Indeed.
So, the recently announced 13 retained class 170s: are they in addition to the 21 specified in the franchise? Or have 21 been cut to 13?
I think we should be told!
CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Resources
"Great Ideas and Initiatives for the Borders Railway"
(558 posts)-
Posted 8 years ago #
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I think it has to be 13 + the minimum commitment 21 if they are looking to move Turbostars to cover Fife and the Borders plus increase the numbers of services as claimed/planned. They currently have 50 + 5 on short term lease.
It looks like they're retaining 40 of 48 Class 158 and 38 of 47 Class 156 units, a net loss of 17 2-car units.
Posted 8 years ago # -
I used this service for the first time at the weekend all the way to Tweedbank. Grubby old trains, no return ticket, single track line, poor signage at the terminus....but it still made me smile. Trains are good.
Posted 8 years ago # -
"Trains are good."
Aren't they just? :-)
Posted 8 years ago # -
"
Ms Sturgeon said a re-elected SNP government would look into the possibility of extending the line past Tweedbank as far as Carlisle.
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Posted 8 years ago # -
Call me a cynic but the SNP seem to look at a lot of improvements to the train network before deciding to spend money on trunk road projects instead.
Posted 8 years ago # -
Hawick should be a first logical step from Galashiels; it's not far, has the trackbed largely remaining and links another big Borders town to the network with population centres and potential tourist destinations in Melrose, Newtown St Boswells,
Between Hawick and Carlisle though you've got a lot of moor, hill and bog and not a lot of people to serve. There's talk of trying to route it through Langholm, but geography gets in the way and Langholm was always at the end of a branch in the old days.
Posted 8 years ago # -
Call me a cynic but the SNP seem to
look atwater down, cut back or cancel a lot of improvements to the train network decided by previous administrations before deciding to spend money on trunk road projects instead.FTFY
To my knowledge this is the first rail improvement they have "looked at" (or proposed to conduct a feasibility study for) in the past nine years. No promise to actually build anything beyond the commitments they inherited from Messrs. McConnell, McLeish, et al.
Someone will no doubt be along to correct me in a minute (HS2 Glasgow-Edinburgh, I hear you cry). In the meantime, the crickets chirrup as we contemplate all the new rail improvements proposed by the SNP...
Posted 8 years ago # -
That was a quick edit. I was just about to ask about the high speed Ed-Gl route.
Posted 8 years ago # -
I would call myself Quick Draw McGraw but there's probably another forumite for whom the appellation would be more apposite.
Also, I know there are now proposals mooted for an HS3 From Edinburgh to London, but I understand this was the brainchild of the UK government, and that the Scottish government are "working with" them to bring the mootings to fruition sometime after I'm drawing my pension most likely...
Posted 8 years ago # -
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What can be done to restore confidence in the Borders Railway? CBR wants to see more modern reliable trains introduced long before ScotRail’s proposed date of 2018. The causes of the recent signal failures must be thoroughly investigated and resolved. And plans need to be prepared to extend the short lengths of double track along the route, to provide more scope for trains to pass each other. There is also an urgent requirement for more tracks to be installed on the very congested approach from Portobello into Edinburgh Waverley.
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Posted 7 years ago # -
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The trips have been confined to Sundays - between 7 August and 25 September - to avoid the need to cancel regular ScotRail services because the line is largely single track. Fewer trains run on Sundays.
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Posted 7 years ago # -
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“Sadly, the single-track railway was designed with no spare capacity other than on Sundays, when ScotRail services are just hourly, and this means the peak day of the week for charter trains nationally – Saturdays – has been lost to the Borders Railway, with associated loss of potential visitor expenditure to the regional economy.”
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Posted 7 years ago # -
They could also do with a turntable at Tweedbank... Or at the very least the facilities to run a locomotive around its carriages.
Posted 7 years ago # -
"
Rail consultant and author David Spaven said cuts to double-track sections, enabling trains to pass each other, had hit reliability. Spaven said: “The Borders Railway has proved to be a classic penny-wise, pound-foolish project.
Poor official traffic forecasts have proved to have underestimated passenger numbers by nearly 900 per cent.
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Posted 7 years ago # -
Self-fulfilling prophecy; predict low passenger numbers, cut costs by reducing potential capacity, get high passengers, unable to cope, reliability collapses, passengers abandon railway, get low passenger numbers, service can cope...
Posted 7 years ago # -
They could also do with a turntable at Tweedbank... Or at the very least the facilities to run a locomotive around its carriages.
Is the disused turntable in Aberdeen still extant?
Posted 7 years ago # -
@Arellcat I think I saw some pictures recently where it was being refurbished.
Posted 7 years ago # -
Posted 7 years ago #
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From Wikipedia:
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The following are in storage, awaiting installation at UK sites:Barry Rly. -– 65’ outer race. Dismantled ( ex Bricklayers Arms 1970s; moved from Mid Hants Rly.)
South Devon Rly. - Dismantled (ex Hull Botanic Gardens in 2005; built 1955, 60 ft), planning permission to install at Buckfastleigh requested
Midland Railway Centre – Swanwick Jnc. – Dismantled - Hand powered, Balanced 60’, (ex Chinley).
Severn Valley Rly. - Dismantled (ex Bristol Bath Road) Stored at Eardington. Intention is to install at Bridgnorth. 70’;
East Lancs Rly. – Dismantled (ex Germany) – stored at Buckley Wells
Dean Forest Rly. - Dismantled (ex Calais Shed, SNCF, ex MLST Loughborough. )
Quainton – 60’ Dismantled (ex Hitchin GNR) R&R
Tyseley – stored dismantled – to be installed at Stratford upon Avon - ex Thornaby (new location proposed 2004, not yet under construction, to be installed by Tyseley Locomotive Works Ltd.)
Swanage Rly. Furzebrook ex Old Oak Common Depot 2011 - BR (WR) 70’ /125T ?E CS 9709/53 in use at Old Oak Common until 2008, used for HST power car turning etc.
Mallaig, Network Rail – Dismantled, scheme to install the ex Whitchurch table which is stored at Corpach or Fort William.
"Posted 7 years ago # -
Might be better to doubletrack parts of existing route first.
Posted 7 years ago # -
I'm pleased the Thornaby turntable is to be reused. I spent many happy hours on Thornaby station as a youngster watching the comings and goings from the marshalling yards and depot. Mostly double-headed steel coil and slab trains as I recall.
Posted 7 years ago # -
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The second lesson is that the largely single-track railway has been – predictably – plagued by unreliability due to inadequate infrastructure and the poorly-performing Class 158 trains. The proportion of “right-time” arrivals at Tweedbank has never reached 70 per cent across any one week since late last October, and across August, right-time trains at Edinburgh Waverley dropped to an average of below 30 per cent (as did Tweedbank arrivals).
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Posted 7 years ago # -
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Soc Antiq Scot (@socantscot)
September 8, 2016BBC News - Historic Aberdeen railway turntable removed as part of steam plan
"Posted 7 years ago # -
Removed to be refurbished to encourage/enable more steam tours to Aberdeen.
Posted 7 years ago # -
Can someone who knows what they're talking about explain this?
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/sep/09/urgent-review-ordered-on-borders-railway
Posted 7 years ago # -
@IWRATS I think there's a couple of things conspiring together here.
1 - already unreliable rolling stock has been hamstrung by a refurbishment programme that has replaced the radiators with versions that don't function as intended. The hilly nature of the route, with quite an intensive acceleration pattern has defeated the abilities to cool the engines compounded by the engineers forgetting we do actually get summers here.
2 - woefully inaccurate utilisation forecasts meant a light service pattern with limited carriage capacity was put on. When they realised the popularity, there was little spare stock to increase the carriage length; the refurbishment programme for stock started after the line was opened, so any spare 158 units were in works. There's a UK-wide rolling stock shortage so nowhere to easily get new units.
3 - previously noted that the double track length of the line was cut-back, meaning there's now fewer places where services can pass. This means single delays easily propagate along the length of the route. Services running late have little opportunity to catch up.
4 - previously noted congestion between the junction where the Borders line leaves the ECML and Waverley. Services can take a perilously long time to get to/from Waverley from Millerhill. Adds to other delays for above reasons.
5 - seems the track and signalling system has been somewhat unreliable. I'm not sure of the reasons for this.
6 - overcrowding of trains has added to delays as it takes longer to load/unload them and indeed some services got so full that they cancelled them mid-journey and got everyone off the units and had to call in buses. The class 158 has a poor reputation for "station linger" times, as it has 2 small, slow-opening doors at the far ends of each carriage and narrow vestibule areas. More modern units (e.g. the Turbostars) have double-width doors and vestibules at the 1/3 and 2/3 positions on the carriage.
Add the above 6 points together and you get one very unreliable service.
Was all this foreseeable? Yes, absolutely. Could anything have been done to prevent it? Yes, absolutely. It was almost destined to go wrong thanks to the conspiring forces of Transport Scotland and a government happy to trust in their slightly rail-averse "experts" and look for any way to cut some corners to boost the dual carriageways budget.
Posted 7 years ago # -
"5 - seems the track and signalling system has been somewhat unreliable. I'm not sure of the reasons for this."
The article says -
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At the same time, devices called axle counters, which monitor each train’s journey along the 25 miles of single-track line, have suffered repeated faults, causing trains to stop, campaigners say.
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In other words another consequence of singletracking...
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The most common use for axle counters is within railway signalling for track vacancy detection. This is a form of block signalling, which does not permit two trains to be within the same block at the same time, this decreases the chance of collision due to railways being divided into blocks which ensures there is always enough space between trains to allow one to stop before it hits the one in front.
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Posted 7 years ago #
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