TRANSPORT | Piccadilly To Victoria Direct Rail Link | Ordsall Curve

[Gdogg371]

Originally Posted by SOMtastic

Perhaps someone can enlighten me :
There has been much talk on here of congestion around the throat of Picc.
Ordsal curve discussions aside - there has also been talk of some sort of flyover arrangement to allow trains to get from one side to the other.
Correct me if I’m wrong here, but isn’t pretty much the entire approach to picc elevated ?? ie on a huge viaduct ?
Would it therefore not be simpler to go under - through one of the arches - rather than over ?
.. Or are we talking about further out when it gets onto tera ferma ?

the issue there would be the gradient of the decent and ascent. trams are quite capable of dealing almost rollercoaster levels of changes in gradient, whereas heavy rail is not. plus assuming that was not an issue, heavy rail does not deal with tight bends very well and the line is built up heavily on both sides, so large radius, gentle curves are not an option.

[SOMtastic]

Originally Posted by Gdogg371

the issue there would be the gradient of the decent and ascent. trams are quite capable of dealing almost rollercoaster levels of changes in gradient, whereas heavy rail is not. plus assuming that was not an issue, heavy rail does not deal with tight bends very well and the line is built up heavily on both sides, so large radius, gentle curves are not an option.

Fair enough.

[CharlieP]

Originally Posted by madferret

There won't be doubling back on Liverpool-Leeds services. They will go via Victoria instead of Piccadilly, reducing conflicts in train movements at Picc (see WatcherZero's post above).

Why don't they go via Victoria at the moment, and how does this new link change anything?

Other transpennine trains will be able to go through Victoria then round to Piccadilly and Manchester Airport, saving the reversing that they currently have to do.

That's the bit I missed - I was looking at purely west-east routes and couldn't see anything that would be affected.

What will the knock-on effect be on other services though? Will Huddersfield lose its TransPennine trains?

[hulmeman2]

Originally Posted by CharlieP

............. Will Huddersfield lose its TransPennine trains?

No, trains will run the same route till Stalybridge, then fork right to Ashton and Victoria, instead of running via Guide Bridge to Picc.

[Joseph_Locke]

Originally Posted by SOMtastic

Perhaps someone can enlighten me :
There has been much talk on here of congestion around the throat of Picc.
Ordsal curve discussions aside - there has also been talk of some sort of flyover arrangement to allow trains to get from one side to the other.
Correct me if I’m wrong here, but isn’t pretty much the entire approach to picc elevated ?? ie on a huge viaduct ?
Would it therefore not be simpler to go under - through one of the arches - rather than over ?
.. Or are we talking about further out when it gets onto tera ferma ?

To answer this a bit more fully (Gdogg371 is wholly correct BTW) you would be wanting to connect the lines that go through Ardwick through to the lines through 13/14/15/16. If you go under you'd cross either Devonshire Street North or the Mancunian Way on the level. From a gradient point of view you need to drop (or rise, for a flyover) 7 metres to cross an electrified line, which at heavy rail gradients is a minimum of 560 metres of run-up.

On a vaguely related thread, Ardwick flyover would also kill any plan to bring HS2 into the low number side of Picc on a flyover...

[Joseph_Locke]

Originally Posted by madferret

Other transpennine trains will be able to go through Victoria then round to Piccadilly and Manchester Airport, saving the reversing that they currently have to do.

One of the extra proposals in the Northern Hub scheme is a flyover outside Piccadilly station to allow trains access to the through line without getting in the way of other traffic but that isn't part of this current scheme.

The Chord does away with the need for a flyover at Ardwick altogether, because all the crossing moves from 13/14/15/16 to Ashburys disappear. Northbound trains wanting to head east go round Manchester clockwise.

[Joseph_Locke]

Originally Posted by cle

You might get some further fast shuttles to Oxford Road? I'm not sure - I don't think anyone knows yet?

This has been answered on the Non-Metrolink thread! Warrington Central will keep its two an hour express to LLS - Man Picc.

I asked the same thing on another forum. The amount announced in the budget was £200m - £85m for Ordsall and Swindon/Kemble is £45-55m - which leaves £60-70m left announced for the railways. I'm not sure what this money is for?

Don't know, but remember that the £85M is what DfT have pledged to spend on part of Northern Hub - that doesn't mean the NR will never do the rest of the Hub, just that £85M of the £530M is already funded. The rest will have to come out of NR's budget in CP5 / CP6.

[madferret]

Originally Posted by CharlieP

Why don't they go via Victoria at the moment, and how does this new link change anything?

Because they use the line through Warrington Central to get to Liverpool from Manchester. The new chord provides a simple interchange for passengers to the other stations and airport and removes the train movement conflicts at Piccadilly (as previously mentioned in several posts)

This will put trans-Pennine services almost back as they used to be - Manchester Exchange was the main station for that route until the early 60s.

[WatcherZero]

Originally Posted by cle

I asked the same thing on another forum. The amount announced in the budget was £200m - £85m for Ordsall and Swindon/Kemble is £45-55m - which leaves £60-70m left announced for the railways. I'm not sure what this money is for?

I answered it there too but in case you missed it £150k goes to the Sheffield Tram-train trial for further planning and a number of road schemes and the Nottingham NET Phase 2 will compete against each other for the rest.

[madferret]

Originally Posted by WatcherZero

I answered it there too but in case you missed it £150k goes to the Sheffield Tram-train trial for further planning and a number of road schemes and the Nottingham NET Phase 2 will compete against each other for the rest.

From Hansard: "Savings in the Department for Transport mean that we can also afford £200 million of additional investment in our regional railways." So it's definitely rail not roads.

The Nottingham tram extension has been reported at £500M, so I can't see that being included either.

[CharlieP]

Originally Posted by madferret

Because they use the line through Warrington Central to get to Liverpool from Manchester. The new chord provides a simple interchange for passengers to the other stations and airport and removes the train movement conflicts at Piccadilly (as previously mentioned in several posts)

Thank you all for your patience, but I'm still not quite there yet.

I'm using an old Ian Allen railway atlas to try and figure this all out - I can see how the trains have to go to Piccadilly if they're coming in from Warrington, so with this new link in place will they reverse at Oxford Road to get to Victoria?

[WatcherZero]

Originally Posted by madferret

From Hansard: "Savings in the Department for Transport mean that we can also afford £200 million of additional investment in our regional railways." So it's definitely rail not roads.

The Nottingham tram extension has been reported at £500M, so I can't see that being included either.

http://nds.coi.gov.uk/clientmicrosit...3&SubjectId=36

Plans to extend the Nottingham tram were today given the green light by the Government when Transport Minister Norman Baker announced today that savings have been identified to make the project more affordable.
The two extensions are planned to go to Chilwell/Beeston and Clifton, linking directly into Line One at Nottingham Station.

Today's decision will now allow Nottingham City Council to continue to the next stage of the funding approval process.

Central and local government have worked in partnership to save £209m within the Spending Review period. This will now allow an extension to the Nottingham tram, together with highways maintenance improvements in Sheffield, Hounslow and the Isle of Wight, to continue to the next stage of the funding approval process.

There you go, straight from the horses mouth.

[madferret]

Originally Posted by CharlieP

Thank you all for your patience, but I'm still not quite there yet.

I'm using an old Ian Allen railway atlas to try and figure this all out - I can see how the trains have to go to Piccadilly if they're coming in from Warrington, so with this new link in place will they reverse at Oxford Road to get to Victoria?

No, they won't stop at Warrington. They will use the Chat Moss line via St. Helens and Newton-le-Willows. That's why cle is bothered about the change upthread, it's not clear if there will still be fast services to Warrington Central.

[CharlieP]

Now I'm confused again. What's to stop this happening now?

[madferret]

Originally Posted by CharlieP

Now I'm confused again. What's to stop this happening now?

Technically, nothing. It was decided in the 80s that Piccadilly would be the main inter-city hub for Manchester and Victoria was allowed to run down to effectively become a commuter station for regional services.

[Mwmbwls]

Originally Posted by drdave

At the moment though we have an express every 30 mins from Central, which would change to an hour, plus we would loose trains to Leeds and the east. Using Bank Quay is a pest because it is on the edge of the town centre and miles from the interchange (bus station). Also if you saw Central station in a morning and how some people miss the trains because they just cant fit in them, you would see we can ill afford to loose services.

IIRC, somewhere in the bottom of my memory box is the suggestion, I cannot recall by whom, that there would be a direct train from Liverpool through to Manchester Airport via the CLC. At the moment there is an hourly service to Liverpool that runs via the L&M through Newton le Willows

[Gdogg371]

Originally Posted by Mwmbwls

IIRC, somewhere in the bottom of my memory box is the suggestion, I cannot recall by whom, that there would be a direct train from Liverpool through to Manchester Airport via the CLC. At the moment there is an hourly service to Liverpool that runs via the L&M through Newton le Willows

there certainly used to be a liverpool to manchester airport train when i was growing up in flixton. there used to an all stops service between the two as well, which i used to ride to burnage and back. must have taken ages to complete the route as that is a huge number of stops.

[Gdogg371]

Originally Posted by CharlieP

Now I'm confused again. What's to stop this happening now?

to give you a better idea on why this is happening, victoria largely serve routes to the north of the city centre and piccadilly the south (a legacy of their being built by different companies in the 19th century). victoria has the problem of being a station with too many through platforms and not enough terminating platforms (with current useage patterns), whereas piccadilly is a station that has too few through platforms and its terminating platforms operation is hampered by it's through services having to cut all the across its terminating lines north to south to gain access to the through platforms on the south side of piccadilly.

the idea is that by putting the ordsall curve in, many of these services can run via victoria (without having to terminate there), run in a loop around the outskirts of the city centre, approach piccadilly's through platforms in the opposite (from the oxford road) direction, then travel on to terminate at the airport.

in one stroke this means that victoria's platforms are used more efficiently, piccadilly has less through trains crossing the path of terminating ones, less trains doing turnarounds at piccadilly and everyone in the north gets a better connected service that serves both manchester stations and the airport.

[WatcherZero]

It will indeed be like a Metro between Vic and Pic with very high frequency of trains, think of it as another rapid transit route through the city centre :P

Very similar in operation to Merseyrails inner circle.

[ScouseinManc]

So when is it likely we'll see platforms 15 & 16 getting built at Piccadilly?