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Robin9 · January 5th 14, 01:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by

In article ,
(Robin9) wrote:

d;140333 Wrote:
On Wed, 01 Jan 2014 13:41:38 -0800 Aurora wrote:-
On Wed, 1 Jan 2014 19:18:18 +0000 (UTC), d
wrote:
-
On Wed, 1 Jan 2014 17:24:25 +0000
Roland Perry wrote:-
In message , at 09:04:08
on Wed, 1 Jan 2014, Aurora remarked:

HMG in the UK is funding the largest program of rolling
electrification to date. This may be the biggest rail investment
since the 1950s modernization.

More than the £9bn on the WCML upgrade or £15bn on Crossrail?

Investment funding across the network for the next 5 years, which
includes money to complete Crossrail and Thameslink, comes to £9bn-

Which will be small change compared to the costs of HS2 if it goes
ahead.-

That money could do so much good if spent elsewhere on the UK network.
The Welwyn bottleneck would be a good start.-

If the government had been honest and said simply that the west coast
main line has reached capacity and a new parallel line is needed I
suspect most people would be for HS2 or some version of it. But selling
it as a way just to shave 15 mins off a trip to brum was moronic and
quite rightly people said it would be a waste of money.

I wonder if it would be possible to increase the loading gauge on the
WCML to allow double deck trains and increase capacity that way? Would
be bloody expensive but perhaps not quite HS2 expensive.

Wouldn't it be cheaper to have longer trains? Before privatisation, trains
on all main routes, not just WCML, were longer than they are now. As one
who travelled frequently by train in the '60s, '70s and '80s, I am always
struck by how short today's trains are. I am not at all surprised that
there is overcrowding at peak times.

While the Sprinter revolution proved that frequent short trains were better
than a few cross-country trains a day, the current East Coast trains for
example are more or less all that can fit into the platforms. Remember the
White Rose services that could only use platforms 1 and 6 at the Cross?

and when in loco-hauled days did Cambridge-London trains extended to 12 20m
coaches?

--
Colin Rosenstiel

In "my day" The Flying Scotsman was a loco-hauled 12 coach train with an
extra coach added on Fridays. It did leave from platform 1. How long is the
equivalent train today? My point is that if in those B.R. days the train had
been reduced to eight coaches, it too would have been massively
overcrowded.

The Cambridge Buffet Express was a loco-hauled five coach train. FCC trains
are frequently only four coaches long.

Some other examples: Victoria to Brighton; Waterloo to Portsmouth via
Guildford; Waterloo to Bournemouth & Weymouth: all used to be 12 coach
trains. They're not today.