Halish Railway
Established Member
Should EMR's order of Class 810s quickly prove to provide insufficient capacity, not wiring Leicester removes the ability to run relief EMUs from St Pancras to Leicester and removing one of the core benefits of electrification of massively increasing the number of trains capable of operating on any given route.
Part of me also wonders whether the scope of this project is flawed - It seems to be a project that focuses only on converting services originating at St Pancras to electric traction. Had the project also considered infill routes such as Leicester / Sheet Stores Jn / Derby to Birmingham and Lichfield Trent Valley then perhaps a more concerted effort would be made to wire the route properly rather than having discontinuous electrification if you work on the assumption that services using infill electrification will be worked by traditional EMUs without any form of independent power.
My worry is that Leicester North to Syston and maybe Sheet Stores Jn gets done whilst Leicester station faces the same fate as the 'postponed' electrification that was supposed to be done as part of GWEP. Then there's the pressing matter for the industry as a whole that in order to encourage more electrification, Network Rail needs to prove that it can electrify problem areas such as Leicester station at a reasonable cost rather than adopting discontinuous electrification.
