Wood End Lock, trent and mersey

[alan_fincher]

and b. (if it's affordable) it will take custom away from the slower rail routes, which serve more stations, leading to them becoming uneconomic, and reduced or even axed services to the intermediate stations.

I don't believe this to be correct at all.....

 

As Richard, Dave & kbarber (and maybe others) have all said, existing routes are being operated to a capacity now that undoubtedly means a greater flow of train than in what would previously have been called the heyday of the railway.

 

At peak times there simply is no spare capacity at all.

 

It's precisely for this reason that intermediate stations have to remain closed, or, if they are lucky, get a few trains a day, but not enough to offer the services people want.

 

I think far from causing closure of "uneconomic" stations, freeing up some line capacity to allow more stopping trains, you would start to see old stations reopening, and quite probably new ones built.

 

I don't disagree though about making short distance flying a whole heap harder for people to do!

 

I think there have been some appalling political decisions made about railways in this country, and that it will take years to reverse the short-sightedness of much that has been done. New lines where existing ones can't cope just have to be better than more roads, or more flying, in my view.

[Chertsey]

I am beginning to be won round. Likewise on the bullseyes. Unprecedented!

[alan_fincher]

I am beginning to be won round. Likewise on the bullseyes. Unprecedented!

 

OK, then ............

 

"Northwich boats are better than Woolwich boats" - discuss!!

[Chertsey]

OK, then ............

 

"Northwich boats are better than Woolwich boats" - discuss!!

Only when they've got reinforced stemposts! Now get back on topic you naughty man.

[sociable_hermit]

As of course did not the builders of the canals too...

 

You seem to know your stuff about railways and I know from other posts Sociable Hermit does too - so just briefly to get this back on topic I'd appreciate thoughts as posted further up as to the necessity of the route to skirt across the Wood End lock area of the T&M - would what I'm suggesting be viable.

I'm no surveyor, but I'm struggling to see a clear path to the west of the canal that wouldn't demolish at least one farmhouse or the sewage works. It looks like they've tried to go for the path of least resistance in terms of buildings and road alterations, though the new line would pass very close to the edge of Streethay. The lock cottage suffers the most as others have said.

 

I reckon there might be a route running roughly parallel to the east of the canal from the southerly T&M bridge, then crossing back over between Ravenshaw Cottage and Rice's Gorse. It would continue east of Shaw Lane Farm, and pass between Ashton Hayes Farm and Westview Cottages to join the existing WCML roughly where the mast is shown.

 

Not only would that take the railway further away from the lock cottage, it would also space the canal bridges much further apart, easing any possible boat congestion issues. Most importantly, for selling the idea, it would also ease the sharpest point of the curve on the railway line, possibly enabling higher speeds for the trains.

 

But as I say, I'm no surveyor. If anyone wants to suggest further investigation of that proposal, feel free.

[MoominPapa]

Not only would that take the railway further away from the lock cottage, it would also space the canal bridges much further apart, easing any possible boat congestion issues.

One should never take these things for granted, but I very much doubt that new bridges will narrow the canal at all, so there shouldn't be congestion issues. These won't be brick areches built to the minimum price, like the original canal bridges.

 

For what it's worth, I'm very much persuaded that HS2 is a good idea, and I certainly don't think that adverse affect on the environs of a canal is a good argument against it.

 

MP.

[avonside1563]

Personally I would have no problems with the railway crossing the canal at that point. Modern bridges, as MP says above, will be wide and probably of concrete beam construction with little or no narrowing of the canal. Regards the environmental impact then I would much rather it was a railway with a train passing every 5-10 minutes than a blinking great trunk road with constant heavy traffic. Yes I agree it will be a shame to lose a peaceful stretch of canal but there are plenty of other quiet places to moor and the benefits to the environment will be far greater if HS2 is successful in reducing travel on other more polluting modes of transport.

[Guest]

The more I look at it the more I'm pretty sure it's possible to run the line as follows though.

 

 

Ignore my rather poor attempts at drawing freehand with a mouse but the red line below misses all the local structures and is less 'curvy' (Railway engineers will be cringing on reading that) allowing a fster passage of trains.

 

It also eliminates the two bridges over the T&M and the complex alterations to the road.

Edited May 20, 2011 by MJG

[Chertsey]

Personally I would have no problems with the railway crossing the canal at that point. Modern bridges, as MP says above, will be wide and probably of concrete beam construction with little or no narrowing of the canal. Regards the environmental impact then I would much rather it was a railway with a train passing every 5-10 minutes than a blinking great trunk road with constant heavy traffic. Yes I agree it will be a shame to lose a peaceful stretch of canal but there are plenty of other quiet places to moor and the benefits to the environment will be far greater if HS2 is successful in reducing travel on other more polluting modes of transport.

I thought it was an issue of bridge height clearance that was the worry?

Is this protected statutarily, or is it a matter of BW and its successor body (and all of us) successfully lobbying for this and monitoring it? Be interesting to see whether the successor body has more or less clout with government.

[sociable_hermit]

One should never take these things for granted, but I very much doubt that new bridges will narrow the canal at all, so there shouldn't be congestion issues. These won't be brick areches built to the minimum price, like the original canal bridges.

 

For what it's worth, I'm very much persuaded that HS2 is a good idea, and I certainly don't think that adverse affect on the environs of a canal is a good argument against it.

 

MP.

I was thinking more of the two bridges being either end of a fairly tight curve in the canal. Even if the bridges are full width (which they should be, but I wouldn't assume anything), the view forward will still be restricted. Add a pair of long-ish boats into that equation and there may well be some issues.

 

However my main reasoning for shifting the track to the east is to increase the distance between the railway and the lock cottage, as well as providing a more natural alignment for the railway. The arrangement as currently planned would leave this in a dingy little hole between the two bridges, and that doesn't look right or good to me.

[sociable_hermit]

What's the easiest way to amend the drawing to show what I mean?

[Machpoint005]

It's just you and me DaveRichard

No, me too.

 

I simply don't understand the fuss about 'train noise' - a train only makes a noise as it goes past, and then it has GONE!

It's a good job the transport naysayers 200+ years ago didn't get their way, or we wouldn't have a canal network.

[Guest]

What's the easiest way to amend the drawing to show what I mean?

 

Hi SH,

 

I opened the pdf from the link in my earlier post.

 

While it was open on my screen I did a screen capture by pressing 'Shift and print screen'

 

This put an image of what was on my screen on my clipboard.

 

I then opened Microsoft Paint and clicked paste on the file menu.

 

I now have an image I can edit in any way I want. I just added the red line with the brush tool.

 

I saved it as a jpeg on my PC and uploaded it to Photobucket and linked to it in the normal way for posting images.

Edited May 20, 2011 by MJG

[NB Alnwick]

Hi

I signed it online last week just after passing thro said lock and mooring at my favourite canal junction and pub at Fradley. After reading online both the for and against HS2 schools it soon becomes apparent that it will be an obscene waste of public money ( an immense amount ) we dont need monstrous noisy traffic of any kind thro our rapidly diminishing countryside, those few people who have sad lives all about tearing about just for money can now do meetings etc online with modern technology. My brother in law a director of a large ammerican company has in his house a room set with high speed video links etc and does business with several of his staff in several countys at the same time without even getting in a car. No its not needed what is needed is a certain section of our community in the uk to realise that the biggest latest this that and the other is not necessary........oh and what a suprise it starts in London. We have approximately 60 million people in the uk with only 10 million living in or near to that dump so 50 million others will be funding London yet again................

Rant over.

 

Where were you when the proposal to build the M40 was launched? That particular expensive development ruined a great deal more of our peaceful countryside than a railway ever could . . .

[Chertsey]

Whatever the rights and wrongs may be, there's only one thing that can stop a project like this once it's got to this stage, and that's running out of money. Resistance is futile. It's probably too late to bring about even minor changes.

[NB Alnwick]

I have to say that I am in complete agreement with 'mayalld' and others who have indicated support for the new high speed rail route.

 

The nation needs it!

 

Our railways were decimated by short-sighted politics in the 1960s and although there was a route that offered a reasonable chance of high capacity/high speed travel between the industrial centre of England and London (with connections to the channel tunnel and south coast ports), it was hastily closed and largely demolished without further thought.

 

We live in a more enlightened age now so we need to consider sustainable mass transport rather than letting the selfishness and greed of a minority of well-off 'nimby' property owners dictate our future transport requirements.

[Guest]

Whatever the rights and wrongs may be, there's only one thing that can stop a project like this once it's got to this stage, and that's running out of money. Resistance is futile. It's probably too late to bring about even minor changes.

 

I'm not convinced - It's my understanding that the new proposed route that now affects Wood end has come about as a result of changes following the first stages of consultation, and it is still in the 2nd consultation stage AFAIK

 

My problem is I can't seem to locate drawings of the original route so I am not totally sure yet which affects the canal system around Fradley most adversely, the original route or the new one.

[sociable_hermit]

Hi SH,

 

I opened the pdf from the link in my earlier post.

 

While it was open on my screen I did a screen capture by pressing 'Shift and print screen'

 

This put an image of what was on my screen on my clipboard.

 

I then opened Microsoft Paint and clicked paste on the file menu.

 

I now have an image I can edit in any way I want. I just added the red line with the brush tool.

 

I saved it as a jpeg on my PC and uploaded it to Photobucket and linked to it in the normal way for posting images.

Thanks! This is what I was trying to describe:

 

[sociable_hermit]

Hey I put a lot of effort into that!

[headjog]

It wouldn't open until 2025, make that 2028+ on current standards, WHEN it's finally approved. The cost, according to The dept.of Transport could top £30 billion, (at 2009 prices) and "This section is merely a link - a spur taking the high speed trains those precious few steps further north to one day meet up with a future line...The route for this phantom track up North hasn't even been officially announced.." what with bailing out our Euro friends, cutting back benefits and services here, supporting all those illegals,rising prices all round, and generally being expected to volunteer in areas where we once used to provide a real job for someone, I wonder what else needs me to donate my wages/savings/funds/taxes to? Hmmm

 

article from local paper here for anyone interested.

 

Lichfield Mercury 19/05/2011

 

edited to add second article

 

Same paper

Edited May 21, 2011 by headjog

[sociable_hermit]

It depends on how you look at it, doesn't it?

 

Despite the general doom and gloom (which may or may not have been hyped by the banks to asset grab a few houses and businesses), it is clear that London - Birmingham and London - Manchester WCML routes are very busy indeed. Given the economic importance of all three locations, and our Government's desperate need for cash, I think they are speculating to accumulate. It aids economic recovery in the long run, by facilitating further business growth, and in the short term, by creating some construction work at a time when that sector is doing particularly badly.

 

I agree the money could have been spent on plenty of other things, such as housing or health care. But those things won't give the Government a return on their investment in quite the same way, and that's the situation we're now in.

 

The good news if you live near the proposed HS2 route is that the construction work will undoubtedly bring money in to local shops and businesses, through both the companies doing the work and their employees spending their wages. It's a bit New Deal like, in that regard, but I'm sure the motivation is more commercial than social. I hope so, because there needs to be a commercial focus to stop it from turning into another PPP fiasco.

[FadeToScarlet]

Been said before but bears repeating: existing rail routes are at saturation point. Especially West Coast Main Line. Virgin is prime (perhaps sole?) user of WCML fast lines south of Rugby; they use 9 paths per hour off-peak and 11 paths per hour during the peaks. Green headway (the absolute maximum the line can handle without trains being slowed by signals) is probably around 2 minutes. But I believe timetable headway is 5 minutes, the minimum that can be managed to allow for decelerating Milton Keynes stoppers (the turnouts on the entry to the middle platform at MK are 70mph to maximise capacity). That's about the best that can be managed on the present infrastructure with lineside signalling; in other words, if anything wobbles even slightly there is already hardly any free space to allow things to catch up. There is certainly no capacity for growth. Likewise on the slow lines, where London Midland share the capacity with the various freight operators.

 

The only way to increase capacity is to build additional lines. No ifs, no buts, no maybes. The only possible alternatives if new lines are to be built are (i) to follow the existing routes - vastly expensive, highly disruptive (does anyone remember what it was like when they renewed Ledburn Junction????) and offering no real advantage in terms of speed (the WCML was the HS2 of its day, laid out at a time when 40mph was considered fast) - or (ii) to choose a new alignment where engineers don't have to work around a live railway, leaving the existing railway to run with minimal interference, and offering the possibility of much higher speeds.

 

HS2 is capacity driven, with the possibility of high speed being a bonus - but (as SNCF discovered) one that pays dividends. (Actually the LNER discovered that in the 1930s, and Gerry Fiennes systematised it in the 1950s/60s with his concept of Vitesse Commerciale and the incomparable Deltics, also on the ECML). Moreover, track layouts and rolling stock optimised for high speed and with sophisticated cab signalling allows even higher capacity - I believe the core section of the original PSE LGV now carries over 20 trains per hour each way during the peaks - a timetable headway, albeit I suspect very vulnerable to perturbations, of less than 3 minutes.

 

If, as seems reasonable to believe, regional traffic is increasing as quickly as long-distance, there will be both need and provision of 125mph London-Birmingham/Manchester/Liverpool services calling at existing major centres when HS2 opens. The mix will change, the calling patterns will make them more semi-fast than express (still faster than the expresses of a decade ago though) and passengers from (say) Milton Keynes to Glasgow will need to change trains in Brum, but the overall service will be better and total capacity much higher.

 

Incidentally, talking of the HS2 of its age, I believe Mr Stephenson had to deal with very similar arguments to those the objectors are employing when surveying and building the London and Birmingham Railway.

 

But how many of the trains are filled to capacity? If there are two TOCs operating over the same route, they will split the available traffic and mean that neither train is carrying as many passengers as it could.

[mrsmelly]

Where were you when the proposal to build the M40 was launched? That particular expensive development ruined a great deal more of our peaceful countryside than a railway ever could . . .

Guilty as charged.

We have all just rolled over in the past and let things happen to our countryside but things have gone too far. The cost of the HS2 is obscene and again justified I suppose by parliament ( London ) or the fact its starts from ( London ) a bit like the obscene waste of our money on the olympics ( London ) It is in this day an unecessary, noisey obtrusive nightmare of a rail link for a minority most of which will live in ( London )

As one of the vast majority of uk residents who dont live in/near London I am a tad tired of paying my taxes to fund said dump.

Having said that I wouldnt want it anywhere in the country its simply not required.

 

Whatever the rights and wrongs may be, there's only one thing that can stop a project like this once it's got to this stage, and that's running out of money. Resistance is futile. It's probably too late to bring about even minor changes.

 

Yes well said and I thought we were supposed to be skint !!!

[ditchcrawler]

I have to say that I am in complete agreement with 'mayalld' and others who have indicated support for the new high speed rail route.

 

The nation needs it!

 

Our railways were decimated by short-sighted politics in the 1960s and although there was a route that offered a reasonable chance of high capacity/high speed travel between the industrial centre of England and London (with connections to the channel tunnel and south coast ports), it was hastily closed and largely demolished without further thought.

 

We live in a more enlightened age now so we need to consider sustainable mass transport rather than letting the selfishness and greed of a minority of well-off 'nimby' property owners dictate our future transport requirements.

But if the same money was invested in the present system what would be the outcome of our transport system

[Guest]

Hey I put a lot of effort into that!

 

It's an alternative certainly and separating the bridges is a good idea. Your route looks very close to Kings Bromley marina though may need to curve further west to get some distance.