East-West Rail (EWR) countdown to entry into service

[Oxfordblues]

I've booked for a music festival in Northamptonshire next August which means getting from Oxford to Northampton with my bike. I plan to go via Marylebone and Euston. I have zero expectation that Gavray junction to Bletchley will be open to public passenger trains by then!

 

[jimm]

You don't need an anti-rail agenda to find millions of pounds of public money spent on the railway with no virtually no return or benefit from it. Ordsall Chord, HS2, Botley Road bridge, GWEP just to name a few

So are you saying that there was no benefit from Great Western electrification? Overspending and, as a result, not finishing the job properly is not the same thing as there being no benefit - or maybe you enjoyed breathing in all the exhaust fumes from HSTs and Turbos at Paddington and elsewhere? The 387s delivered a huge capacity boost over Turbos for the suburban services, much less diesel is being burned (and none at all between London and Cardiff), etc

Same goes for Botley Road bridge - no one understood what was really lurking under the road there (nor was that the railway's responsibility) and once they did grasp the scale of it, then it was stark staring obvious that the job was going to take a lot longer. The actual rail bridge installation was pretty straightforward, once it could finally proceed.

The benefits are that Oxford station is now future-proofed. Trains will be able to access the new platform 5 and the extra bridge span placed on the east side allows for another platform or platforms to be added at that side as and when it is deemed necessary (many years ago, in my view, but that's another story). And the road and pedestrian paths under the railway have been transformed - unless you think a choice of a low, narrow tunnel one side of the road or a narrow pavement right next to the traffic on the other was just fine.

HS2 is a monumnetal cock-up, with the politicians taking the starring role for changing their minds every 10 minutes for years now, and others up North are better placed than me to pass judgment about what benefits there may be from Ordsall.

 

[btdrawer]

Chiltern currently seem quite sanguine about the strikes, saying "Most customers will experience a near normal train service"

Saturdays 10 & 17 October - Industrial Action | Chiltern Railways

Chiltern Railways industrial action information.

www.chilternrailways.co.uk

 

[800002]

Chiltern currently seem quite sanguine about the strikes, saying "Most customers will experience a near normal train service"

Saturdays 10 & 17 October - Industrial Action | Chiltern Railways

Chiltern Railways industrial action information.

www.chilternrailways.co.uk

Because its an accurate statement, in the approach to a mostly usual service offering.

Can't predict what may occur on the day, as with any day the railway operates.

 

[btdrawer]

Yeah I wasn't doubting them to clear. Just good to hear they don't expect it to be very disruptive.

 

[Nottingham59]

So are you saying that there was no benefit from Great Western electrification?

Well, spending well over £5 billion on GWEP increased the national debt by that amount. With 10y gilt rates over 5%, taxpayers are currently paying around £300 million a year just to service that debt. That annual cost is much more than the annual cost savings being realised by extending the OHLE beyond, say, Maindenhead.

Overspending and, as a result, not finishing the job properly is not the same thing as there being no benefit - or maybe you enjoyed breathing in all the exhaust fumes from HSTs and Turbos at Paddington and elsewhere?

Paddington was already electrified before GWEP. Class 800 and 802 are both bimodes and would be on electric in London.

The 387s delivered a huge capacity boost over Turbos for the suburban services, much less diesel is being burned (and none at all between London and Cardiff), etc

We could have ordered high capacity bimodes to run the class 387 services, at relatively little extra cost. Either way, Paddington wouldn't have had diesel fumes. The extra costs today from running bimodes would be a tiny fraction of £300 million a year.

Same goes for Botley Road bridge - no one understood what was really lurking under the road there (nor was that the railway's responsibility) and once they did grasp the scale of it, then it was stark staring obvious that the job was going to take a lot longer. The actual rail bridge installation was pretty straightforward, once it could finally proceed.

It was the project owner's responsibility to understand what was lurking under there. That was the railway. Pretending otherwise just shows how careless the railway is with public money.

The benefits are that Oxford station is now future-proofed. Trains will be able to access the new platform 5 and the extra bridge span placed on the east side allows for another platform or platforms to be added at that side as and when it is deemed necessary (many years ago, in my view, but that's another story). And the road and pedestrian paths under the railway have been transformed - unless you think a choice of a low, narrow tunnel one side of the road or a narrow pavement right next to the traffic on the other was just fine.

That's all futures, though, isn't it? We were talking about benefits actually realised, specifically addressing this point:

the Treasury) can point to EWR and say, we put in hundreds of millions of pounds of public money and so far there's been virtually no return or benefits from that.

HS2 is a monumnetal cock-up, with the politicians taking the starring role for changing their minds every 10 minutes for years now, and others up North are better placed than me to pass judgment about what benefits there may be from Ordsall.

Quite.

Getting back on topic, if the railway industry as a whole cannot bring a new service into operation after all the capital investment has been spent and the trains are ready to go, then it does not deserve public subsidy.

 

[Class15]

Well, spending well over £5 billion on GWEP increased the national debt by that amount. With 10y gilt rates over 5%, taxpayers are currently paying around £300 million a year just to service that debt. That annual cost is much more than the annual cost savings being realised by extending the OHLE beyond, say, Maindenhead.


Paddington was already electrified before GWEP. Class 800 and 802 are both bimodes and would be on electric in London.


We could have ordered high capacity bimodes to run the class 387 services, at relatively little extra cost. Either way, Paddington wouldn't have had diesel fumes. The extra costs today from running bimodes would be a tiny fraction of £300 million a year.


It was the project owner's responsibility to understand what was lurking under there. That was the railway. Pretending otherwise just shows how careless the railway is with public money.


That's all futures, though, isn't it? We were talking about benefits actually realised, specifically addressing this point:




Quite.

Getting back on topic, if the railway industry as a whole cannot bring a new service into operation after all the capital investment has been spent and the trains are ready to go, then it does not deserve public subsidy.

Genuine question for you here, and not only about this post: why are you so anti-electrification?

The 387 services work great as they are, the trains are reliable and they are fully electrically worked. Clearly ideally they would go to Oxford, but suggesting that we should have less, rather than more, GW electrification seems very counterproductive to me.

 

[btdrawer]

Getting back on topic, if the railway industry as a whole cannot bring a new service into operation after all the capital investment has been spent and the trains are ready to go, then it does not deserve public subsidy.

I think this is quite a crucial point. Cost-effectiveness matters, and the British rail industry has had a poor track record on this as of late.

I do think electrification is important and I would like to see GWML finished. Pure EMUs are cheaper to build and maintain than bi-modes, they can accelerate faster, they produce less wear and tear. But the fact is that the UK is currently spending a higher % of GDP on rail investment than any other OECD nation. The reason we aren't seeing results is not because we aren't putting the money forward; it's because our construction costs are far too high, and skepticism about new projects is to some extent a rational response to that. Imo it's absolutely crucial that we try to understand how we can get our costs down to, eg, French or Spanish levels, if we really want to see transformational change to the network (which I'm sure we all do on this forum).

To relate back to EWR specifically, setting a precedent that we can't have any more DOO will make the situation worse, since it means any new service will be much more expensive to operate, meaning the business case becomes weaker.

 

[Nottingham59]

Genuine question for you here, and not only about this post: why are you so anti-electrification?

That's a really good question. To avoid hijack this thread, I've answered it is Speculative Discussion here:

This is a new thread to answer the following question by @Class15 in the EWR Countdown discussion.

 

[bspahh]

That's a really good question. To avoid hijack this thread, I've answered it is Speculative Discussion here:

That thread is

What I think is wrong with current OHLE electrification practice

This is a new thread to answer the following question by @Class15 in the EWR Countdown discussion. Genuine question for you here, and not only about this post: why are you so anti-electrification? Well, that's a good question. After thinking about it for a while, I'd say there are six...

www.railforums.co.uk

 

[Falcon1200]

It was the project owner's responsibility to understand what was lurking under there.

How would anyone know what was 'lurking under there' if there were no suitable records?

 

[Farigiraf]

Well, spending well over £5 billion on GWEP increased the national debt by that amount. With 10y gilt rates over 5%, taxpayers are currently paying around £300 million a year just to service that debt. That annual cost is much more than the annual cost savings being realised by extending the OHLE beyond, say, Maindenhead.

Getting back on topic, if the railway industry as a whole cannot bring a new service into operation after all the capital investment has been spent and the trains are ready to go, then it does not deserve public subsidy.

Could apply this logic to any public investment, e.g. motorways, hospitals, schools - if the body overseeing the project is too incompetent at keeping the finances in order then it shouldn't be done as it's 'net negative'. But then we wouldn't be building much at all for the forseeable future! Can't think of any recent governments (or future options at the next GE) that have been particularly competent at this stuff. Don't think sitting around doing nothing is going to fix our economic woes anytime soon though.

 

[D1511]

How would anyone know what was 'lurking under there' if there were no suitable records?

I believe it's known as site investigation

 

[Falcon1200]

I believe it's known as site investigation

Which could only be done by digging everything up, and then dealing with whatever was found.... which is what happened, surely?!!

 

[Peter Sarf]

I think the problems with jobs like Botley Road Bridge in Oxford is something that can be argued to be unforeseen.

For Great Western Electrification it was the run away costs of over engineering it - or will we be glad of it one day ?.
It was not helped by the UK state not asking for the usual derogations in the latest version of the European standards on 25kV AC overhead electrification. Which then had to be followed. That process had been done in the past by BR but we lost that knowledge/capability/oversight after privatisation and the state did not pick it up. So we could argue it was a cost of privatisation ?.

BUT for East West Rail the excuse is......
Blinkered. Obstinacy. Self Interest.
How can anyone argue a two coach train in 2026 needs a guard but other trains upto 12 coaches in length elsewhere seem to have been fine for decades.
Depressing.

 

[Robin Edwards]

BUT for East West Rail the excuse is......
Blinkered. Obstinacy. Self Interest.
How can anyone argue a two coach train in 2026 needs a guard but other trains upto 12 coaches in length elsewhere seem to have been fine for decades.
Depressing.

I was a trade unionist for the 40+ years I was in employment at both worker and management grades however when the RMT is in this case, blinkered, obstinate and for self interest, it's easy to see how consideration is made by management for outsourcing - even if that's not possible for Chiltern trains and even if RMT are so anti-outsourcing (and rightfully so in many situations)!