The Electric Train from Platform 5 is Running 25 Years Late
So they’ve finally announced the decision to electrify the Great Western Main Line. And they’ve going right through to Swansea rather than stopping at Cardiff, which is a sensible decision. No mention of Plymouth or Penzance, although keeping the wires up on the sea wall might be an engineering challenge!main
While I have to applaud the decision, I do have to ask why this wasn’t done 20 years ago. The last major electrification project was the East Coast Main Line, which British Rail completed in 1988. So why did they disband the electrification teams rather than carry on with the next project.
In retrospect, the answer is simple: Privatisation happened. Because of the ideologically-driven need for short-term profits, it was no time for long term investment projects. So Britain continues to lag behind the rest of Europe, with a significant proportion of main line trunk routes operated by diesels.
The other electrification project announced is the George Stevenson’s Liverpool to Manchester line, opened in 1830 as the first main line in the world. At first glance this is an odd choice; the only trains using it’s entire length nowadays are a handful of local trains; even the Liverpool to Manchester expresses use another route. But at Newton-le-Willows there are connections both north and south with the main London-Glasgow line. These connections will enable electric to run directly between Liverpool or Manchester to Scotland, and serve as a diversionary route between Liverpool or Manchester to London when the more direct routes are closed for engineering work.
So hopefully we’ll see the end of the class 185 “Lardarse Express” diesel trains operating under the wires for 90% of the journey on Manchester to Edinburgh services. Although seeing Virgin Trains using diesel Voyagers 100% under the wires between Glasgow and Manchester doesn’t exactly convince sceptics of the value of electrification. Neither does the percentage of freight on electrified routes hauled by diesels.
July 24th, 2009 at 11:08 am
I also note that the wires will go up at night to avoid interrupting passengers.
When do they thing the freight trains move?
July 24th, 2009 at 4:17 pm
There isn’t a huge volume of freight on the GWML nowadays - sadly the railways don’t carry anything like the amount of freight they did in the 1970s. What freight there is can probably either be accommodated in daytime freight paths, or diverted via alternative routes - you could send the Avonmouth to Didcot coal via Westbury and Reading, for instance. It’s a longer way round, but power-station coal isn’t a time-sensitive cargo.
On the four-track sections east of Didcot I would assume they would only need to close two tracks out of four for most of the work.