Your Sheffield Transport Solutions

[NewcastleOwl]

Originally Posted by Leeds No.1

This actually flags up a good point. If MML is electrified and can offer journeys under 2hrs from Sheffield by 2033, then there might not be any real need for HS2 to serve the centre of Sheffield.

A stop at Meadowhall could therefore mean there are actually two good connections to London from Sheffield, which would surely make Sheffield a great place for business, whether based at Meadowhall or in the centre?

Personally I think the MML will actually get worse, one of the reasons it's so important to have a decent HS2 stop in Sheff.

The whole argument about capacity is that firstly HS2 itself provides extra capacity between major cities and new routes direct to Europe from the provinces and secondly it 'frees up capacity on the existing classic rail network'. When you read the small print, this latter statement means you can use the likes of the MML, already close to capacity on the electrified commuter belt bit south of Bedford, to provide more frequent-stopping inter city services and more local services. This could be good for more Chestfield-Dronfield-Dore-Sheff commuter trains but leads to slower Sheff to London MML trains (and the X-country Sheff-Brum-Bristol trains that use the northern part of the MML); the idea being you're supposed to use HS2 for the longer journeys instead.

I also fear, that having missed lost out narrowly (to the Great Western Line to South Wales) on electrification before, the MML might never be electrified north of Bedford because the DfT will say to Network Rail "don't bother, the E Mids and S Yorks will be getting HS2 by 2033, spend your money elsewhere".

[muddycoffee]

One of the more interesting things I read about the improvements to MML is the increase of the guage.
The line suffers from narrow and low bridges and tunnels and therefore cannot accommodate european sized freight waggons.

[Irish Blood English Heart]

If the line runs to the east of Rotherham I'll be amazed. I still expect a S.Yorkshire station to be in the vicinity of Sheffield, even if it's just over the border in Rotherham.

If it was nearer Doncaster they wouldn't be comparing the current times from Sheffield, they'd be comparing them with Doncaster instead.

[Irish Blood English Heart]

Whatever hope that the one per hour dedicated Sheffield service might've ran the last few miles into the city centre on a low cost spur now look dead as Sheffield will have no terminating service now:

http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showpo...postcount=1722

- the dedicated Sheffield to Euston service is no longer shown, all services into Sheffield from Euston now carry on to Leeds (which now has four Euston services per hour, all stopping at South Yorks).

Would be interesting to see the results of this and what it means for services on the MML too:

-an indicative specification for changes to classic services and using the capacity freed up – particularly on the East Coast Main Line (ECML), Midland Main Line (MML) and Cross-Country services – has now been incorporated into our modelling, to allow for the analysis of the impacts of released capacity beyond those for the WCML;.

[Bladerunner]

Funny, Sheffield is not mentioned once in this document.

http://assets.dft.gov.uk/publication...sal-update.pdf

Still, as mentioned before this is no way set in stone and many refinements will be made before a law is passed. It should be put the the attention of Sheffield MP's that the city has been dropped from the new report. Hopefully if enough fuss is made, the city will not be completely by passed.

It would be crazy if it takes 2 hrs to get from Sheffield to London, but less than an hour to get from Leeds to London

[Irish Blood English Heart]

Aye all mentions are of South Yorkshire, there will be 7 trains per hour in each direction from this new station, 3 to Euston, 1 to Heathrow and 3 to Birmingham south bound and 6 to Leeds!!! and 1 to Newcastle north bound. It's going to be one hell of a white elephant if it's situated in open country somewhere. I suppose being a through station it only need to have 2 platforms with that service pattern and with every service stopping.

Situated near Meadowhall or somewhere else between Rotherham and Sheffield it might just work if transport into the centre is of a suitable standard.

[Irish Blood English Heart]

Interestingly the map on P22 (which has a disclaimer stating it is schematic only) indicates HS2 running through both the Nottingham and Sheffield conurbations as well as taking an easterly approach into Leeds.

[Leeds No.1]

That map is a bit crudely drawn so I don't think too much reliable information can be gathered from it.

I also don't think there will be any trains terminating at Sheffield. Manchester and Leeds are the major anchors beyond Birmingham that will generate the most amount of usage, so it'll be that trains continue to Leeds and beyond.

[Irish Blood English Heart]

Originally Posted by Leeds No.1

That map is a bit crudely drawn so I don't think too much reliable information can be gathered from it.

I also don't think there will be any trains terminating at Sheffield. Manchester and Leeds are the major anchors beyond Birmingham that will generate the most amount of usage, so it'll be that trains continue to Leeds and beyond.

Originally it was indicated 1 service per hour would terminate in Sheffield but this has now been sent through to Leeds too. I think Leeds has lost it's direct services to the capital now as all call at "South Yorkshire" and only one doesn't stop at "East Midlands" when previously some ran direct didn't they?

The nightmare scenario for Sheffield is the HS2 station opens out in open countryside on the M18 to the east of Rotherham but that it loses it fast services on the MML as the "freed up capacity" results in getting rid of the fast services on the MML to replaced by all stop metro services. Meaning a 3 hour trip to London via all points on the MML or a long and tortuous trip to a parkway station by bus before boarding HS2.

The only winners would be National Express.

[poshbakerloo]

Originally Posted by Irish Blood English Heart

or a long and tortuous trip to a parkway station by bus before boarding HS2.

This will be the big problem for HS2!

[NewcastleOwl]

I once flicked through the technical spec on the web (DfT or HS2 Ltd – can’t remember which), so to clear up the curves and inclines debate of a few posts ago:

With the possible exception of a long, extreme easterly, alignment (fag end of Donny), the thru-line in S Yorks will have to be bendier with steeper inclines than Phase 1 London to Birmingham; the geography dictates this. The Phase 1 main stretch, from the western edge of Greater London to the Birmingham International parkway station, is only so incredibly straight because there are no decent sized settlements in between. The routing specification does allow bends (albeit fast speed, gradual / long radius, sweeping type bends) and is quite generous on gradient. The alternative is fewer bends and more tunnels; either way it’s not as constrained by straight lines and valley bottoms as some are making out.

Also there is a relaxation of the curve radii spec on station approaches. This is because the acceleration / deceleration zones are very long, so you have to operate at a much slower speed as you enter the built up area to slow for the impending station stop. This provides even more flexibility in where you can twist a track to get to a city centre station; this will be exploited I’m sure in the approach to Brum Curzon St and Leeds City Centre terminus stations.

The big problem for Sheff is that it has only ever been ‘promised’ (even then, reluctantly, I feel) an intermediate station (like E Mids) between Brum and Leeds/ECML, not a terminus. The revised business case presumed service patterns linked in others’ posts above confirm this is still the case (currently). If you then assume that not all services will want to stop in Sheff then there will be a high speed passing loop around the station and no or little deceleration for non-stopping trains. This is fine if your station is in the straight Rother Valley, but if it’s in the city centre you must to have an element of (at least slightly) sharper bends that would impede speed a little of the through services. Interestingly, the revised business case assumes that every Leeds and Newcastle services DOES stop at Sheff doesn’t it?

However, a ‘city centre fringe’ Nunnery through-station would use a fairly straight / fast alignment from the south (east), room for a passing loop (i.e. straight line for through trains but station platforms on a ‘lay by’ side line) and only starts to run the danger of any sharpish bends to the north in the Upper Don Valley. Therefore I would have thought the best place to turn off the Penistone line into a tunnel to get to the M1 corridor / onwards to east Barnsley would be straight after the Wicker viaduct (into the hill at the old Bridgehouses station or Neepsend area). This would also protect the tranquillity of the valley round Wortley by not continuing this far north along existing alignment. I still believe this is the only site (Nunnery) to have a city centre intermediate station; otherwise we’ll be stuck with a parkway intermediate in no-man’s land.

[NewcastleOwl]

Once more, to emphasize the sheer importance of this to the fortunes of the city centre:

If you take some of the official statements about HS2 at face value then the Y-network (with its connection to Heathrow and HS1) could well be just the start of a high speed rail revolution in the UK. It’s a chance, not just to increase speed and capacity but to redraw the entire railway map of Britain. Just because Sheffield has been left out in the (relative) cold in the past doesn’t mean to say that with modern engineering knowhow it should settle for second or third best this time around. Why persist with the perverse situation where a fair-sized city, slap bang in the middle of the country, is relatively isolated in most transport modes, unable to realise its potential? That’s why I’m so in favour of some sort of City Centre HS2 station.

By the way I don’t agree with this ‘move the City Centre to Meadowhall business for all sorts of sound, logical, rather than sentimental, reasons – which I’ll not go into all of them now, but to name a few, besides killing off the fragile city centre, think:
smelly sewage works and biomass power station at Blackburn Meadows, massive flood risk, worst photochemical and noise pollution for anywhere miles around because of M1, terrible local road congestion; not a great place to stick a load of office buildings and piazzas!

[NewcastleOwl]

While the proposed route of HS2 phase 2 eastern branch may not be known, we can take a very good educated guess at where the only options are that it might go through S Yorks:

Would take a while to explain fully (to do with a combination of flatter country, less dense population, former disused rail corridors and good alignment to route further north east of Wakefield/Leeds) but I would be 75% certain the place the line up to the ECML (with Leeds city centre spur) will go is to the EAST of Barnsley, not west. In the South of the county, around Jnct 31 of the M1, I am 90% certain that the line will be in the Rother Valley either eastern side to and very close to the M1 or western side along the old Great Central Line trackbed west of the lakes – i.e. have it pinned down to within 1.5 miles. Between these north and south points there’s two sub-options; ‘East’ and ‘West’. From the Rother Valley the East option follows the M1 a bit further north then the M18 before turning back due north towards Leeds either east of Rotherham or closer to the A1(M) west of Donny. West pretty much has to continue up the GCL to Beighton, before numerous options (all with challenges, though not insurmountable) to get to the east of Barnsley present themselves.

If you believe, as I do, that the East option just won’t do (may be easier but actually less direct to Leeds and would have to serve S Yorks with a station well away from all main population centres), then you are only looking at the West option.

In other words, and what this is all driving at, is that you have to get from Beighton (rail) Junction to east Barnsley (suggest between Monk Bretton and Cudworth)…there’s potentially a plethora of ways of doing that, but that’s the only part of the route you have left to guess (with a S Yorks station in there somewhere)!

[Leeds No.1]

You mean non-stop services rather than direct? I thought all trains stopped at Birmingham International anyway?

I don't think South Yorkshire will end up with a station somewhere east of Rotherham. There'd be no point in a station there; it serves no business community, would take just as long once connections are added on, and there would be no justification in stopping trains there.

It'll be either in the centre of Sheffield or around Meadowhall.

[larven]

Originally Posted by NewcastleOwl

By the way I don’t agree with this ‘move the City Centre to Meadowhall business for all sorts of sound, logical, rather than sentimental, reasons – which I’ll not go into all of them now, but to name a few, besides killing off the fragile city centre, think:
smelly sewage works and biomass power station at Blackburn Meadows, massive flood risk, worst photochemical and noise pollution for anywhere miles around because of M1, terrible local road congestion; not a great place to stick a load of office buildings and piazzas!

It's not about moving the centre to Meadowhall, more about encouraging development in the Meadowhall area without all the constant 'oooh it'll kill off the city centre' rhetoric.

There's stacks of development potential in and around Meadowhall for employment and business. If you're going to use flood risk, smells, road conjestion and noise as obstacles to development then you might as well write off most of the east of Sheffield for development period.

[LNGCats]

The path will be decided by now and will be with the ministers shortly and made public in the summer. Any amendments to the line after that, before legislation will be minimal as was seen with the Brum part of the route.

[Irish Blood English Heart]

According to the Telegraph the route will:

pass close to Haw Park Wood in West Yorks, which has been designated as a Site of Special Scientific Interest; Monk Bretton Priory in Barnsley, a Scheduled Ancient Monument which was closed by Henry VIII during the dissolution; and Wombwell Wood, also in Barnsley, a Forestry Commission site famous for its bluebells and home to skylarks, meadow pipits, woodpeckers and kestrels.

which would suggest that it'll follow the great central line up the Rother Valley through Beighton and either up to Meadowhall (which will have more challenges) or up through Rotherham to Masborough station where it will strike open countryside north of Rotherham and pass to the east of Barnsley.

[larven]

At Monk Bretton it could follow the route of the old North Midland railway past Cudworth, through Royston and on up to Wakefield and beyond. If it passes close to Haw Park Wood then its almost certain to do this I reckon.

I know these areas very well and mourn the loss of much of the substantial railway infrastructure that used to exist in these parts. I can't wait to see how the route will find its way through them.

[Irish Blood English Heart]

It would seem to suggest to me that a South Easterly approach into Leeds City Centre seems pretty sensible too, as shown in the schematic map above.

And perhaps an upgrade of the Hallam line from Meadowhall to Monk Bretton to become the HS line.

Though this would mean the Penistone line would have to be cut back to Barnsley or reinstated via Deepcar (severing links between Barnsley and Sheffield).

[larven]

Yeah looks that way, passing to the east of Wakefield between Junctions 29 and 30 of the M62 before heading North West into Leeds centre.