Trans-Pennine… transformative
PHILIP HAIGH examines the progress being made with the TransPennine Route Upgrade, and looks at the next steps and the possible pitfalls for the ambitious multi-billion-pound project
It’s the upgrade that never happened. But now, perhaps, the trans-Pennine line between York and Manchester via Leeds and Huddersfield is about to receive the improvements it’s needed for so long. Back in 2000, Railtrack Commercial Manager Richard Thompson told RAIL about the track owner’s ambition to bring 45-minute journeys between Manchester and Leeds, with trains every 15 minutes. As RAIL 383 recorded him saying: “Two cities that size ought to be served by a 15-minute service.”
Roll forward 11 years, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced £290 million to electrify the route (RAIL 685). By this time, Network Rail had replaced Railtrack.
In RAIL 716, NR Senior Sponsor Simon Coulthard said: “One of the early steps is to clear the route, to enable the wires to be put up, and a lot of the present effort is to examine each structure - bridge, viaduct, aqueduct, platform - eventually by specialist on-site inspection, to see whether there is sufficient headroom and width for the wiring and its support columns, and if not to establish the best solution.”
Add another 11 years, and today NR Transpennine Route Upgrade (TRU) Industry Programme Director John Reed says: “One of the things to keep in mind with this whole programme is that this is a route for which you could say forever - well, for at least two decades, maybe more - has had a big enhancement just around the corner.”
By the time Reed was speaking in late summer 2022, NR had divided the route between Manchester and York into ten smaller projects. Each looks at a section of line. Leeds sits outside the project - it was the one part of the route that Railtrack did manage to upgrade two decades ago, with its major Leeds 1st project.
The decade following the Chancellor’s funding announcement was marked by indecision from the Department for Transport. It simply could not decide what it wanted for (and from) the line.
The National Audit Office reported in July 2022: “In 2011, the Department [for Transport, DfT] set out plans for the electrification of the Trans-Pennine route. These aimed to reduce rail industry operating costs and its carbon footprint by moving from diesel to electric trains. The Department forecast that this upgrade would cost £289m (in 2011 prices) and be completed by 2019.
“The DfT progressed these plans, and work began in early 2015 before pausing pending a review of Network Rail’s investment programme. The work was restarted in late 2015 with a revised scope that aimed to increase track and train capacity and reduce journey times.
“In 2017, the DfT concluded that, without improvements, the infrastructure would continue to cause day-to-day problems for passengers and present a barrier to economic growth in the region.
“Since 2017 the fundamental outcomes for the programme have remained unchanged: improving journey times for passengers, increasing track capacity, and decarbonising the railway. Despite this, changing ministerial priorities and budget constraints led the DfT to make repeated changes to the scope of the programme in this time.
“In 2018, the DfT scoped the programme to be delivered within a £2.9 billion budget and to be completed between 2019 and 2024. The DfT subsequently revised the programme several times with no clear agreement on the end state until 2021.”
The NAO noted that annual passenger journeys on the route rose by 29% to 137 million in the decade to 2019-20. Meanwhile, only 38% of trains ran on time, it said.
Reed takes up the story: “The real transformation in this programme has come about in the 2018-19 period. That was a real turning point. Before Control Period 6, TRU was always one of the big things in there, but it was envisaged as a very tightly budget constrained effort: £2.9bn - do the best you can for that Network Rail, please, was the instruction. Electrification wasn’t very important. The mantra was: do the things our passengers notice and benefit from the most the really direct, obvious things.”
This £2.9bn scheme was called Option C (see table, page 39). Reed explains: “It had elements of capacity, line speed and performance improvement. It had some wiring in, but it depended on a bi-mode train to make some use of that. The sections where line speed improvements and wires were located were very tightly value-managed to make sure you got the best bang for your buck in response to the Government’s funding constraints.”
But the tide was turning: “Come 2019, the Department’s ambitions were growing. They were more interested in a full electrification option. At some point that year, Grant Shapps arrived [as Transport Secretary] and at the end of the year there was an election.
“From that point on, the Government’s interest and policies on decarbonisation drove us completely to a fully electrified solution. That was a really big shift. It went from something of very little interest, only do it where it’s absolutely necessary, through to zero emissions, decarbonisation as a big priority, and don’t constrain it financially - tell us what it would cost and we’ll think about it.
“So that brought us to Option F. The big change there is that we added some more line speed and performance improvements. We added OLE for the whole route. At the time, that seemed like a really big step up.”
It was Option F that appeared in last November’s Integrated Rail Plan, costed at £5.5bn. Yet the DfT came back for more.
Reed explains: “Then the Department got even more interested in what else we could do. So we started to look at digital signalling west of Leeds, between Manchester and Leeds. We increased the freight gauge from W8 to
NR plans to cut journey times by remodelling and realigning track. It plans to increase capacity with extra track and flying junctions. And at the unglamorous end of upgrade work, it plans to improve drainage. The result should be as close to a new railway as it’s possible to get from a line opened as long ago as 1834.
W8a, which helps take the big boxes on special wagons. We introduced a station upgrade fund with an ambition that when we finished the upgrade, the whole route would have the look and feel of a new railway.”
He continues: “As the IRP emergent thinking became clearer and Northern Powerhouse Rail ambitions became clearer, there was a very sensible question along the lines of: actually, the NPR scheme will need to do things between Manchester and York on this very route, what could you do while you’re there and could you tell us if that will reduce disruption for passengers? We’re still working that up. It’s one of the least mature elements of the scheme. We also, as part of that, introduced ETCS [European Train Control System] across the whole route, so we put it east of Leeds.”
Having been criticised for early versions of the upgrade doing little or nothing for freight, the DfT began to take an interest in this area. Reed tells RAIL: “So, one of the things - and we haven’t landed this with the DfT yet, we’re giving them some options at the moment - is what will it take to run 15 additional intermodal freight trains per day? We have also agreed that we will provision the route for W12 between Manchester and Thornhill Junction. There are a handful of tunnels and structures in there that we need to do some work to.
“Where the Department has landed, subject to the business case process, is that at the last investment gateway we went to DfT and the Treasury, and they want Option G. Since then, we’re working to add the freight in once they have a price and proposal from us.
“I’m not sure how long it will take for them to work through that. The one thing to note with the freight is that the ask from the Department that we’re working up is: how do you accommodate that by flexing passenger train services.
“It’s not build enough infrastructure for a complete new path, so what we’re teasing out with the Department is what that means. Do we take slightly lower performance because we’re squeezing this path in? Or do we run it in off-peak hours? There’s a whole lot of choices that we’ve got to work through with the Department over the next 12-18 months.”
With ambition comes expense. Last July, the DfT announced funding of over £9bn for the project and said that it was releasing £959m to be spent on the remaining electrification between Manchester and Stalybridge.
This came before Reed spoke to RAIL, so it’s likely that TRU will need further funding if it’s to deliver the extra improvements he’s outlined.
Out on the line
While electrification is the most obvious benefit that’s expected from the TransPennine Route Upgrade, it’s not the only change. NR plans to cut journey times by remodelling and realigning track. It plans to increase capacity with extra track and flying junctions. And at the unglamorous end of upgrade work, it plans to improve drainage. The result should be as close to a new railway as it’s possible to get from a line opened as long ago as 1834.
The most complex part of the programme is Project W3, which runs from Huddersfield to Dewsbury. TRU West Alliance Director Phil Millington explains: “The whole route is going from a two-track to a four-track section, and with Huddersfield station being significantly remodelled and upgraded to make it a 21st century station.
The Government’s interest and policies on decarbonisation drove us completely to a fully electrified solution. That was a really big shift.
Jim Reed, Trans-Pennine Route Upgrade Programme Director, Network Rail
“We’ve recently been awarded the Transport and Works Act Order there, which is a real bonus for the project as it came in a few months early. The whole team across operators and key external stakeholders has been a real success story for us. We’re really proud of that.”
RAIL 929 revealed that NR planned to spend £1.5bn on this eight-mile section of line. At Huddersfield station, it will add a second island platform and abolish two bays that face Leeds. This will give a station with four through platforms and two bays - one facing Leeds and one for trains to and from Sheffield. To link the new island platform, NR will extend the subway and build a new footbridge at the Leeds end of the station.
Land for the new island will come by removing four carriage sidings. In their place, NR will lay sidings at Hillhouse, where it also plans a temporary platform for use when Huddersfield is closed for work.
NR will double the track east of Huddersfield, laying four tracks on the viaduct:
Down Slow, Up Slow, Down Fast, Up Fast. The Slow lines will serve intermediate twinplatform stations at Deighton, Mirfield and Ravensthorpe (NR will close the current station and build a new one west of today’s). The Fast lines will run without interruption past Heaton Lodge Junction and Thornhill Junction. where they will merge with the 75mph Slow lines before Dewsbury.
Thornhill Junction will be rebuilt to become a flying junction where the 110mph Fast lines for Leeds will cross the pair of tracks serving Wakefield Kirkgate.
Baker Viaduct (named for railwayman Stuart Baker who died in 2021) will carry the lines over the River Calder and adjacent canal on a different alignment from today’s.
Millington tells RAIL: “We can work alongside this route while we’ve got operational trains, so we can work midweek. Obviously we need a series of possessions and big blocks in that area to do the commissionings.
“How it’s currently planned is that there are three big commissionings through this area. One at Huddersfield, called ‘Huddersfield 1’, which is part of the station work and viaduct work. We then come back 12 months later to finish off Huddersfield station itself and undertake a second commissioning.
“The third big commissioning is around Ravensthorpe, with a new flying junction going in there. So, three or four months after Huddersfield blockade number two, we shut the railway for 30-or-so days to go and complete that Ravensthorpe blockade, called ‘the eye of the needle’. It’s our key junction, so we need to remodel the whole of the junction by putting in a new flyover.
“So, those are the three major interventions on W3: Huddersfield 1, Huddersfield 2 and the Ravensthorpe block, all around 2025 and 2026.”
That’s all to come, but Millington already has teams hard at work on Project W1, which runs from Manchester Victoria to Stalybridge (where Project W2a remodels the station).
He explains in late-summer: “That part of the route is well into delivery - probably 60%-65% complete for the upgrades and around 70% completed for the track renewals. We have around 50% of the OLE installed.
“We’ve completed a signalling commissioning, which took place in June this year. A second signalling commissioning is planned for next March, with a 26-day blockade. The current plan takes us on W1 and W2a to an infrastructure ready-for-use date of mid-2024. That enables a turnback facility for electric trains between Manchester and Stalybridge.”
Although Project W2 covers Stalybridge to Huddersfield, NR has split it into W2a, W2b and W2c to make planning easier, because different sections are at different planning stages.
Millington says: “Project W2c is fairly recent. W2b, up until the back end of last year, was very much like W1 with upgrades, electrification, resignalling, and lots of
Three or four months after Huddersfield blockade number two, we shut the railway for 30-or-so days to go and complete that Ravensthorpe blockade, called ‘the eye of the needle’. It’s our key junction, so we need to remodel the whole of the junction by putting in a new f lyover. Phil Millington, TRU West Alliance Director
resilience work around track and structures.
“Since Option G was introduced, that route up to Marsden from Huddersfield is going from a two-line section to a three-line section, which means we’re in different stages of development for W2b and that other section. So, just for now, we’ve renamed that other section between Marsden and Huddersfield W2c.
“When we get to the option selection position, it will be back to one project. But just for ease of referencing for us while we’re planning, it’s been easier to split them out.
“W2b is a two-line section that’s being upgraded for resilience work, so that’s track renewals and some modifications, upgrading some of the stations, resignalling, bridge strengthening, and bridge reconstruction work. Also in there are two major interventions at Scout Tunnel and Stalybridge Tunnel.
“Going to W12 gauge requires some significant work in those tunnels. The current scheme is showing that we’re going to slab-track both of those tunnels. We’re probably looking at a 40-day blockade to get that in place.
“Scout Tunnel is only 200 yards long. But because it’s on a reverse curve, to get the transitions in it becomes a similar length scheme to Stalybridge, which is a huge tunnel. Quite challenging, but very exciting as well.”
To complete the western projects, Millington adds: “W4 takes us from just the other side of Ravensthorpe up to Leeds, and is similar to W1 and W2b sections. It’s an enhancement/ upgrade part of the scheme, so full electrification, signalling works, and bridge renewals.
“And one of the key things in there is Morley station. We’re building a new station about 200-300 metres to the east of the current station. We need to do that to get the right line speeds through there - it’s quite a tight curve. That’s planned for the middle of next year. The rest of it is a track upgrade, electrification and resignalling.
Marsden rose to prominence last autumn, when DfT published its Integrated Rail Plan. This revealed that in place of a completely new Northern Powerhouse Rail line between Manchester and Leeds, DfT proposed building new only as far east as Marsden. Here, NPR trains would join NR’s route to head down the eastern flank of the Pennines into Huddersfield.
Heading east from Leeds
While Leeds sits outside TRU, Reed notes: “We’ve done some work, slightly separately, such as Platform 0. TRU has ended up delivering them, rather than them being part of TRU, if you see what I mean.
“There is a separate programme looking at the Leeds area improvement plan, which is taking a much bigger view of all the routes that come into and out of Leeds to see what’s the right thing to do. We link up with them.
But very strictly as a programme, we make use of what’s there and need it to stay there, but we’re not intending to improve it.”
East of Leeds, NR has combined Projects E2, E3 and E4 into one, to deliver them more efficiently now that it’s completed their individual planning.
TRU East Alliance Manager Andy Stocks tells RAIL: “You come out of Leeds along Marsh Lane viaduct. There are various upgrades along that route, then you come to the key issue for east of Leeds, which is the area around Neville Hill depot.
“Currently, that’s going through development. But we’re looking at a quite serious piece of new layout there to make entry into the depot and also entry into the freight yards there on the south side better, to stop delays on the main line. That’s quite a big enhancement. And all that area is resignalled and electrified.”
Crossgates to Garforth (Project E3) is the subject of fresh development work, with the DfT interested in TRU Option G. This has the potential to deliver a very different railway to the twin-track one that’s there today. NR remains coy about its plans, but notes that it might need to pursue a Transport and Works Act Order.
Stocks explains the next section: “From Garforth into Church Fenton is essentially E4, and that’s very much an upgrade. It’s resignalling, electrification, and upgrades to culverts, underbridges, overbridges and drainage. That gets you to Church Fenton. There’s a remodelling exercise at Church Fenton to ease line speed through there and enhance capability, so we’re extending the loop at Church Fenton to give better journey times and holding capacity.
“Then you’re into Project E1, which is the project we’re fully involved with at the moment. That is a classic enhancement job. We’re upgrading the line speed to 125mph, there’s signalling works, full electrification of all four lines - it’s not just the Up and Down Leeds, it’s the Normantons that run parallel to it as well. And we’re essentially renewing all the track on the Up and Down
Leeds all the way to York, and renewing the S&C [switches and crossings] on the south side of York around the
Holgate area.”
In August, the wires were now probably 40% up, to give a perspective on that. It should be complete around Week 33 [November]. Track renewals on all four lines are probably around 30% complete.
NR plans to tie in this new section of electric railway into the East Coast Main Line at Colton over the next two Christmas holidays, so that it can energise the route in March 2024 and complete its 125mph trackworks by December 2024.
Despite the volume of track renewals needed across TRU, NR is opting to deliver them as discrete packages, rather than drive a high-volume track renewal train from one side of the Pennines to the other. Its rule of thumb is to renew anything that was planned to be done before 2030. Anything planned for after 2030 will then be done when its time comes. In total, NR expects to renew or lay new a total of 134 miles of track.
Shifting to ETCS in-cab signalling is another route-wide aspect of TRU. NR Route Managing Director Rob McIntosh told RAIL last summer that this was the least mature part of the upgrade. He said it would learn as much as possible from NR’s East Coast Main Line ETCS project, adding that it was likely to be delivered using a national framework contract that itself learnt from the ECML scheme.
NR is still planning how to implement ETCS. In the meantime, there will be changes to today’s signalling. Project W3 will include closing Diggle sign
al box (built in 1885) with control shifting to York Rail Operating Centre (ROC). Batley box (1878) will also close, again in favour of York ROC. Manchester East Signalling Centre will shut, with control shifting to Manchester ROC. This will leave the route under Manchester and York ROCs.
Challenges remain
In its July report, the National Audit Office highlighted several challenges to TRU, including NR’s negotiations with train operators to secure track access. In part, NR can mitigate the effects of closing the line by running trains over diversionary routes. Between Church Fenton and Leeds, trains can run via Castleford - as they did when NR relaid the junction at Micklefield.
Stocks notes: “There’s quite a lot of resilience work that NR has been getting on with for quite a number of years - signalling upgrades,
Despite the volume of track renewals needed across TRU, NR is opting to deliver them as discrete packages, rather than drive a highvolume track renewal train from one side of the Pennines to the other.
track upgrades, S&C refurbishment, that type of thing.
“We’re specifically doing some work at Castleford. We’re reopening Platform 2 and we’re doing quite a bit of work from the signalling point of view to increase headways. We’ve put crossovers in to get some flexibility around Castleford. So, it will benefit the Castleford route when we’ve finished, there’s no doubt about it. The station will look better than it does at the moment, with a good platform on one side and an eyesore on the other.”
There’s another route between Leeds and Thornhill Junction to divert trains via Wakefield Kirkgate.
For the Pennine section of the line, trains can use the Calder Valley route via Hebden Bridge and Rochdale, which leaves the main trans-Pennine routes at Heaton Lodge Junction. That leaves the two-mile section that both route share between Heaton Lodge and Ravensthorpe. To take trains away from this section means sending them via Bradford Interchange, where they will need to reverse.
The NAO’s other warning is sent squarely towards the Department for Transport, and that’s about rolling stock. Its July report said: “A critical requirement to achieve the full benefits from the upgrade is the procurement and use of electric trains that are capable of using new signalling infrastructure. The Department and Network Rail are developing reecta strategy for the next business case approval in December 2022 to set out what additional rolling stock would be required and by when.”
Funding for rolling stock should come from the DfT’s train operating budget, said the NAO. From NR’s perspective, Reed notes: “The big job we have with ETCS is that the infrastructure is one thing, but the rolling stock and the driver training - the operational business change - is actually the bigger, more complicated piece. So that’s a real focus for us at the moment as the rolling stock strategy is being developed.”
Train operator TransPennine Express chiefly uses modern Class 802 bi-mode trains on the route. They can operate on diesel power or as electric trains, so pose no problems to NR’s wiring programme. They are also similar to stock that LNER uses on the ECML and which will in future be running under ETCS signalling. TPE’s other stock sits in two fleets. It has modern Class 68 locomotives hauling Mk 5 stock and older Class 185 diesel multiple units (DMUs) dating from the mid-2000s.
Meanwhile, Northern has a more varied fleet with which it operates local services on sections of the route. They include Class 158 DMUs that date from the late 1980s and modern Class 195 DMUs built recently by CAF.
Despite the ‘express’ in its name, TPE runs most of the stopping services along the route between Manchester and Leeds, usually to and from Huddersfield. These are the trains that would most benefit from the extra acceleration that electrification brings.
The DfT has some time in which to decide (or leave it to Great British Railways to decide), because TRU currently has a completion date of somewhere between 2035 and 2041.
There’s one challenge the NAO doesn’t mention. That’s the possibility that the recent change of Transport Secretary shifts the DfT’s position again. Just as interest grew under previous incumbent-but-one Grant Shapps, so interest could wane under new Transport Secretary Mark Harper.
There’s a further risk that DfT could treat the TRU in the same way it treated the Northern Hub project in Manchester. Here, it only permitted NR to deliver half the project but still expected to reap the full benefits. So, NR built Ordsall Chord, but DfT failed to fund the rest of the project that would ease the flow of trains through Manchester.
For TRU, there’s a risk that NR’s funding despite DfT pledges - only stretches to the Huddersfield section and the E1 and W1 work already under way. That would leave the rest of the line constrained, unelectrified, and once more waiting for an upgrade.
There’s a remodelling exercise at Church Fenton to ease line speed through there and enhance capability, so we’re extending the loop at Church Fenton to give better journey times and holding capacity. Andy Stocks, TRU East Alliance Manager