UK & Irish Railways

Victor

Is this map accurate? I thought much more of the British network was electrified, in particular the North Wales line.

http://www.bueker.net/trainspotting/maps/british-isles-network/british-isles-network.gif

mackerski

Victor wrote:

I thought much more of the British network was electrified, in particular the North Wales line.

I can't say if it's up to date, but as of 1987, a Holyhead-London train didn't have electric power until Crewe, which is exactly as stated on the map. Also, looking at the mainline trains out of Paddington (westbound services, Bristol direction AFAIK) you'll see a lot of Diesel-only.

I can't comment on the rest of the network, though.

Dermot

John R

Victor wrote:

Is this map accurate? I thought much more of the British network was electrified, in particular the North Wales line.

http://www.bueker.net/trainspotting/maps/british-isles-network/british-isles-network.gif

Looks correct to me, why do you think the North Wales line is electric?

John R

mackerski wrote:

I can't say if it's up to date, but as of 1987, a Holyhead-London train didn't have electric power until Crewe, which is exactly as stated on the map. Also, looking at the mainline trains out of Paddington (westbound services, Bristol direction AFAIK) you'll see a lot of Diesel-only.

I can't comment on the rest of the network, though.

Dermot

Apart from the channel tunnel link which is a new line the only significant electrification in recent years was the Heathrow express from Paddington. That is the only section of that line electrified, all other trains from Paddington are diesel.
Before that the last electrification project was the East Coast main line from London to Leeds, Newcastle, Edinburgh and Glasgow in the late 1980s.
It looks likely now that there will be no more electrification projects bar the odd small extention here and there, the current system does not provide the necessary incentives. In more than a few cases diesel traction is heavily used on electrified lines because of the bizarre post privatisation set up.

enterprise

A good case of this is the North Berwick branch in Scotland. It was juiced 15 years ago as part of the ECML project, it used old Cl. 305's cascaded from the NSE Great Eastern in London. They were withdrawn approx 1998 (?) and the line was supposed to use CL. 318's cascaded from Glasgow services by the introduction of the Cl. 334.

Anyway that didn't last long, the 318's stayed in Glasgow and the line got the 5 Cl. 322 from the Stansted Express service (which had come via North Western trains in Manchester!) and these were used up to a few months ago when the SRA decided to send them back to the "One" franchise, operating routes ex London Liverpool St (i.e. their old haunt).

As a stop gap measure Scotrail are using ex Virgin Cl. 90 locos and Mk3 rolling stock to provide the service but it is planned when they get their new Cl. 170's DMU's a bunch of them will be used on this service thus mothballing the electric wires!

ChipZilla

Hmm, reminds me of that urban legend about the Glasgow scumbag who got fried trying to steal some of the overhead cables.

http://www.darwinawards.com/darwin/darwin2001-16.html

mackerski

Is that map accurate for the hugely long single-track sections on the Irish network? I know it's wrong for double track to end at Clonsilla, but that's a recent change. But it's surely not single all the way from Maynooth to Sligo. How about the other stretches?

Dermot

John R

mackerski wrote:

Is that map accurate for the hugely long single-track sections on the Irish network? I know it's wrong for double track to end at Clonsilla, but that's a recent change. But it's surely not single all the way from Maynooth to Sligo. How about the other stretches?

Yes it is largely correct. Cobh - Dublin, Bray - Bangor, Belfast - Whitehead, Connolly - Maynooth and the link lines in Dublin are the only double track sections.