The Fifteen Billion Pound Railway.

Mint Sauce

Just started on BBC2 tonight (9pm), all on Londons Crossrail Project. Continues I think next week and the following week.

dublinman1990

I am just seeing it right now and it is a good start to it so far. They just did an interesting piece on the tuppenny railway in the last few minutes.

And yes, it is a 3 part series when I looked at the Radio Times to look for the programme.

ballsymchugh

this is phenomenal!

the lad controlling the eye of the needle bit looks about 17.

Mint Sauce

Mind them £300,000 cars!

:eek:

dublinman1990

The railway graphics and archive footage for the programme looked very nice.

I would love to see more of that for the next two episodes.

101sean

It was very enjoyable. Company I work for does a lot of work for the various contractors on it and we've put liners in most of the major sewers it crosses.

The costs of safe working are incredible, there's a handbook just for what vehicles they'll allow on the sites, if you don't have the right safety stickers (mostly telling cyclists to back off!) on your truck you don't get in.

Much of the material and waste haulage is done by rail, especially at the Paddington end.

Rashers72

Any ideas if it will be repeated? Thanks

h.gricer

Rashers72 wrote: »

Any ideas if it will be repeated? Thanks

Id say at some stage on BBC4, all BBC documentaries usually are, just keep an eye, the Michael Portillo Great Railway Journeys are being repeated at the moment.
Regards
hg

youreadthat

Rashers72 wrote: »

Any ideas if it will be repeated? Thanks

Tonight BBC2 23:20.

man98

I caught most of it, looks good.
Let's hope they'll be able to make one on the Dublin Metro in years to come.

dublinman1990

I just seen a tunnel boring machine being put together on part 2 of that documentary. It looks extremely large and heavy to be put together and laid down below underground.

I think that is a certainty that MN or DU will use them in the coming years.

sporty56

Most of the precast concrete tunnel segments you've seen on these programmes are Irish manufactured - Shay Murtagh in Raharney, Co. Westmeath. Plenty of other Irish manufactured precast concrete sections have also been used for Crossrail and similar. The keen observer will notice several trailers a day heading to Dublin Port ferries carrying high tech reinforced and prestressed concrete units to build UK railways(and maybe soon even beyond).

Yet when LUAS and extensions were been constructed local manufacturers were shunned by RPA with all the concrete sleepers being imported. Irish Rail manufacture majority of their concrete sleeper requirements in Portlaoise and when extra ones were needed they went to Irish based manufacturers. For example, the heavier sleepers on Bray - Greystones came from Banagher Concrete.

Let's hope RPA's policy of buying precast concrete sleepers overseas is a thing of the past as present work proceeds. Minister Varadker, for one, was horrified on becoming fully aware of extent of what went on in the past with LUAS sourcing infrastructure components and has hinted several times that won't be allowed to be repeated.

man98

I think it's crazy how little infrastructure was invested in during the Celtic Tiger. Britain are making CrossRail for their expanding city. We only get another Luas line, with nothing in Cork.

metrovick001

Middleton line?

man98 wrote: »

I think it's crazy how little infrastructure was invested in during the Celtic Tiger. Britain are making CrossRail for their expanding city. We only get another Lisa line, with nothing in Cork.

corktina

The beams for the flyover being built in Reading were built in Ireland. There is a massive project underway in Reading to relieve congestion in addition to the Cross rail project and electrification masts are going in already. Reading already was the second busiest station outside London and now has the fine new station and infrastructure it deserves, with Crossrail coming and a west facing Heathrow junction planned. Massive investment where it is needed, Ireland please copy

richiek83

corktina wrote: »

The beams for the flyover being built in Reading were built in Ireland. There is a massive project underway in Reading to relieve congestion in addition to the Cross rail project and electrification masts are going in already. Reading already was the second busiest station outside London and now has the fine new station and infrastructure it deserves, with Crossrail coming and a west facing Heathrow junction planned. Massive investment where it is needed, Ireland please copy

Totally agree, was in Reading Station just last week. Impressive station to say the least. Still not finished but it was airy and very spacious.

101sean

A lot of the segments for the Eastern end are made in Chatham dockyard in Kent and shipped by barge. I think there's another plant at the western end but they obviously can't make them fast enough!

Sisk, an Irish company, run the Chatham plant as part of it Crossrail JV with Dragados

Mint Sauce

Repeated on BBC2 tonight, for anyone who missed it yesterday like me.

A Dub in Glasgo

corktina wrote: »

. Reading already was the second busiest station outside London and now has the fine new station and infrastructure it deserves

For clarity

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

Outside London

1. Birmingham NS
2. Glasgow Central
3. Leeds
4. Manchester Piccadilly
5. East Croydon
6. Edinburgh Waverley
7. Glasgow Queen Street
8. Brighton
9. Reading

Reading station is a fine station with the investment nearing completion

corktina

if you use those figures then there are several flaws. You haven't included interchanges by the looks , and East Croydon is a London Station, making Reading 6th

man98

metrovick001 wrote: »

Middleton line?

The Middleton line is fine, and so is the M3 Parkway, but these a short lines designed for commuters. I'm more thinking something along the lines of Metro North, or the completion of the WRC.

corktina

you said "nothing in Cork"......

man98

corktina wrote: »

you said "nothing in Cork"......

I was talking about a Luas equivalent in Cork.

A Dub in Glasgo

corktina wrote: »

if you use those figures then there are several flaws. You haven't included interchanges by the looks , and East Croydon is a London Station, making Reading 6th

I have not come up with the figures, the ORR has

corktina

man98 wrote: »

I was talking about a Luas equivalent in Cork.

Don't want to argue but you said Dublin "only" got a Luas line and nothing in Cork. That implies you were talking about something more than Luas, and Midleton is something more than Luas, a heavy-rail commuter line. Cork also got an enhanced InterCity service.

Louche Lad

corktina wrote: »

if you use those figures then there are several flaws. You haven't included interchanges by the looks , and East Croydon is a London Station, making Reading 6th

The other non-London stations on that list are Gatwick Airport, and then Liverpool Central which apparently is busier than Liverpool Lime Street. I never knew there was a Liverpool Central!

Outkast_IRE

man98 wrote: »

The Middleton line is fine, and so is the M3 Parkway, but these a short lines designed for commuters. I'm more thinking something along the lines of Metro North, or the completion of the WRC.

The midleton line has issues, the main one in my book is that it literally runs past some of the biggest employers in the county in the carrigtwohill industrial estate but doesnt have a stop there.

man98

Outkast_IRE wrote: »

The midleton line has issues, the main one in my book is that it literally runs past some of the biggest employers in the county in the carrigtwohill industrial estate but doesnt have a stop there.

I thought a Dunkettle station/ parkway was planned. Once again, Dublin needs a big project, a Luas line to the north since Metro was scrapped. I'd also suggest an intersection for Dart/ Luas in somewhere like Killester, although I'm not too familiar with the Belfast line.
I missed this week's £15bn Railway.

cml387

man98 wrote: »

I think it's crazy how little infrastructure was invested in during the Celtic Tiger. Britain are making CrossRail for their expanding city. We only get another Luas line, with nothing in Cork.

Crossrail is to cater for a city of ten million.

You might as well ask what infrastructure is being developed for Ipswich, the urban population of Cork being somewhat similar.

monument

cml387 wrote: »

Crossrail is to cater for a city of ten million.

You might as well ask what infrastructure is being developed for Ipswich, the urban population of Cork being somewhat similar.

Ipswich has an urban population near to 198,582 and metro population close to 399,216? And it's the second city of a country?

And I don't think anybody is suggesting anything on the scale of Crossrail for Dublin or Cork.

man98

Cork is a pain to go through at the best of times, especially the centre. Maybe Bertie should have thrown money at a Kent Station - Bus Station - Patrick St (Yes, I know how close they are) - Washington St - UCC. Nothing overly extravagant, just a single line. It's not as if any major cities are reducing in population. But of course Bertie was never one to think too far past Drumcondra. Nothing on par with CrossRail.

corktina

how will that work? an urban system such as LUAS needs to be high intensity with lots of potential passengers. It can't be high intensity on a single line and there isn't enough passengers to justify it anyway. This is what buses are for.
What's needed is to sort the traffic out to avoid conflicting movements at junctions. This could largely be achieved by making the quays into a giant roundabout with left turn onlys at each junction

Pete_Cavan

man98 wrote: »

I'd also suggest an intersection for Dart/ Luas in somewhere like Killester, although I'm not too familiar with the Belfast line.

I always though that extending the Luas from the O2 to Clontarf Road via the port and Eastpoint would be a very beneficial project for relatively little cost. Would probably have to cross East Wall Road twice, and then cross the Tolka but most of the route has little obstructions and trams could stop at the siding on the southern side of the main line at Clontarf Road.

TheBandicoot

Outkast_IRE wrote: »

it literally runs past some of the biggest employers in the county in the carrigtwohill industrial estate but doesnt have a stop there.

Maybe I'm being ignorant, but there is a Carrigtwohill station and it seems to be as close to the industrial state as is possible?

cgcsb

corktina wrote: »

how will that work? an urban system such as LUAS needs to be high intensity with lots of potential passengers. It can't be high intensity on a single line and there isn't enough passengers to justify it anyway. This is what buses are for.
What's needed is to sort the traffic out to avoid conflicting movements at junctions. This could largely be achieved by making the quays into a giant roundabout with left turn onlys at each junction

Or pedestrianising the Island except for some key through bus/tram routes with park and rides around the N40, that ought to get rid of the traffic. There are plenty of commuters in Cork to justify light rail. Most continential cities(Bar Spain and Italy) it's size have suck light rail systems. Luas isn't 'high intensity' it is a medium capacity system and it is under designed with peak hour trams exceeding their capacity.

cgcsb

Pete_Cavan wrote: »

I always though that extending the Luas from the O2 to Clontarf Road via the port and Eastpoint would be a very beneficial project for relatively little cost. Would probably have to cross East Wall Road twice, and then cross the Tolka but most of the route has little obstructions and trams could stop at the siding on the southern side of the main line at Clontarf Road.

The bridges and associated structures would incur major cost for a project that would benefit an area already served by DART

monument

corktina wrote: »

how will that work? an urban system such as LUAS needs to be high intensity with lots of potential passengers. It can't be high intensity on a single line and there isn't enough passengers to justify it anyway. This is what buses are for.
What's needed is to sort the traffic out to avoid conflicting movements at junctions. This could largely be achieved by making the quays into a giant roundabout with left turn onlys at each junction

He may or may not have picked the perfect route but there are examples of new tram lines being built in France in cities which have similar population levels to Cork, some are single line systems.

There are some such examples where the city is close to larger cities and the tram line runs into both cities, but that's not always the case and there are examples of where it's not.

There's also examples of tram lines covering the city centre being fed by buses.

Having a tram system or not is a political choice about what we spend money on and what we do with the space on our streets and roads.

corktina

cgcsb wrote: »

Or pedestrianising the Island except for some key through bus/tram routes with park and rides around the N40, that ought to get rid of the traffic. There are plenty of commuters in Cork to justify light rail. Most continential cities(Bar Spain and Italy) it's size have suck light rail systems. Luas isn't 'high intensity' it is a medium capacity system and it is under designed with peak hour trams exceeding their capacity.

certainly Patrick St and the Grand Parade should be traffic free at this stage, what are they thinking having a through route through the main streets of the city!

Mint Sauce

Last part repeated tonight for any who missed it yesterday. Again that would be me.

etchyed

sporty56 wrote: »

Yet when LUAS and extensions were been constructed local manufacturers were shunned by RPA with all the concrete sleepers being imported. Irish Rail manufacture majority of their concrete sleeper requirements in Portlaoise and when extra ones were needed they went to Irish based manufacturers. For example, the heavier sleepers on Bray - Greystones came from Banagher Concrete.

Let's hope RPA's policy of buying precast concrete sleepers overseas is a thing of the past as present work proceeds. Minister Varadker, for one, was horrified on becoming fully aware of extent of what went on in the past with LUAS sourcing infrastructure components and has hinted several times that won't be allowed to be repeated.

Protectionist nonsense, and I'd like to see some quotes from Varadkar on this. If the builders of Crossrail had behaved as you're suggesting the RPA should, there would be no business for Irish companies bidding for construction work or producing concrete tunnel segments, all of which has probably dwarfed the amount of work they would have got on Luas. Britain plays fair with European procurement rules, and Ireland benefits from that. Ireland evidently plays fair too. You can't have it both ways.

corktina

they were at painsto point out where some of the crossrail components came from. Pretty much all over Europe, a benefit of the EU where they were able to go after the best deal across a huge market rather than the 1950/60's loco procurement policy which prevented them buying German or American like CIE did

sporty56

Etchyed,
Nothing to do with protectionism but just knowing exactly what you're trying to acheive coupled with clever economics.

Irish precast concrete is very competitive priced in Southern UK and always will be. The South East of England in particular is very short on ordinary concrete aggregates because local sources are exhausted. Most of southern England has very limited quantities of high quality aggregates of the type needed for high strength precast concrete units as used in Crossrail and similar rail and road projects. Such aggregates have to come from North Wales, Scotland or Roadstone in Arklow making them very expensive compared to here. Aggregates sources on near continent are also scarce and expensive. The island of Ireland is geologically very different from our nearest neighbour with vast quantities of top quality glacial gravel as well as limestone and basalt(particularly Antrim) at the right price. UK uses precast concrete from Ireland because of quality at right price.

The Luas project was a CIE one originally and naturally envisaged using their own well proven civil and mechanical engineering resources if were ever built. However as it came nearer to being a reality a major disagreement arose between Government and CIE over budgetary control. Also CIE were adamant on no repeat the DART sting** and other financial surprises. CIE maintained their stance and job was taken away from them to hastily formed RPA. We all know now how right CIE were to be suspicious with massive over budget spending by RPA on construction of permanent way and equipment.

An Australian crew fresh from completing rail upgrades in Vietnam arrived at Red Cow to set up base to built a tramway. Unfortunately they knew little of Ireland’s construction industry supply capability and this coupled with CIE being in a non co-operative huff over losing the job lead to extraordinary conclusion that nobody in Ireland could make concrete sleepers or supply ballast other than CIE. This led to concrete sleepers being sourced from Germany at serious expense including £10.00 per unit on transport alone, the Irish concrete industry was not considered. Those familiar with the scene then would know that Banagher Concrete, Curragh Concrete, RMC, Macrete and Turkington all made concrete sleepers from time to time for IR and NIR. Any or all of these were fully capable of fulfilling Luas considerable requirements.

The extraordinary failure of RPA to engage with Irish industry and instead import was raised in the Dail with then Minister O’Rourke. The Ministerial response was that this was an internal Irish Rail matter and not the Dept’s responsibility. Either she was badly advised or whatever, it was never IR business but CIE and the same Government that had invented RPA when CIE asked awkward questions about money with FFs pet project. Around this time Brendan Ogle’s ILDA began causing problems more immediate to rail transport than German sleepers and vigilance of RPA waned. Some day I’d like to see real storey of ILDA and disappearance of railfreight documented particularly as it freed up lands in Spencer Dock and elsewhere as well as generating tolls for NTR etc.
Later on when Cherrywood, Citywest and Point extensions were being done, the RPA went back to German source for sleepers without going to tender arguing it was the continuation of same job. It wasn’t just sleepers as contractor Laing O’Rourke found out at The Point. They had sourced appropriate granite setts from Mayo at competitive price but were told to forget about it by RPA as we have our staff globally searching for stone – far more interesting to visit China than Mayo !

One would be foolish to think that “Bertyism” that wrecked our economy did not touch on every aspect of Government influenced spending and policy. The various tribunals have informed us of the extent of inappropriate fiscal activities than went on then and new revelations on those times continue and will continue to make headlines. The microscope now is rightfully on publically funded operations such as Luas, Metro and DART interconnector. You can see how far RPA’s Metros got with Varadkar – rightly scrapped as economic nonsense. Luas work is essentially completing what regrettably got left out in first place with sensible extension using Broadstone right of way. DART interconnector has in principle been approved pending finance.

The UK and others are far clever using EU procurement regulation than we are. They have strong industrial manufacturing histories compared to us – they’ve learned the tricks of what you put in small print to encourage local manufacture when it suits. Our own former Minister of State(OPW) Brian Hayes tried to do something similar for OPW tenders about 2.5 years ago by associating concept of “carbon footprint of an item to site” in costing. However he naively spoke about it on RTE with Pat Kenny rather than just doing it and defending it if anybody noticed the subtleties of the relevant clauses. His idea was right but trying to bring political kudos to his new Ministerial office let him and what was been tried to acheive down. Hopefully some future Minister will be successful in introducing the concept to public tendering process here.

Sporty56

metrovick001

Very interesting & well put post, thanks.

sporty56 wrote: »

Etchyed,
Nothing to do with protectionism but just knowing exactly what you're trying to acheive coupled with clever economics.

Irish precast concrete is very competitive priced in Southern UK and always will be. The South East of England in particular is very short on ordinary concrete aggregates because local sources are exhausted. Most of southern England has very limited quantities of high quality aggregates of the type needed for high strength precast concrete units as used in Crossrail and similar rail and road projects. Such aggregates have to come from North Wales, Scotland or Roadstone in Arklow making them very expensive compared to here. Aggregates sources on near continent are also scarce and expensive. The island of Ireland is geologically very different from our nearest neighbour with vast quantities of top quality glacial gravel as well as limestone and basalt(particularly Antrim) at the right price. UK uses precast concrete from Ireland because of quality at right price.

The Luas project was a CIE one originally and naturally envisaged using their own well proven civil and mechanical engineering resources if were ever built. However as it came nearer to being a reality a major disagreement arose between Government and CIE over budgetary control. Also CIE were adamant on no repeat the DART sting** and other financial surprises. CIE maintained their stance and job was taken away from them to hastily formed RPA. We all know now how right CIE were to be suspicious with massive over budget spending by RPA on construction of permanent way and equipment.

An Australian crew fresh from completing rail upgrades in Vietnam arrived at Red Cow to set up base to built a tramway. Unfortunately they knew little of Ireland’s construction industry supply capability and this coupled with CIE being in a non co-operative huff over losing the job lead to extraordinary conclusion that nobody in Ireland could make concrete sleepers or supply ballast other than CIE. This led to concrete sleepers being sourced from Germany at serious expense including £10.00 per unit on transport alone, the Irish concrete industry was not considered. Those familiar with the scene then would know that Banagher Concrete, Curragh Concrete, RMC, Macrete and Turkington all made concrete sleepers from time to time for IR and NIR. Any or all of these were fully capable of fulfilling Luas considerable requirements.

The extraordinary failure of RPA to engage with Irish industry and instead import was raised in the Dail with then Minister O’Rourke. The Ministerial response was that this was an internal Irish Rail matter and not the Dept’s responsibility. Either she was badly advised or whatever, it was never IR business but CIE and the same Government that had invented RPA when CIE asked awkward questions about money with FFs pet project. Around this time Brendan Ogle’s ILDA began causing problems more immediate to rail transport than German sleepers and vigilance of RPA waned. Some day I’d like to see real storey of ILDA and disappearance of railfreight documented particularly as it freed up lands in Spencer Dock and elsewhere as well as generating tolls for NTR etc.
Later on when Cherrywood, Citywest and Point extensions were being done, the RPA went back to German source for sleepers without going to tender arguing it was the continuation of same job. It wasn’t just sleepers as contractor Laing O’Rourke found out at The Point. They had sourced appropriate granite setts from Mayo at competitive price but were told to forget about it by RPA as we have our staff globally searching for stone – far more interesting to visit China than Mayo !

One would be foolish to think that “Bertyism” that wrecked our economy did not touch on every aspect of Government influenced spending and policy. The various tribunals have informed us of the extent of inappropriate fiscal activities than went on then and new revelations on those times continue and will continue to make headlines. The microscope now is rightfully on publically funded operations such as Luas, Metro and DART interconnector. You can see how far RPA’s Metros got with Varadkar – rightly scrapped as economic nonsense. Luas work is essentially completing what regrettably got left out in first place with sensible extension using Broadstone right of way. DART interconnector has in principle been approved pending finance.

The UK and others are far clever using EU procurement regulation than we are. They have strong industrial manufacturing histories compared to us – they’ve learned the tricks of what you put in small print to encourage local manufacture when it suits. Our own former Minister of State(OPW) Brian Hayes tried to do something similar for OPW tenders about 2.5 years ago by associating concept of “carbon footprint of an item to site” in costing. However he naively spoke about it on RTE with Pat Kenny rather than just doing it and defending it if anybody noticed the subtleties of the relevant clauses. His idea was right but trying to bring political kudos to his new Ministerial office let him and what was been tried to acheive down. Hopefully some future Minister will be successful in introducing the concept to public tendering process here.

Sporty56

sporty56

Sorry but ommitted explanation below from my previous post

**DART project had VAT imposed on it very late after costings were finalised and work well in hand. It left CIE looking silly having to source additional funds internationally but meant it didn’t appear as overseas borrowings on Dept Finance balance sheet at a delicate time financially.

Outkast_IRE

TheBandicoot wrote: »

Maybe I'm being ignorant, but there is a Carrigtwohill station and it seems to be as close to the industrial state as is possible?

No in terms of walking from station to entrance to industrial estate if you could do it in a straight line it would be roughly a mile, but you cant walk it that way you must go into the towns main road and then walk it down to the industrial estate it would be a good 20 min brisk walk for a fit person more for most people. And then the industrial estate is large in itself with some employers another 5-10 min walk in.

Physically the rail line runs directly through the center of the industrial park, you could literally not plan it better, and before the bust the IDA was promising funding for a station stop in the estate, but of course this never materialised.

All workers i know in the estate dont consider rail an option as the walk is too far and the bus stops outside the estate.

A major missed opportunity for Irish Rail there.

corktina

The line goes no where near Carrigtwohill industrial estate. Do you mean Cobh Cross/Fota estates?

Outkast_IRE

corktina wrote: »

The line goes no where near Carrigtwohill industrial estate. Do you mean Cobh Cross/Fota estates?

The rail line travels right through the industrial estate the one im talking about is offically called Carrigtwohill Business and Technology Park , there is just no stop there. If your familar with the estate it runs between gilead and the rest of the estate.

https://www.google.ie/maps/@51.9124393,-8.2821288,1099m/data=!3m1!1e3

corktina

Glad you cleared that up, Carrigtwohill Industrial Estate is by the main road

GBOA

Where is Carrigtwohill in relation to Liverpool Street? Will Oyster be accepted on that route?