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On Oct 30, 3:42 am, "Peter Masson" wrote:
"burkey" wrote in message
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From the Department for Transport
Friday 30th October 2009
Rail passengers travelling between Watford and St Albans are in line
for more regular and more frequent services thanks to exciting plans
to create a new tram service, announced today by Transport Secretary
Andrew Adonis and Hertfordshire County Council.
This raises a lot of questions.
Will the tram trains use the existing 25 kV OHLE, or will the line be
re-electrified at 750 V DC?
Will there be additional stations (Garston and How Wood are
comparatively recent additions)?
Will the tram trains be high floor or low floor? If the latter the
existing stations will have to be altered.
Are street-running extensions envisaged at either end?
Those were the questions that came to my mind. If the system extends
in the street 25 kV would not be an option there. OTOH, IIRC Karlsruhe
has dual voltage units.
Re-electrifying the line would not be a cheap, or easy, option.
Don't they need at the very least a new passing loop to allow the
increased frequency? I'm not sure, if so, why they need to convert to
tram-train. It's not as if any street running is proposed, is it?
--
Colin Rosenstiel
The current run-time is 16mins, according to earlier posts this thread.
Turnaround times are subject to standards for railway operation.
1) Use of what are effectively Light Rail vehicles (in the manner of Tyne &
Wear Metro and DLR) allows other (ie non-railway, eg tramway) turnaround
parameters to apply;
2) While it has been commented that the Class 350 have tram-like
acceleration - the question is: at what cost? Vehicle depreciation and
electricity consumption in particular.
3) If the line is operated as "one-engine-in-steam" with no operational
access to the main line (means manually locking points at Watford Jn [WFJ],
I suppose), then Light Rail standards for end loadings and vehicle strength
can apply. This means the desired acceleration can be achieved with lighter
vehicles and lower power bills - has some "green" credentials to boot!!~~!
4) If the start-to-start turnaround including recovery can be got under 15
mins, then a half-hourly schedule can be maintained.
5) The smart money would be to liase with the other high-platform LR
operators in the UK and buy in a multivoltage version of whatever they are
buying; possible share the engineering spare.
6) LU and NR DC supplies will be available at WFJ with the Metropolitan line
extension and possible Bakerloo re-instatement. I suspect that repowering
the OHLE with the available DC could work, even with significant voltage
drop so long as the single unit in use can work with voltages from 500 to
800 or so.
7) extensions would of course be on County Councillors' minds, subject as
always to business case and expenditure priorities.
DW down under