MML Electrification: is it going to be completed?

[edwin_m]

Even at £0.5bn, the EM wiring cut is only 1/30 of the bung Heidi/Starmer has offered the "Red Wall" for trams etc (which cost over 10x per mile more than 25kV).

Contrasting it with tram doesn't make a convincing case.

25kV northwards from Leicester will make negligible difference to journey times and none at all to service frequency or number of seats, so is unlikely to attract new passengers. The short term benefit comes down to eliminating the carbon and local emissions of the intercity services, plus a small number of local ones that might go to EMUs (most of them do substantial mileage away from any planned wiring).

The proposed tram system will tie local communities and new developments into the existing urban area. If properly thought out it has the potential to get a lot of people out of cars with associated emissions, safety, noise and other local benefits. It also improves local access to intercity rail, which is a big barrier both to modal shift and to regenerating "left behind" communities outside the big cities. So although it's a much higher cost, the benefit should be much greater too (though I do have doubts about extending it to Derby).

To me, MML electrification needs to be considered in parallel with a rolling stock strategy for Cross Country and the local services. I've suggested elsewhere that some of the 80x that GWR uses on mostly non-electrified regional routes could be swapped for Voyagers, which might free up enough 80x for some XC services to make use of the wires that they run under for much (but not all) of their journeys. But if that doesn't happen then we are back to whatever replaces the Voyagers in the medium term. Also, large fleets of battery or bi-mode units will be needed in a few years time to replace Sprinters and progressively post-privatisation DMUs (170s not far off 30 years old now). As these fleets are introduced in a particular area, a strategy can be worked up that might include selective or whole-route electrification to make best use of them.

 

[PJM]

From an article in Leicestershire Live

A spokesperson for Network Rail addressed concerns raised by residents, saying: "We’re sorry to residents affected by our engineering work near Wigston. This is part of a series of weekend improvements to the Midland Main Line – including track, signalling and drainage upgrades.

"These enhancements will improve resilience and benefit train performance, while progressing our Midland Main Line electrification project, which will enable EMR to introduce their new greener fleet of bi-mode trains. Our teams are working hard to keep noise to a minimum out of respect for our lineside neighbours, who received noise disturbance letters ahead of the work to provide as much warning as possible."

So many mixed messages!

 

[Dr Hoo]

Presumably all this track renewal, such as at Wigston, possibly at a slightly lower height for future clearance purposes, plus all the pegs, mean that it has at least been decided that there will be no changes to track layout for capacity or other reasons for at least a generation?

 

[PJM]

Presumably all this track renewal, such as at Wigston, possibly at a slightly lower height for future clearance purposes, plus all the pegs, mean that it has at least been decided that there will be no changes to track layout for capacity or other reasons for at least a generation?

A very good question to which I have no answer.

 

[swt_passenger]

Presumably all this track renewal, such as at Wigston, possibly at a slightly lower height for future clearance purposes, plus all the pegs, mean that it has at least been decided that there will be no changes to track layout for capacity or other reasons for at least a generation?

“No track layout changes” (on at least the Wigston to Leicester section) had been stated explicitly in the previous MML wiring progress thread.

 

[Yew]

Almost all of this is also true of the West Country though isn’t it.

How many people live in the West Country, out at the extremities of the nation, compared to the centrally located East Midlands?

 

[londonmidland]

“No track layout changes” (on at least the Wigston to Leicester section) had been stated explicitly in the previous MML wiring progress thread.

I recall there also being a design solution found for the low London Road bridge at the south end of Leicester station?

I can’t help but think that electrifying the last few miles into Leicester would make a lot more sense compared to where it currently terminates at the moment.

I’m going into speculative territory here but for when there are special events on in London, the 360s could be used as crowd busters to and from Leicester. Stick them into platform 4 at Leicester and move the Ivanhoe services to the north end of platform 1 if required.

There could even be a future shuttle service between London and Leicester, calling at intermediate stations along the way. This would provide better connections to Sheffield and further north from Luton Airport, Luton, Bedford, Wellingborough, Kettering and Market Harborough stations, by just requiring one change at Leicester.

 

[swt_passenger]

I recall there also being a design solution found for the low London Road bridge at the south end of Leicester station?

Yes, that’s also been stated categorically to have a confirmed solution, it was covered on a few occasions in the closed thread.

 

[Dr Hoo]

“No track layout changes” (on at least the Wigston to Leicester section) had been stated explicitly in the previous MML wiring progress thread.

Thanks, I must have missed it. I’m still staggered by the number of un-started schemes on multi-use lines that don’t seem to recognise the ‘75% freight growth by 2050’ target.

Hopefully at least the power supply arrangements will be robust enough for all-electric + 75% growth.

 

[2001olib]

I think there's a pretty strong case that the East Midlands has the worst rail service of anywhere in Britain. There's plenty of reasons for it

• No electrification hence less reliable services
• Comparatively short trains on local and intercity services
• Slow journey times particularly from Nottingham to Birmingham/Leeds/Manchester
• Poor frequency. Pretty much all regional routes are hourly at best

Electrification wouldn't have solved all those problems, but it would have improved reliability and increased the chance of longer and high frequency services on some routes, given the electric trains are more abundant and cheaper to run.

Unfortunately its no surprise. Especially when you consider how much money gets spent on transport in the east mids per capita. Just 56% of the national average.

 

[Grimsby town]

Almost all of this is also true of the West Country though isn’t it.

Somewhat but it's hard to make the case its worse than the East Midlands. Bristol has pretty good CrossCountry services compared to Nottingham. Devon and Cornwall's services are better than Lincolnshire's. Even the local frequencies tend to be higher for Bristol than the EM. EM also has a higher pop density so should theoretically have a better service. At least Nottingham has the tram. Both are pretty poor though. The likes of Nottingham and Bristol should have had electrified heavy rail years ago. I imagine wires will be needed eventually so the government is just putting off the inevitable.

 

[Bald Rick]

I have heard it said that the areas that have gotten the worst deal out of transport funding in the UK are the South West/West Country, the East Midlands, and Northern Ireland. I'm willing to believe that, tbh.

And the South East outside London.

 

[deltic08]

Everybody seems to be jumping on the battery propulsion bandwagon forgetting that OHL is needed for battery charging of at least 20 minutes. More as battery charging cycles increase.
What are the advantages of stopping MML electrification at Wigston apart from not spending any more money on electrification? Non from what I can see.
1.Wigston to Sheffield and back on batteries is 150 miles, too far without another charge. Perhaps Chesterfield to Moorthorpe/Doncaster should be electrified first then 810s could be cascaded to XC and battery/electric trains could operate out of St Pancras.
2.Pure electric 360s, or even surplus 350s, could not now be used for crowd busting or regular stopping services from St Pancras to Leicester because of stopping just short of Leicester. Complete the missing four miles.
3.Services to Matlock, Grantham, Nottingham-Leeds, Corby-Derby/Nottingham etc could then be replaced with battery bimodes that cannot be used now and at least until electrification is complete.
Cancellation of MML electrification has been a knee jerk reaction and not thought out rationally wasting money already spent. As said already, penny wise and pound foolish.

 

[Zomboid]

And the South East outside London.

East Anglia has been a backwater of clapped out trains before the GA total fleet renewal. Those 315s and 156s were pretty dire.

 

[The Ham]

And the South East outside London.

Indeed, it's an often misconception that the South East does well on spending, it is amongst the worst.

 

[Bald Rick]

East Anglia has been a backwater of clapped out trains before the GA total fleet renewal. Those 315s and 156s were pretty dire.

Quite a lot of new infrastructure in East Anglia over the last couple of decades though.

 

[WAO]

The other point about the South East is that the trains are well used with journeys per head much higher, so subsidy per passenger mile (and per carriage - the trains are longer!) may be much lower. NSE , IIRC, almost broke even whereas regional railways could need 80% subsidy.

Regional electric railways are however well used. Nota bene.

WAO

 

[The Ham]

The other point about the South East is that the trains are well used with journeys per head much higher, so subsidy per passenger mile (and per carriage - the trains are longer!) may be much lower. NSE , IIRC, almost broke even whereas regional railways could need 80% subsidy.

Regional electric railways are however well used. Nota bene.

WAO

Which highlights the flaw in the analysis when only looking at transport infrastructure spending, in that is only ever part of the picture.

However, to steer the topic back on thread, the electrification of now regional railways would do two things:
- make it cheaper to run the services and so reduce the amount of subsidy
- increase the amount of infrastructure spending and so being it more in like with other regions (even if it's still a long way behind London).

 

[HSTEd]

Everybody seems to be jumping on the battery propulsion bandwagon forgetting that OHL is needed for battery charging of at least 20 minutes. More as battery charging cycles increase.

There are a lot of places where twenty minutes of charging time can be got with relatively little wiring.
You want low speed track that is heavily used.

What are the advantages of stopping MML electrification at Wigston apart from not spending any more money on electrification? Non from what I can see.

That is a very large advantage

1.Wigston to Sheffield and back on batteries is 150 miles, too far without another charge. Perhaps Chesterfield to Moorthorpe/Doncaster should be electrified first then 810s could be cascaded to XC and battery/electric trains could operate out of St Pancras.

Assuming an absolute minimum ten minutes turnaround, Sheffield services could be served by electrification between Dore and Sheffield. That more or less gets you to twenty minutes of charge time.

Dore to Meadowhall would serve several routes with charging and require fewer track kilometres than Wigston to East Midlands Parkway. Let alone the rest of the scheme envisaged.

3.Services to Matlock, Grantham, Nottingham-Leeds, Corby-Derby/Nottingham etc could then be replaced with battery bimodes that cannot be used now and at least until electrification is complete.

Many of the services to Grantham could likely be served without electrification near Nottingham thanks to half of them running down the ECML to Peterborough.

As for the rest, providing them with charging opportunities would require far less electrification than completing the envisaged MML scheme.

Cancellation of MML electrification has been a knee jerk reaction and not thought out rationally wasting money already spent. As said already, penny wise and pound foolish.

The money already spent is gone. It should have no further impact on planning, it can't be recovered.
Completing the envisaged MML scheme would likely cost billions.

 

[Killingworth]

The money already spent is gone. It should have no further impact on planning, it can't be rerecoved
Completing the envisaged MML scheme would likely cost billions.

Two very important points. 200 years of railways and we've seen many billions spent on planning that never delivered the intended benefits, not least because many a project was delayed, curtailed and then cancelled.

The Manchester Hub! One little part of that work impacts on the MML. It seems very peripheral but it illustrates the problem. The Hope Valley Capacity Scheme grew out of the need to redouble tracks through Dore & Totley station, a project that Railtrack were planning to deliver about 2003-4. Plans were seen on their Manchester office walls in the mid/late 1990s. Delivery 2024 after much further planning the costs now hidden in budgets long forgotten. Cost has been given as £140m in media briefings but over 25-30 years it must be nearer £200m after final clearing up.

That work is supposedly electrification ready, but it isn't delivering the extra hourly train between Manchester and Sheffield. The problems in the Manchester area are well known.

What is escaping wider attention is the capacity issue down the Sheaf Valley into Sheffield and platform constraints. That's also restricting extra services. (Onwards to Nunnery and the Don Valley for Meadowhall is another headache.)

Just adding wires is possibly fairly simple. To do that without resolving tracks and platforms would be a big mistake. So we're likely to continue deferring decisions, contracts and completion for another 20 years? By which time the world will have changed and billions will indeed need to have been spent.

Will what then exists be capable of handling at least double present passenger numbers? Not if left as it is.

 

[The Ham]

Will what then exists be capable of handling at least double present passenger numbers?

Before anyone questions this, since 2009 rail growth has grown by around 50%, that's on track to see passenger numbers double between 2009 and 2037.

That's with a significant drop in rail useage during COVID, without another major event like that doubling in 20 years is possible (even at 5% growth per year it could double within 15 years).

 

[NCT]

It’s just Little England syndrome again isn’t it. When things get difficult we throw our hands up and give up addressing the root problems. Then we stay in the comfort zone of only counting the costs and never the values.

Then we sit on our laurels hoping for a technological panacea and hallucinate the day we can point our fingers at the rest of Europe that actually made the effort to better themselves while we’ve been flailing around.

 

[QSK19]

Having passed Loughborough station yesterday, the SPL compound is still there and fully intact.

I don’t get why it is still there if SPL’s remit has been cancelled. Peg marking is one thing, it’s quite another SPL having a substantial facility.

Looking at other examples of prep works, track lowering and the pegs themselves. Again, why is time and money being quite frankly wasted if the work for which their purpose serves has been knocked on the head?

And the fact that NR, a public body whose activities/communicarions must surely be heavily monitored by the DfT, are still putting out notices referring to planned MMLE just seems rather strange.

 

[Trainbike46]

Having passed Loughborough station yesterday, the SPL compound is still there and fully intact.

I don’t get why it is still there if SPL’s remit has been cancelled. Peg marking is one thing, it’s quite another SPL having a substantial facility.

Looking at other examples of prep works, track lowering and the pegs themselves. Again, why is time and money being quite frankly wasted if the work for which their purpose serves has been knocked on the head?

And the fact that NR, a public body whose activities/communicarions must surely be heavily monitored by the DfT, are still putting out notices referring to planned MMLE just seems rather strange.

Presumably whatever has been contracted out will be done, and that may include significant works by SPL.

Alternatively SPL isn't in a hurry to remove their compound as they don't need it elsewhere?

 

[WAO]

There will have been some external contracts let which cannot be cancelled - such as the survey, design and pegging of mast sites etc. Such is necessary for the actual installation tenders and contracts to be tightly drawn up - not so evident previously. In addition, advance works such as track lowering and bridge work will precede the heavy works and have to be programmed well ahead. The application for grid supply at Kegworth may have progressed and there may be a commitment to NG. There will also be internally funded activities for which budgets have been set, which cannot cease quickly. This will add up to quite a lot and will reduce (and make more certain) the completion costs which will no doubt be sought by NR (hopefully with local lobby support as well) and which DfT has promised to keep under review.

The cost of wiring to the EM at c£10M/track mile is only c£400M with another £300M onto Sheffield which could arguably be better served with battery operation. Compare this to the WCML PUG 25 years ago at £9.5Bn (and not finished, with major power supply upgrades still needed), and the Dore station/junction at £140M or £850M for Reading Station, or the monthly present (but falling) rail subsidy of £1Bn and we aren't talking big money in railway terms.

The Midland system (like the L&Y) never had the stardom or bling of the EC/WC/GWR but it serves a lot of useful places, as the fragmented electrification present on both systems bears witness.

WAO

 

[edwin_m]

The government is talking about changing the rules for grid connections from first come first served to prioritising those that have firm plans to go ahead and therefore deferring those that aren't going to be needed for some time. I wonder if this now means that the Kegworth and Chesterfield connections will be deferred.

 

[GraphitProjekt]

Having passed Loughborough station yesterday, the SPL compound is still there and fully intact.

I don’t get why it is still there if SPL’s remit has been cancelled. Peg marking is one thing, it’s quite another SPL having a substantial facility.

Looking at other examples of prep works, track lowering and the pegs themselves. Again, why is time and money being quite frankly wasted if the work for which their purpose serves has been knocked on the head?

And the fact that NR, a public body whose activities/communicarions must surely be heavily monitored by the DfT, are still putting out notices referring to planned MMLE just seems rather strange.

i just think this all shows how knee-jerk and unplanned the decision was there's probably a few months at least of stuff happening before we things drying up

 

[GRALISTAIR]

The government is talking about changing the rules for grid connections from first come first served to prioritising those that have firm plans to go ahead and therefore deferring those that aren't going to be needed for some time. I wonder if this now means that the Kegworth and Chesterfield connections will be deferred.

Please no. That would be really really bad news.

 

[QSK19]

The government is talking about changing the rules for grid connections from first come first served to prioritising those that have firm plans to go ahead and therefore deferring those that aren't going to be needed for some time. I wonder if this now means that the Kegworth and Chesterfield connections will be deferred.

Surely that’s for future connection applications? AIUI the Kegworth is approved (not sure about Chesterfield), in which case because permission has been given, they can’t simply revoke it?

Far from my area of expertise though, so I defer to those more in the know.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 14 Jul 2025 ==

Please no. That would be really really bad news.

Agreed. And if included in that is the right to revoke existing connection permissions, that really would be a game changer for the worse.

 

[Zomboid]

Surely that’s for future connection applications? AIUI the Kegworth is approved (not sure about Chesterfield), in which case because permission has been given, they can’t simply revoke it

I don't know the inside track, but it's likely that things like the transformers have already been ordered, and they're pretty specialised things. Not sure who else would need a 400/25-0-25kV transformer - I know they don't use the same grid voltages below 400 in many other places (in France I think it's 220 rather than 275kV, for example), but maybe 400 is a wider standard.

But most likely the grid works will end up being completed. The project hasn't actually been cancelled, just "paused" (and it did end up coming back after the last pause), so completing things like already contracted grid works would make sense.