Engineering Focus

Taking a look at the Northern Class 195 which was built by CAF (Construcciones y Auxiliar de Ferrocarriles), features technical specs and thoughts about the units.   Twitter - Facebook - Youtube

O n the 18th of November 2021 the Government published its long-awaited Integrated Rail Plan (IRP) that sets out how the Government will attempt to improve rail links across the North and Midlands. In this blog I hope to set out the main points from and unpick some of the claims made within the report. This part, in a two part blog looks into the detail of the Northern Powerhouse Rail proposal. Part one looks at the HS2 East announcement and the possible implications of cancelling the eastern leg of HS2 Northern Powerhouse Rail (HS3) Northern Powerhouse Rail is where things start to get a little more complicated, as far as I can tell the Government has rejected all 3 proposals put forward by Transport for the North, which were: " Option 1 was a mixture of new-build high-speed line, covering roughly half the route from Liverpool to Leeds, and upgrades to the existing lines into Leeds (via Huddersfield) and Liverpool (via Warrington Bank Quay) for the rest of the route

On the 18th of November 2021 the Government published its long-awaited Integrated Rail Plan (IRP) that sets out how it will attempt to improve rail links across the North and Midlands. In this blog I hope to set out the main points from and unpick some of the claims made within the report. This first part looks at the HS2 East announcement and the possible implications of cancelling the eastern branch of HS2. Part two looks into the detail of the Northern Powerhouse Rail proposal. A link to the full report can be found here.     IRP map HS2 East First of all, HS2 East is being cancelled, this hasn't come as much of a surprise to many within the rail industry, but it is still incredibly disappointing nether the less. The Government says instead it will upgrade the Midland Main Line and East Coast Main Line, which it claims will provide the same level of benefits as HS2 East. The Govermnet says it intends to upgrade junctions, signalling and power systems on the ECML to enable train

Update 15/11/21 It would seem that the title of the blog should have been "the time for discussion should be over" as it appears the leg from Birmingham to Leeds is going to be heavily curtailed. I'll wait and see what detail emerge this week, but it seems almost certain that the government is going to be making a huge mistake. Not only will de-scoping HS2 East reduce the journey time benefits from Leeds to London and Birmingham, and mean there will be little to no increase in capacity,  but it will also mean that there will be no hope of improved regional journeys that would have been made possible by the construction of the eastern leg of HS2. In 2009 when I first began actively campaigning in support of HS2 I never imagined I'd one day be photographing and writing about the construction of the project. At the time I was in my mid-20s and full of youthful optimism and felt that someone ought to be challenging the many myths about the project which were being dissem