My Mad East Midlands Metro Scheme

[HSTEd]

Well, I decided this morning that I was going to go completely nuts and indulge in some insane blue-sky thinking along the lines of "what could we do with lots of money to spend".

The concept was the following:
A Nottingham Loop line (simillar to the Merseyrail Loop) under the Market Square with a second platform underneath the current railway station that would then link into the lines going east of Nottingham, providing an intensive service to the various routes to try and turn the whole area for 30 miles into a super-Nottingham commuter belt.

And now the implementation:

1. There would be a single track loop line in tunnel with one 120m platform under the current railway station and another underneath the Old Market Square, total length would be about 2700m, implying a cost of something like £150m.
2. This loop line would open out onto the railway lines east of the surface Nottingham station with the tunnel mouths appearing on opposite sites of the existing lines to avoid the need for conflicting moves across them.
3. The system would then use the existing lines for 3.6km to Netherfield Junction at which point the line would split, hopefully using the existing flat junction, two head either for Carlton (and hence Newark) or to Netherfield itself.
4. East of Netherfield there would be a new crossover east of the station to allow the existing (or partially abandoned?) branch to Arnold to be reopened as a single track passenger spur with access to both platforms at Netherfield.
5. The Gedling Colliery spur would be electrified, as would the Grantham to Nottingham Line, the Grantham Avoiding line as far as Sleaford and the Nottingham to Lincoln line all the way to Lincoln.
6. A new station would be constructed adjacent to Gonerby Moor Service station where the B1174 crosses the railway with a park-and-ride facility to try and tempt commuters into Nottingham off the rather heavily loaded A52.
7. Two new stations would be constructed on the reopened "Gedling Branch", one in Gedling and the other at the end of line adjacent to the 'Chartwell Grove' bus stop on (what I think is) Woodborough Road.
8. Another station could be constructed near Gonerby Hill Foot as there is scheduled to be massive development in the area

On this enormous infrastructure we would then run the following:

4tph Nottingham Loop - Grantham
4tph Nottingham Loop - Lincoln via Newark Castle
4tph Nottingham Loop - Gedling/Arnold branch
4tph Nottingham Loop - sleaford

All trains would stop at all stations and would use rapidly accelerating multiple units to keep out of the way of the existing express and freight services on the lines.

While this would undoubtedly do a great deal of good for the economies of Eastern Nottingham, Grantham, Sleaford, Newark and the intervening villages it would cost an absurd amount of money.
You would need the very expensive loop tunnel, a 200 track kilometres of electrification, a couple of kilometres of new track and several new stations.

I estimate a pricetag of roughly £600m including new 60m EMUs to operate the service, which unfortunately is enough to kill any possibility of such a scheme considering the population of the towns involved (even including all of Nottingham which is silly) is under a million people at the present time.


Still one can dream.....

 

[YorkshireBear]

Makes relative sense even if a few of the frequencies seem ambitious. The cost estimate, my personal opinion is that the tunnel alone would come to nearly 500 million including the two stations... anything up to 1 billion for your scheme more likely 800 million though. Personal opinion.

 

[MCR247]

8tph from Nottingham to Bottesford?!?! hock:

 

[HSTEd]

I just realised that you could extend electrification to Lincoln and run the trains through and then there would be no need for anything but freight and the electric services to be run between Nottingham and Lincoln.... would require another £75m or so to extend the track that far but considering the price of the project.... why not?

8tph from Nottingham to Bottesford?!?! hock:

Well the marginal costs of running electric multiple units are rather low, and it would be a good idea to have lots of trains on the Grantham branch, but you would also need lots of trains on the Sleaford branch to make a Park and Ride at Gonerby Moor sufficiently attractive to gain it some custom.
The more ridiculous (on the face of it at least) effect of this scheme is that Elton and Orston would recieve the full 8tph.....

Makes relative sense even if a few of the frequencies seem ambitious. The cost estimate, my personal opinion is that the tunnel alone would come to nearly 500 million including the two stations... anything up to 1 billion for your scheme more likely 800 million though. Personal opinion.

The tunnel is indeed by far the most expensive part of the scheme, but it is unfortunately necessary to gain journey time savings for most reasonable end points in Nottingham by providing for a rapid means of getting from the outlying destinations to the very heart of Nottingham, which unfortunately the railway station currently does not.

2700m of tunnel with 2 120m platforms is going to be expensive but it appears very difficult to generate a reasonable cost estimate, since we could probably both make arguments for our own proposed figures.

 

[IKBrunel]

It seems a great shame not to have free parking at East Midlands parkway & put 'Nottingham park & ride signs on the M1. Would justify extra stopping trains between EMD & NOT.

I also wonder if there is a business case for a new station in the Wollaton/Radford area on the Robin Hood / Erewash Valley lines, given the metro style stopping frequency of the latter, and proximity to University Jubilee campus and large areas of housing.

 

[YorkshireBear]

The tunnel is indeed by far the most expensive part of the scheme, but it is unfortunately necessary to gain journey time savings for most reasonable end points in Nottingham by providing for a rapid means of getting from the outlying destinations to the very heart of Nottingham, which unfortunately the railway station currently does not.

2700m of tunnel with 2 120m platforms is going to be expensive but it appears very difficult to generate a reasonable cost estimate, since we could probably both make arguments for our own proposed figures.

I don't disagree it is a good idea just disagreed with your cost estimate

 

[harry42]

Like that!

 

[HowardGWR]

It only takes a few minutes to walk up to the Market Square from the station (I did it for years). Now they even have a fancy tram to do so.

I just don't see the point.

 

[HSTEd]

It only takes a few minutes to walk up to the Market Square from the station (I did it for years). Now they even have a fancy tram to do so.

I just don't see the point.

It's the best part of ten minutes or more on foot. In the context of half hour travel times to destinations this is a big loss.
Additionally there are severe capacity issue in the surface station that would prohibit metro operations.

 

[Philip Elliott]

Or just re-build London Road (High Level) station and then connect into the tram network.

 

[edwin_m]

The City Council has just got some funding for bus improvements, which will apparently include barring general traffic from Collin Street and Canal Street, presumably to use Queens Road instead. If done properly this should make the walk up from the station quicker and seem much shorter even though it's still the same distance!

There was a plan in late Victorian times for all train services in Nottingham to be diverted into a single station oriented east-west roughly along the line of Parliament Street, with tunnels to join the existing lines near Lenton and Sneinton.

This was sort of superseded by Victoria station, built in the same area but lying north to south. Another mad scheme would be to run Metro lines into Weekday Cross then an underground station in what is now the Victoria Centre car park.

 

[RichmondCommu]

Whilst I'm in no doubt that you have the best of intentions, in my opinion you're barking up the wrong tree and need to turn your attention to the North East Midlands! Although many of the lines serving the Notts / North Derbyshire coal mines have been torn up the track beds remain intact and track could easily be re-laid.

Why not have a Metro Scheme that links the ex pit villages to Nottingham, Chesterfield and Sheffield, whilst retaining your idea for an underground station in the centre of Nottingham.

 

[WestCountry]

I'd go around the other way, tunnelling from Radford (portal pointing north) in a loop under the centre and station then coming back up north of the mainline heading east and north again at Mansfield Jn. This would allow trains from Trent Jn via the HS2 station at Toton with a new south chord at Trowell.
Say 4tph Mansfield/Worksop(/Ollerton?), 2tph Matlock via Derby, 2tph in each direction Leicester-(new chord again)-AshbydlZ-Burton-Derby, 2tph Sheffield via Ilkeston (allowing the Liverpool service to turn off at Dore).

 

[bunnahabhain]

The only likely thing to happen to the railway network is a second train east of Nottingham towards Newark and possibly Lincoln to enable the Leicester to Lincoln service to be speeded up. The only stations to attract a huge amount of custom are Bingham, Bottesford and Lowdham, the rest either have very few people living nearby or are so close to the city that the bus services have covered the demand.

 

[HSTEd]

If there was room I would propose a two platform through station in Nottingham, allowing a Thameslink esque service, but I can't work out any way to fit that in close to the centre.

Also I am not sure where the London Road station is? Is that the thing that is the gym now in the eastern station approach?

 

[edwin_m]

The gym was London Road Low Level, which became a parcels depot about WW2 and finally closed in around 1990. There was a London Road High Level just next to it which was on the connection from the GNR into Victoria, and survived for a long time after closure but it and the remains of the viaduct were demolished three or four years back.

 

[IKBrunel]

Whilst I'm in no doubt that you have the best of intentions, in my opinion you're barking up the wrong tree and need to turn your attention to the North East Midlands! Although many of the lines serving the Notts / North Derbyshire coal mines have been torn up the track beds remain intact and track could easily be re-laid.

Why not have a Metro Scheme that links the ex pit villages to Nottingham, Chesterfield and Sheffield, whilst retaining your idea for an underground station in the centre of Nottingham.

Notts county council recently bought the strips of land off British Railways Board Residual of various former colliery lines. I'm not sure exactly which lines/where, but I think not far from Nottingham itself. They're currently looking for funding to establish them as waymarked trails presumably with bridleway status. I've heard a few grumpy rail enthusiasts whining about turning alignments into National Cycle Network routes in recent years, but personally I think it's a good way to preserve alignment & prevent them being built on/etc. If a business case/funding for line reopening materialises later on, then it's a lot easier to reroute a gravel trail than it is to CPO peoples homes & businesses.

 

[starrymarkb]

Makes me think of Leipzig's City Tunnel.

(For those that don't know Leipzig is a city the size of Bristol, the S-Bahn is currently being upgraded to use a new Tunnel though the city centre with stations at the Hbf, Markt, Willhelm-Leutzner-Platz and Bayerische Bhf - its well over budget and about 4 years late with a lot of long term line closures in the area aswell)
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---
Wonder if you could Claim a VAL as a guided busway to get funding (ok it would need dedicated right of way)

 

[CalderRail]

By "Branch Line to Arnold", do you mean the old Nottingham Suburban Railway route? Because I recall that was looked into once (for use as a Tram run), and the Tunnels are mostly intact, but the surface sections have been built on.

Still you could do it with about 20 houses, one OAPs home and a few back garden reclamations & a bit of creative planning.

The City Council has just got some funding for bus improvements

Nottingham City Council couldn't find its arse with both hands and an atlas. And the roads in Nottingham make buses a non-starter for mass transit. That's why the tram routes don't follow roads.

 

[Kettledrum]

It seems a great shame not to have free parking at East Midlands parkway & put 'Nottingham park & ride signs on the M1. Would justify extra stopping trains between EMD & NOT.

I also wonder if there is a business case for a new station in the Wollaton/Radford area on the Robin Hood / Erewash Valley lines, given the metro style stopping frequency of the latter, and proximity to University Jubilee campus and large areas of housing.

Car parking at East Midlands parkway is far from free and costs £6 or £7 per day. There are around 900 car parking spaces currently there of which 2/3 of the spaces are almost always empty.

 

[RichmondCommu]

Car parking at East Midlands parkway is far from free and costs £6 or £7 per day. There are around 900 car parking spaces currently there of which 2/3 of the spaces are almost always empty.

Which makes one wonder how successful the HS2 station at Toton is likely to be?

 

[HSTEd]

By "Branch Line to Arnold", do you mean the old Nottingham Suburban Railway route? Because I recall that was looked into once (for use as a Tram run), and the Tunnels are mostly intact, but the surface sections have been built on.

Still you could do it with about 20 houses, one OAPs home and a few back garden reclamations & a bit of creative planning.

No, I meant using the now defunct track to the Gedling Colliery and then extending it over the fields to the southern edge of Arnold.

 

[edwin_m]

Nottingham City Council couldn't find its arse with both hands and an atlas. And the roads in Nottingham make buses a non-starter for mass transit. That's why the tram routes don't follow roads.

In fact the council and the part-owned operator NCT has won several transport awards over the years and is one of the few places where public transport use is rising. Not sure where arse-finding comes into this but it seems to me the city is doing more things right transport-wise than most other places.

I don't see how trams following roads or otherwise is relevant to this topic. My comment about closing the Broadmarsh gyratory to general traffic was in connection with improving the walk from the station.

 

[HowardGWR]

No, I meant using the now defunct track to the Gedling Colliery and then extending it over the fields to the southern edge of Arnold.

You do realise what a climb it is up to Mapperley Plains?
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---

In fact the council and the part-owned operator NCT has won several transport awards over the years and is one of the few places where public transport use is rising. Not sure where arse-finding comes into this but it seems to me the city is doing more things right transport-wise than most other places.

I don't see how trams following roads or otherwise is relevant to this topic. My comment about closing the Broadmarsh gyratory to general traffic was in connection with improving the walk from the station.

I could not understand that comment either from CalderRail. IIRC, the city council very bravely continued with the tram project after the surrounding County Council refused to part fund its proportion (after it changed political hands). I believe that has changed again now. The other brave measure was to find finance from a workplace parking charge scheme that I believe is unique in the UK; certainly one of the most significant.

 

[Philip Elliott]

No, I meant using the now defunct track to the Gedling Colliery and then extending it over the fields to the southern edge of Arnold.

Would you plan to use Mapperley tunnel...?

 

[HSTEd]

Would you plan to use Mapperley tunnel...?

Ideally I would lvoe to be able to incorporate the northbound lines out of Nottingham into the system.

But the tunnel doesn't take the line all the way and the rest of the right of way seems to have been obliterated.

 

[Mitch in Notts]

Notts county council recently bought the strips of land off British Railways Board Residual of various former colliery lines. I'm not sure exactly which lines/where, but I think not far from Nottingham itself. They're currently looking for funding to establish them as waymarked trails presumably with bridleway status. I've heard a few grumpy rail enthusiasts whining about turning alignments into National Cycle Network routes in recent years, but personally I think it's a good way to preserve alignment & prevent them being built on/etc. If a business case/funding for line reopening materialises later on, then it's a lot easier to reroute a gravel trail than it is to CPO peoples homes & businesses.

One has already partly opened - from Mill Lakes (junction with route 6) at Bestwood Village to Moor Road just north of Goosedale - ultimately this is to go through to Calverton Colliery site.

Another one open is from Bilsthorpe through to Sherwood Pines Forest again linking into route 6 and also onto the Southwell Trail at Bilsthorpe.

Also Radcliffe on Trent to Cotgrave - not open yet?, plus a short link in the Clipstone area.

All four routes are former colliery lines.

 

[HowardGWR]

Ideally I would lvoe to be able to incorporate the northbound lines out of Nottingham into the system.

But the tunnel doesn't take the line all the way and the rest of the right of way seems to have been obliterated.

I just cannot see any sense in this eastern circuit of Nottingham (leaving aside the contours issue). Who in Gedling wants to go to Arnold? The area in between is unbuilt, which is a good thing because it is Green Belt (note capitals).

The whole eastern area of Nottingham is where escapees from city living commute back into Nottingham, so that the travel pattern is like a star shape with the centre in the city centre. There is no outer ring road that indicates such a need.

 

[HSTEd]

I just cannot see any sense in this eastern circuit of Nottingham (leaving aside the contours issue). Who in Gedling wants to go to Arnold? The area in between is unbuilt, which is a good thing because it is Green Belt (note capitals).

Lots of people in ARnold want to go to Nottingham though.

The fact that the line goes via Gedling is not a major problem, it still has the buses beat easily for travel time.

The whole eastern area of Nottingham is where escapees from city living commute back into Nottingham, so that the travel pattern is like a star shape with the centre in the city centre. There is no outer ring road that indicates such a need.

So people must always travel in absolutely straight lines?

 

[Philip Elliott]

The only reason I asked about the tunnel is because it collapsed in the middle - your reply suggests you didn't know that. Arnold by bus is dead easy.