Glasgow to Belfast... by train?

[Parkey]

Found this today. It's a crazy far-future idea, but sounds like quite a cool concept.

Presumably it'd be linked into the London-Glasgow high speed 2 line that WILL have been built by then dammit.

[Ameecher]

It's been suggested many times before, not only is there the problem of where does the money and backing come from, but what guage do you build it to?

[Parkey]

Gauge? Is the Irish Gauge different?

Ahh yes, a look at Wikipedia tells me that the Irish railways are 5ft 3in (1600mm) gauge.

I dunno. Presumably the dedicated HSLs would use standard 4 ft 8½in gauge as this is the European standard, but perhaps a three-rail mixed gauge arrangement could be implemented to allow high speed trains to use the same station infrastructure as existing domestic trains?

[Kevo00]

I would seriously doubt any bridge/tunnel is feasible to Ireland simply in terms of Ireland having a population of only about 5.5m, many without rail access and mostly at too low a population density to make many extensions of HSL possible in Ireland.

If any is feasible I would imagine Holyhead-Dublin would be a better crossing to build it at as the line could project straight into Dublin city centre and the Holyhead line is already mostly double track and could be upgraded. If the link was built between Stranraer and NI a new connection to Stranraer would need to be built as the present Stranraer line south of Ayr is mostly single track and extremely windy, and I doubt the terrian in the region is too well suited to an HSL. A lot of traffic does go Scotland-NI though.

Perhaps MagLev could be a solution for this as the guideway might be buildable accross sea without needing a big bridge and it would eliminate the gauge issue. Plus if added to the Glasgow-Edinburgh scheme it could bring in Glasgow and Prestwick Airports on the way down to Stranny.

For sure a fixed link to Ireland would be a good way to counter the growth in Aviation as flying wins hands down over the long and incovenient rail and ferry journeys at the moment...

[Ameecher]

Trouble with that one is that Holyhead to Dublin is at least twice as long as Stranraer to Larne.

Also Northern Ireland has a population of 1.7m, and Republic of Ireland has about 4.5m...

[Parkey]

I think a tunnel, like the channel tunnel, would be the most likely solution. I doubt a maglev would be used because - so far at least - they aren't able to carry freight.

As at the moment we have a transport budget which consists of "spend money on London, spend some more on London, spend yet more on London... throw the North and Scotland the change... Northern Ireland? What's Northern Ireland?" such an expensive link that doesn't directly serve London would also be more or less impossible to get through Westminster. It's bad enough trying to get them to approve a new cross London rail link even when the trains running under their own floor are so full of people in the rush hour that there's hardly any room for air. [/cynicism]

[Kevo00]

Of course that might be because Scotland and Northern Ireland are devolved countries. And they get more than their fair share of public money thanks to the Barnet Formula.

There's no way another channel tunnel would get built now, particularly not on a Scotland-NI alignment when the existing infrastructure is probably overcapacity for the route. A better priority would be to improve ground based public transport for the route such as making sure that you can travel by train-ferry-train from Glasgow into Northern Ireland like you could before Stena Line stopped sailing to Larne without having to go on a slow bus journey through central Belfast. Or extending the present railway up the old military line to Cairnryan so you could travel by train to the P&O ferries or Stena's proposed future terminal without a bus transfer.

[Parkey]

I suspect we're more likely to see a second England-France channel tunnel in the medium to long term than this particular concept anyway.

[Ameecher]

I suspect we're more likely to see a second England-France channel tunnel in the medium to long term than this particular concept anyway.

That is actually stupid.

Maybe if the current tunnel gets vaguely close to capacity would they build another but even then that'd be pretty unlikely.

[Parkey]

I didn't say it was very likely or soon, I just said it was more likely

[andel]

One question - who in Belfast really wants to go to Glasgow?

Its one step off the crazy idea of providing extra carriages between Oxford and Reading/Paddington (one which is thankfully now not likely to see fruition!)

[Parkey]

Took me a while to find a picture of a morning peak train from Oxford to Paddington, but here it is:



For all my railway mania and my HSL fixation I see First Great Western and I'm really glad I get to work by bicycle.

[Ameecher]

Took me a while to find a picture of a morning peak train from Oxford to Paddington, but here it is:

Oh how witty you are... Get on southeastern, you haven't seen busy until you've been on one of those.

[atomicdanny]

Took me a while to find a picture of a morning peak train from Oxford to Paddington, but here it is:

Oh how witty you are... Get on southeastern, you haven't seen busy until you've been on one of those.

The trains i normally catch are almost empty (although its something like 6am or about 3pm, from Aylesham - Dover) It only really gets busy on that route around Gillingham onwards - towards London (but at least i have the advantage of getting a seat when its empty if i go to london )

[Ameecher]

You obviously live at the right end of the network

Trains from Dartford inwards are generally the busiest. People moan about the High Density HSTs that FGW are making, at least they actually have seats unlike the 376s...

[orudge]

I saw that story the other day. Apart from the obvious gauge issue, the thing one has to remember is that most traffic to the island of Ireland goes from Holyhead to Dublin - all the European hauliers come along the A55 and get the ferry across, and so on. I can't see that many passengers outside of Scotland really wanting to have to drive/catch the train all the way up to Stranraer or wherever, then getting a train across, and then having to go all the way down to Dublin again. It's probably quicker for them to get the train to Holyhead and catch the fast ferry.

If a fixed link were ever to be built, Holyhead-Dublin (despite it being somewhat longer) would make the most economic sense. And even then, it would quite possibly be wise to build a road bridge/tunnel, or a combined road/rail link - remember that a large majority of traffic coming across is HGVs. Sure, providing a passenger link is nice, but economically, it'd make much more sense to build a link that cargo can use (and yes, while it would be nice if more cargo used the railways, it's not something that seems to be happening, particularly not from the mainland of Europe all the way to Ireland!).