Liverpool International Railway Station

Requirements

One of the questions that come up every so often is "If Liverpool gets an HS2/NPR connection where will the station be?". It is a difficult question to answer, Steve Rotheram and the LCR have effectively ruled out expanding Lime Street, saying it is simply not possible, and I completely agree. This hasn't stopped some people, who seem more interested in the architecture than the practicality of the solution.

It is important to set out the requirements for a proper connection. For me, this is full length 400m GC gauge trains. The LCR has added close proximity to Lime Street and the existing station to that I'd add it needs to be outside the loop for practical reasons.

The space we need is defined by the with of a GC Gauge carriage,  which is 3.29m, the platforms at a minimum of 12m with an extra meter for wiggle room giving a total of 19.58m per 2 line set. For simplicity let's call it 20m.

The absolute minimum number of platforms is 4 this assumes HS2 & NPR, in reality adding some extra platforms for intentional and classic long-distance makes sense, so a more realistic size is 6 or 8 platforms. this would allow for reasonable expansion or transfer of all long-distance express trains to the new station. Leavening regional and semi-fast for Lime street & local for Central station. This means we are looking for a site 60m or 80m wide.

 Location

I do have a site in mind which fore fills all the requirements with perhaps up to 100m available if a small amount of pavement is taken. That site is currently occupied by the Mount Pleasant Car Park and the 051 nightclub, between Mount Pleasant and Brownlow Hill.

 

Taking 80m line and extending 450m forward takes the end of the platforms to under the cathedral.

Building

The land climbs from the Lime street and is some 10 meters higher by May Street several meters of headspace would be needed for this interface. Having 2 concourses allows the lower concourse at the platform end to be a reasonable size and to be constructed in a pit providing a cliff-like at May Street for the tunnelling to start, meeting the incoming 2 line tunnel.

Constructing an 80m span underground would be challenging.  Leaving supporting walls or building the walls would make the task easier, 3 walls each of 1m would add only 3m to the overall width and arranged as below they would provide fireproof divides between each platform in the underground section. 

Track layout.

 

 

 

Since the King's Cross fire there have been very strict rules for underground stations design to reduce the risks from fire. One of these is for excellent ventilation, to remove fumes, while the upper booking hall would prevent natural vertical ventilation, it could be provided lateral or vertically at the edge.

This would be unlikely to provide sufficient ventilation for the platforms. To accomplish this providing force extraction/insertion via vertical shafts at the end of the platforms could provide the needed throughput for the platforms with the Lower concourse side vents providing the entrance or exit points.

This would leave the area above the concourses free for use as a significant building.

Connections

Providing access to Liverpool's other main stations via travelators could utilise the existent access to central from the basement of Lewis's.

A station of this size would likely mean that other than an expansion of Liverpool central no new station would be needed for 100 years. Providing support for an international connection via the channel tunnel.

Full Connection

I know that currently HS2 plans barely include Liverpool as anything other than a minor adjunct but here are several plans for a dedicated Liverpool line from 20 Miles More to my own far cheaper plan here at Lymm to Lime Street.

 

Liverpool HS2/HS3 Junction

I have given some thought to the junction that would link my preferred HS2/Liverpool link to

the planned trunk. The requirements I set were a straight through connection to Manchester without using the main north-south trunk, no increase in the set of points on the main trunk and keeping speed as high as possible.

In the end, I came up with 3 options the Option 1 fulfils all these criteria, with minimal changes to the existing HS2 phase 2 plan. Option 2 would require some changes to keep the number of points down, while Option 3 is the simplest and comprises most of the principles, but is the one with the least new land take but also the slowest speeds, due to the tight radii of the curves. In order to keep within HS2 already published acceleration and speed requirements the line around the junction would need to be quaded but this, I believe has been allowed for in the original plans. I have assumed that the route to Liverpool uses the Warrington and Altrincham Junction Railway at least through Warrington.

The maximum speed that seems acceptable on curves is given by the table below, the data is taken from Minimum railway curve radius with the diagrams I have had to approximate the curves.

Curve radius	≤ 33 m/s = 73mph	≤ 56 m/s = 125mph	≤ 69 m/s = 154mph	≤ 83 m/s = 185mph	≤ 97 m/s = 216mph	≤ 111 m/s = 248mph
Cant 160 mm, cant deficiency 100 mm, no tilting trains	630 m	1800 m	2800 m	4000 m	5400 m	7000 m
Cant 160 mm, cant deficiency 200 mm, with tilting trains	450 m	1300 m	2000 m	no tilting trains planned for these speeds

North Junction

The existing proposal for phase 2 includes a junction north to east, I am not entirely sure why, given current plans have the GC route finishing before Wigan, any trains from Manchester north would have to be classic compatible and   already some routes north available via those, the same is true for Liverpool northward. So, for the purposes of this blog, I will consider the routes north to be optional though I will leave the existing planned line in red.

Option 1

This arrangement fulfils all the criteria keeping to radii of over 5000m allowing running speeds of over 200mph. It would eliminate the north chord suggest for phase 2 and replace it with a longer chord further west. It would, however, entail going through 270 degrees to transit between Liverpool and HS2 north.

It is unlikely that such speeds would be permitted on the section of line from Warrington as it passes through some residential areas making the large radii redundant.

Option 2

The simplest way to avoid some of the line speed restrictions would be to leave the Warrington Altrincham route earlier, to the west of Lymm close to the M6, to avoid steep turns it would mean leaving the route before the M6 so the existing under pass could not be used. It would involve taking a new cross country route of some 8km to link to the Manchester spur, with a chord to the south, which could use the same sets of points on the trunk as the Manchester spur.

To the north, the chord would have to be somewhat tighter and may involve adjustments to the north junction proposed for phase 2 in order to keep the points countdown. However,   geometrically it is the simplest junction and involves little change to the routings planned in phase 2.

Option 3

This is by far the simplest option reusing the maximum amount of old right away and adding the minimum new track, it does this by sacrificing speed the curves from the Liverpool route to HS2 are of about 500-600m in radii limiting speed to 70 mph. There would no option but adding points to any northern routing.

However, if the section of line between the northern crossing was quad, all the way to and beyond the southern Manchester Spur, then the points in that direction could be kept the same and the quading would allow acceleration to full track speed. Access to Manchester is via the northern chord proposed for phase 2.
As a schematic it would look like

Conclusion

My simple conclusion is that Option 3 is the most likely. I doubt the extra speed of the other 2 could actually be realised. Option 2 may be the option that has to be picked to calm the noise concerns of the residents of Lymm.

Trans North/HS3

The Government released The Northern Powerhouse: One Agenda, One Economy, One North report, which contains some interesting stuff regarding Liverpool and High-Speed rail, most notably

Trans North/HS3

Also covered is HS3 which has similarities to my Pan Northern Railway  through without York, Chester and Holyhead.

  

HS3 using existing lines

The target maximum speed that has been mentioned is 140 mph, this was the same as the target for the West Coast Mainline upgrade in the 90s.

The was for the first generation of Pendolinos, the second generation is capable of 155mph. The reason they don't go over 125 is the lack of in-cab signalling, but under existing plans, the entire system will be set up for in-cab signalling by 2029, according to the International Rail Journal. Electrification from Man to Leeds is already planned as is Leeds to Hull according to the BBC. It is already in place Liverpool to Manchester.

The proposed times for HS3 are

Liv -> Manc in 20 minutes, mean  94.5 mph over 31.5 miles.
Man->Leeds in 30 minutes, mean 85.4 mph over 42.7 miles.
Leeds ->Hull in 45 minutes, mean 68 mph over 51.6 miles. 

So all those are already planned before HS3! what extra is needs to happen for HS3?

The OpenOffice Calc spreadsheet can be found here.

The Liverpool to Manchester section, given a Pendolino, allowed to accelerate straight to 140 and decelerate into Manchester Victoria would take 15:35. With various limitations caused by going through stations and in urban areas 20 minutes is very close to the maximum that could be achieved. To make a 20 minutes service possible some work would need to be done, whether that would be passing loops or quadrupling of long sections I don't know, perhaps some traffic could be offloaded to other routes but providing access for St Helens & Newton le Willows is not optional. Complete requadrupling of the section from Lime Street to Huyton Junction would help, that would require work to widen the track bed at Broad Green where the M62 intrudes.

The Manchester -> Leeds time of 30 minutes knocks about 15 minutes off of the current journey time, and is 9:37 slower than the theoretical maximum, bearing in mind this is the curviest bit of the route this is less demanding than the Liverpool-Manchester time and perhaps reflects greater thought and time applied.  

The Hull time is only 9 minutes faster than the current time which is the smallest improvement and as this is the longest route doesn't make much sense. Most of the route is quite straight except for a large kink around Selby.

Rail lines around Selby

The average speed for Leeds -> Hull is 68.8 compared with 94.53 for Liv->Man and 85.4 for Man->Leeds. This seems a bit slow, given the profile I would expect a mean speed faster than the Man->Leeds speed. At the same average speed as the Liv->Man journey Leeds -> Hull is about 32:45 and at the Man -> Leeds is 36:15. So it should be possible to knock a further 10 minutes off the overall journey getting the overall journey down to 1:25.

A second generation Pendolino is capable of 155mph, similar to the Advanced Passenger Train, in order to operate at the higher speed the APT had enhanced brakes, these are not on the Pendolino. If a system capable of similar braking to the APT's Hydro Kinetic system were fitted then speeds over 140 could be achieved, which might allow some more savings or at least greater safety margin.  One candidate for the breaking system would be Circular or Linear Eddy Current Braking both of which have been used on railways in excess of 155mph.

Beyond England

Welsh extension.

Currently, the time from Hull to Holyhead, 218 miles, would be 4:09 with an average speed of 52.5 mph, if some stops are taken out leaving only the major stops, then the journey can be down to 3:39 with a mean speed of 59 mph. Whilst this probably faster than it can be driven, the current journey would be longer as it would involve waiting for connections at the principal stations.
Using the 140 mph maximum then with the full set of stops the journey could be made in 2:19 with a mean speed of 94 mph. With only the principle stops that drops to 1:42 at a mean of 128.
The theoretical speed would obviously not be possible but a time of between 2:30 and 2:45 should be possible, knocking 1:24 of the current possible time.
A Liverpool Holyhead journey, via the soon to be reinstated Halton curve, would take about 2:00, this time, is even more speculative than the others as it involves the Chester to Runcorn parliamentary train, which only runs early Saturday morning during the summer, and is in no rush. Taking out the stops gets down to 1:52. With the high-speed options, the time drops to 1:00 with stops and 51 without. Giving an estimated real world time as 1:15, a 45-minute saving.
Electrifying and speeding up Chester to Holyhead would improve London-Holyhead times, as well as local trains, as part of HS3, it would provide a very useful link between the Ferry Terminals of Hull and Holyhead.

Midland Main Line

In the picture below you can see the line from Derby to Manchester that used to part of the Midland Main Line connecting London and Manchester. It is now cut back to serving Derby and Sheffield.

The yellow portions of the Line out of Derby and Manchester are still in use but not as a main line. The white section in the middle is 14 miles of unused track bed.
Reconnecting this would add redundancy to the London Northwest link and provide a direct faster connection to the East Midlands.
It and HS3 will create a Northern power house an eXtended Midland Mainline can only boost it further.

 

Liverpool doesn't need HS3 to connect to Manchester

Liverpool does not need HS3 to connect to Manchester, it needs it to connect to Leeds & Hull. It is not that getting Liverpool to Manchester down to 20 minutes wouldn't be useful, but the linkage between the city centres is not the only measure of connectivity.
Both Liverpool and Manchester City regions have large hinterlands with several centres of economic activity. There is no point measuring simply the connectivity between the two Centres, the interconnectivity must take into account the linkage between the sub nodes. While the linkage between Ellesmere Port and Bolton may not be as important as the Liverpool to Manchester link, it is not worthless and is one of many sub-node interconnections.
One of the longer distance routes available from Liverpool Exchange was the link to Bury via Liverpool and Bury Railway, unfortunately, this was cut back to Bolton in 1970 though most of the alignment is still in place and a 4.5-mile section would allow a link to Manchester Metrolink for line into Manchester City Centre.

Liverpool & Manchester rail linkages

The building of the Ordsall Chord seems to be funding and going ahead if coupled with that Merseytravel's Airport spur was constructed and the Warrington Altrincham line reinstated. Then an outer loop could be formed, providing direct links from,  Say Widnes to Bolton/ Altrincham and Bootle as well as providing links to between Liverpool, both Manchester's stations and Stockport.
A link from the Northern Line from Bootle via the stock interchange to St James and the Wirral would push the loop out to Ellesmere Port and Runcorn. Though a reverse at Liverpool could do the same.

Rail Details of Liverpool

A map of Liverpool with some of the changes proposed in Merseytravel's 30-year plan.

Rail Details of Manchester

Details of the Ordsall chord.

Warrington rail details

The red line departing right is the disused Warrington and Altrincham Junction Railway
all the other lines are intact and in use though the green line entering left is only used for freight and connects to Ditton Junction.

Timperley rail detail

This is Skelton Junction with the line entering from the upper left is the closed Glazebrook East Junction to Skelton Junction Line while the red line entering mid-left is the closed Warrington and Altrincham Junction Railway.

Tram Train

Some parts of the network are now operated by MetroLink but use old rail alignments. Converting these to Tram-Train allow connections to places like Prestwich direct from Liverpool.