Altfish
Member
Well, I thought he meant 4-track from Oxford Road to Castlefield Junction - that would need minimal demolition, a pub and Deansgate Station. 4-track to Piccadilly is harder.
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Manchester Piccadilly P15-16 - my idea for an alternative
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Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
Is Deansgate (the main building, not the platforms, i.e. the bit with "Knott Mill Station" on it) listed?
LOL The Irony
Established Member
It only 
involves getting rid of Altrincham Street, a multi storey and 6 buildings...
involves getting rid of Altrincham Street, a multi storey and 6 buildings...
LOL The Irony
Established Member
My plan was keep building, remove the platforms.
4 tracking the whole route would be incredibly expensive and unnecessary if Castlefield junction was rebuilt, Deansgate was closed, Oxford Road reduced to 4 longer platforms and Piccadilly P15 and 16 built. That would probably increase capacity to 16tph passengers and 1tph freight. How much capacity would be gained from 4 tracking? The biggest problem with a walk way would be finding a route from the junction of Whitworth Street West/First Street/Albion Street to Deansgate-Castlefield tram stop. The City Road Inn combined with a skyscrapper under construction opposite and planned to the left of it makes any solution obscenely expensive. However, the usefulness of the current link is debatable due to Deansgate Railway station only having a 2tph service.
LOL The Irony
Established Member
Maybe not all the way but my plan has separate tracks for services to Liverpool and Bolton
Doesn't Deansgate have 5 tph (2 Liverpools, 2 Prestons and a Southport westbound, 2 Oxford Rds, 2 Airports and a Hazel Grove eastbound)
On the this site the convention for calculating frequency only considers pairs of services. You have described 2.5 tph.
That would be almost idea (though pricey!). Would you pair by use or by direction between Piccadilly and Castlefield Jn?
In theory it would be ideal but in reality it would multiply the cost for very little extra capacity. It would require demolishing numerous buildings and use of land that is already owned by developers. It would mean reducing Whitworth Street into a one way road and diverting traffic to already congested roads. The corridor needs to be improved for 4 tracking would be a clossal waste of money.
shredder1
Established Member
The line between Deansgate and Piccadilly could be tiered, they seem to manage that sort of thing in Europe
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
Would be pretty ugly, that.
shredder1
Established Member
Well maybe, but it would increase capacity I expect, I was in Antwerp recently Central station, I`d not been since the 1980`s and was amazed to see a 3 tier level now built into the station and Berlin HB has 2 levels for main line trains with a 3 tier large shopping centre inbetween .
edwin_m
Veteran Member
I think a double height viaduct was proposed in a study about 2000 but never taken forward.
Closing Deansgate might allow grade separation of Castlefield Jn. Trains from Liverpool would rise up to the level of Metrolink, pass over the lines to and from Ordsall, and drop back to existing level in the vicinity of where Deansgate station is now. The western half might not be to obtrusive if it was styled to match the adjacent Metrolink viaduct, but the eastern half would fly over Deansgate (the street) at higher level than the existing bridge.
Closing Deansgate might allow grade separation of Castlefield Jn. Trains from Liverpool would rise up to the level of Metrolink, pass over the lines to and from Ordsall, and drop back to existing level in the vicinity of where Deansgate station is now. The western half might not be to obtrusive if it was styled to match the adjacent Metrolink viaduct, but the eastern half would fly over Deansgate (the street) at higher level than the existing bridge.
Think that's more to do with the way Railway infrastructure is built in Europe verses how we do things here.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
But digging down to extend a station (and I agree Antwerpen Centraal is a very nice job, as is Berlin Hbf) is rather different from what would be a horrid blight on central Manchester by stacking another double track viaduct onto the existing one.
LOL The Irony
Established Member
You can blend it into existing architecture like Knutsford's Aldi.
1&3 are barely used as the capacity's pretty much bottlenecked by Piccadilly making it effectively a 2 track railway.
To my understanding there's a transport and works act submission been sitting on the secretary of state's desk for at least 2 years to whack a viaduct over Altrincham street and the carpark (hell, the notices went up whilst I was still at Uni) as well as authorize P15&16.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
I don't think you could "blend in" doubling the viaduct in height however fancy the cladding you put on the outside.
BTW, said Aldi looks like fake-olde-worlde stuff on a 1990s Barratt housing estate.
LOL The Irony
Established Member
They put the effort in and that's enough.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
Not in my book. I actually find that kind of fake old building pig-ugly and vastly prefer the European way of mixing stuff up (or, say, the way St Pancras is a blend of old and new styles). The "standard" modern Aldi building is not particularly ugly in my view.
FWIW, doubling the height of the Manchester viaduct would be a blight even if it were gold plated.
Mind you they like blights in Manchester. I have never seen such a pig-ugly tower block as the Beetham Tower since they stopped building 1960s-style Brutalist buildings. They really should have looked to the kind of creative and genuinely attractive and interesting modern architecture that's going up in the City of London - now that is a nice blend of old and new, much better than the fake New York theme park of Canary Wharf with its security guards whose uniforms are only just the right side of the law on impersonating a Police officer.
LOL The Irony
Established Member
Just clad it with the same brick as the original was built.
Castlefield junction does not need grade seperation and capacity would be significantly improved by widening the existing viaduct to create gentler curves to increase line speed. The railings and bridge sides could be moved to the new wall of a widened viaduct and very little demolition would be needed if the track continued on its old alignment from Deansgate Station (which would need to be closed to make the most use of increasing the line speed.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
You're missing the point.
The issue would not be how it looked. The issue would be near-doubling its height.
LOL The Irony
Established Member
Won't be an issue when the class of 92 open up that new skyscraper.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
Yes, it will. Manchester isn't going to end up like some European cities with skyscrapers for every meal, as it were, it simply isn't a UK thing. Birmingham is probably about as high rise as the UK will ever get.
LOL The Irony
Established Member
The only way of solving this is widening or double tiering. Some people are against widening, others are are against 2 tiers and the rest are against both ideas. This needs to happen and something's going to have to give and 1 group of people are going to be left unhappy. Everyone will just have to except that the outcome may not be the one they wanted.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
The viaduct doesn't need either 4-tracking or double-tiering. What it needs is all *stations* to have 4 platforms. You can signal a viaduct like that to take a train every 30 seconds - the issue is that station dwell times are more than twice that. (Edit: and the trains used do not make that length of station stop feasible - there is no way you could replace everything with Class 700 style trains designed to increase passenger flow over everything else)
What is needed is:
- Picc P15-16, with 13-14 becoming eastbound only and 15-16 becoming westbound only
- Oxford Road converting to two 240m island platforms
- Closure of Deansgate (as the extended Oxford Road would be most of the way there)
Then to operate in the flexible manner Schiphol does - i.e. have island A and island B (which would be what would be shown on the PIS), and signal the next train on the viaduct into whichever is free at the very last minute.
That way 60tph through the whole formation should be doable - 2 minute dwell times on each side of each island.
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LOL The Irony
Established Member
But what about widening the junction approach to 4 tracks?
The official scheme would provide a good deal of extra capacity despite remaining two tracks at the narrowest points. It just needs Grayling to stop blocking it. Westbound trains would alternate between the two westbound through platforms at Piccadilly, similarly at Oxford Road, similarly eastbound.
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