British Railways - Pics, Info, News, Views

[Manchester Planner]

Class 45 on the Great Central Railway


(Electric) Class 87 on the West Coast Mainline


(Electric high speed train) Virgin Pendolino and EWS Class 66 on the West Coast Mainline


Class 143 unit at Bristol Temple Meads


Class 323 (electric multiple unit) at Manchester Piccadilly


Class 175 (diesel multiple unit) at Newport


As you can gather, there's quite a bit of variety in Britain!

[Manchester Planner]

There are a few electric locomotives used for freight, though freight is generally hauled by diesel as only a third of the network is electrified.

Class 90 (in a very clean EWS livery)


Class 92 hauling container traffic through Stafford (this is a very common sight in Manchester)

[Manchester Planner]

A contrast - two recently built lines...

The London-Paris (via the Channel Tunnel) line in Kent


The Welsh Highland Railway in North Wales


The Welsh Highland Railway will connect with the Ffestiniog Railway in spring 2009.

[zaphod]

Is that a real revenue freight or just a ballast replacement? A steam locomotive hauling something that isn't an old timey passenger car full of tourists with cameras, how insanely cool is that?

Anyways, when are they gonna roll out those Shinkansen-type CTRL trains?

[Manchester Planner]

Alas, only ballast replacement.

The Welsh Highland Railway is primarily a tourist/heritage railway, though it is newly built (completion next year) and will serve the national park it runs through in a commercial way. (Note that in the UK a "national park" isn't a park as such..) It will connect with the Ffestiniog Railway at Portmadog. Both are private railways, though with certain national rail tickets you can use the Ffestiniog line as part of a longer journey which otherwise uses national lines (the Ffestiniog Railway connects the Cambrian Coast line with the Llandudno Junction-Blaneau Ffestiniog line). The Welsh Highland Railway runs across from the Welsh north coast to its West coast, starting at Carnarvon. It may be possible to extend it to Bangor, where it would connect with the Chester-Holyhead line. So you see, these narrow gauge railways do form part of the wider network.

Both the Ffestiniog and Welsh Highland are 2ft narrow gauge.

http://whr.bangor.ac.uk/whrroute.htm

25 miles long. Its objective is... "As well as being a magnet for rail enthusiasts, the rebuilt line will also offer a new way to reach the communities and countryside en route, and offer an alternative to motor transport in an ecologically sensitive area, particularly for the tens of thousands who visit Snowdonia every Summer." It wouldn't surprise me if the national park authority use the line to move materials in and out of the park, as there is little road access in parts.

The Ffestiniog Railway is 14 miles long, so the combined railways are 39 miles - quite a long narrow gauge railway network! Maps of the Ffestiniog and Welsh Highland Railways:



Up-to-date construction photos can be found here (scroll down):
http://www.isengard.co.uk/

[Manchester Planner]

Originally Posted by zaphod

Anyways, when are they gonna roll out those Shinkansen-type CTRL trains?

These beauties?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail_Class_395

Next year.

[Republica]

That steam train powered up the main line a few days back, looks like afew spotters were lining the route as it came past at 75mph. Bit strange seeing a steam train going up the ECML in 2008! Apparently it can go up to 90mph.

[Manchester Planner]

Maybe not on the ECML, but steam is surprisingly common on the national lines in Britain, especially at weekends. There are a lot of chartered/special trains running, some of which are diesel and some steam. Every fortnight or so a steam loco hauled train passes through Manchester Victoria.

[serdar samanlı]

Do british suburb trains share tracks with mainline trains or they have dedicated tracks?

[Republica]

Theres no big differentiation - they are all part of the national rail system. Some have local only services, some have local and long distance on the same lines, some will have 4 tracks with the inner two for express.

[sotonsi]

Originally Posted by Republica

Theres no big differentiation - they are all part of the national rail system. Some have local only services, some have local and long distance on the same lines, some will have 4 tracks with the inner two for express.

or the right two, or the left two, or the outer two. In fact, I think the paired-by-speed arrangement is perhaps more common than the paired-by-direction. Often there's a flyover switching between the two types (Ilford, Wimbledon).

[elfabyanos]

Originally Posted by sotonsi

or the right two, or the left two, or the outer two. In fact, I think the paired-by-speed arrangement is perhaps more common than the paired-by-direction. Often there's a flyover switching between the two types (Ilford, Wimbledon).

To expand on this, in the South East (of London) its nearly always paired by speed. Out to Orpington, Shortlands to Swanley, Victoria to Three Bridges on the Brighton mainline. The latter is like this I think because the second fast set of tracks was added later. I think thats often the reason for that type of operation. I know the SouthWest mainline from Waterloo is paired by direction after Wimbledon, but I think that maybe down to the flyover works done on that route in the late 19th century to speed it up. Do you think the Ilford flyover may have been an 'upgrade' too? Paired by speed seems to make more sense with flat junctions, paired by direction makes more sense if there are semi-grade separated junctions, so you don't have situations where one train has to cross three other tracks in one go.

[Koen Acacia]

Originally Posted by Manchester Planner

The Welsh Highland Railway is primarily a tourist/heritage railway, though it is newly built (completion next year) and will serve the national park it runs through in a commercial way. (Note that in the UK a "national park" isn't a park as such..) It will connect with the Ffestiniog Railway at Portmadog. Both are private railways, though with certain national rail tickets you can use the Ffestiniog line as part of a longer journey which otherwise uses national lines (the Ffestiniog Railway connects the Cambrian Coast line with the Llandudno Junction-Blaneau Ffestiniog line). The Welsh Highland Railway runs across from the Welsh north coast to its West coast, starting at Carnarvon. It may be possible to extend it to Bangor, where it would connect with the Chester-Holyhead line. So you see, these narrow gauge railways do form part of the wider network.

That sounds like a damn cool project actually. Most of the time those "old" railway lines are just an isolated piece of track, but this one sounds great.

[sotonsi]

The Welsh Highland extension involves goes through great scenery - I went along part of the route at Easter en-route to Pwllheli. It's very, very cool. Definitely worth a ride when it opens.

[Manchester Planner]

Some photos of the Class 395 "Javelin" trains at their rather shiny and new depot!

http://paulbigland.fotopic.net/c1599018.html

[city_thing]

What are the frequencies like on the suburban rail systems in cities like Birmingham, Manchester & Liverpool? Do they made for good mass transit systems - or are the too irregular for that?

Basically, do they operate in an S-bahn type fashion?

I can't believe I've never even wondered about this before...

[sotonsi]

The City Line in Birmingham operates 6tph for it's central section. The other lines are in the 2tph range, IIRC.

The Wirral Line is made up of three 4tph services (Liverpool-West Kirby, Liverpool-New Brighton, Liverpool-Hooton splitting to 2tph Chester, 2tph Ellesmere Port). The Northern line is also made up of three 4tph services (Central-Kirkby, Central-Ormskirk, Hunts Cross-Southport).

[Manchester Planner]

Outside London the major cities don't really have dedicated suburban networks as such - the stations and lines in the suburbs are basically part of the national network that just happen to be within the urban area! There are dedicated commuter/suburban services and ticketing though, its just they run as part of the wider network and on national lines.

Greater Manchester's railway network:
http://www.gmpte.com/pdfmaps/GMPTERaildiagA4.pdf

The frequencies vary from line to line and I find that these days it's pretty good. They vary from 2 trains per hour up to about 4 or 5. It's not amazing but then the demand isn't that high as Manchester has a good bus network as well as trams and much of the employment is towards Trafford Park, etc where people commute generally by car.

The map above also includes the city's tram network ("Metrolink"), which is growing and is of course a dedicated network specifically for more local transit. Manchester's trams are quite heavily engineered and the infrastructure resembles actual railway lines/stations (probably because much of the network is ex-railway!) and frequencies are good with trams around every 8 minutes or so usually.



toot!

[Manchester Planner]

Whilst on the subject of the Metrolink - it's being rebranded over the next few years and the first station to have received the new branding is Piccadilly.



The network is to be expanded in the next two years with 4 additional lines (one long one, two medium length ones and one very tiny extension!) -
http://www.gmpte.com/pdfmaps/Geo_Met...Extensions.pdf - new map of the network, come 2011 or so.

And the new trams will look like this:

[Svartmetall]

Dots are the new racing stripe of trams!

Looks good though! I have to agree with your comment about commuter rail in the UK. I do wish we had more discernable suburban services like the continent, but at least routes are operated on a fairly frequent basis on the whole.