Potential infrastructure improvements in the Glasgow area

[alangla]

I’ve come to the conclusion that “new” electrification isn’t the priority. In order, I reckon double Milngavie, open out or widen Haughead Tunnel & double the Circle and Larkhall lines, to Allanton initially then on to Larkhall. Consider doubling Dalreoch to Alexandria or Balloch and Craigendoran Jct to Helensburgh.
More difficult, look at remodelling Hyndland so the merger of lines is east of the station or, ideally, grade separation but I suspect the site is far too tight. All will involve significant re-electrification.

 

[CEN60]

I’ve come to the conclusion that “new” electrification isn’t the priority. In order, I reckon double Milngavie, open out or widen Haughead Tunnel & double the Circle and Larkhall lines, to Allanton initially then on to Larkhall. Consider doubling Dalreoch to Alexandria or Balloch and Craigendoran Jct to Helensburgh.
More difficult, look at remodelling Hyndland so the merger of lines is east of the station or, ideally, grade separation but I suspect the site is far too tight. All will involve significant re-electrification.

I'm curious in what benefit do you see in doubling the line at Larkhall - the service is already clockface every 30mins and is easily serviced by the current track layout? The problem is paths / slots from Central Low Level which is creaking at the seams as far as i can see.

 

[alangla]

I'm curious in what benefit do you see in doubling the line at Larkhall - the service is already clockface every 30mins and is easily serviced by the current track layout? The problem is paths / slots from Central Low Level which is creaking at the seams as far as i can see.

Hence the “initially to Allanton” qualifier. At the moment, there’s about a 6-11 minute gap at Haughead between a train coming off & the next going onto the branch, there’s also only a few mins turnaround at the far end and 6 minute transit (roughly) so assume each train is on the branch for 17 mins. If they’re passing Hamilton Central at anything over 10 mins late, you’re looking at a) getting tangled up with something coming from Motherwell and b) even if that doesn’t happen, they’ll still obstruct the next train going on or be held at Allanton. The result is usually an early termination at Hamilton Central. Doubling to Allanton would allow for more time at the far end hopefully as the pass could be scheduled for the current single line section instead of at Hamilton Central. I reckon it would add significant resilience. Have a look at the area on traksy when there’s a bit of delay & you’ll hopefully see what I mean

 

[David M]

Consider doubling Dalreoch to Alexandria or Balloch and Craigendoran Jct to Helensburgh.

Possibly covered previously in which case apologies but what was the reasoning behind reducing them from double to single track in the 1st place?
We can add the Milngavie line to that as well.

 

[gingertom]

Possibly covered previously in which case apologies but what was the reasoning behind reducing them from double to single track in the 1st place?
We can add the Milngavie line to that as well.

to cut down on maintenance costs.

 

[InOban]

Happened all over the UK, and is costing a fortune to reinstate the second line, especially because it then has to meet modern standards, eg width of the six foot, embankment construction etc.

 

[Altnabreac]

I’ve come to the conclusion that “new” electrification isn’t the priority. In order, I reckon double Milngavie, open out or widen Haughead Tunnel & double the Circle and Larkhall lines, to Allanton initially then on to Larkhall. Consider doubling Dalreoch to Alexandria or Balloch and Craigendoran Jct to Helensburgh.
More difficult, look at remodelling Hyndland so the merger of lines is east of the station or, ideally, grade separation but I suspect the site is far too tight. All will involve significant re-electrification.

Those aspirations are all well and good but that's a lot of expense for only a small upgrade in reliability.

Improving Hyndland would definitely be the priority rather than any of the other works you identify. Network Rail looked at it in the Scotland Route Study and the option identified was to 4 track from Hyndland East Junction to Partickhill including a full rebuild of Hyndland station with 4 platforms.

 

[matchmaker]

Those aspirations are all well and good but that's a lot of expense for only a small upgrade in reliability.

Improving Hyndland would definitely be the priority rather than any of the other works you identify. Network Rail looked at it in the Scotland Route Study and the option identified was to 4 track from Hyndland East Junction to Partickhill including a full rebuild of Hyndland station with 4 platforms.

Still leaves the bottleneck between Partickhill and Kelvinhaugh which would be very difficult to 4 track.

 

[d9009alycidon]

A contributer to the "Urban Glasgow" came up with a very plausble idea to relieve the Hyndland to Kelvinhaugh bottleneck, his idea can be see here https://urbanglasgow.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=4645&p=133249&hilit=hyndland#p133249. Unfortunately the housing development where the old Partick Central Station once was has rendered it totally impossible

 

[Altnabreac]

Still leaves the bottleneck between Partickhill and Kelvinhaugh which would be very difficult to 4 track.

Yes but having 4 tracks at Hyndland significantly improves throughput. Partick isn't ever going to justify 4 tracking, the cost is just too high compared to the benefits.

 

[InOban]

What would be essential to improve throughput is grade separation before or after Hyndland. And the a bay platform to turn round trains there.

 

[gingertom]

What would be essential to improve throughput is grade separation before or after Hyndland. And the a bay platform to turn round trains there.

I think there's just about enough room to 4 track between Partick and Hyndland. Grade separating the junction going from 2 to 4 would eliminate conflicting moves to and from the west of Partick and there's enough room for it. A turnback at Hyndland would be difficult if it was 4-tracked. One could be created west of Jordanhill on part of the trackbed of the old Whiteinch branch, or more use made of the EGIP link at Anniesland?
The low hanging fruit has been picked. Everything becomes expensive now.

 

[NotATrainspott]

I think there's two separate notions which are relevant to this

• Improving the reliability of the existing service
• Allowing extra services to run on top of today's service

The challenge is that the two of them would both require new infrastructure, but they are in conflict. To make a business case for new infrastructure it is normally required that there be some sort of new service - improving reliability in itself is not transformational. However, any extra services added would then dilute the extent to which the service could be made more reliable. The best case scenario is that there is some sort of infrastructure improvement possible which would deliver more new paths than would be required to justify its cost, allowing a little bit of extra headroom at the same time as enabling new services. Even then though, unless there's a much bigger and more difficult bottleneck after it, it's still quite probable that the excess capacity would end up being used for more services again.

What is the future of the north west Glasgow electrics service? The 2043 Route Study is a good place to start since it shows what the professional railwaypeople of Scotland think will be needed in a few decades. Quite notably they do not include extra paths on these routes, as the existing service pattern is actually not a problem. Therefore, it's going to be particularly hard to justify spending hundreds of millions on a capacity improvement when there's no fundamental need for it. There are a lot of capacity constraints across the Low Level networks which are getting fairly balanced now. More trains through Partick would be a nice thing to have but where do they go east of Bellgrove, or Rutherglen? The route out to Airdrie is constrained by the need to serve many suburban stops while also allowing a competitive end-to-end journey time to Edinburgh via Bathgate.

The sort of upgrade they're proposing for Hyndland would be fairly doable, since most of the land is under railway ownership. Realistically they could get most of the way there by going slightly further with the plans they had for a third platform at Hyndland. By fiddling with Hyndland East junction and the entry into the existing loop/proposed third platform line you could enable another parallel movement. There's going to be a conflicting movement somewhere and I would very much imagine that allowing trains from both Anniesland and Jordanhill to enter the platforms simultaneously is more important than the other way around. In the worst case scenario any wait to go westwards backs up eastwards through Partick onto the grade-separated Finneston junction through the existing bottleneck.

Fixing the single lead junction at Westerton seems like it's going to happen, even if just to give a bit more clearance for trains to not block at Hyndland. The benefit of redoubling Balloch or Helensburgh will be much more limited by their distance from the core and the fact that recovery turnback points are available at Dalmuir and Dumbarton Central. Fixing Bellgrove is probably also less important given that it only directly affects the Queen Street service and is limited to 2tph.

I've said this many times before but I would expect any real interest in spending hundreds of millions of pounds into expanding the transport network north-west of Glasgow to be spent on metro projects. The best way to improve Hyndland-Partick is to bypass it entirely on a street-running tram and then dedicate the existing heavy rail network to serving exurban passengers.

 

[westralian]

While there is the turnback at Exhibition Centre the addition of extra platforms at Central low level to allow Lanarkshire services to terminate there would surely be a cheaper way to add capacity (at least in this direction) than quadruplicating Partick-Hyndland. Adding a link between Newton (with grade separation from the WCML) and Carmyle could mean that services from Blantyre would avoid conflicts with the WCML.

 

[d9009alycidon]

Trouble is that Newton is only one of ten conflicting junctions with the WCML between Carstairs and Rutherglen, (Carstairs, Lanark Junction, Law Junction, Wishaw South, Lesmahagow Junction x 2, Newton East and West, Uddingston and Rutherglen East) any or all of these junctions can cause delays on the WCML, sorting one with a costly grade separation would not solve anything.