Halton Curve begins
With work now under way to reopen the Halton Curve to its first regular passenger services since 1975, PAUL STEPHEN paid a visit to see what is required of Network Rail to complete the project
RAIL pays a site visit as work begins to reopen the Halton Curve to its first regular passenger services since 1975.
What the Halton Curve lacks in length, it more than makes up for in the substantial economic benefits its reinstatement is predicted to deliver for the Liverpool City Region and surrounding area.
That’s because upgrading this 1.5-milelong dormant stretch of single track has been estimated to be worth £100 million to the local economy each year, by creating new commuter flows and leisure travel opportunities.
Its strategic value is obvious. Connecting with the Chester-Warrington line at Frodsham Junction at its southern end, and the Liverpool branch of the West Coast Main Line at Halton Junction to the north, an upgraded Halton Curve will offer an alternative to Merseyrail’s Wirral Line. This will enable a new hourly service to be introduced from December 2018 between Liverpool Lime Street and Chester, via Liverpool South Parkway (for Liverpool John Lennon Airport), Runcorn, and Frodsham.
Operating within the new Wales & Borders franchise that commences in October 2018, council leaders on Merseyside have agreed to underwrite revenue initially, until further agreement can be reached with Welsh government to transfer this responsibility. It is also hoped that this new service
tllbtddbd th require additional, and as yet unsecured, investment from the Welsh Assembly in new infrastructure and rolling stock.
With a funding envelope of £18.75m, the Halton Curve upgrade project was given the green light in April 2016 when the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority voted to release almost £ 6m of extra funds, which was needed to meet NR’s updated costing of the scheme ( RAIL 803).
Much of this cash has come from the City Region’s Local Growth Fund, after the Combined Authority accepted a business case prepared by its passenger transport executive Merseytravel, that gave the scheme a benefit:cost ratio ( BCR) of 1.9.
By potentially stimulating more than 200,000 new journeys by rail per year, the scheme had formed a cornerstone of Merseytravel’s Long Term Rail Strategy, published in 2014.
Mt ft hiljtd providing much-needed relief to some of the region’s heavily congested routes such as the A55 and M56.
The £18.75m price tag has not been immune from criticism, however, and is widely perceived as an inordinately high cost for a scheme involving such a short stretch of track that, although seldom used, is kept in operational condition. But when RAIL last visited this issue just over 12 months ago, Merseytravel’s Chief Executive Frank Rogers pointed to the requirement for NR to rigorously follow its Governance for Railway Investments Projects (GRIP) procedure.
He said that this means almost 25% of the headline number is made up of a contingency fee, while extra costs are added such as risk and consultancy fees greatly inflating the more modest cost of actual construction. £18.75m should therefore be seen as the absolute
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had the line not stubbornly clung on in its neglected state, in an extraordinary tale of survival.
Having opened in 1873, the Curve’s days began to look numbered in the early 1970s during the construction of the M56 when abandonment was seriously considered to save the cost of spanning the new motorway.
Passenger services were then withdrawn from the Curve by British Rail in 1975, when it diverted declining levels of traffic between Liverpool and Chester to its route via Birkenhead and the Mersey Tunnel (now Merseyrail’s Wirral Line).
The Curve soldiered on in a useful diversionary capacity for almost two decades, until Railtrack singled the line in 1994 to reduce maintenance costs, and reduced line speed to its current limit of 40mph.
Railtrack also limited the line to onedirectional running by removing vital crossovers at its northern end which subsequently allowed access to ( but no longer from) the WCML.
The Strategic Rail Authority made one final attempt at closure in 2004 to remove the cost of including Halton Junction in its signalling upgrade of the WCML, but plans were eventually shelved to sidestep the heavily bureaucratic and expensive administrative process of formally closing the line.
Since then, a single unadvertised service has continued to run every summer Saturday to fulfil the basic legal requirement needed to keep the line officially open, giving the Halton Curve its special appeal with enthusiasts.
Much of the work required to restore the curve to bi-directional running must therefore be done at either end, explains NR’s project manager Karla Telford during RAIL’s tour of Frodsham Junction on July 14.
She says: “Currently trains can only be signalled northbound, so we are having to completely resignal the Frodsham control
We plan to have this fully operational by the second May Bank Holiday in 2018, for new services to be introduced in the timetable change in December 2018. Karla Telford, Network Rail’s project manager
This is another big day for the City Region. This project will link it with Chester, North Wales and the whole regional economy making a big difference to so many people. Martin Frobisher, London North West Route Managing Director
area. This will mean replacing semaphores with colour lights, removing the lever frame from Frodsham signal box and replacing it with a control panel, linked to Manchester Regional Operating Centre (ROC).
“At the other end, the resignalling will form part of the Wavertree-Weaver Junction upgrade, which has created cost efficiencies and boosted the project’s BCR. But there will be a new crossover at each end of the Curve and lots of ancillary power and communications work to do.
“We plan to have this fully operational by the second May Bank Holiday in 2018, for new services to be introduced in the timetable change in December 2018.”
The Wavertree-Weaver Junction resignalling scheme forms an essential part of the Halton Curve upgrade, by providing a window of opportunity to complete the work needed at Halton Junction on the WCML with minimum disruption and also economies of scale.
Although part of a wider £ 340m investment in improving the network in and around Liverpool, the Wavertree-Weaver Junction resignalling focuses on a 16-mile stretch of the
WCML where five signal boxes will be removed and control transferred to Manchester ROC.
By working on both projects at the same time, Telford says that almost £ 2m has been shaved off the cost of the Halton Curve upgrade through sharing existing engineering possessions scheduled for next April and May, while also avoiding the need to re-open the area’s signal interlocking at a later date.
As well as installing new signalling equipment and crossovers at Halton Junction, almost 400 metres of new track will be laid on a slightly adjusted profile to increase turnout speeds from 25mph to 40mph, easing pathing constraints on the WCML caused by trains leaving and entering the Halton Curve.
Meanwhile, at Frodsham Junction, a new crossover is set to be installed during two weekend possessions in November, and the area controlled by Frodsham signal box completely resignalled in February. Semaphore signals will be replaced by colour signals, while the box’s lever frame will be replaced by a control panel which will remain manually operated during the signal box’s opening hours of 0600-2200, but then controlled by Manchester ROC overnight when it is locked out.
To facilitate the resignalling, a new power cable is being laid along the full length of the Halton Curve, and contractors from Babcock arrived on site in June to begin laying cable troughs and pouring concrete foundations for new lineside equipment.
NR would not confirm whether the new infrastructure would be able to support more than the hourly service which it has been remitted to deliver, but RAIL understands that the key constraint on increasing frequency any higher is finding spare paths on the WCML.
Double tracking of the Halton Curve is also not currently envisaged, although Telford said that the upgrade work was being so as ‘not to preclude’ it being implemented at a later date.
NR’s London North Western Route Managing Director Martin Frobisher adds: “This is another big day for the City Region. This project will link it with Chester, North Wales and the whole regional economy making a big difference to so many people.
“When I started my career, I spent 15 years maintaining existing railways, and now we’re starting new services like this. It’s a different era and it’s fantastic.”