Another perspective on rail electrification
YOUR coverage of the cancellation of the electrification of the railway between Cardiff and Swansea, although full, omits to touch on three very relevant matters.
First, Mr Grayling last week also cancelled two other schemes proposed at the same time, namely the northern part of the East Midlands line between Kettering and Sheffield (depriving Leicester, Nottingham and Derby of electric trains) and the small Windermere line in Cumbria.
The several Lancashire lines also proposed originally for electrification have all been completed (Liverpool-Manchester, Manchester-Wigan & Preston) except for Preston-Blackpool which is well under way. The other contemporaneous electrification scheme , the Northern TransPennine line (ManchesterHuddersfield-Leeds), continues unaffected.
Why does the Northern Powerhouse do better than South Wales and the East Midlands ?
Second, not only Swansea loses electric trains (one an hour) but there is also a large gap in the South Wales Metro route map, as the twice hourly service to Maesteg was to use the same wires as far as Bridgend.
The Metro plans will have to be revised: electric trains stopping at Brackla, Pencoed, Llanharan, Pontyclun and St Fagans would have been far faster than diesels with slower acceleration.
Will the Welsh Government have to pay itself for electrification to Bridgend, as well as the BridgendMaesteg section it always expected?
Third, the opening of a new station at St Mellons is welcome as a stopping place for semi-fast or local trains to Ebbw Vale, Abergavenny, Chepstow, Bristol and beyond, but definitely not as an extra stop for expresses to Paddington, which are already slower than they were 35 years ago, when some trains ran non-stop from Newport to Paddington, giving a Cardiff-London time of one hour 45 minutes by omitting Bristol Parkway, Swindon, Didcot and Reading, which stations mean that the usual journey time to Cardiff is now two hours 10 minutes.
We are told that electric trains will cut 15 minutes from present journey times, still leaving us 10 minutes slower than the best train of yore, and adding a stop at St Mellons (and, after 2026, at Old Oak Common) to give us no improvement at all. Cardiff will not have an express service but rather languish at the far end of a London outer suburban semi-fast. Michael LN Jones Cardiff