MML Electrification: is it going to be completed?

[Tim__]

Having watched the green signals video, quoting from the DFT press release they said phase 3 was being paused. I'd thought Wigston to Syston was phase 2. I suspect I'm clutching at straws?

 

[Bald Rick]

Then why was it cancelled if it was easy to do?

No money.

 

[QSK19]

Having watched the green signals video, quoting from the DFT press release they said phase 3 was being paused. I'd thought Wigston to Syston was phase 2. I suspect I'm clutching at straws?

Yep, unless I’m mistaken, RS2 is Wigston-Syston and RS3 is Syston-Trent Junction

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 23 Jul 2025 ==

No money.

So once again MMLE is the victim of something beyond its control - money spent on something unrelated (the cynic in me squarely blames the government’s welfare farce) that leaves the MML as the loser again. All the millions wasted on prep work and admin.

No doubt it’ll be the same story in 2035, 2045, etc. At this rate, every one of us will be long gone and there’ll still be no progress on MMLE!

 

[NCT]

A bit of conspiracy theory:

They make a song and dance about RS3 while quietly proceeding with RS2.

In a year or two when it comes to opportunities to create some fiscal headroom, the government dangles paused projects like RS3 and York Third Line in front of their backbench MPs and go 'look what happened last time when you voted against reforms'.

 

[Class15]

Yep, unless I’m mistaken, RS2 is Wigston-Syston and RS3 is Syston-Trent Junction

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 23 Jul 2025 ==


So once again MMLE is the victim of something beyond its control - money spent on something unrelated (the cynic in me squarely blames the government’s welfare farce) that leaves the MML as the loser again. All the millions wasted on prep work and admin.

No doubt it’ll be the same story in 2035, 2045, etc. At this rate, every one of us will be long gone and there’ll still be no progress on MMLE!

My gut is that it will proceed but slowly and in sections. Like we saw with Bedford to Kettering and Kettering to Wigston. Next would be Wigston to Leicester, then East Midlands Parkway, etc etc

 

[londonmidland]

I can’t read this article as it is locked behind a paywall, however the headline isn’t at all positive sounding.

Midland Main Line electrification teams to be stood down this year as project is paused​

 

[QSK19]

Such a shame - all that expertise and money going to waste. I think that our dream of gradual, discreet works over the next few months is dead in the water.

The really annoying thing is that when - no, if - MMLE gets authorised again, teams and experience would have to be built from scratch, thereby driving the price up.

So disappointing, frustrating and regrettable. Seemingly very much down to a shambolic mishandling of expenditure elsewhere.

Politicians will never learn and the MML will continue to be their railway plaything

 

[HSTEd]

Given the apparent performance of battery technology, any future electrification in support of it could probably be provided by teams from the continent a la HS1.

Standing up a domestic capability for hundreds of track kilometres per year is excessive in that context. And any less than that, is it really worth bothering?

 

[The Ham]

When is HS2 getting it's wires installed?

Depending on when that is that may just be closer enough to now that the teams could find employment soon enough not to be lost. It may also allow further electrification afterwards without putting the cost up too much.

 

[QSK19]

When is HS2 getting it's wires installed?

Depending on when that is that may just be closer enough to now that the teams could find employment soon enough not to be lost. It may also allow further electrification afterwards without putting the cost up too much.

For anywhere but the MML of course

 

[The Ham]

For anywhere but the MML of course

Of course, everyone knows that's not happening this side of 3,142!!!

 

[WAO]

When is HS2 getting it's wires installed?

Batteries, surely. Milliband knows best.

WAO

 

[Mikey C]

Frustrating, when the MML team had got its act together too.

Politicians like headlines projects. Reopenings and new stations give them something shiny and new to boast about, whereas "upgrades" don't have the same PR benefit...

 

[stevieinselby]

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

Obviously it depends where you draw the boundaries, but it may not be that dissimilar.

East Midlands - an area covering Leicester, Nottingham, Mansfield, Derby and Burton-upon-Trent: 2.5m
West Country - an area west of the line from Bridgwater Bay to Lyme Bay: 2.1m

Data and maps from https://www.ons.gov.uk/visualisations/customprofiles/draw/

 

[Killingworth]

Other East Midlands boundaries may be applied! Always dangerous drawing lines on maps used for different purposes.

 

[stevieinselby]

Regional electric railways are however well used. Nota bene.

Regional electric railways are well-used, or regional well-used railways are electric?

Except that it didn't. We already had Heathrow Express and a few EMU's, plus we then had Crossrail which solved most of the Paddington suburban DMU issue. We still needed DMU's on the Oxford stoppers, Pewsey's, Basingstokes, TV branches and the Guildfords, which were not then available further West where the Turbos would have shone.

I can't see Crossrail running through to Reading without GWML electrification, it wouldn't have been remotely cost-effective to electrify all that way for 4tph to Maidenhead and just 2tph continuing on to Reading. The trains currently running to Reading, maybe even those to Maidenhead as well, would have terminated at Slough, and the local services to Reading as well as the Newbury and Didcot/Oxford services would have remained as GWR DMUs.

Other East Midlands boundaries may be applied! Always dangerous drawing lines on maps used for different purposes.

Sure. And by the same token, there are plenty of people who would include Bristol and maybe even Bournemouth in the West Country. That's why I said "Obviously it depends where you draw the boundaries"!

 

[Mikey C]

I can't see Crossrail running through to Reading without GWML electrification, it wouldn't have been remotely cost-effective to electrify all that way for 4tph to Maidenhead and just 2tph continuing on to Reading. The trains currently running to Reading, maybe even those to Maidenhead as well, would have terminated at Slough, and the local services to Reading as well as the Newbury and Didcot/Oxford services would have remained as GWR DMUs.

Crossrail could have included electrification to Reading.

More relevantly, as a comparison to the MML, GW electrification could have been done just to the edge of the "Network Southeast" area, which is effectively what the MML had before the wires went past Bedford. That would have been a logical Network Southeast aspiration in the 90s if it and BR had still existed, to get all the London commuter services wired (Marylebone being next), leaving the longer distance services as diesels.

 

[QSK19]

Of course, everyone knows that's not happening this side of 3,142!!!

Yep, trains will be flying in the air by then - yet the good old MML will probably have 745s/390s converted to bi-modes à la 769 (ie taking practically life-expired EMUs and shoving engines underneath them)

 

[WAO]

Yes.

Reading is unusual in the South East in that more commute into it (being a growing, prosperous centre) than out of it, so more balanced workings. Crossrail's 9-cars are well patronised to Reading, perhaps more so than those from Waterloo.

GW suburban electrification was once programmed to be complete in 1980!

Had it been staged, then the mistakes could have been made on a cheaper, smaller scale and remedied sooner. The MTU re-engined HST's had more life in them and potentially were uprateable. GWMLe should then have followed on from MMLe, not preceded it.

If Railway Officers had been in the lead rather than arts graduate civil servants...

WAO

 

[Senex]

There is a very interesting report in today's Green Signals (

) by Richard Bowker on the recent Transport Select Committee hearing. The MML electrification "pause" figures quite extensively. It seems to boil down to two things, from what Lord Hendy had to say. The first (and it came out in other answers he gave too) is simply, "There. is. no. money." And I've punctuated it like that because that's how he really did put it. The second is that lovely new hybrid multiple-units will deliver all the speed and comfort improvements that passengers want, so there's really no urgency to complete yet more electrification (and in any case, the significant London end of the line is done). The logic of that seems to be that there's no case for completing the wiring to Bristol, Swansea, or Oxford either!

Bowker reported some very good questioning from two or three of the Committee members which either didn't get answers or produced some contradictory answers from the Hendy side but did at least get clarification of what is now in the pipeline — and, by implication, what we may as well forget about. There was a follow-up with a very good interview with the Leicester Mayor, Sir Peter Soulsby, who brought out very clearly the East Midlands dissatisfaction (and noted that MML electrificagtion has been talked about since the early 1980s and this remained the only main line out of London not to have been properly done).

So was this Committee meeting a very clear early indication of Rachel Reeves's chickens coming home to roost? If the various savings Starmer's government tries to make can't be got past his MPs, then it's all sort of other things, including investment for the future, that will miss out.

 

[Tim__]

But in Lord Hendy reply he states he realises the people north of Syston won't be happy.
I'm almost willing to dream that Wigston to Syston will get done.
My concern is that it was thought that stage 3 would be done before stage 2, so by pausing stage 3 they are implicitly pausing stage 2

 

[londonmidland]

But in Lord Hendy reply he states he realises the people north of Syston won't be happy.
I'm almost willing to dream that Wigston to Syston will get done.

Syston is a very specific place to mention, as well as a place not many people would probably know where it is located? You’d expect Leicester to be mentioned.

Wishful thinking but what if RS2 is still carrying on quietly, before all tools are put down?

 

[weeklycommuter]

The reason why the Midland Mainline electrification has been paused is that the Government has decided not to spend money on it.

Governments will always find the money for a project if they think their political future depends on it. Leicester East switching from a Labour MP to a Conservative MP and Leicester South from a Labour MP to an independent MP has probably not helped as this means there are no longer any backbench Labour Leicester MPs to lobby Labour Government ministers inside the Parliamentary Labour Party for continuing with the Midland Mainline electrification to and North of Leicester. A Conservative MP and an independent MP will have no influence on Labour Government ministers. Leicester West is represented by the embattled Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall.

The message from the Labour Government's recent changes to their Winter Fuel Payments policy is that the way to persuade the Labour Government to change policy is to vote against the Labour Party in whatever elections are taking place. The pausing of the Midland Mainline electrification may result in voters in the East Midlands and South Yorkshire who still support the Labour Party pausing their votes for the Labour Party. If this happens the money for unpausing the remaining phase of the Midland Mainline electrification to Nottingham and to Sheffield will magically appear.

 

[Bald Rick]

Syston is a very specific place to mention, as well as a place not many people would probably know where it is located? You’d expect Leicester to be mentioned.

Wishful thinking but what if RS2 is still carrying on quietly, before all tools are put down?

It isn’t happening.

 

[HSTEd]

Well the electrodiesel genie, as well as the battery genie are out of the bottle.

The classical network effect is more or less dead.

Arguably, once electrodiesel trains became a widely proposed solution (a decade ago?), the MML electrification should have been rephased to replace the Wigston-Syston segment with Sheffield or similar, where there are more trains around to benefit.

The MML scheme was designed along the same lines as earlier schemes, starting from one end and moving out. I think this was a serious mistake that has now got the pipeline cut off.

 

[YorkshireBear]

There is a very interesting report in today's Green Signals (

) by Richard Bowker on the recent Transport Select Committee hearing. The MML electrification "pause" figures quite extensively. It seems to boil down to two things, from what Lord Hendy had to say. The first (and it came out in other answers he gave too) is simply, "There. is. no. money." And I've punctuated it like that because that's how he really did put it. The second is that lovely new hybrid multiple-units will deliver all the speed and comfort improvements that passengers want, so there's really no urgency to complete yet more electrification (and in any case, the significant London end of the line is done). The logic of that seems to be that there's no case for completing the wiring to Bristol, Swansea, or Oxford either!

Bowker reported some very good questioning from two or three of the Committee members which either didn't get answers or produced some contradictory answers from the Hendy side but did at least get clarification of what is now in the pipeline — and, by implication, what we may as well forget about. There was a follow-up with a very good interview with the Leicester Mayor, Sir Peter Soulsby, who brought out very clearly the East Midlands dissatisfaction (and noted that MML electrificagtion has been talked about since the early 1980s and this remained the only main line out of London not to have been properly done).

So was this Committee meeting a very clear early indication of Rachel Reeves's chickens coming home to roost? If the various savings Starmer's government tries to make can't be got past his MPs, then it's all sort of other things, including investment for the future, that will miss out.

The same transport select committee who have recently been hearing evidence on why electrification costs so much, with a key driver being boom and bust so I suspect they were well versed in what they wanted to ask.

Doesn't change the fact that the government isn't making rail investment a priority and the industry needs to sort it's self out and deliver more for less if it wants to continue delivering. Note industry is all encompassing in this case. Roger Ford and his boiling frogs is a good analogy.

 

[mjr018]

Having watched the green signals video, quoting from the DFT press release they said phase 3 was being paused. I'd thought Wigston to Syston was phase 2. I suspect I'm clutching at straws?

Phase 3 is the rest for midland mainline from Wigston to Sheffield/ Nottingham.
The plan for the next business case was for route sections 2 and 3 together so building and energising from Wigston to Trent Junction

 

[Killingworth]

Arguably, once electrodiesel trains became a widely proposed solution (a decade ago?), the MML electrification should have been rephased to replace the Wigston-Syston segment with Sheffield or similar, where there are more trains around to benefit.

Once Grayling went for bi-modes the omens from Swansea and Bristol were clear.

Electrifying around conurbations with old track layouts designed and built for Victorian needs, partially hacked up, land sold off and then parts rebuilt over the next 60 years for another market that has itself moved on - is incredibly expensive! Certainly to do it right.

It's not so much the electric catenary and supply but all the trackwork, bridges, drainage and signalling that needs replacing to be ready to support a doubling of capacity over the next 50 years. Penny wise, pound foolish - so we end up not spending many pennies. Except with railways we always seem to, eventually!

 

[The Ham]

doubling of capacity over the next 50 years

A doubling of passengers over 50 years means rail growth of 1.4% year on year.

That's way off what we've been getting of late, so doubling in that timeframe is unlikely.

In fact over a 50 year period to see a quadrupling of passengers (2.82%) is still well below what all bar one (London Overground) TOC saw in growth last year (each of the rest with a growth rate of over 4%, with the majority seeing growth of over 5%)

 

[HSTEd]

Once Grayling went for bi-modes the omens from Swansea and Bristol were clear.

Electrodiesel was going to be part of the IEP programme already in 2010.
I have to wonder why the Midland Main Line project was not phased with electrodiesels in mind considering the concept had been around since 2010 and 80x series trains started testing in 2015.

I believe theres even posts from me on the forum from around then predicting we would ultimately end up here!

(Perhaps I am a prophet instead of a madman!)

Electrifying around conurbations with old track layouts designed and built for Victorian needs, partially hacked up, land sold off and then parts rebuilt over the next 60 years for another market that has itself moved on - is incredibly expensive! Certainly to do it right.

It's not so much the electric catenary and supply but all the trackwork, bridges, drainage and signalling that needs replacing to be ready to support a doubling of capacity over the next 50 years. Penny wise, pound foolish - so we end up not spending many pennies. Except with railways we always seem to, eventually!

Well... the railway industry had its opportunity to get an all new railway, fit for the future, and look how that went!