Many moons ago, high-speed train correspondent Mr. Pokery wrote,
The Welsh assembly wants a high-speed rail link to Europe. Even if routing the trains westwards from St. Pancras would be tricky, would it be possible to use the now-abandoned slower southern link to send some trains on a route of Cardiff to Waterloo to Ashford to Stations East?
Good on the Welsh. It's not just daffs, rugby, and CBBC commissions.
Looking into the geography, we were surprised at how close the lines going out of Paddington come to the lines going out of Euston. We'll kick the southern approach into touch, and offer a fairly simple preferred route: New Lines to St Pancras, six miles along normal railways in north London, then to the Great Western line. The details:
- Normal operation from Europe to just north of St. Pancras, but turn right rather than enter the station.
- Travel along the Primrose Hill goods line for about a mile, to the West Coast line, about 1¼ miles out of Euston.
- Then mosey along the regional lines for about 4 miles, to Willesden Junction.
- Take a left turn past Old Oak Common for about a mile, and that'll join the Great Western route on the slow lines around Acton Main Line.
- Cross to the fast lines at some convenient point.
From a track point of view, there is one big and two small bottlenecks. The big one is at Willesden Junction; we believe, but we're not entirely sure, that there is access from the Slow lines to the Acton line without crossing the Fast lines. If there isn't, there may be a case to build a flyover for this purpose; the probable cost would be tens of millions.
The small bottlenecks are the junctions with the slow lines at Primrose Hill and Acton. In each case, trains travelling to Wales would need to cross the path of local trains heading to London. Some care would need to be taken with signals, particularly at Primrose Hill, where there is a relatively steep incline up. Trains travelling from Wales could peel off at both turns.
One side-effect of this proposal could be to improve the links between the WCML and St. Pancras, making the latter a more viable diversion when Euston needs to be closed. Similarly, any enhancement on the Old Oak route would enable some Paddington trains to run into Euston.
From a train point of view, we run into the problem of power. Eurostar trains are configured to use overhead power cables, but the GWR line to Cardiff has no overhead cables beyond Heathrow. Existing Eurostar trains do not have a diesel engine, and it appears that such engines would require a safety case in order to be allowed through the tunnel. This should not be an insurmountable problem: if necessary, an engine change could be made at Ebbsfleet or Ashford.
The final problem is the one that might scupper the plan: the Westminster government's paranoid fantasies about Britain being simultaneously a part of, and apart from, Europe. Westminster insists that all passengers through the Tunnel book their tickets in advance, have their baggage scanned, their pass-ports checked, and treats the whole operation as though it were an airport. This would, in effect, close at least one platform of Cardiff station for an hour before each departure, and perhaps 30 minutes around each arrival. This would not be an efficient use of the station. It appears that this security theatre is a matter reserved by Westminster, not one devolved to the Welsh Assembly.
What about the putative Scottish link, requiring merely a right turn at the entrance to St. Pancras, and running on the existing East Coast electrics? Immigration is a matter explicitly reserved from the Scottish parliament. The Channel Tunnel Act 1987 is similarly reserved from Scotland, but the UK government's insistence on separating cross-channel traffic from all others is not included in the legislation, and it is not clear that it is a provision for dealing with terrorism. There could be the sniff of a constitutional challenge were the Scottish Parliament to propose a through service.
Our view is that the railway infrastructure is in place. All that's needed is for someone to challenge the Interior Ministry's xenophobia, borrow or build a spare Eurostar set (or just a half-set), and the service can begin.
