06.07.09
The case for further railway electrification in Britain
Jon Honeysett asks why less than 35% of Britain’s main lines are electrified and explains why electrification is important for the railway industry, passengers and the environment
There are many reasons why only a third of this country’s rail network is served by electric trains - Westminster’s failure to realise national importance of rail transport: the low status of ministers of transport within government: Department for Transport civil servants opposing electrification: a fragmented rail industry with 28 private passenger train operators: poor media appreciation of the environmental advantages of electric railways: uninformed public opinion on sustainable integrated transport issues: half a century of marketing a private car culture: a London centric view of society’s needs by market forces: and a failure to rationalise air transport – Heathrow’s unwanted third runway.
All of these reasons, and more, might well have contributed to the abandonment of the best opportunity to upgrade Britain’s transport infrastructure since the end of World War Two-Labour’s Transport 2010 – the Ten Year Plan white paper published in July 2000. This was a unique chance for government, local authorities and transport operators to produce an integrated transport strategy which gave the population a reliable alternative to private car use, upgrading not just railways, with more electrification, but new interchanges with Light Rapid Transit and buses, new cycleways and safe pedestrian routes.
But the great British public, most of whom have never travelled to Scandinavia or northern Europe and have never experienced how good integrated transport can be or how much of their railways are electrified, together with their MPs in Parliament, failed to back the ten year plan. The consequence of that failure and the inability to understand the damage our air environment suffers from emissions caused by short-haul airline flights, as well as from road vehicles, severely hampers any plans to cope with the effects of global climate change.
Knowledge of British transport history is useful. Eric Geddes, post-WWI rail adviser on the ‘big four grouping’, examined the possibility of the Lloyd George and Baldwin governments sanctioning system-wide railway electrification in Britain using DC overhead lines, north and west of London, at £239m. With plentiful coal supplies and looming economic problems, the plans were shelved. However France, Italy, Germany and other countries proceeded.
The Southern Railway carried on with 3rd rail DC electrification south of the Thames and by 1939 the Southern Electric was the world’s largest electrified system, complementing the London Transport Underground to provide rail passengers in London & the south east with a realistic alternative transport mode to the private car. 1,759 miles of track were electrified at a cost of £20.5m during the 1930’s economic depression.
Post war nationalisation in 1948 presented another opportunity for a rolling programme of railway electrification but, sadly for the industry and public, much of the £1.5 billion given to British Railways for the 1955 modernisation plan was wasted on building a variety of diesel locomotives, many of which were useless, new steam locomotives and marshalling yards for wagon-load freight, the future demanding long-wheelbase articulated container trains.
The London Midland Region started in 1959 with its 25kv AC overhead line electrification from Euston to Birmingham, Manchester, and Liverpool and the Scottish Region electrified its Clydeside suburban routes. The ‘sparks’ effect of fast Inter City services in 1966 was dramatic but still government hesitated to fund the wiring from Weaver Junction, north of Crewe, to Motherwell. It was 1974 before the Euston-Glasgow WCML was fully electrified.
The West Coast Main Line electrification was followed by the low cost East Coast Main Line in 1983 funded by a Conservative administration. But Britain’s first electric main line, the Manchester-Sheffield 1.5kv DC route, was stupidly closed. Southern Region was funded to extend the 3rd-rail to East Kent in 1959 and Woking-Bournemouth by 1967. Other BR electrifications – to Kings Lynn and Norwich and 3rd-rail from Tonbridge-Hastings; Bournemouth-Weymouth and Southampton-Portsmouth all generated new traffic.
Where are we now?
With the exception of the Channel Tunnel high speed line to St. Pancras and some minor projects – overhead line electrification from Paddington to Heathrow and from Crewe to Kidsgrove - no new railway electrification has been undertaken in Britain, or even planned, for nearly two decades.
Network Rail and the Association of Train Operating Companies managers might question the methods DfT civil servants use to cost new electrification, while to pro-public transport campaigners in RailFuture, Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, the sustainability benefits of electric traction always appear overlooked (11% of German Railways traction current is generated from sustainable sources). Current can be reliably generated from a combination of tide race dynamos, wind turbines, photovoltaic solar panels and hydroelectric sources.
While noting the environmental and sustainability benefits of electrification, one minister said: “Electric trains are more reliable than diesels as well as being cheaper to buy, maintain, and operate.” Perhaps official views are changing.
With a global recession in progress and the WCML in trouble yet again with defective overhead wiring at Rugby and Watford, it would seem to be the wrong time to call for more electrification of Britain’s railways, but I disagree.
What is needed now, and what was lacking in the mid-20th century, is a rolling programme of 25kv AC electrification for approximately 4,000 route miles in conjunction with re-signalling in the west, Wales, the Midlands, the north of England and Scotland. Gantry installation, cabling, overhead line catenary wiring and testing crews would undertake a project, complete it and move on to the next scheme, maintaining continuity instead of being paid off, dispersing and contacted again when a new project is authorised.
195 miles of 3rd-rail electrification are still required in southern England as far as Salisbury, completing the region’s traction standardisation with the above procedures employed minus gantry installation and OHLC wiring crews. Costing and ordering of OHLC and 3rd-rail electrification materials would be undertaken as a programme was authorised. KE, sub-station capacity and clearance surveys could be completed prior to the project start dates.
The world is changing and Britain with it. Market forces always demanded that London is first in transport provision but, with the long-term rolling programme of railway electrification proposed, should the Trans-Pennine main line from Liverpool to Manchester, Leeds/Bradford, to York and Hull, not be considered as an equal to the Bedford-Leicester-Nottingham-Sheffield-Leeds ‘Midlands’ and the Heathrow Jct.-Reading-Bristol-South Wales main lines?
In an age of environmentally sustainable planning, there must be an agenda for railway modernisation that includes regional regeneration including ‘infill’ electrification for suburban lines, provision of electrified diversion routes that utilise ‘infill’ routes and consideration of rail/road integrated freight transport requirements.
‘Infill’ electrification is vital and if one region qualifies before others for modest investment to demonstrate this, it is the north and north west. As many railway writers have pointed out, electrification linking the 30 miles from Liverpool’s eastern suburbs to Manchester, via Earlestown, which already has a short section of OHLC, would enable through running of electric trains not only between Manchester and Liverpool, but also from both cities to Preston, Carlisle and Glasgow on the WCML and a diversion from the south.
Preston would be the focus for another area of ‘infill’ with the electrification of the 17-mile route to Blackpool, badly needed to regenerate the resort with through electric train operation from London Euston and the 37 mile route from Leyland, south of Preston, to Bolton, Manchester and the airport, again enabling through running from Piccadilly onto the WCML as a diversion from the Midlands via Stoke-on-Trent, avoiding Crewe.
Electrification of the 44 mile route from Manchester Piccadilly to Stalybridge, Huddersfield and Leeds, the 52 miles on to Hull, via Micklefield Jct., with the 18 miles from Micklefield Jct. to York, with the above ‘infill’ projects, provides the north with a 144 mile high speed electrified Trans-Pennine ‘steel beltway’ for passengers and containerised freight, linking the Irish and North Seas.
The north-east to south-west rail route from west and south Yorkshire to Derby, the West Midlands and the Bristol conurbation would greatly benefit from previously outlined projects. The 56-mile Middlesbrough/Sunderland ‘loop’ and the 127-mile Derby-Burton-on-Trent-Water Orton-Birmingham-Gloucester to Bristol Parkway route would complete the bulk of the main line electrification required.
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