Route Electrification with Maps

[Legolash2o]

Ok, so three maps have been attached.

Green map: Six months of passenger movement from February 2019.
Yellow map: Six months of freight movements from February 2019.

Using the data which lines would you electrify?

I would be tempted to possibly electrify Immingham to Doncaster (freight), Felixstowe to the north west (freight) and Oxford Didcot to Birmingham (passenger).

 

[GRALISTAIR]

The big prize to me is F2N - but obviously I would also do N - Nuneaton to Birmingham New Street as an add on. Before Oxford you need to finish off Didcot to Oxford then carry on - has freight benefits too from the port of Southampton eventually with the old electric spine idea.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 19 Aug 2020 ==

Also I am a big fan of Julian Worth suggestions for freight in the attached file. F2N is on there of course - but he does not have your suggestion of Immingham to Doncaster on there.

 

[Legolash2o]

Oops I meant Didcot.

I'm guessing the Nuneaton to Birmingham New Street to add resilience and diversion routes?

 

[Meerkat]

Priorities to me are London Gateway, Felixstowe branch, and the Nuneaton-New Street-Tamworth triangle (for a Brum-Tamworth metro service as well as freight to Hams Hall, Birch Coppice and Washwood Heath/Lawley Street)
Beyond Newbury do you need to electrify into the quarries or ‘just’ to Westbury with diesels shuttling to the quarries for the moment? And what do you need for Croft, just Croft to Market Harborough or to Nuneaton too?
How essential is the Lincoln joint? If liner trains are electrified can they stay out the way north of Peterborough without going round the long way?

 

[S&CLER]

The maps are fascinating, but I'm puzzled about what the dots on the lines represent. They can't be stations because there are too many. And there are oddities , e.g. absence of Bolton-Euxton and the curious duplication in the Prestatyn-Talacre area on the freight map. Is the line thickness proportional to freight train numbers or to tonnage (not that it would make that much difference,I suppose)?

I'd agree, Didcot-Oxford is a strong front-runner because it combines freight and passenger benefits. Perhaps the GW scheme should have started as a suburban project, Paddington-Oxford, with Oxford-Coventry following on before Bristol and Cardiff. A WR chief engineer predicted this strategy in the 1970s, I recall.

 

[Mikey C]

I'd electrify the Chiltern Lines as a matter of priority

Strong passenger growth
Gets diesels out of Marylebone and Snow Hill
Releases lots of Turbos and Turbostars which can then be cascaded to start replacing Sprinters

Didcot/Oxford to Banbury can be done as part of this, with East-West rail following on

 

[anthony263]

Doing electrification to swansea would allow most of the Swansea to London paddington services to go over to electric operation for the whole trip apart from those services from West Wales and diversions

 

[Legolash2o]

The maps are fascinating, but I'm puzzled about what the dots on the lines represent. They can't be stations because there are too many. And there are oddities , e.g. absence of Bolton-Euxton and the curious duplication in the Prestatyn-Talacre area on the freight map. Is the line thickness proportional to freight train numbers or to tonnage (not that it would make that much difference,I suppose)?

The dots are Tiplocs (one for each track), they also include junctions, stations, bus stations, other random timing locations. The data is something I made from Feb 2019 and since then the dots have been cleaned up and gaps filled in. I'm due to do a newer one some day soon hopefully. The lines are weighted by the amount of schedules within a six month or so period.