Recent content by Nottingham59

Unfortunately there is no supermarket distribution centre that would need a whole train load of one single brand of bottled water at a time.

The proposed final timetable for the phase 1 to Birmingham and Handsacre only needed 6 platforms, and one iteration of the Euston plan was to build it in two stages, first to 6, then extending to 10 or 11 platforms when the eastern leg was built. Sunak and his speechwriters who cooked up the...

I think the gradient is around 1% from the Dore South junction up to the Bradway tunnel. Is there anything steeper on the MML south of there? And stone trains could always go the long way round through Sheffield and Barrow to avoid uphill gradients. EDIT: Anyway, it seems to me there is scope...

I stand corrected. Though I understand that 4200 - 4800t stone trains regularly run from the Mendips. And isn't the whole point of extending the Dore South chord is to allow longer and therefore heavier stone trains to access the Southbound MML? Does mean that mean there are no infrastructure...

Can someone explain what's wrong with the existing rail provision for the quarries around Buxton? There seem to be plenty of routes out, so it should be possible to manage maintenance schedules so that at least one of Dore, Altrincham, Hyde Central, or Reddish North is available every night...

This satellite image of England at night shows where the population is. There there are plenty of other corridors (Manchester-Leeds / Manchester-Sheffield) that need investment in rail capacity more than Manchester-Derby. Source...

There are lots of heritage railways about. Most avoided taking over tunnel sections, because of the potential costs, but some of them will have tunnels that would/could be available: e.g Severn Valley Railway (Bewdley Tunnel); Great Central Railway (Rempstone Rd Tunnel. @Flying Phil might know...

But the HS2 threads all say that the extra cost of providing a high-speed capabilty on HS2 was minimal ....

Not sure. The civils for HS2 contract C1 was let for around £800M, which comprised 2 miles of Colne Valley viaduct and 10 miles of twin tunnel under the Chilterns. After inflation, that gets to around £1.6bn for 12 miles. I understand that a viaduct costs around half that of a tunnel, so that...

How much per mile will this viaduct cost?

It was the government Intercity Express Programme that specified a "standard" train length of 260m, which was compatible with all the mainline stations that can take an 11-car Pendolino (265m). St Pancras at 240m is the odd one out.

Think how much delay and cost EMR would have saved if they'd simply ordered 9-car 80x, with the standard 26m car body length.

I've often wondered if there was scope for a reversing crossover between Crewe and Sandbach to allow freights from Basford Hall to access the Trent Valley lines via Stoke, to avoid crossing moves at Colwich. EDIT: I think that quite a lot of stone trains have different routings for loaded and...

Sure, but if it's on official website of the official Train Operating Company, then that counts as "official" in my book....

I was thinking of new platfoms off the WCML mainline. So more a redevelopment, with new terminating platforms in the space between Moor St and Curzon St accessed by new chords from WCML. There was an opportunity to make Curzon St/Moor St a new hub station for the whole national network, with...