Wolstenholme Square 75 years and back to Square one.

Some of you may have heard of Liverpool nightclubs, Cream, The Continental and The Kazimier, few of you will know they sat on Wolstenholme Square. For a more detailed history see liverpool1207.

At the beginning of May 1941, the square looked like this. Nice buildings but only a paint factory

In May 1941, along with other parts of Liverpool it was the subject of an unscheduled redevelopment by the Luftwaffe. Unscheduled as far as the owners and Liverpool were concerned but I'm sure the Luftwaffe had a very thorough schedule.

From Liverpool1207

The post war rebuild was not of the same quality as the original even with the stone cladding, I went to the Continental thrice and hated it, which is good as I normally loath night clubs.

75 Years after the original Luftwaffe redevelopment it now looks like this flattened again in May 2016 by Mee's Demolition, this time, the owners knew.

Soon the rebuild will start, back to, if not its former glory, then to at least a more respectable height.

For more details see Falconer Chester Hall Wolstenholme Square

You might not like it but the buildings that housed the clubs were cheaply put up after the war, this is a timely rebuild. Everyone will still have their memories of nights out, in my case, despite lots of therapy. There is nothing lost in this particular redevelopment, it is the final scab falling off a war wound. One more bomb site gone.

Hydrocarbons for peace.

There are few people more enthusiastic about electric cars than Robert Llewellyn, better known to some of you as Kryten from Red Dwarf, here is one of his video blogs regarding Orkney.I don't have a problem with most of it but I'm a little concerned about some of Rob's attitudes to hydrocarbons, not the fossil variety or even the biologically variety but the totally synthetic stuff. You can see Rob's opinion when he is shown the old diesel plant, which, I imagine is still kept in good condition to back up the wind.
Orkney's power system is a hierarchy. the first tier is power being generated and then used immediately, the next stage is the large battery, followed by presumably the interconnector or the diesel, then the other.
One a windy sunny and warm day, Orkney will be generating more power than it can use, the batteries will be full and the interconnect will be maxed out, what to do then? Well, the hierarchy seems to be different for using excess generated power that it is for generating power, the diesel section is missing.
Storing electrical power in batteries is highly efficient but the energy density is low and over time the batteries discharge, this means they are good for short term storage. I wonder how long Rob has left one of his cars to see how good the batteries are, it something I'm having trouble finding out.
The US Navy has been developing a system for producing Jet Fuel from sea water on its Nuclear Powered Aircraft carriers. See Fueling the Fleet, Navy Looks to the Seas  and US Navy Announces $3/Gallon Jet Fuel from CO2. So the diesel's part in the hierarchy could be restored.
Rob's criticism of the diesel as being "dirty", might be seen as a reason not to do it, but the dirty bit of diesel comes from impurities in the fossil fuel, others comes from the incomplete combustion of diesel due to a large variety of hydrocarbon compounds in the natural mix. The production of wholly synthetic fuel eliminates most of the impurities and allows the fine tuning of the compounds in the synthetic hydrocarbon, which allows the combustion process to be optimised to minimise particulate output. My own choice for the compound would be Hexadecane (C₁₆H₃₄) but chemists might pick a better compound.

There are other alternatives for longer term storage, such as Cryogenic energy storage, which may be more efficient in the short term, but the one thing that is know about hydrocarbons is that they are stable for a long term, they can survive underground. So while over a few months or years the Nitrogen will boil off, if extra power isn't added.
We also have large amounts of infrastructure to transport and store hydrocarbons, if we one day our fuel stores are full and our environmental plants are producing the power that is needed then, we can put some of the hydrocarbons back where the fossils came from back underground, helping to reduce the excess CO2 in the atmosphere.

Synthetic diesel is a very high-density energy store, there might never be a day when batteries have a high enough energy storage for long range air travel or to produce the power for some of the world's biggest machines, they may but synthetic fuels will be there as a backup and very long term store.
If and when we move to a fusion powered world, we can get rid of windmills we can still make synthetic diesel for those off grid needs, we still pump it underground and Rob's mate Chris can still drive around in his vintage motors.
Whatever we do we need a hierarchy of storage and synthetic diesel seem to be a good candidate for the long term tier as well as for various niche applications. It is no use being sniffy about it, we cannot waste the ideas and material we have invested in hydrocarbons.
The one thing that is gone for good for future cars is the mechanical transmission, the superiority of electric transmission and it ability to match the prime mover speed to produce the energy need efficiently is better than mechanical CVT. 

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.

WW2 and why my dad fought in it.

In late August 1939 my dad joined the RAF, some time later he found himself in North Africa, then Sicily and finally Italy. He was with fighting along side others from the following countries
 United States
 Free France
 Canada
 India
Poland
 New Zealand
South Africa
Brazil
Kingdom of Greece
 Mandatory Palestine
 Belgium
 Australia
 Czechoslovakia

My dad died before I could ask him why he fought, especially as he joined up before the war had started and wasn't conscripted like so many of the troops. I am surprised how many supporters of UKIP, the EDL etc seem to think they know why my father and so many others fought, and want to claim that they are behaving the way they do in support of his goals and the sacrifices of his friends and comrades.
The one thing I am sure about is what the other side was fighting for and that seem to be more in line with the policies of the EDL and UKIP.
One thing that came out of WW2 was the European convention on human rights, which is presided over by the European Court of Human Rights. The leading UK advocate was a Conservative politician, supported by Churchill. See European Convention on Human Rights what UKIP and the Tory right are fighting against is the explicitly expressed wishes of hose who fought and led in WW2. In there racists and xenophobic speeches the are reproducing the messages not of the Allies but of the Axis powers, the only thing that exceeds their bigotry is their ignorance and stupidity.

Trident: A fork in the road.

I've always been a supporter of the UK having nuclear weapons. The morality of a weapon doesn't depend on upon its size, destroying a city by conventional carpet bombing is just as immoral as using a nuclear weapon.

I'm less keen on Trident for several reasons, one of which is that with the rise of Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) system it will become less effective. The major powers are developing Hypersonic Glide Vehicles to overcome this defence. These vehicles will be launched from ICBMs, but instead of following a ballistic trajectory to their target, they will fly at a speed approaching Mach 10 in the upper atmosphere. So reducing reaction time for any ABM system.

For the UK developing one of these is a possibility, perhaps along with France, the other possibility is a very long range (3000 miles +) cruise missile, which is the option I prefer. This is partly down to utility and partly down to the rise of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, Drones to you. What is a cruise missile, but a single use, disposable UAV? The UK is committed to developing UAV, so why not take advantage of this convergence of technology.

I was struck by the following assessment on Wikipedia of the Royal United Services Institute suggestion for a Trident replacement.

A ‘Dual-Capable’ Submarine Force: "This would maintain the plan to build new submarines, but with only four missile tubes (compared with the twelve currently planned) and with an explicit design mandate that asked designers to allow them also to perform conventional roles... It would not be possible, however, for potential adversaries to detect whether or not a particular boat was nuclear-armed when it went on patrol. Such an arrangement could, in time, combine increased survivability for the nuclear force while also holding out the possibility of further reductions in the size and readiness of the nuclear deterrent."

The US is also considering a dual use boat to replace the Ohio class based on the Virginia Class

The US Navy has converted 4 of its Ohio-class Trident submarines to a role which replaces the Trident missiles with 7 Tomahawk cruise missiles as well as many other systems.

The US's current attack submarine is the Virginia Class, which as part if its design contains the Virginia Payload Module a system which is very similar to having Trident Launch tubes, but with the 7 cruise missile armament, though these will not be nuclear capable.

These all point to the end of the dedicated ballistic missile submarine, Tridents replacement should be the dual use boat, when not armed with Trident, the tubes should not be empty but armed for other jobs. These boats should be based on the Astute class, and when the Astute class comes up for replacement, they should be replaced by dual use boats. This could provide a Navy with a Nuclear Submarine fleet of 11+ boats, possibly up to 14, with greater flexibility than the current system.

In the very long term, a cruise missile could replace the Trident missiles themselves, in about 2050, which will be long after I've stopped being.

Jeremy Corbyn, the new Labour leader, is against Trident's replacement, but given the current makeup of parliament, he is unlikely to get his way. That doesn't mean he cannot influence the system, with dual use boats, the boats do not become waste if Nuclear weapons are  abandoned. The dual use plan adapts the system to the threats faced now and at the same time makes Nuclear Disarmament easier.

When it comes to a vote in the Commons on replacement I cannot see JC ever asking his party to vote for a replacement of the Vanguard boats, but it might be easier for the party to abstain on Dual Use boats, if that is a way of stopping a like replacement, with all the costs and limited capability that entails, and as the RUSI report suggests this, "while also holding out the possibility of further reductions in the size and readiness of the nuclear deterrent." which is at least a step in the direction JC wants to go, it is better than no step at all.

Things to Come

This the future for humanity, it is this or nothing.

We need to talk about Warren

Sometime ago the leader of Liverpool City Council was Warren Bradley, a LibDem. He became leader when Mike "Jackanory" Storey had to resign of a breach of the code of conduct. Storey was at best anodyne, a primary school headmaster with all the charisma of a primary school headmaster. When Warren came along, I'd never heard of him, but it was quite clear he was only Storey's proxy.

Both Storey and Bradley achieved very little, the greatest achievement of Storey was securing the Capital of Culture year for Liverpool and that was about it. Very little happened in the city.

After a brief discussion with Bradley, it seems that he thinks of himself as badly done by and regards any mention of his conviction for a rather foolish bit of electoral fraud as abusive. Warren you weren't hard done by, you were just so far out of your league it was painful.

One of his statements that "educated people are seeing through Joe Anderson", would seem to imply, that as he doesn't like the guy, he sees himself as an educated man. Well, while I don't have any facts about his education, if he has one he has always hidden it well. He variously came over as some who hasn't got that much of an idea of what's going on, always slightly bemused or slightly drunk.

Like a lot of LibDems, he suffered from a lack of imagination and drive, whether you agree with Anderson or not, he has got something done, Warren and Co never did, they were obsessed with not annoying anyone, in the end they annoyed a lot of people. People will forgive mistakes, they are less forgiving of inaction. It is equally true that always answering the call "something must be done" with something is just as wrong.

Liverpool Council suffered from a paralysis that it didn't want to be in the same light as Militant, this led it to be non-confrontational and frankly cowardly, Warren is the personification of that. You can see in the local journals the anger that Joe Anderson has raised by simply doing things, some are outraged that he has not doing the things that they want, others are just annoyed that he is doing things at all. All of them are convinced they speak for the people of Liverpool, all of them ignore the fact that in the May election Joe's party increased its seats on the council.

Let get this right Joe is not a smooth political operator he is in fact a bit of a gobshite but so are his most voluble critics. Not least among them Warren. What most of the voices offer is a quick fix, just do what we want, have our  priorities and it will all be ok. What history teaches us is that this is wrong, you cannot have any real, permanent long term effect on society over night, this is a long hard slog where the reasonable ambition is to make things better for your great grandchildren. To believe you can do it quicker is vanity and a dangerous vanity.

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.