News from the East Anglian Branch of Railfuture, Edited by Martin Thorne and Jerry Alderson.
Railfuture News Snippets 251 - 31/03/2014
- RAIL ROUTES [all issues]
- Network Rail announces to media works it will perform in East Anglia during Control Period 5 (2014-2019)
- Cambridgeshire County Council transport chief "positive about the potential" of Cambridge to Haverhill railway line
- First revenue-earning freight train operates over the new time-saving fuel-saving £59m Ipswich chord
- GUIDED BUSWAY [all issues]
- WEBSITES [all issues]
The Cambridge University Railway Club (CURC) has announced to high-profile speakers at its meetings in May 2014. On Friday 9th May Richard Brown, who led the franchising process review, is the guest and on Friday 16th May it is Mark Hopwood, the Managing Director of First Great Western.
RAIL ROUTES
Network Rail announces to media works it will perform in East Anglia during Control Period 5 (2014-2019)
On 31st March 2014, the day before Control Period 5 (1st April 2014 to 31st March 2019) begins, Network Rail announced to the media a list of the infrastructure enhancement schemes that it planned to undertake in East Anglia during that five-year period. Nominally costing £2.2bn this is rather an abuse of figures since that is the total expenditure, including Operations, Maintenance and Renewals (OMR), rather than just infrastructure. Of the national £38bn quoted as "investment" during that period, less than £10bn is actually investment - the rest is just 'doing the day job.'
The improvements to the network in East Anglia include:
- Upgrading overhead power lines between London and Chelmsford to improve resilience
- New tunnels just north of King's Cross that will allow direct services to the South Coast from Cambridge and Peterborough
- Upgrading the Bow Junction near Liverpool Street to allow more trains to pass through
- Rebuilding Ely Junction North allowing more trains to run across East Anglia
- Open a new Rail Operating Centre (ROC) in Romford to control the entire railway in the Anglia region
News item: http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-26820538.
Cambridgeshire County Council transport chief "positive about the potential" of Cambridge to Haverhill railway line
Keywords: [Haverhill]
On 22nd March 2014 the East Anglian Daily Times reported that Cambridgeshire County Council's head of transport and policy infrastructure and funding Dearbhla Lawson was "positive about the potential" of a rail link between Cambridge and Haverhill but also said that a bus service was the short-term solution, while the New Anglia LEP and Suffolk County Council both lent their support to the rail project. Desktop estimates suggest that the line could cost up to £30million per kilometre to reinstate but a study is planned and is likely to be published by the end of 2014. The original Cambridge to Haverhill to Sudbury to Marks Tey line came off the Liverpool Street line just south of Shelford Station, and went to east of Sawston with a station at Pampisford where there is currently an architectural salvage site and then on to west of Linton where there is a large grain storage depot. The route near Stapleford has almost disappeared, near Sawston a cutting has been filled in with rubbish and at Pampisford there is a large grade-separated junction where A505 and A11 merge.
First revenue-earning freight train operates over the new time-saving fuel-saving £59m Ipswich chord
Keywords: [IpswichChord]
On 24th March 2014 GB Railfreight operated the very first revenue earning freight train along the newly commissioned 1.2km 30mph double-track Ipswich Chord, which avoids a time-consuming, fuel-wasting and capacity-wasting reversal in Ipswich. The 11:33 train from Felixstowe North Terminal to Doncaster Railport was classed as a 'test train' and the chord opened to commercial traffic a week later on 31st March 2014, on time and on budget (at £59m of which £10.7 million came from the European Trans-European Network [TEN-T]) according to Network Rail. Always known informally as the 'Bacon Factory Curve' (after the Harris Bacon Factory that previously occupied part of the triangle created by the new line) it was formally known as the Ipswich chord during the project's planning and construction stage. However, route signage refers to 'BFC'.
The new chord was built to take freight trains to and from Felixstowe - the UK's largest container port and the sixth largest in Europe - via Bury St Edmunds, Ely, Peterborough and Nuneaton. Currently only GBRf is using it because Freightliner still needs to go into Ipswich Yard as that is where its crew depot is located. Freightliner is apparently considering using Stowmarket for a small depot. Prior to the opening of the Chord there were 28 freight trains per day in each direction, 18 via London and 10 via Ely. When the Chord is at full stretch in 2030, after other infrastructure improvements are complete, it is anticipated that there will be 56 paths each way. However, whilst the plans are to send most of the additional Felixstowe freight trains cross country via Ely - i.e. using the new chord - some will continue to go via Ipswich, where there is often a crew and/or traction change before continuing via the Great Eastern main line (GEML) to Stratford (a challenging pinch-point for signallers) and thence via the North London line to join the West Coast main line. The GEML route is, of course, already very busy with a mixture of InterCity, semi-fast and stopping outer suburban trains. The container trains have to fit around the passenger services on what is basically a twin-track railway from Liverpool Street to Ipswich, with limited opportunities for fast trains to overtake at Chelmsford, Witham and Colchester.
The new chord, which Railfuture strongly supported during the public consultation stage, is the first Network Rail line to be authorised under 'The Railways (Interoperability) Regulations 2011' and it was envisaged that only freight trains would use it. However, several charter rail tour operators intend to traverse it for the benefit of 'track bashers' requiring the line to be reclassified as 'mixed traffic.' It is very unlikely that the chord will ever be used for regular passenger services. The once extensive Felixstowe Town station, with four long bay platforms, has been cut back to just one shorter platform that is sufficient to serve the hourly Class 153 shuttle, which has to share the (currently) single line with the container trains serving the three Felixstowe freight terminals.
The chord has been future-proofed, not just by building it as double track now, rather than adding a second track later, but by installing overhead lines for a 150-metre section of the 'Up' curve to avoid complex alterations later and also cope with an 'up' electric train being mis-routed onto the curve.
GUIDED BUSWAY
County councillor accuses guided busway team of "consistently misleading" councillors over problems with the scheme
Long-term opponent of the £152m Cambridgeshire Guided Busway, and now a county councillor (having been a district councillor at the time of the public inquiry), Cllr Mike Mason, told a Cambridgeshire County Council meeting that questions about delays, overspends and contractual wrangling with builder BAM Nuttall, as well as faults with the track, had been "answered evasively or not at all" by the council's busway team. He called for a cross-party inquiry into the scheme but it was defeated by 33 votes to 21 (partly because an 'independent' review had been commissioned but had not yet reported) with council leader Cllr Martin Curtis claiming Cllr Mason's allegations were "totally unfounded" according to the Cambridge News.
Cllr Mason's motion claimed the council had "failed" to "properly scrutinise and publicise the financial, contractual and operational legacy" of the busway. He complained that much of the debate on the issue had "not been conducted in open meetings and that this is not in the public interest." He claimed that during 2008 and 2009 the "contract was running out of control, it was running two-and-a-half years late and, with the greatest of respect I believe, by their public statements, that the cabinet and officers were denying these facts."
Commenting upon the news story, one person observed that "most local governments do not have the skills to write a sound contract. In contrast construction companies are sharp witted and rapacious, and employ far better people on their side of the negotiating table than the council can, or will, afford. As a result, when it goes wrong - and sometimes it's not the fault of the construction company, as councils are too wont to change the specification after the fact - the cards are all with the construction company."
WEBSITES
Website created to promote rail industry collaboration for rebuilding Bicester to Oxford rail route
Keywords: [EastWestRail]
The first part of the East West Rail Link will be the completely rebuilt route from Bicester Town station (to be renamed Bicester Village, after the major retail centre, once reopened) to Oxford will open in 2016 - sadly later than originally planned because of delays in the planning process. Later phases will, of course, take it to Bedford and ultimately Cambridge. The rail industry companies involved have created a new http://www.bicestertooxfordcollaboration.com/ website to promote the collaboration between Network Rail and Chiltern Railways that will manage the upgrade of the line (Chiltern Railways has taken over from Great Western) and connection of the railway to the Chiltern Main Line at Bicester with the construction of 1km of new route. Part of the purpose of the website is to inform nearby residents and road users of the work that is being done, in particular disruption.
Railfuture East Anglia Branch News Snippets 251 - 31/03/2014
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