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"Great Ideas and Initiatives for the Borders Railway"
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Posted 11 years ago #
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The route around Sherrifhall has been added to OSM -
Posted 11 years ago # -
@chdot unless I've missed something and the new alignment is shifting significantly from the old, that looks rather off.
EDIT - I have missed something. Eventually managed to uncover an official route map on a public FOI request (none on the Borders Railway website!).
I assume the deviation 750m to the west is to better serve Shawfair. I guess that's why I saw the bing at Shawfair starting to be re-profiled at the weekend and why all the construction equipment appeared to be steamrollering the site of Monktonhall (rather than the original route through the birch overgrowth of Millerhill Yard)
Posted 11 years ago # -
"unless I've missed something"
Yes, the bypass!
Line being realigned to where it can get 'space' to go underneath road without 'diving' too much.
"I assume the deviation 750m to the west is to better serve Shawfair"
What Shawfair?!
Original (housing) developers pulled out years ago. Don't know if anything is planned at all.
The station will be built - on Monktonhall site.
There's also -
"
a combined bid between Midlothian Council, to the south of the capital, and Buccleuch Property
"http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/battle-begins-over-scots-sports-centre.20311306
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A total of six bidders will battle it out for the right to host Scotland's first national performance centre for sport, the Sunday Herald has learned.
"
"
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The facility must include a full-size indoor 3G synthetic pitch for football and other sports, three floodlit outdoor football pitches, a nine-badminton-court sports hall, a state-of-the-art fitness studio, and three or four-star hotel accommodation. But it could also include an indoor beach volleyball hall, and a dojo for martial arts."
There's also a bid from Heriot Watt.
Posted 11 years ago # -
Official sod cutting I assume. There was a huge amount of work going on at Monktonhall 2 weekends ago, and preparatory works going on for over a year now at other parts of the route.
Posted 11 years ago # -
There's also a bid from Heriot Watt.
Heriot Watt, Dundee and Aberdeen in the shortlist. Midlothian didn't make it.
Posted 11 years ago # -
Aberdeen? Do you mean Perth or St Andrews?
Posted 11 years ago # -
Sorry, Stirling, not Aberdeen. Perth and St. Andrews bids also declined.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-tayside-central-22184379
Posted 11 years ago # -
Network Rail has added a nice new map feature to the Borders Railway website - full engineering layouts for the entire line:
http://www.bordersrailway.co.uk/maps-plans.aspx
The tunnel under the bypass (I know it's technically an overbridge) appears to be quite a bit narrower than 130ft.
Posted 11 years ago # -
Agree with you Morningsider, I think when they've referred to width, it's been the width of the road (which is the length of the tunnel!)
They also appear to have kept the ornamental (if very overgrown) flower border that used to sit infront of Monktonhall Colliery on the drawings. (Circular object above and to left of station)
Posted 11 years ago # -
On a related note, in issue 721 of Rail magazine there's a short article of interest:
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Restoration of a rail service to Penicuik could happen within a decade if Midlothian Council's aspirations come to fruition.Following rejection of an earlier study which showed the costs to be prohibitive (Feb 2013), the Council has asked Heriot-Watt Uni to carry out a desktop study into a proposed route, the Midlothian Advertiser reports, and it is probable that the re-opening will be included in the Midlothian Local Development Plan, due to be issued for consultation in May.
Reinstatement of the former route, which closed to passengers in 1951, back to the junction with the Borders line south of Eskbank could be difficult due to developments.
"Posted 11 years ago # -
Could be difficult due to Waverley eastern approaches capacity issues as well.
A possible candidate for tram train though if the powers that were/be had any vision?
Posted 11 years ago # -
I was under the impression that the capacity problems at Waverly are the main reason that the South Sub re-opening never progresses.
My favoured solution is to convert the Western Approach road into a railway, put in a new station at the end and relieve the pressure on Waverley that way.
Posted 11 years ago # -
"put in a new station at the end"
Posted 11 years ago # -
I heard someone suggest last week that the Western Approach Road would be the ideal location for the end of HS2...
Posted 11 years ago # -
HS2 will probably end atop a pole 300 feet tall sticking out the roof of Edinburgh Castle. For maximum "world class" factor.
Posted 11 years ago # -
Don't be ridiculous, clearly they'll run an elevated rail line up the steep side of the rock and convert the castle into a departure/arrivals terminal*
*not a station this is the 21st century.
Posted 11 years ago # -
"station stop" I believe is the prefered parlance.
"Where this service will terminate"
Posted 11 years ago # -
"Joining the Borders railway dots after 40 years"
Posted 11 years ago # -
Wait. Didn't they just announce turning this into a cycle path?
Yes. Yes they did.
Posted 11 years ago # -
I had a nasty feeling that the Penicuik spur and the "new" path would turn out to be one and the same thing :-(
Posted 11 years ago # -
It would presumably make more sense economically and socially not to open this spur, but to open the old Peebles railway, which went via Eskbank and called at Penicuik. Again this would lead to the loss of a very good shared use path.
Given the government's multi-billon commitments to dual carriageway building however, I very much doubt Penicuik will see a railway connection before I retire.
Posted 11 years ago # -
Similarly I think the tram network will eventually come to occupy the majority of the old rail beds - NEPN, Innocent, WoL etc.
They have none of the issues that made the airport shuttle line cost £1bn as there are no businesses to impact, utilities to move, junctions to redesign - you could just tear up the existing surface and lay as for heavy rail (but on a lighter scale).
Think about how many more people would be brought within 500m of a tram stop if they just extended it round to Ocean Terminal from Haymarket. Or swung a spur from Haymarket up to Balerno, lots of land targeted for development in these parts.
In the case of Penicuik, to be fair, you can imagine that connecting 20,000 people to mainline rail is probably more of a priority than a few cycle commuters.
On my trips up the WoL path to the new house, it's rare to see more people using it than I can count on my fingers. Under utilised much?
Posted 11 years ago # -
you can imagine that connecting 20,000 people to mainline rail is probably more of a priority than a few cycle commuters.
Always the way though, isn't it? Dualling the A9 (and now A96) more of a priority than rail; rail more of a priority than trams and buses; trams and buses more of a priority than cycling.
Cycling at the bottom of the heap, as per usual...
Posted 11 years ago # -
If there was any sense about it, reinstatement of these lines would come with mandatory provision of improved cycle routes alongside (so that, for instance, you could have ridden from Edinburgh to Gala along the Waverley route, barring the odd detour for a tunnel).
However, saving £££ using an old rail bed doesn't seem to translate into "let's use some of the savings to maintain or put in place a bike route"
Posted 11 years ago # -
However, saving £££ using an old rail bed doesn't seem to translate into "let's use some of the savings to maintain or put in place a bike route"
No, it's more like "well that was expensive, but at least we've got some budget left to build more high speed roads".
Posted 11 years ago # -
There are three old rail routes into Penicuik.
The "high" route via Loanhead. The Edinburgh, Loanhead and Roslin railway. Branched off at Millerhill with stations at (outside) Gilmerton, Loanhead, Roslin and Glencorse. There was an extention further into Penicuik where the Tesco now is, but that was just a coal depot and the gasworks. A lot of the trackbed in Penicuik itself is built on. There is a significant viaduct missing across Milton Bridge golf course, which was demolished in the 1980s.
The "low" route via Hardengreen to Penicuik. This is the old Penicuik Railway route, it branches off the Penicuik Railway at Hardengreen and runs though lightly populated countryside. This is the route of the Penicuik to Dalkeith cycle path. The station for Penicuik was underneath the Valleyfield McMansion estate where the Bank and Valleyfield papermills were.
The Peebles Railway, which stopped at Pomathorn, somewhat to the south of Penicuik itself. It branches off the Waverley route at Eskbank, and runs through Bonnyrigg, where some of the trackbed has been built on and cycle route runs briefly through a housing estate.
In my opinion, the most sensible option would be to use the railway trackbed as far as Straiton, then run the tram up the main road in the bus lane and into Penicuik. The cycle path route is fairly indirect and bypasses most of the current population centres along the way.
Posted 11 years ago # -
This does look like tram-train territory.
Posted 11 years ago #
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