
Why a proper connection between the two stations wasn’t incorporated, when they rebuilt Euston in the 1960s, only a genius of the level of Einstein could tell. But sadly he’s dead, so we’ll have to use the ouija board.
What puzzles me, is that how come the architects in the 1960s, could create two stations as bad as Manchester Piccadilly and Euston and yet leave Liverpool Lime Street as a properly working station! This section in Wikipedia offers a few clues.
Is The Northern Hub Bold Enough?
Yesterday, on my trip to Blackburn, some of the problems that will be addressed by the Northern Hub developments became obvious.
Admittedly, my problems are slightly worse than most passengers as I’m a coeliac, so my chance of buying a decent gluten free meal in Blackburn is about the sane as finding a cold bottle of water in Hell. There isn’t even a Pizza Express, although they do have restaurants in Blackheath and Blackpool.
So to be safe, I have to go via Manchester or Leeds, where there are several good gluten-free restaurants, or at a pinch Preston, where there is a pleasant Pizza Express.
The main problem is that I’m coming up from London and I want to leave Manchester going to the North. Trains from Manchester Victoria to Blackburn are rather decrepit and cramped Class 150 Sprinter DMU or scrapyard specials as I called them in this post. They seem to run twice an hour, which is better than those from Leeds and Preston, which are just hourly.
You can get from Piccadilly to Blackburn, but it involves a change of train at either Salford Crescent or Bolton. The service is two trains per hour and is probably the best way to do it.
Linking the two main stations in Manchester is the key part of the Northern Hub and involves creating the Ordsall Chord. A plan with a similar objective from 1977 was the Picc-Vic Tunnel, but this much bolder plan was cancelled.
The Ordsall Chord won’t particularly help my journey of yesterday, as I would still do the same short journey to Salford Crescent or Bolton for a train to Blackburn. The stillborn Picc-Vic Tunnel would probably have had a similar effect to Thameslink in London, where for example arriving passengers from Newcastle going to say Sevenoaks dive into the low-level St. Pancras Thameslink station to get their train. So I would have probably dived into Piccadilly low-level station and got the next half-hourly train to Blackburn.
So I have to ask if the Northern Hub plan is bold enough!
But Manchester isn’t London and there is one big difference! London is very much bigger and the numbers of commuters and other rail users is substantially higher.
Another important factor is that Northern Rail runs trains, that discourage rather than encourage more users.
Because of this last point, the fact that a large amount of railway electrification and refurbishment of trains is taking place is very much a positive influence. Some voices in the North may have sniffed at refurbished Class 319 for their new electric services. But if the refurbishment is as good as it was for the Class 455 of South West Trains, no-one except the new train manufacturers will be complaining.
One great advantage of the Class 319, is that there are 86 trainsets, which would mean that electrifying further lines wouldn’t require the purchase of new trains.
We also have the problem in Europe, that there is a shortage of train building capability. So would we prefer to say buy new Chinese trains or refurbish sound trains in places like Allerton, Doncaster, Ilford and Derby? Especially, if the refurbished trains are just as reliable and comfortable, at a fraction of the cost!
In some ways though, the Northern Hub is an extremely bold project, as it is a bit like Topsy on Speed.
The idea of the Northern Hub was only first mooted in 2009 and now there a lot of work in progress like the restoration and roofing of Manchester Victoria station and the electrification of routes. I took this picture yesterday, as I travelled towards Blackburn.
Electrification In Progress
Already the first parts of the project are in place, with new Class 350 electric trains now running from Manchester Airport to Glasgow and Edinburgh via Newton-le-Willows under newly installed wires.
Before the end of this year, you should see a new roof on Manchester Victoria and electric trains connecting Liverpool and Manchester for the first time. When you consider that both cities were electrified for important services to Crewe and the South by 1961 and to London in 1966, it is a disgrace that Liverpool and Manchester have had to wait nearly another fifty years for the electrified link to be inserted.
I described the Northern Hub project as Topsy on speed. In some ways, a project like Topsy is a nightmare to manage, but in one way the scope of this project is expanding relentlessly. And that is in the area of electrification. When first proposed it was intended to electrify the main lines between Liverpool, Preston and Manchester. Since then Blackpool and Huddersfield have been added. There is thought to be no connection between the fact that part of the Huddersfield line is known as the Real Ale Trail and the decision to electrify that line.
Knowing the area and its problems well as I do, I can’t believe that by 2020 there aren’t plans in place to add more lines to the electrification program.
Already the Todmorden Curve is being rebuilt, so that direct diesel services from Manchester Victoria to Burnley can begin later this year. Although Wikipedia says that services might not begin, due to lack of suitable rolling stock. Every line electrified would need new electric trains, but would also release some diesel ones for use elsewhere.
So do we have the virtuous circle, where by refurbishing Class 319 trains, we get the rolling stock to electrify lines, which releases much needed diesel trains to be used to provide a better and more frequent service on other lines to increase the passenger traffic, so that the lines are worth electrifying. And as any number of examples have shown, clean, reliable and frequent electric train services generate a momentum of their own.
In some ways, these lines are very similar to the Valley Lines in Wales. Important to their communities, but neglected and depending on scrapyard specials to move everybody around. But the government has plans for the Valley Lines, as detailed in this extract from Wikipedia.
On 16 July 2012 the UK Government announced plans to extend the electrification of the network at a cost of £350 million. This was at the same time of the announcement of electrification of the South Wales Main Line from Cardiff to Swansea. This would also see investment in new trains and continued improvements to stations. It is thought to start between 2014 and 2019.
We should boldly go on the development of the Northern Hub. On the other hand, progress has been so good this far, perhaps we just need to ensure that it continues at this rate.
I would also suggest that those in charge of the Valley Lines upgrade, take note of what must be good practice in Lancashire.
The Train From Hell
I won’t talk about the match at Blackburn, as Ipswich lost.
But I had one of the worst train journeys I’ve ever had returning from Blackburn to Manchester.
It was one of Northern Rail’s scrapyard specials, or a Class 150 or similar to name it correctly.
But the real problem was that it was full of drunken twenty somethings, who were drinking bottles of Foster and other rubbish. The noise was horrendous.
Until corrected, I would assume everybody was going from Blackburn to a night out in Manchester.
Such behaviour on the Underground, would have resulted in many taking a walk home.
I was glad to get off the train at Salford Crescent to get another train to Piccadilly. But that wasn’t without its contingent of drinkers.
The Worst Station In The UK
If they wanted to remake Brief Encounter, all they’d need to do was go to Manchester Victoria station and add a few steam trains. Not for nothing was it voted the UK’s worst station in 2009.
Although come to think of it, if a powerful steam engine, went through the station, it would probably cause the tonnes of muck in the station roof to fall off and kill a few passengers, even if the steam didn’t blow the station down.
Salvation is at hand, as Network Rail are rebuilding the station and putting a new roof on the station, to protect the squalor from the elements.
At least the information screens work and I found my way successfully to the train.
It’s Wet So It Must Be Manchester
To get to Blackburn I needed to get between Carluccio’s at Manchester Piccadilly station and Manchester Victoria station to catch the 13:00 train to Clitheroe.
I knew I was in Manchester, as it was raining.
As I had bought my ticket from Manchester Stations to Blackburn for the princely sum of £6.95, I had to walk, as you can’t use these tickets on the tram to get between the two stations. Also, unlike Sheffield, my Freedom Pass where it is valid on the trams, it is not valid in Manchester.
The Anonymous Widower 