Soham station plan doesn’t consider the prospects for future traffic growth

The scale of the plan for a station at Soham ( RAIL 905) is doubtless limited by the accounting need to keep expenditure down in a particular period of spend, but it fails to take into account the long-term plans for the line or operational convenience in the medium term.

Thankfully, the artist’s impression does highlight that space is being left for a second track and platform under the footbridge, which appears high enough for overhead electrification.

One of the stated objectives of Network Rail is upgrading of the Felixstowe to the Midlands route for a far greater number of container trains. One major pinch point is the single-track Soham section.

While paying lip service to that intent, this means that there will be the cost of building a single platform, sending the contractors away, and then building the second platform. I suggest this will be markedly more expensive.

The other matters are disruption and convenience. A station can be built on a working line, but it is safer not to.

There are two options: build the other platform first and then lay a long loop for trains to access it when it is complete, or lay the long loop first then route all traffic through that to build the platform on the then dormant existing line.

Either way the build is easier, the disruption is less, and there is a long loop that benefits the ever-increasing freight traffic along the line.

Robert Weller, Gloucestershire