If single phase railway substations were to be replaced with true 3 phase ones, that could easily increase to 3% of national demand, which is quite a significant increase.
Two years since I moved away from the Manchester area. Ordsall Lane grade separation must be the most worthwhile in terms of removing conflicting movements but doesn't the existence of road bridges under and over require some quite steep gradients? A shame that platforms 3/4 at Salford Central are now binned, although not sure what would stop there. Wasn't that the whole point of slewing the Chat Moss tracks to pass between the old platform remains? But the train companies don't seem to want them.
I think this means electrification and new signalling. Once electrification comes a new service pattern will be needed as 2 diesel tph under the wires would be less than optimal
Not without some sort of infrastructure intervention.
Regarding the CLC and Piccadilly, this is the actual wording of the relevant parts of TfN's MTF paper, linked by @WatcherZero in #392 (my bolding):
I think this is all too vague to infer details of the interventions. Indeed, since the options are still being developed the details might not yet be finalised.
No mention here of Piccadilly or the CLC.
Also ain't the work at Salford Crescent already commenced some months ago? To be honest, not for the first time, sounds like to me the usual re-package / spin by the Government again!No, that was work to the two existing platforms.
Allows parallel arrivals from Bolton and Wigan, but not departures. It will be accessible from the Manchester direction as a turn back, but not onwards.
Currently all Atherton line services go to Salford Central and all services to the Windsor Link come from Bolton, so southbound parallel arrivals would have to converge or cross each other's paths at Windsor Bridge South Junction unless there is a radical recast of service routings.
As far as I understand from an earlier stage of development it would go on the existing through road, so probably only for trains from the Bolton line, but to either Vic or Picc.
and increased potential for northbound trains to use the middle platform.
Yes, but not very much. Everything will still have to go through the same set of points at the south of the station at Windsor Bridge South. There is no new track work going in, just a platform.
So passengers from Atherton/Walkden who want Oxford Road/Piccadilly will likely have to cross the bridge from Platform 1 to the new platform (Platform 0?) instead of the same platform change at present.
I would expect that services from Bolton to Victoria would be signalled onto the Up Bolton platform (P0?) whilst Bolton to Castlefield is signalled onto P1 to retain connectivity with the Atherton branch.
I’m yet to go on an on-time train between Bolton and Salford Crescent that hasn’t waited outside of Salford Crescent for about three minutes. I’d imagine that there would be a desire to keep a few minutes slack in the timetable for trains coming from Atherton and Bolton to ensure that they make their way through the Castlefield corridor and Manchester Victoria on-time.
Depends on the timetable, but that is potentially how it could be. It is likely more a bolt hole for any TRU trains that need to hide somewhere once they have come from the east.
In my experience, the Blackpool to Manchester Airport only gets a clear route (and on time arrival) into Salford Crescent if the preceding Blackburn/Clitheroe to Rochdale service has been cancelled, or is sufficiently late to have been regulated behind the Airport service at Bolton.
