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East Anglia Branch News - Snippets Issue 266 - 20/06/2015

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News from the East Anglian Branch of Railfuture, Edited by Martin Thorne and Jerry Alderson.

Railfuture News Snippets 266 - 20/06/2015



The Railfuture summer conference has just been held be in Newark (on 20th June 2015), with an excellent line-up, including David Horne, Managing Director of Virgin Trains East Coast speaking for an hour including answering questions. Details about the conference can be found at www.railfuture.org.uk/conferences?conf=2015_newark. The autumn conference will be in Bristol on 7th November 2015. Go to www.railfuture.org.uk/conferences to book attendance and see a list of future and past conferences.

The Railfuture East Anglia branch meeting will be in Ipswich on Saturday 27th June 2015. The guest speaker will be Richard Storer of Crossrail Ltd. (see flier). A reminder that the flier for the next or most recent meeting can always be found at http://www.railfuture.org.uk/east/meetings/.

It is now confirmed that the Railfuture East Anglia branch meeting on 5th December 2015 will be in the large hall at St Paul's Church Hills Road, Cambridge, close to the railway station. The branch has used the venue before.

Railfuture was pleased to see a four-page article on the reopening of the Wisbech railway line in the 10th June to 23rd June 2015 edition of RAIL Magazine (number 776, pages 54-57, with substantial mentions of Railfuture (and East Anglia branch chairman Peter Wakefield in particular) for its lobbying of local politicians and support of the Wisbech 2020 team.

On Wednesday 15th July from 18:30-21:00 there will be a lecture about the IPEMU battery-powered train that was tested on the Harwich branch at the start of 2015 (see [Snippets 247], [Snippets 256], [Snippets 262]). It will be presented by James Ambrose, Principal Engineer (T&RS), Network Rail who was the Project Manager for the IPEMU project. The venue is the Institute for Manufacturing, 17 Charles Babbage Road, Cambridge CB3 0FS. Refreshments will be served from 18:30. The talk starts at 19:00 and ends by 21:00 following questions and discussion. Details at http://www.talks.cam.ac.uk/talk/index/59687.

The Whitwell and Reepham Railway have just opened on-line bookings for their 2015 Santa Specials, which run from 12th to 21st December. In fact they have had our first booking on 19th June. Go to http://www.whitwellstation.com.


RAIL FRANCHISES
Department for Transport announces short-list of three bidders for the full Greater Anglia franchise

On 2nd June 2015 the Department for Transport issued a statement that it had short-listed three bidders for the long-term Greater Anglia franchise that would commence in October 2016 (that original target date of July 2014 having been dropped because of the franchising review triggered by the West Coast franchise debacle in 2012). The three bidders that passed the pre-qualification stage are:

  • Abellio East Anglia Limited (a 60%-40% joint venture between Abellio and Stagecoach)
  • First East Anglia Limited
  • National Express East Anglia Trains Limited
Abellio is the incumbent (without any Stagecoach involvement, hence the partnership was a surprise), although its Metro and West Anglia Inners were transferred to Transport for London on 1st June. Railfuture will naturally be contacting all three of them to ensure they are aware of its campaign priorities.


STATIONS
Little visible progress on the new Cambridge North station seems but Railfuture gets a detailed update from Network Rail

Keywords: [CambridgeNorthStation]

Railfuture East Anglia attended a Network Rail presentation in Cambridge on 16th June and received an update on progress of the new Cambridge North station.

It was explained that "technical legal reasons" caused Network Rail to file a new planning application (S/1236/15/FL) with South Cambridgeshire District Council, even though they mirror the County Council's application, which was approved on 18th December 2013. The new application (Railfuture has written a letter of support but is critical of the shortened canopies over the three platforms compared to the original application and also calls for the ability to turn round more trains at the new station). The new application is intended for consideration by Cambridge Fringes Joint Development Control Committee on 15th July 2015 and if approved, as should be the case, then construction will start in August 2015 for opening at timetable change in December 2016 (with commissioning taking place in November 2016). One of the reasons for the long lead time is the need for two weekend closures of the railway line and there is a set schedule. Roads will need to be closed for five days. Preparation work has already taken place, such as clearance of freight sidings, overhead lines for bay platform, detail design and an environmental survey.

Originally, under the County Council's proposals there were to be just 450 car parking spaces, something Railfuture considered to be ridiculously pessimistic, but Network Rail will look at increasing this to around 2,000 by decking the car parking. They are also investigating whether to move the car parking area to run parallel to railway line after moving the sidings access line. This would also make decking easier. Even with this relocation the station could still open in December 2016 but it would need a section 73 material change and an Addendum Planning Application. Network Rail confirmed that the Department for Transport will be now funding everything , including the car park, which Network Rail (not the County Council) will be delivering in addition to the station.

Railfuture East Anglia has been lobbying hard for Network Rail's disused access link from Milton Road to the sidings between the drain and the North boundary fence of the Business Park to be turned into a public cycleway, so that it is segregated from both bus and car traffic. Network Rail confirmed that it is investigating making a permitted development application to covert this, which is subject to funding. The meeting was informed about the Crown Estate's planning application (15/0919/FUL) lodged with Cambridge City Council (comments by 25th June 2015 for determination by 29th July 2015) for three new accesses to East end of Business Park (the two on the North side require the Network Rail disused access to become a public right of way but the South side access is to the busway extension). As has been the intention throughout the design phases, all platforms will have to be accessed via the bridge as the sidings rail access will cut off all the platforms from the station. Concerns about whether lifts would be adequate have been expressed to Network Rail and they will check lifts and compare them with Cambridge Station, although given the criticisms of those lists it is not a good benchmark. A ramp for disabled access is not possible as it would be too long for an acceptable gradient; this is usually why stations usually have lifts for disabled access.

The issue of bus services to the new station is very important (especially to reduce traffic and parking problems) and Network Rail said this was being looked into. On the other side of the station, Fen Road level crossing control will use CCTV; the alternative as been ruled out as it would interfere with the Merlin array of radio telescopes which stretches from Cambridge to Jodrell Bank (this is to create a large effective collecting area for better resolution of the astronomical radio images).

The good news about the new station is that Cambridge County Council announced that the roadworks on Milton Road to create a junction with the new bus route had finished, so traffic arrangements would be back to normal on 22nd June, and that the cycleway underpass below the new bridge would also re-open at the same time.

Developments on this extremely important rail project will continue to be monitored closely by Railfuture.


RAIL ROUTES
Network Rail confirms that Ely-Soham doubling will mean a six-month closure for the important cross-country freight route

The Ely-Soham track should have been doubled by now had everything gone to plan. Unfortunately it was put on hold when Network Rail discovered that the embankment at the Ely end on which it intended to lay another track would be incapable of supporting it because of the ground conditions. Network Rail has now confirmed, just as Railfuture had been warned, that the route between Ely and Chippenham Junction will have to close for six months to allow demolition and complete re-build of the embankment. The fen peat would need clearing out (0.5m to 1.5m) and the gravel and clay beneath prepared for polystyrene foundations and rock and ballast embankment above. The closure is likely to happen towards the end of the two-year dualling work, which is expected to start in 2017 and be completed by early 2019.

The temporary closure will probably mean the suspension of direct trains from Ipswich to Peterborough, as was the case in 2007 when the bridge was damaged and had to be replaced. The use of the route by freight trains from Felixstowe - an increase of 14 trains a day in each direction being the main reason for performing the line upgrade - would have to travel via London or Norwich, as the route via Newmarket and Cambridge has limited capacity as it is single track throughout, apart from a short passing loop at Dullingham. It would make sense to electrify the route (or at least construct the concrete bases for stanchions) at the same time, but this is not currently Network Rail's intention. It is financed in 'silos' so that a passenger enhancement, a freight enhancement and electrification are separate projects as far as they are concerned. This situation is known to frustrate staff within Network Rail just as much as organisations like Railfuture.

Cambridgeshire County Council wishes to re-open Soham station and Railfuture hopes that the new station can be provided during the line closure although this is currently outside the scope of the works. The council are also proposing the reinstatement of the west curve at Newmarket at some stage in the future. This would permit a local service to run from Ely via Soham and Newmarket into Cambridge. Soham has stronger economic links with Newmarket and Cambridge than it does with Bury St Edmunds or Ipswich and such a service would encourage use of rail into Cambridge in preference to changing at Ely. It would also permit better northerly links from Newmarket to Ely and beyond. Naturally Railfuture supports the proposal and has even drawn up some track diagrams for Newmarket station to show how extra capacity for a frequent and flexible service could be provided.

Railfuture pays for 15,000 Rail Haverhill leaflets to promote petition to reopen railway

Keywords: [Haverhill]

In June 2015 the Rail Haverhill campaign group announced that 15,000 leaflets urging people to support the campaign for a reopened railway between Cambridge and Haverhill have been posted through doors in Haverhill and the surrounding villages over a month. The leaflets, which have been funded by Railfuture East Anglia point to the www.railhaverhill.org.uk website where there is an online petition for local people to sign. Within the first few weeks more than 1,100 people had signed, according to the group, with a minimum of 4,000 needed to make it really effective. The aim is to present the petition to Cambridgeshire, Suffolk and Essex county councils to encourage them to work together on a rail link. However, one of the complexities of local government is that a threshold needs to be reached for each council, and that is exacerbated by Haverhill being at the point where all three counties meet.

The Cambridge News quoted Railfuture East Anglia chairman Peter Wakefield, who said: "Haverhill is growing very rapidly, and it will reach 40,000 people within a few years. A high-quality public transport link to take lots of people very fast into Cambridge would benefit Haverhill, Cambridge and everywhere in between."


RAIL FREIGHT
Rail freight returns to a siding at Johnston Logistics at Eccles Road on the Ely-Norwich line after a long absence

Keywords: [ElyNorwichLine]

On 20th June a freight train deposited stone at Johnston's siding at Eccles Road, which is on the Ely-Norwich line. Apart from a charter train into the siding on 9th May 2015 this was its first commercial use since 2008 when the potato traffic ceased. The train passed the junction and then reversed in. The train was met by a stationary grabber, which unloaded the limestone aggregates (to be used for road building) from the open-topped wagons as the locomotive drew the train forward, one wagon length at a time. When unloading was complete the train went back, via Ely, to the Peak Forest. Initially trains are expected to deliver there once a week.


Railfuture East Anglia Branch News Snippets 266 - 20/06/2015

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