would the woodhead route have survived if never modernised ?

[melmerby]

11 hours ago, MarkC said:

To perhaps open another topic though - in hindsight it might have been better to rebuild the London Extension, opening it out to Berne Gauge, for HS operation as the CTRL was also being built

Total non starter.

Much of the GC extension beyond Rugby had been lost and it didn't go to one of the primary objectives - Birmingham.

HS2 is to being built to relieve traffic on  the WCML to West Midlands and further.

 

The GC extension was the wrong line at the wrong time, most of the decent traffic centres from Rugby northwards had already been bagged by the existing railways and the lower section passed through little of signicance.

[phil-b259]

28 minutes ago, 62613 said:

I think the original proposal was to close Hope Valley, and keep Woodhead open

 

It was - but had the Hope Valley shut then Woodhead would have stayed open regardless of what happened to freight (though it may have been de-electrified when the OLE and traction was considered life expired).

 

As soon as the Hope Valley got its reprieve the Woodhead route was doomed - not so much of a case of 'if' but more a case of 'when'

Edited February 24, 2023 by phil-b259

[phil-b259]

3 minutes ago, melmerby said:

Total non starter.

Much of the GC extension beyond Rugby had been lost and it didn't go to one of the primary objectives - Birmingham.

HS2 is to being built to relieve traffic on  the WCML to West Midlands and further.

 

The GC extension was the wrong line at the wrong time, most of the decent traffic centres from Rugby northwards had already been bagged by the existing railways and the lower section passed through little of signicance.

 

Plus there is the not so small issue of what happens south of Aylesbury! 

 

The twin track Metropolitan line (or the GC & GWR joint line) is hardly conducive to high speed services what with the intensive commuter operations and Marylebone would need serious expansion (much akin to the HS2 works at Euston) to handle more trains.

 

[MarkC]

15 minutes ago, melmerby said:

Total non starter.

Much of the GC extension beyond Rugby had been lost and it didn't go to one of the primary objectives - Birmingham.

HS2 is to being built to relieve traffic on  the WCML to West Midlands and further.

 

The GC extension was the wrong line at the wrong time, most of the decent traffic centres from Rugby northwards had already been bagged by the existing railways and the lower section passed through little of signicance.

I'm well aware of the history of the London Extension, but I was thinking more of getting to the North & North West, tbh - and yes, we know about relieving pressure on the WCML. Pity the objectors don't grasp that...

[MarkC]

16 minutes ago, phil-b259 said:

 

It was - but had the Hope Valley shut then Woodhead would have stayed open regardless of what happened to freight (though it may have been de-electrified when the OLE and traction was considered life expired).

 

As soon as the Hope Valley got its reprieve the Woodhead route was doomed - not so much of a case of 'if' but more a case of 'when'

I never grasped why Woodhead was to be retained as opposed to the Hope Valley, particularly as the direct Manchester-Matlock-Derby route was closed.

 

Mark

[woodenhead]

21 minutes ago, melmerby said:

the lower section passed through little of signicance.

A bit like HS2 🤣

[62613]

36 minutes ago, woodenhead said:

But a series of communities lacking on Woodhead, kept it open.

 

Who would have used Woodhead and Dunford Bridge regularly?  The losers though were the communities east of Penistone getting to Sheffield, but with no Sheffield Victoria and certainly no money to put in a curve they were doomed when passenger services ceased.

 

Today we can see it was the right decision to keep the stations within the Peak District National Park open.

Absolutely correct, having used the line to get to Edale and Grindleford in the early 80s

[Edwin_m]

47 minutes ago, woodenhead said:

But a series of communities lacking on Woodhead, kept it open.

Also Woodhead had no significant freight traffic generated on the route itself (except Stocksbridge which was and still is served by the surviving remnant).  Closing Hope Valley would have meant saying goodbye to the Peak District stone traffic, or keeping the route through Bakewell open instead.  

[pH]

6 hours ago, PenrithBeacon said:

The carbon monoxide from the diesel exhausts might just stop the engines working.  

 

1 hour ago, 62613 said:

I hope diesel exhausts don't contain carbon monoxide. That would imply incomplete combustion …

Incomplete combustion, you say?

 

https://youtu.be/wXpTRpn_fuQ

[Reorte]

1 hour ago, woodenhead said:

Today we can see it was the right decision to keep the stations within the Peak District National Park open.

Agree, although with the bias that it's local to me so I make some use of it :)

[pH]

6 hours ago, PenrithBeacon said:

In US there is at least one tunnel which has to be purged with fresh air after a train has passed …

Offhand, I can think of two in the US; the Cascade Tunnel on BNSF in Washington State and the Moffat Tunnel on UP in Colorado. And another two in Canada; the Mount Macdonald Tunnel on the CPR in British Columbia and the Thornton Tunnel under Burnaby in Greater Vancouver. I’m sure there are more.

[Reorte]

42 minutes ago, Edwin_m said:

Also Woodhead had no significant freight traffic generated on the route itself (except Stocksbridge which was and still is served by the surviving remnant).  Closing Hope Valley would have meant saying goodbye to the Peak District stone traffic, or keeping the route through Bakewell open instead.  

I think it depends. Some of the stone traffic heads off in the Manchester direction and it's plausible a fair amount of that would've remained open for commuter traffic (definitely as far as Marple, quite possibly as far as New Mills, maybe as far as Chinley, and at that point it's worth keeping that connection up to the quarries).

[jamie92208]

4 hours ago, Edwin_m said:

Tunnel ventilation was one of the reasons several mountain sections in the States were electrified.  However that was to eliminate steam working, and with the advent of diesels these electrifications were fairly quickly abandoned.  Which suggests that steam would be worse than diesel from a pollution point of view.  

There are at least two that I know of, Moffatt tunnel on the Denver and Rio Grande route from Denver and Cascade tunnel on the former Great Northern route that used to be electrified.  Strangely enough a steam loco shut down diesel helpers on the Donner pass route when IIRC the Challenger 3985 was en route to Sacramento  with a diesel helper supposedly doing most of the work.  The exhaust  from the steamer caused the diesel to shut down so 3985 had to be opened up and apparently  the crew got down on tbe cab floor and hung their heads outside to keep breathing just like crews did on Wentworth bank before electrification.

 

Jamie

[Edwin_m]

Went through the Moffat tunnel on Amtrak in 1986, and part way through we screeched to a halt and the lights went out.  It was announced that the driver had received a message to shut down because the concentration of fumes was getting to high.  

[Wheatley]

9 hours ago, woodenhead said:

Taking an alternative history route - if they had abandoned the Wath routes to Penistone in 1950 rather than electrify they could have routed trains via Healey Mills:

 

Wath-Barnsley-Healey Mills-Mirfield-Stalybridge-Guide Bridge-Woodley then pick up the South Mancheser avoiding route to Skelton and on to Warrington.  At that time the Standedge route was four track and busy but as the 50s and 60s progressed it became less so and would easily have soaked up the Woodhead traffic from Wath, traffic from Sheffield could have continued going via Penistone until passenger services ceased and then been routed via Wath or sent via Chinley

 

Being freight they didn't have to route via Penistone, they chose to.  At the time however, it probably worked out more cost effective to electrify and keep going over Woodhead but economics caught up and the trains did go via Standedge.

 

I once sketched out a layout plan for a mate, based on Barnsley but with the OLE extended from Wath via Quarry Junction to Healy Mills. Couple of goods loops behind the up platform from Barnsley Station Junction to Jumble Lane too instead of the PW yard and football pen that replaced the loco shed. 

 

Only the traction was replaced over Woodhead, the expensive 19th century labour-intensive operating system with mechanical signalling, lots of short sections, lots of boxes, lots of signalman and their reliefs and supervisors, remained until the end. Those which outlasted the electrics survived into the 1990s. A fully modernised route with a power box co-located with the ECR at Penistone and track circuit block with MAS signalling might have resulted in a different financial case for closure. 

Edited February 24, 2023 by Wheatley

[TheSignalEngineer]

4 hours ago, woodenhead said:

Who would have used Woodhead and Dunford Bridge regularly? 

There are only about five or six houses at Woodhead, all formerly associated with the railway. Crowden is slightly more populated, there are about 12 occupied properties within a 20 minute walk of the old station site. One of those used to be a row of railway cottages. There is only one isolated farm between the two ends of the tunnel at Woodhead and Dunford Bridge. Continuing east from there it's about four miles before you find any significant population. Heading due south from Woodhead the first house you come to is the former Snake Pass Inn about six miles across the moor.

Basically the population runs out about a mile past Glossop and Hadfield stations, but the catchment area of those plus Dinting generates about a million train journeys per annum.

[Reorte]

1 hour ago, Wheatley said:

 

I once sketched out a layout plan for a mate, based on Barnsley but with the OLE extended from Wath via Quarry Junction to Healy Mills. Couple of goods loops behind the up platform from Barnsley Station Junction to Jumble Lane too instead of the PW yard and football pen that replaced the loco shed. 

 

Only the traction was replaced over Woodhead, the expensive 19th century labour-intensive operating system with mechanical signalling, lots of short sections, lots of boxes, lots of signalman and their reliefs and supervisors, remained until the end. Those which outlasted the electrics survived into the 1990s. A fully modernised route with a power box co-located with the ECR at Penistone and track circuit block with MAS signalling might have resulted in a different financial case for closure. 

Tragedy of the world quite often IMO, that the human approach to things is either unaffordable or only affordable by treating people poorly. Neither that situation nor the solutions we've come up with hold any appeal at all.

[russ p]

One thing that hasn't been mentioned is the government wanted rid of the railway to build the M67 , one carriageway was to go through the tunnel and the other over the top but in times of bad weather a contraflow through the tunnel.  I'm not entirely convinced that would have worked without major work on the tunnel as it doesn't seem wide enough 

[russ p]

14 hours ago, phil-b259 said:

 

 

the new tunnel had one ventilation shaft built mid-way along - and that shaft was not linked to the old tunnels in any way.

 

However as noted this was insufficient to disperse significant concentrations of diesel fumes which is why operating restrictions were imposed on the number of diesels per hour.

 

Do you know if that was the shaft with the 76 on as apparently its been capped?  I had a look on Google maps and I seems no shafts now remain 

[woodenhead]

20 minutes ago, russ p said:

One thing that hasn't been mentioned is the government wanted rid of the railway to build the M67 , one carriageway was to go through the tunnel and the other over the top but in times of bad weather a contraflow through the tunnel.  I'm not entirely convinced that would have worked without major work on the tunnel as it doesn't seem wide enough 

https://pathetic.org.uk/unbuilt/m67_manchester_to_sheffield_motorway/maps/City.shtml

https://pathetic.org.uk/unbuilt/m67_manchester_to_sheffield_motorway/maps/Woodhead West.shtml

https://pathetic.org.uk/unbuilt/m67_manchester_to_sheffield_motorway/maps/Woodhead East.shtml

https://pathetic.org.uk/unbuilt/m67_manchester_to_sheffield_motorway/maps/Stocksbridge.shtml

 

And it seems this plan was hatched in the 1960s, so Woodhead from a Government perspective had been doomed well before 1981 but the sheer cost of it finally put paid to the proposal.  There are two bits in existence - the M67 in Manchester itself from Denton to Mottram and the A628 Stocksbridge by-pass, the latter being built as a single track road.  In central Manchester they did demolish a strip of land which included the famous Belle Vue zoo to prepare for the road and for a long time the route of what would be the M67 would be visible by it's very lack of buildings.

 

These maps are interesting, whoever did them showed the Fallowfield loop as a dismantled railway so they must date from the late 1990s onwards, it also appears to show the M60 junction with the M67, something that did not exist until the M60 was built joining the end of the M66 to create the loop.

 

In terms of using Woodhead tunnel, it was proposed for the eastbound side, I wonder if it was for lorries climbing rather than all eastbound traffic.

[russ p]

2 hours ago, woodenhead said:

https://pathetic.org.uk/unbuilt/m67_manchester_to_sheffield_motorway/maps/City.shtml

https://pathetic.org.uk/unbuilt/m67_manchester_to_sheffield_motorway/maps/Woodhead West.shtml

https://pathetic.org.uk/unbuilt/m67_manchester_to_sheffield_motorway/maps/Woodhead East.shtml

https://pathetic.org.uk/unbuilt/m67_manchester_to_sheffield_motorway/maps/Stocksbridge.shtml

 

And it seems this plan was hatched in the 1960s, so Woodhead from a Government perspective had been doomed well before 1981 but the sheer cost of it finally put paid to the proposal.  There are two bits in existence - the M67 in Manchester itself from Denton to Mottram and the A628 Stocksbridge by-pass, the latter being built as a single track road.  In central Manchester they did demolish a strip of land which included the famous Belle Vue zoo to prepare for the road and for a long time the route of what would be the M67 would be visible by it's very lack of buildings.

 

These maps are interesting, whoever did them showed the Fallowfield loop as a dismantled railway so they must date from the late 1990s onwards, it also appears to show the M60 junction with the M67, something that did not exist until the M60 was built joining the end of the M66 to create the loop.

 

In terms of using Woodhead tunnel, it was proposed for the eastbound side, I wonder if it was for lorries climbing rather than all eastbound traffic.

 

Unless the tunnel was purely for bad weather use? It shows more than one airshaft , I wonder if its an older map with shafts of the original tunnels or they were planning to sink others 

[The Stationmaster]

20 hours ago, russ p said:

 

Did the new tunnel not have one air shaft? I'm not sure if I read somewhere it had one which linked into one for the original tunnels. I remember about 20 years ago seeing a ventilation shaft on the Moor above which had a great 76 mural on it. You could see down it but it appeared to split into two presumably for the two old tunnels not sure if it had another branch to the new one

Speaking as somebody who - much to his disappointment at the time - travelled through the Woodhead Tunnel behind a diesel (an EE Type 4) I certainly didn't notice any unusual umpact of diesel fumes in the passenger accommodation even with some quarter lights open.

 

There was a ventilation shaft through to the one of the old tunnels but i don't know if any of the verival shafts cut to facilitate construction of the new tunnel were retained for ventilation purposes.

[The Stationmaster]

18 hours ago, woodenhead said:

A bit like HS2 🤣

Exactly so.  Nowadays the idea of intermediate stations on main lines between main centres of population seems positively old fashioned - and something of a nuisance!

[MidlandRed]

1 hour ago, The Stationmaster said:

Exactly so.  Nowadays the idea of intermediate stations on main lines between main centres of population seems positively old fashioned - and something of a nuisance!

To an extent, the success (or willingness) of the strategic local authorities to lobby for major national infrastructure to reap benefits for the areas they pass through has a bearing on this. Look at HS1 and Kent - as well as the series of environmental features, way beyond HS1 one of the trade offs was to receive comprehensive train services making use of the new facilities which resulted in South Eastern High Speed. Whilst technically more difficult (slotting into the very high speed through services), it remains surprising there is no link to a hub serving say, Aylesbury. 
 

It’s surprising Buckinghamshire haven’t been doing the same - my understanding was they were in full opposition mode rather than anything else - probably a reflection of public feeling in that area, but also the fact they get all the disbenefits and few tangible benefits is somewhat surprising given the aspiration for development, especially on the Oxford/Cambridge corridor, which crosses HS2. 

Edited February 25, 2023 by MidlandRed

[62613]

12 hours ago, woodenhead said:

https://pathetic.org.uk/unbuilt/m67_manchester_to_sheffield_motorway/maps/City.shtml

https://pathetic.org.uk/unbuilt/m67_manchester_to_sheffield_motorway/maps/Woodhead West.shtml

https://pathetic.org.uk/unbuilt/m67_manchester_to_sheffield_motorway/maps/Woodhead East.shtml

https://pathetic.org.uk/unbuilt/m67_manchester_to_sheffield_motorway/maps/Stocksbridge.shtml

 

And it seems this plan was hatched in the 1960s, so Woodhead from a Government perspective had been doomed well before 1981 but the sheer cost of it finally put paid to the proposal.  There are two bits in existence - the M67 in Manchester itself from Denton to Mottram and the A628 Stocksbridge by-pass, the latter being built as a single track road.  In central Manchester they did demolish a strip of land which included the famous Belle Vue zoo to prepare for the road and for a long time the route of what would be the M67 would be visible by it's very lack of buildings.

 

These maps are interesting, whoever did them showed the Fallowfield loop as a dismantled railway so they must date from the late 1990s onwards, it also appears to show the M60 junction with the M67, something that did not exist until the M60 was built joining the end of the M66 to create the loop.

 

In terms of using Woodhead tunnel, it was proposed for the eastbound side, I wonder if it was for lorries climbing rather than all eastbound traffic.

The M67 at the Mottram end is now being extended about half a mile to Mottram Moor, I think as dual carriageway, which doesn't actually do much to alleviate the problems of traffic through Tintwistle,Hollingworth and Mottram. Still, after about 40 years, it's nice to know that the Tintwistle - Mottram bypass has at least been started.

 

My MP has also in the last 12 years, lobbied for a Woodhead road tunnel, and for Metrolink to get to Stalybridge (god knows why!)

Edited February 25, 2023 by 62613