Electrification Taskforce Final Report

[WatcherZero]

Final report of the 'Northern Sparks' Electrification Taskforce.

To remind of previous publications

Review of electrification
http://www.railnorth.org/wp-content...ication-Task-Force-Baseline-Position-v5.0.pdf

Prioritisation methodology development
http://www.railnorth.org/wp-content...rification-Task-Force-Prioritisation-v5.2.pdf

List of all electrification schemes
http://www.railnorth.org/wp-content...ation-Strategy-Baseline-Review-of-Network.pdf

Final Report
http://www.railnorth.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/EFT_Final_Report_FINAL_web.pdf

For those who want to skip to the end.

Tier 1 (recommend immediate start to business case development for inclusion in next CP 2019-2024) 1450 single track km
Calder Valley (Full) 84
Liverpool to Manchester via Warrington Central 80
Southport/Kirkby to Salford Crescent 79
Chester to Stockport 75
Northallerton to Middlesbrough 73
Leeds to York via Harrogate 70
Selby to Hull 70
Sheffield (Meadowhall) to Leeds via Barnsley / Castleford & connections 68
Bolton to Clitheroe 67
Sheffield to Doncaster/Wakefield Westgate (Dearne Valley) 67
Hazel Grove to Buxton 66
Warrington to Chester 64

Tier 2, Considered for electrification post 2024 but light rail alternatives should also be considered. 950 single track km
Manchester to Sheffield and Manchester southeast local services 59
York to Scarborough 53
Bishop Auckland/Darlington to Saltburn and Sunderland 53
Barnsley to Huddersfield 50
Sheffield to Lincoln via Retford 49
Chester to Crewe 47
Burnley to Colne & Kirkham to Blackpool South 45
Knottingley to Goole 45

Tier 3, Should be electrified in the long term but in the short term perhaps modern diesel or alternative traction power improvements should be considered. 1600 single track km
Barrow to Carnforth 38
Pontefract to Church Fenton 38
Hull to Scarborough 38
Ormskirk to Preston 37
Carlisle to Newcastle 36
Skipton to Carlisle 35
Barton on Humber 34
Cumbrian Coast 32
Doncaster to Gilberdyke 32
Cleethorpes to Thorne (Doncaster) 26
Middlesbrough to Whitby 26
Skipton to Heysham 7

Tier 1 schemes have the largest economic impact on the wider economy, they also form a base significantly boosting the marginal cost of follow on schemes. They recommend they are progressed through design and costing immediately so as to be ready to break ground when other schemes finish in 2019/2020. Within this tier is Warrington to Chester however it only makes financial sense if North Wales electrification is progressed otherwise it would be diesel operated beyond some additional Chester-Manchester services.

Tier 2, the major scheme in this phase is South TPE and associated network in South East Manchester. Crewe to Chester would naturally form part of a wider scheme to electrify the WCML to North Wales and possibly HS2 at Crewe, other routes build on Tier 1 schemes to give 100% electrification for the City Regions, Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds and Sheffield. Some routes may well be suited to light rail electrification and we recommend this is looked at with some urgency in light of the Sheffield Tram-train trial.

Tier 3 include most of the long rural routes and some infill routes with limited services such as the Humber which could only be progressed once South TPE was done and should be looked at once the core network is programmed. Ormskirk to Preston and Moorthorpe/Castleford to York would not justify electrification on the basis of the current limited passenger service however perhaps examination should be given to increasing services. Ponterfract is important for freight and as a diversionary route.

 

[SqUaShIe P]

All very interesting that. Thanks for the summery. 2019-2024 just seems like such a long time away. Its a shame we cant have it all done within the next few years

 

[GRALISTAIR]

Wow I will print off and read at leisure. I will be delighted if all Tier 1 schemes get done by 2030.

 

[WatcherZero]

Im just glad to see my local lines (Kirkby, Southport, Atherton) ranked third, I knew they would be in the top half of the table but worried they wouldn't receive initial promotion.

Transport secretary will be officially receiving it in Sheffield today, no idea on the time.

 

[DarloRich]

Im just glad to see my local lines (Kirkby, Southport, Atherton) ranked third, I knew they would be in the top half of the table but worried they wouldn't receive initial promotion.

Transport secretary will be officially receiving it in Sheffield today, no idea on the time.

then he will put it straight in the bin!

You can’t seriously think that electrifying the Darlington - Bishop Auckland line would be of any value whatsoever. Any schemes approved for future control periods will be:

1) Cheap
2) fill ins or
3) additions to the (then) existing TPE wires.
4) Short distance

there just isn’t the money of the level of work suggested - Some of the vaunted tier 1 schemes won’t even happen let alone anything below that!

I realise I will now be castigated as some sort of negative Norman but please try to be realistic!

 

[The Planner]

Not at all, I doubt you will get even half of tier 1 in CP6 based on the way costs are going like you say.

 

[WatcherZero]

Bishop Auckland line, 1 service every 2 hours but says it passes Merchant Park and Merchant Park 2 offering rail freight opportunities and I may be wrong but isn't that the location of the Hitachi plant too?

 

[northwichcat]

Interesting regarding Chester. They'll be no unelectrified route between Chester and Manchester if that happens, which would prevent issues during engineering works if services are diverted.

However, what would happen to North Wales services if the North Wales coast wasn't electrified?

Also if you're doing the Mid-Cheshire line and the Buxton line then electrifying the chord between the Liverpool/Warrington-Crewe line and the Mid-Cheshire line would make sense for freight services to be able to switch to electric, as would the freight line connecting the Mid-Cheshire and Buxton lines.

I wonder if the inclusion of the Mid-Cheshire line assumes the Airport spur is extended to join on the Mid-Cheshire line, given most Airport services will be electric long-term.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

It's a good skim-read.
All very plausible for local-authority based thinking, but it doesn't quite seem to work at the network level.
Why would you put Stockport-Chester (or at least Northwich-Chester) ahead of Crewe-Chester?
Probably because the "local" view has prevailed over the "network" view.
For instance I can't see Chester station and the line from Northwich being wired as a priority over any other route into Chester.

Then there's the whole cost/resources thing.
The TP North electrification is still shown as 2019.
We have no clue yet as to how the strategic plan will unfold as a result of these constraints.
I think it will all have to be revisited when the CP6 funding is set (with some CP5 projects still to do).

 

[topydre]

Why would they suggest that Chester-Crewe should be considered for light rail when it's part of a major express line? (North Wales, Bangor, Holyhead etc)

 

[po8crg]

Why would they suggest that Chester-Crewe should be considered for light rail when it's part of a major express line? (North Wales, Bangor, Holyhead etc)

They didn't. Some of the Tier 2 could be considered for light rail, not all.

One reason that Chester-Crewe is in Tier 2 is that it needs to be considered together with North Wales Coast, ie benefits from running electric trains to Llandudno/Holyhead are not included in Northern Sparks (to be fair, that's outside their remit).

They actually say in the document that Chester-Crewe and Chester-Warrington really need to be looked at jointly with North Wales Coast and Chester-Wrexham, but those lines are outside their remit, so they've accounted only for traffic within their remit.

 

[northwichcat]

Why would you put Stockport-Chester (or at least Northwich-Chester) ahead of Crewe-Chester?

Crewe-Chester scores poorly on economic benefits according to the report.

Economic benefits they identify for electrification include faster journey times and more capacity.

There's no immediate stations on the Crewe-Chester line (meaning faster acceleration wouldn't do much for journey times) and the shuttle doesn't really struggle for capacity. I also don't think there's that much traffic on the Crewe-Chester line.

While for Virgin services the majority of Chester services are part of diagrams which include services to North Wales.

We also know from Network Rail's previous analysis that Crewe-Chester electrification would have a high cost (proportionally) to other lines due to having approx. 1 bridge per mile.

So I think as a stand-alone route they've probably got Crewe-Chester right. However, I think if they were evaluating Crewe-Holyhead the outcome would likely be a lot more favourable.

 

[WatcherZero]

It's a good skim-read.
All very plausible for local-authority based thinking, but it doesn't quite seem to work at the network level.
Why would you put Stockport-Chester (or at least Northwich-Chester) ahead of Crewe-Chester?
Probably because the "local" view has prevailed over the "network" view.
For instance I can't see Chester station and the line from Northwich being wired as a priority over any other route into Chester.

That would be true if the panel didn't include Network Rail, the TOCs and other network representatives. I seem to remember theres a line in it somewhere that says something akin to local objectives and concerns were overrode in favour of rational economic assessment and the TOCS provided a sense check.

Rereading it, says 1/4 of the electrification schemes identified are examined in detail in the Electrification Refresh RUS (work done concurrently with teams feeding into each other) though one difference it says is the Network Rail version of the Calder Valley scheme includes lines to Bolton to Colne, Clitheroe as well.

Stockport Chester scored 40 on Economic, Crewe Chester only scored 10, Crewe Chester has more diesel km ended but Stockport Chester has greater passenger benefit from rolling stock quality upgrade.

 

[quantinghome]

Looks like the final report has been taken down. I wonder if they were released prematurely given there has been no big announcement.

 

[Aictos]

If the Calder Valley is being considered for full electrification and Colne to Burnley/Kirkham to Blackpool South is being considered for potential electrification, what rolling stock could be used to replace the existing 142s/158s on that route?

How much of a improvement does EMUs have over DMUs on these routes?

 

[WatcherZero]

Looks like the final report has been taken down. I wonder if they were released prematurely given there has been no big announcement.

Yep, just looked and its been deleted from the server.

 

[snowball]

To remind of previous publications

I had no idea until today that there had been any previous publications!

That was kept quiet! I had no idea they were considering so many routes. I thought they were only considering the eight originally mentioned plus Manchester to Bradford and Leeds via the Calder valley, and possibly one or two others.

Two of the original eight (Sheffield to Doncaster and Moorthorpe) have migrated to the base case.

Just glimpsed a brief trailer at the start of the BBC1 13:00 news for Look North (Leeds) at 13:30, which will apparently include a relevant item.

 

[ainsworth74]

You can’t seriously think that electrifying the Darlington - Bishop Auckland line would be of any value whatsoever.

I imagine it's more about wanting to eventually wire up Darlington to Saltburn. Unless you run a diesel shuttle (with wires up on the ECML and to Saltburn it'll be an island as well) then you need to do out to Bishop. Plus there's the Hitachi plant nearby and some (admittedly limited) rail freight opportunities.

Broadly I'm with you in that I'll be flabbergasted if half of what proposed gets done in the timescale suggested but lets not do ourselves down unnecessarily

 

[philjo]

If the battery train trials are successful that could be an option for the Bishop Auckland branch - presumably it would still be wired at least as far as to Newton Aycliffe to give access to the Hitachi plant. A return trip under the wires from Newton Aycliffe to Saltburn & back would hopefully be long enough to charge the battery

 

[northwichcat]

Cheshire & Warrington's Subregional Transport Strategy doesn't mention Mid-Cheshire line electrification so interesting that Rail North have come up with it. The Subregional Transport Strategy does include line speed improvements, linking the line to the Airport spur and running passenger traffic on the Middlewich branch: http://moderngov.cheshireeast.gov.u...egy - 160215- Stage 1 Report- Draft Final.pdf

 

[GRALISTAIR]

Looks like the final report has been taken down. I wonder if they were released prematurely given there has been no big announcement.

Yep, just looked and its been deleted from the server.

It is a good job I downloaded them all late last night in PDF.

 

[TheKnightWho]

I imagine it's more about wanting to eventually wire up Darlington to Saltburn. Unless you run a diesel shuttle (with wires up on the ECML and to Saltburn it'll be an island as well) then you need to do out to Bishop. Plus there's the Hitachi plant nearby and some (admittedly limited) rail freight opportunities.

Broadly I'm with you in that I'll be flabbergasted if half of what proposed gets done in the timescale suggested but lets not do ourselves down unnecessarily

It's included as Bishop Auckland to Saltburn, which makes more sense really.

I have to say, it's amusing to see how negative certain people are being: clearly their "common sense" has all the answers, and not the people who've put together a report (with data) :roll:

 

[GRALISTAIR]

Is there anyway a politician instead of saying CP this and CP that can just say we would like all (and want) all Tier 1 projects done by 2030?

 

[ainsworth74]

I believe they could say that but it would still have to be fitted into the Control Period structure as that's the way that Network Rail is funded and plans its various infrastructure programs. So you could say 'we want all tier 1 projects by 2030' and Network Rail would probably go away and fit all of that into the various Control Periods between now and then.

 

[TheKnightWho]

If several lines such as Wigan-Kirkby Manchester-Liverpool via Warrington and Warrington-Ellesmere Port were wired up could we see certain routes becoming through routes again? I can't see all of Merseyrail being converted to AC, but I can see them using dual voltage stock with Merseyrail being merged into Northern.

 

[snowball]

The link to the final report is now working again for me (and I've rebooted my computer in the last half hour so it's probably not a cache).

 

[Altnabreac]

Is there anyway a politician instaed of saying CP this and CP that can just say we would like all (and want) all Tieer 1 projects done by 2030?

That's effectively what we have in Scotland where the lines to be electrified were prioritised into the order required by the Strategic Transport Projects Review (STPR) back in 2008 or so and a rolling programme of electrification announced.

The exact decisions on which schemes within each priority tier get electrified within each Control Period has gradually trickled out over the time since then but everyone knows the direction of travel and which schemes are in the pipeline.

At present we don't know an exact programme for CP6 but we do know broadly it will consist of the schemes in Phase 2 and 3 of the STPR decision as by that stage Phase 1 and half of Phase 2 will have been completed.

 

[GRALISTAIR]

That's effectively what we have in Scotland where the lines to be electrified were prioritised into the order required by the Strategic Transport Projects Review (STPR) back in 2008 or so and a rolling programme of electrification announced.

The exact decisions on which schemes within each priority tier get electrified within each Control Period has gradually trickled out over the time since then but everyone knows the direction of travel and which schemes are in the pipeline.

At present we don't know an exact programme for CP6 but we do know broadly it will consist of the schemes in Phase 2 and 3 of the STPR decision as by that stage Phase 1 and half of Phase 2 will have been completed.

10/10 for Scotland - I wish the rest of the mainland Britain would follow suite.

 

[po8crg]

For those wondering what the phases are, this is what the report says:

A.48 It is envisaged that electrification would be delivered on a phased basis. In the short term, this would include:

Phase 1 - Committed improvements as part of the Edinburgh to Glasgow improvements, comprising Edinburgh to Glasgow via Falkirk route, Diversion Routes 1 (Haymarket) and 2 (Falkirk Grahamston), and electrification on the route via Cumbernauld and to Dunblane / Alloa; and
Phase 2 - Electrification of the remaining routes in the Central Belt (Shotts, Whifflet, Paisley Canal, Glasgow North Suburban, East Kilbride and Kilmarnock).
A.49 In the longer term, extending into the period beyond STPR, this would include:

Phase 3 - Electrification of routes between Edinburgh, Perth and Dundee including the Fife Circle;
Phase 4 - Electrification from Dunblane to Aberdeen; and
Phase 5 — Electrification from Perth to Inverness.

This would leave just the Far North Line, the Kyle of Lochalsh Line, the West Highland Line, the Inverness-Aberdeen line, the Ayr-Stranraer line and, I think (though their map doesn't), the line through Dumfries.

I'm not sure where Borders Railway electrification falls into the plan - it's shown on the map as not being electrified.

 

[Greybeard33]

Also if you're doing the Mid-Cheshire line and the Buxton line then electrifying the chord between the Liverpool/Warrington-Crewe line and the Mid-Cheshire line would make sense for freight services to be able to switch to electric, as would the freight line connecting the Mid-Cheshire and Buxton lines.

The Hartford chord is already part electrified, as a stub off the original WCML electrification. It is a no-brainer that it would be included in the Mid-Cheshire scheme.

The map in Appendix 4, "The Detailed Results", shows the Sandbach to Northwich freight line highlighted in cyan, perhaps indicating that it should be included as infill, although it is not listed in the table.

The freight line from Northenden to Hazel Grove connects to the Hope Valley line, not the Buxton line. I guess it could be considered for infill following Hope Valley electrification, along with the freight line from Chinley to Peak Forest and Tunstead, plus Earles Sidings at Hope.