Scan of pages from "A Rail Strategy for the North West"

Looks like late 80s as Chester was on-line in around 1993.

Chester and Ellesmere are now Merseyrail. Conway Park underground station was cut into the tunnel. It does point out that the original approved Merseyrail plans were cut short and lots of it as well. A six platform interchange station on the Outer Loop at Broad Green called Rocket was to be built but abandoned by the objecting efforts of Tory MP Anthony Steen (who was heavily into the expenses scandals). Liverpool South Parkway was the other and completed about 30 years late. The station is current a white elephant but if the eastern section of the Outer Loop is used fro Everton and Liverpool FC's then the station will fulfil its original intentions. The city is desperate to extend the network.

The City Line out to Wigan is currently being electrified, which was in the original plan with a Crossrail created from Wigan to the Wirral via the Wapping Tunnel from Edge Hill to the underground Liverpool Central station. Work was started on the tunnel but abandoned.The works completed were extensive with an underground burrowing junction built south of Central station and tunnel headers cut into rock to branch into the Wapping Tunnel. As the City Line is being electrified the next obvious project is restarting the 1829 Wapping tunnel project to connect the eastern section of the city to the rest of the underground electrified Merseyrail network creating and east-west Crossrail. Not completing this eastern section of the city has put the east of the city a great disadvantage.

Warrington was to be on Merseyrail and completed by 1991. Thatcher dropped all work on Merseyrail. Woodchurch and Prenton stations on the Wirral were to be built as a part of the Conway Park station project but extending Merseyrail's electric lines a few miles from Bidston up the Wrexham line was deemed not worthy. Conway Park was to be a station for shopping access and the new stations would give wider access for the shopping area with park & ride.

The link to the Rail Strategy Document mentions a River Dee crossing from Meols on the Wirral to North Wales. The environmentalists will object if a bridge. A tunnel could be bored cheaply enough from West Kirby extending Merseyrail to at least Prestatyn in North Wales. The Dee is not deep. A tunnel has been talked about for over 100 years. This tunnel would create a CrossRail from Wigan to Prestatyn via Liverpool if the Wapping Tunnel in Liverpool is reused. Nice, and if the Welsh want to pay then great. It will bring North Wales right into the Wirral and Liverpool, and easy airport access when they get a station at te airport. The North Wales economy then will greatly improve and the Liverpool Metropolitan area extended. As the crow fly's North Wales is very near to Liverpool but difficult to get to with two large estuaries in the way isolating the two adjacent regions.

The EU has long term plans to link all capital cities and all major cities by HSR. They mentioned a "tunnel" from Liverpool to Dublin. A Dee tunnel could be a part of this and eligible for EU funding running HSR and Merseyrail. So, maybe four parallel tunnels.

But Liverpool city centre and the inner-cities are priority for Merseyrail funding and must be with so much need in these districts and available awaiting rail infrastructure.

This is more interesting..

Here is another proposing to open the eastern section of the original Merseyrail Outer Loop.to complete the full loop, to facilitate stadia for the two football clubs killing many birds with one stone. It uses the example of the success at Arsenal:

The idea of a Broad Green interchange may have been influenced by the fact that the local councillor was a certain Derek Hatton. The Liverpool

- Blackpool services had stops added at Broad Green at about that time - these stops have since been deleted.

Liverpool > South Parkway was the other and completed about 30 years late. The

Nonsense, it is becoming very busy, and I am told the 200+ space car park is often full before 09:00 on weekdays.

Liverpool Central could never have accommodated the City line services unless the rebuilding to 4 platforms had taken place, and that would have been mega-expensive. Moreover, diverting the City line services would have made it more difficult to interchange with long-distance services at Lime Street.

A more recent suggestion to reopen part of the Riverside line, and divert some services to a new station near the waterfront was even dafter, as passengers (the vast majority) for Lime Street & the city centre would have had to change trains at Edge Hill.

Bevan

En el artículo , Bevan Price escribió:

Central is currently closed for a major refurb. I'm unsure if any platform changes are being made.

This rather twee website implies that the refurb is mainly cosmetic:

building a new station down the tunnel near to Liverpool 1 shopping centre to avoid disruption.

The platforms are being opened out, removing the equipment cupboards etc, I believe, but it will still be overcrowded.

It would to me make sense to build another island platform, perhaps in an enlarged version of the unused header tunnel that runs alongside the platforms for part of their length (there is not a lot known about this, but its portal can be seen on entering Liverpool Central from the north on the left hand side, and I have seen an early plan of the station showing it). This could perhaps be used for terminating services for now.

It would make a lot of sense to do this before anything else is built on top.

Neil

What they are doing at the station now is temporary. They could get the terminating trains away from the station and space the trains better (timing) which will alleviate matters, however extra platforms or moving the station with extra platforms is the only answer. It should be done ASAP before someone is killed. 17th busiest station in the UK on two platforms is amazing. If it was in London it would have been extended decades ago. If the station is extended it would be used even more.

The header tunnel(s) I believe was built in the 1970s to branch into the Wapping Tunnel to bring the east of the city into the central underground section. It was cancelled. A very expensive burrowing junction was also built to accommodate the branch. All this is "mothballed". After the electrification of the Liverpool-Mcr line finishing off this tunnel project is the natural thing to do.

The 'burrowing junction' similar to the one at Hamilton Square, allows trains from Edge Hill to run underneath those to Hunts Cross, increasing line capacity.

A problem arose as Merseyrail wanted to retain the reversing siding that enabled trains to terminate at Central - only the Southport trains would go on to Hunts Cross doing the north-south Crossrail. This would mean three parallel tracks running together in the cutting. The solution was to bore a new single track tunnel to take the rail line from Central toward Hunts Cross. This is the curved line shown in the diagram below. This new tunnel would allow it to bridge over the proposed line from Edge Hill before emerging in the old CLC tunnel to the south, at a level higher than the incoming line from Hunts Cross.

Two short header tunnels were driven to allow the future Edge Hill Spur tunnels to be constructed without a need to form junction tunnels on a used railway. These headers were only a few metres long. The project team attempted to get the DfT to fund the construction of the branch tunnels as far as the Wapping Tunnel using a then new tunnelling technique but were turned down flat.

Liverpool's Lost Railway Heritage:

En el artículo , News escribió:

Two sharp bends there. Is it practical, engineering-wise?

I would have thought a better use of the Wapping tunnel would be to bring the M62 into the city centre, but of course the widening and improvement work at Edge Lane is now (almost?) completed.

Thanks for that, will have a read.

Yes. The Burrowing junction is built and there and ready. The header tunnels are there and ready. Once the Liverpool-Mcr electrification is complete the tunellelling can commence as a major cost is taken care of.

The Wapping Tunnel is not suitable for road use due to width, ventilation etc. Why would you want to pour the contents of motorway into a city centre? It just does not make sense to do that. Liverpool should spend on its assets, it rail infrastructure which will maintain the integrity of the city. Road carve the city up and make cities soulless.

The Wapping tunnel is great for the 1970s project; to get the eastern rail section of Merseyside into the Liverpool and Birkenhead underground central sections creating very easily an east-west CROSSRAIL. It also emerges at the Liverpool Arena at Kings Dock. If in London a station would have been built and the tunnel reused. They use buses to get people to the arena making a coach park on valuable dockland which can be put to far better use than parking busses.

En el artículo , News escribió:

I seem to remember the proposal was to make it one-way only, presumably traffic travelling into the city, as that was viable.

Deliver passengers direct to the new Liverpool One development, Albert Dock and hotels, deliver passengers direct to the new cruise ferry terminals, now that permission has been granted for cruises to originate and terminate at Liverpool?

Even an underground road re-using a disused tunnel?

Ventilation and new requirement for rescue areas etc.

London tried that with the A40(M), renamed A40 to attempt to say it is not a major road. It pours traffic, very slowly, into Marylebone Rd, which is one of Europe's most polluted roads. The traffic is always backed up as the medieval streets can't cope with the volume of traffic. There is not much difference. Cars should be peeled back and rail take over. Liverpool can stop the rot now and use the amazing rail infrastructure it has to keep a still a very walkable and human city centre. After Merseyrail is updated an integrated tram-train network can be an extension of Merseyrail. Not the garbage that Merseytram was - a stand alone tram network integrated into nothing. A joke.

It is what the cars do when they get out of the tunnel and where they stop. Liverpool's city centre and docklands are too precious to be ruined by cars and chara-bancs.

En el artículo , News escribió:

It's too late. It's already ruined.

The council has allowed development of crappy new buildings to wreck the waterfront. The new museum, while a lovely building, is totally out of keeping with the Three Graces, the new black glass obelisks at Mann Island are simply hideous and One Park West over the road, only a few years old, already looks dated and tired. And don't get me started on the Echo Arena.

The United Nations is threatening to remove Liverpool's World Heritage status because of the inappropriate new development on the waterfront.

Further along, new identikit hotels have been built (Crowne Plaza etc.) with absolutely zero architectural merit and zero respect for their surroundings and the waterfront's heritage.

Moving into the city, some good work has been done, such as the redevelopment of Lime Street station esplanade and the demolition of the hideous 60s tower block and shops obscuring the station facade. But a lot of useful, solid, historic buildings are slowly, insidiously being lost to demolition and "development" which seems to be mostly cheap and nasty student accommodation, like the huge building constructed alongside Lime Street station.

By the way, Drivel, you're as dogmatic as ever. Got spanked out of uk.d-i-y and now infesting uk.railway, hmm? Never mind, we've got Woddles to play with now.

Would you awfully mind not cross-posting your trolling of him, thankyou. We're entertaining ourselves with 'News' quite adequately and politely over here.

Nick