Electrification - do we really want more?

[najaB]

One could be forgiven for thinking that 25kv, let alone 50kv AC, is too high to be economically feasible in light of the modern clearance standards.

Again, the clearance standards shouldn't add significant cost to newly-designed electrification schemes unless there are major structures that could be made to work with the old standards but don't with the new. But I'm not convinced that is a bad thing - instead of trying to squeeze the OHLE in, we could potentially get routes that are cleared to higher structure gauges than they would have been under the old regulations.

That opens the doors to new freight routes, double-deck trains, etc.

 

[HSTEd]

You will never fit double-deck trains into conventional British infrastructure unless you clear to something like AAR Plate H's vertical clearance.
And we will never achieve that.

So increasing gauges is largely pointless.

 

[najaB]

You will never fit double-deck trains into conventional British infrastructure unless you clear to something like AAR Plate H's vertical clearance.
And we will never achieve that.

Widely, no. But there are some routes where it *might* be worth it.

 

[NorthernSpirit]

The Heart of Wessex? It is single track for much of its length and has about 8 trains each way per day between Weymouth and Westbury. You surely can't be serious?

I am serious. Th better connected the rail network can be the better chance of seeing new services as The Ham describes below.

Under current timetables if there were to be a Waterloo to Weymouth via Yeovil service it would be only slightly slower than the slower of the two services which go via Southampton, yet would have stopped at most stations on route after Basingstoke.

The faster if the two services isn't really worth comparing as it runs fast between Waterloo and Winchester, so although it's good for end to end journeys isn't any good for getting from anywhere that it doesn't call at. As such for most places along the route before Winchester it's basically 1tph to Weymouth. As such an increase, even with a 10-15 slower service, will lead to more usage.

Run it once every two hours and you'll double the frequency of the line, add in electrification and gurney times could be very close the existing route and so could then start to be a viable route from London for many.

 

[HSTEd]

The advantage of a third rail solution is that if it only has eight trains a day it could be built even more cheaply than many of the other solutions I suggest.

 

[najaB]

The advantage of a third rail solution...

An 87 mile, third-rail project. Unlikely to happen any time soon.

 

[70014IronDuke]

Under current timetables if there were to be a Waterloo to Weymouth via Yeovil service it would be only slightly slower than the slower of the two services which go via Southampton, yet would have stopped at most stations on route after Basingstoke.

The "Heart of Wessex" is defined as Weymouth - Yeovil Pen Mill - Westbury - Bristol, though latter part is better served by Portsmouth - Bristol trains. So I suspect many people take it to be Weymouth-Westbury.

While I would like to see it get an improved service, and maybe some redoubling to enable it to serve better as a better diversionary route, I don't believe for a minute that it would ever have a case for electrification. You'd be far better off - if electrification is worth all the trouble - stringin wires along say, the Durham Coast line, or Newcastle - Carlisle, or the Settle and Carlisle. (and none of those are going to happen any time soon).

The service you contemplate is something else entirely, and would involve new, expensive connection between the HoW and the LSWR line near Yeovil Junction.

It could, perhaps, be viable, but given the reality on the ground, should be third rail. Because of this, it is not going to happen under current thinking.

 

[QueensCurve]

To be fair it's mostly the ECML. The overhead there is pretty rubbish compared to the stuff that's going up now, which is a large part of the reason the new stuff is so expensive. Long story short, it won't be a significant issue on newly electrified lines, and broadly isn't on older ones apart from the ECML.

Whether the new wiring proves more reliable in practice is yet to be seen. It is vastly more expensive which makes it more unattractive to the politicians.

 

[QueensCurve]

I too have pondered this point. My issue is whether we will see significant progress in wiring only as the whole concept starts to look rather obselete. Perhaps the railway ought to be jumping on the bandwagon and investing in alternative means of powering trains instead? Or at least whether there is something other then erecting thousands of tons of cumbersome, eye-wateringly expensive metalwork every few yards. Battery trains with rapid charge at stations, for example? The kit is in use with urban bus systems. It can't be impossible to develop it for rail use, surely? All sorts of things are happening everywhere else in a very real sense now with power sources, leaving the railways looking somewhat behind the game.

Takes us back to claims a few years ago that electrification was obsolete due to fuel cell powered trains being just around the corner.

 

[QueensCurve]

Yes I do but sadly I think the great western scheme fiasco has put the politicians in a position where it's likely that only the schemes that have boots on the ground now have a chance of being finished. I hope I'm wrong but after reading some of the coded messages coming from rail ministers and our beloved leader (re electrification to Swansea), I wouldn't bet my house on it.

And politicians explicitly saying that electrification is not necessary since new trains are going to be delivered.

Perhaps the politician who said passengers don't know how the train is powered has never travelled in the "super" voyager.

 

[QueensCurve]

The advantage of a third rail solution is that if it only has eight trains a day it could be built even more cheaply than many of the other solutions I suggest.

As debunked comprehensively on other threads.

Once you take account of the unseen infrastructure to supply power to the 3rd rail every 3 miles or so it is anything but more cheap.

 

[HSTEd]

As debunked compr
ehensively on other threads.

Once you take account of the unseen infrastructure to supply power to the 3rd rail every 3 miles or so it is anything but more cheap.

But you don't need all that infrastructure.
The comparison third rail installations were deliberately designed with obsolete technology and overspecced to drive the price up. Meanwhile insanely optimistic 25kV assumptions were made that understate the true cost by something like a factor of four.

Rectification and computer control has come an awful long way in recent years - to the point where the traditional Southern Region type approach is not the one that would be adopted in a low-cost modern scheme.
And you certainly don't need a substation every three miles if your only traffic is eight short EMUs a day.

 

[richieb1971]

It's not good when the first line of a post is blatantly wrong. China's population density puts it way down the list - #79 on this site: http://www.indexmundi.com/g/r.aspx?v=21000

Note that the UK is #50.

Considering the amount of mountains in China, I can almost guarantee the railways built there are going through ridiculously high levels of dense population.

 

[najaB]

Considering the amount of mountains in China, I can almost guarantee the railways built there are going through ridiculously high levels of dense population.

That isn't even remotely close to what you wrote.

Given that railways generally exist to connect cities, that is true of pretty much every railway in the world.

 

[The Ham]

The "Heart of Wessex" is defined as Weymouth - Yeovil Pen Mill - Westbury - Bristol, though latter part is better served by Portsmouth - Bristol trains. So I suspect many people take it to be Weymouth-Westbury.

While I would like to see it get an improved service, and maybe some redoubling to enable it to serve better as a better diversionary route, I don't believe for a minute that it would ever have a case for electrification. You'd be far better off - if electrification is worth all the trouble - stringin wires along say, the Durham Coast line, or Newcastle - Carlisle, or the Settle and Carlisle. (and none of those are going to happen any time soon).

The service you contemplate is something else entirely, and would involve new, expensive connection between the HoW and the LSWR line near Yeovil Junction.

It could, perhaps, be viable, but given the reality on the ground, should be third rail. Because of this, it is not going to happen under current thinking.

Initially it wouldn't need a junction, just reversals at both Yeovil stations (SWT are already doing one on several services a day).

Likewise electrification will be a long time coming, but once you have that service and the wires are going beyond Salisbury (north and west) then the case to electrify all lines south of the GWML and east of Exeter starts to get very strong. If there's only going to be one train eachway in normal service and maybe a doubling of that during certain engineering works (say Southampton to Christchurch where going down to Weymouth and coming back would be quicker for a lot of people than using the replacement bus) then the grid connections could be fairly few in number. Add to that no junctions and the cost of the electrification would be towards the lower end on cost per mile basis.

The main point was that with a little bit of lateral thinking there could be a case for doubling the daily number of services on that line from today. Yes that would still be a long way from making a case for electrification today, but I wasn't suggesting that.