All Wired Up And Ready To Go?
I took these pictures of the Canal Tunnels as we left Kings Cross for York.
As the title implies the Canal Tunnels look almost ready.
I wonder when the first trains will go through the tunnels. Wikipedia says that the Class 700 trains will enter service between 2016 and 2018.
Walking Between Surrey Quays And Queen’s Road Peckham Stations
My walk this morning was between Surrey Quay station and Queen’s Road Peckham station along the South London Line.
I wanted to look at progress on the Bermondsey dive-under and also the New Bermondsey station site.
Nothing was happening at the station site and this Network Rail video makes a bit of sense of the work at the dive-under.
I would appear that the long concrete ramp has now been completed and there has been some demolition of the brick viaducts in the site.
Why Is There No Mention Of York Potash In The Discussion Of Redcar Steelworks?
This detailed article on the BBC entitled What is the outlook for Britain’s steel industry? starts like this.
It is being billed as a top level crisis summit. Government ministers, unions and steel company bosses are heading to South Yorkshire to discuss what can be done to help an industry hit by tough global market conditions.
UK steelmakers say it’s getting harder to compete because of high energy costs, green taxes, the strong pound and cheap Chinese imports flooding the market. Compared to foreign competitors, steel unions warn the cost of making steel in the UK is too high.
The recent closure of SSI’s steelworks at Redcar in Teeside, with the loss of more than 2,000 jobs, has brought into sharp focus the difficulties facing the industry. The Thai firm said a slump in demand for steel was behind its decision.
At other steelworks across the country, from South Wales to Scunthorpe to Rotherham, union leaders says thousands of jobs are hanging in the balance. So what’s next for the UK’s steelworkers?
But with regard to Sirius Metals and the creation of one of the world’s largest potash mines and processing facility; York Potash, there is not a word.
I’m afraid that in a few years there will be little steel-making in Europe, let alone the UK, as other countries with lower costs will undercut Europe on price.
On this page of the York Potash web site, there is an impressive video about the mine and its processing facility.
This must be one of the hopes for the future for Teeside.
I can remember the development of the earlier potash mine at Boulby, when I worked at ICI around 1970. This section is the history of the Boulby mine, and it would appear to have a future. The potash is removed to Teesport, using a reopened section of the Whitby, Redcar and Middlesbrough Union Railway, which used to connect Middlesbrough to Whitby, in addition to the still operating Esk Valley Line
In contrast the York Potash ,mine will use an underground conveyor to move potash from South of Whitby to its processing facility at Teesport.
There is still another railway in the area, which is the heritage North Yorkshire Railway, which connects Whitby and Pickering. According to this section in Wikipedia, it has ambitious plans to connect to the York to Scarborough Line, thus giving the possibility of steam services between Scarborough and Whitby.
I believe that the Tees Valley Metro can be developed.
Like many places in the UK, I believe that services on all the lines from Morpeth and Newcastle in the North to Middlesbrough, Darlington and Whitby in the South could be run using Aventra IPEMUs with a small amount of selected electrification.
Which brings me to the conclusion that Redcar steel works will be closed and Potash mining and a developed Tees Valley Metro will be better for the area, than pouring millions down the black hole of the steelworks.
The New Three Bridges Depot
The new Thameslink depot at Three Bridges for the Class 700 trains opened today according to this report on Rail News.
I passed the depot a few days ago and took these pictures.
I didn’t see any of the new trains as I passed.
Oxford Or Oxford Parkway Station?
I ask this question, as the new Oxford Parkway station opens on the twenty-sixth of this month.
I have just looked at the times and it would appear that the half-hourly services between Marylebone and Oxford Parkway, will take about an hour.
The current service between Paddington and Oxford station isn’t a consistent service, with some services taking forty minutes and other direct services taking an hour longer.
So for the next few months, until Chiltern Railways hopefully arrive in Oxford station in Sprint 2016, it’ll very much be a question of personal convenience and preference.
Significant Documents
When I wrote Increased Frequencies On The East London Line, I relied on this document from Transport for London (TfL) entitled London Overground and Docklands Light Railway Growth.
The document was significant because of its openness and the way it laid out how the London Overground and the Docklands Light Railway will cope with growth.
I think the document also shows how a properly planned public transport project attracts users, that are a precursor to the growth.
After all, in the last few months, I’ve seen the extension of the Nottingham Express Transit and the opening of the Borders Railway, neither of which have attracted substantial amounts of negative comment.
So perhaps we’re now getting rather good at planning these types of projects.
Over the last few months, I’ve read some significant documents, that look to the future.
- Transport for London’s London Infrastructure Plan for 2050
- Liverpool City Region Long Term Rail Strategy
- Greater Manchester Rail Policy
All are quality documents and are superb starting points for the development of railways in their area.
Plumpton Station, Level Crossing And Racecourse
When a friend phoned me from Brighton asking me next time I was in the area to meet him for a coffee, I decided to combine the trip with a visit to the site of the level crossing in I Wonder If This Happens In Europe.
These are pictures I took at Plumpton station.
It would not be called grand, but it must be one of the few stations in the UK with an attached racecourse.
The rebuilding of the level crossing is causing problems according to Wikipedia. This is said.
Network Rail closed the level crossing in September 2015 so that the gates on the crossing could be replaced. However, Lewes District Council rejected the plans to replace the gates as it would cause “substantial harm to the significance of the signal box”. Network Rail have said that they cannot open the crossing as the work is not completed. This has effectively split the village in two, with some motorists having to take a six or seven mile detour.
I did chat with a local and her grey whippet and feel that there could be more to this than meets the eye.
If you type “Plumpton suicide” into Google, you find reports, where people have killed themselves at the crossing.
But I also feel that Network Rail haven’t been too clever in this one. My view is that stations like Plumpton need at least a half-hourly service, as this means you have a proper turn-up-and-go service.
One of the pieces of work being done in the area, is to close all the signal boxes and handle all signalling from Three Bridges Operating Centre. This work combined with an automated level crossing, could surely enable all the half-hourly services between Lewes and London to stop at the station.
But it would enrage the militant wing of the heritage lobby!
As to the signal box, they should be looking at a version of the Highams Park solution. Perhaps it would make a cafe and/or business centre.
Starting a half-hourly service might have the effect of increasing traffic at the station.
It’s a difficult one, but with the population of areas like Sussex getting older, more numerous and more and more people cutting use of their cars, who knows?
For the duration of the level crossing closure, Network Rail and Southern had a golden opportunity to experiment with stopping all services. Some of those drivers, who are doing a long detour, might have been persuaded to try the trains to Lewes, Brighton or London.
I Wonder If This Happens In Europe
This article from Rail News entitled Level crossing upgrade hits deadlock is priceless. This is the first couple of paragraphs.
A bid to upgrade the gates at a ‘high risk’ level crossing in Sussex has fallen foul of planning laws, and Network Rail has written a letter of apology to local residents who have been protesting that the road across the railway has now been closed for several weeks.
The gates at Plumpton between Burgess Hill and Lewes are of the traditional pattern, and controlled from the box alongside. But Network Rail said that “despite its local popularity and heritage, independent risk assessments had identified that the level crossing posed a high safety risk, as well as being increasingly difficult to operate and maintain”.
They now need to be replaced with modern lifting barriers which could in future be controlled by the new Rail Operating Centre at Three Bridges. The upgrade is costing £2 million.
This all sounds straightforward.
But it isn’t as Lewes Council has refused planning permission on heritage grounds.
The lawyers must be loving this one, as it will obviously run and run.
But as it’s a high risk crossing, surely this crossing should be closed before a serious accident happens.
Remember, I used to live in East Anglia and every few months or so, there was a news story about a serious level crossing accident.
Network Rail should be tasked to get rid of them all as soon as possible, so more tragedies like Elsenham and Ufton Nervet never happen again.
I suppose they could always close the East Coastway Line and run Rail Replacement Buses instead.
I wonder if other countries in Europe handle this sort of problem better!
Back From The Hague
Before I left on Thursday, I wrote Off To The Hague Today and started the post like this.
Is there any other train journey between two capitals in the world, that is more difficult now than it was six or seven years ago?
It certainly doesn’t get any better.
Arriving in Brussels, the hourly train to Antwerp and The Hague left in half an hour, so I thought if I could get a ticket to The Hague, I might go direct.
So I tried a machine. But these only sell tickets to Belgium.
Ticket Office?
The queues were horrendous, so I got on the train to Antwerp as my Any Belgium Ticket would get me there!
At Antwerp, I took half an hour to buy a ticket and after a lunch of nuts and the worst coffee, I’ve ever had, I caught the next train to Den Haag HS, where I changed for Den Haag Laan van Nieuwe Oost Indie.
Express train it is not! On this main InterCity route, some of it has a speed limit of just 100 kph. Even London to Ipswich is a 160 kph line.
Coming back, there were a few delays and it took exactly four hours from the time I got on the InterCity train at Den Haag HS before I was on my on-time Eurostar leaving Brussels. Admittedly, forty-five minutes of so was checking-in and waiting for the Eurostar.
Incidentally, Den Haag to Brussels in 172.9 km. and can be driven in two hours.
London to Birmingham is actually slightly further and Virgin does it around 85 minutes.
If that isn’t a disgrace, I’m a Dutchman!
What wasn’t a disgrace was the food on Eurostar!
I’d forgot to ask for a gluten-free meal, but I was assured the main course was gluten-free. I’m pretty certain it was and it was also delicious.
So at least the last part of the journey went well and we arrived in St. Pancras on time!
Passenger services through the Channel Tunnel opened in 1994, with services to and from St. Pancras starting in November 2007.
The new Class 374 trains to start a service to Amsterdam and Cologne are now sitting in sidings, with services supposed to start at the end of 2016.
Judging by the history of the development of services to places other than London, Brussels and Paris, I suspect that date will slip to somewhere about 2026 or even 2036.
The biggest problem seems to be the multiplicity of different electrical systems between France, Germany and The Netherlands. At least we chose our 25kVAC overhead system is the same as the French and has been since at least the 1960s.
I despair, that I’ll ever take a High Speed train direct to Rotterdam and then take a local train to The Hague.
No wonder the EU is such a mess, if the UK, Belgium, France, Germany and The Netherlands can’t agree on something purely technical like a connecting railway.
Den Haag HS Station
This is the station from where I left The Hague
Over the years, I have used it, Den Haag HS station has been cleaned up, but in some ways it is a rather soulless place, except for some of the old details.
I had bought my ticket earlier, but at least there was a machine at the station, where I could get a ticket to Brussels.
Unlike at Brussels, where there were no machines selling tickets to The Netherlands that I could find.
The Anonymous Widower 