In message , at 10:16:18 on Tue, 13 Dec
2016, tim... remarked:

East of Bedford is still part of the Central section.

but it is the complete new build part, albeit on a closed track bed,

No it's not.

so which part of Bedford (St John's) to Sandy has track in situ then

Are you completely incapable of looking at the plans for yourself?

As I was just discussing the route's potential as a useful "profitable"
service, I didn't really see it necessary. All that was relevant here
was that the route was new build and not simply a restoration of a
passenger service on a freight line, and therefore zillions of times
more expensive to build.

It was you who started nit-picking about whether the route was on
long-closed track bed or a completely new route, but that's irrelevant
to my point.

Why then did you bring up the topic? "it is ... on a closed track bed".

And how come suddenly "closed track bed" turns into "track in situ".

you claimed that it wasn't a closed track

I naturally assumed that you thought it a currently open (in part) track

Rather than say what things *aren't*, more clarity would emerge if you
said at the time what you thought they *were*,

To try to nail down this blizzard of shifting goalposts, the current
preferred C2-2 route is on existing tracks to just south of Bedford,
then 39km of new build to Shepreth, where it joins the existing tracks.

The point is that West of Bletchley is not "closed" - technically anyway.

I thought we were discussing east of Bedford.

I am explaining my terminology: Eastern section and Western section

It would be more helpful if you used the same terms as everyone else,
especially Network Rail.

The Western section is the part West of Bletchley that is an in situ
freight line and the Eastern Section is the part East of Bedford that
is currently open fields (or whatever). You can put the bit in the
middle in whichever section you like.

It just happens that this terminology also fits in with the likely
service pattern which will see many trains running to (and probably
terminating at} MK just off somewhere about the mid point of the route.

The service pattern used for the latest (2016) study is:

1 train per hour (tph) London Paddington - Oxford - Cambridge semi-fast

1 tph Bletchley - Cambridge semi-fast; and

1 tph Bristol - Cambridge, with alternate trains extended to Norwich or
Ipswich.

Plus optionally 1 tph Bournemouth - Manchester (currently
-Oxford-Banbury) diverted via Bletchley, Bicester and WCML.

The possibility of a Cambridge - MK - Manchester service was discounted
due to insufficient through passengers being forecast versus the need to
buy new (rather than divert existing) rolling stock.

--
Roland Perry