Steam Dreams 17th April 2016

The pickup and return points for this one indicate a remarkable route: Paddington - Gerrards Cross - Bicester Town - Oxford Parkway - Goring & Streatley (and then to Salisbury, presumably via Reading West and Basingstoke).

 

First steam over the new chord at Bicester between the ex-GW HiWy-Banbury line and the ex-LNW Oxford-Bletchley line. This route (re-)opens as far as the new Oxford Parkway station on 26th Oct, with the "missing link" through Wolvercote tunnel following sometime before 17/4/16. See also this thread in General Railway Chat.

 

I wont be counting my chickens on this one, It will be out of gauge, or not ready, or something.

 

Scotsman is booked over this new bit of route on June 1st as well.

 

Maybe Mr. K's "or something" could be a highlight of the new Bicester Chord infrastructure which features, as I understand it, a steep inclination on the ramp connecting Gavray Junction (on the former Oxford-Bicester line) with Bicester South Junction (on the ex GW/ Chiltern main line) that weighs in at 1 in 33, or put another way, marginally steeper than the Lickey incline.

With approach control signalling to Bicester South Junction, which I believe is situated at or close to the top of the ramp, I wonder what the load book would say about an appropriate trailing weight for respective power classifications of steam locomotives, based on the condition of an ability to restart from stationary at this location. And I wonder, in turn, whether any steam locomotive ascending the incline to join the Chiltern main line will be authorised to do so without assistance.

This will, after all, become a very busy location with a standard service pattern of two trains per hour in each direction from next week (4/5 tph when the East-West link gets going in a few years time). So definitely not a location at which to take any chances. Perhaps Tyseley could furnish a suitable banker (if only!!!). Better still, if there is gainful employment to be had for 84E's panniers after the Lickey Rambler jaunt for 9600 on 7th November, perhaps, a future Pannier Rambler routed over the chord?? Oh Puhleeeease!!!

 

That appears to be a myth going by the general consensus on the WNXX forum - it doesn't look that extreme nor does it seem that extreme to someone whose driven it, and a note in the TWA application drawings points to something more likely:

"The eastern end of the proposed new chord will line will commence with a straight section at the same gradient and level as the main line and then will curve out and descend at a gradient of 1 in 100 to meet the Oxford line at the western end"
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Chris

 

Sincere apologies if the information given on the gradient of the chord proves to have been inaccurate .....but it was based on an article that appeared to be authoritative and whose authenticity I had no reason to doubt,

http://www.rail.co.uk/rail-news/2014/bicester-town-and-chord/

The final paragraph states quite clearly and unambiguously "The Project’s Construction Manager.........has had to supervise eight kilometres of piling, moving a hundred thousand tons of earth and ballast and install 23 kilometres of newt fencing. The Bicester chord had to be built on a flood plain on a falling gradient of 1 in 33 from the former GWR line towards Bicester Town round a tight curve with a linespeed of 40mph."

Before posting I did also take a look at video images of initial trial/test runs over the chord in the last few weeks, which did seem to suggest a real ramp-up on the section of the chord east of the new footbridge, and it was on this basis that I felt reassured that the figure quoted for the gradient was correct.

If anyone has any further definitive updates on this, I would be really interested to know.

 

No need to apologise, it seems to have cropped up in a number of places but all originating from the same source I suspect - aside from the TWA application a reliable industry source on another forum has given it as 1 in 103 which sounds right to me, but with any luck they'll stick up some gradient markers...

 

Having seen the curve whilst passing on the train I must say that it certainly LOOKS very steep and nearer to 1 in 33 than 1 in 100.

 

Can someone please say what "newt fencing" consists of, how it works, and why they need 23 kilometres of it? If it is needed to stop the newts wandering onto the tracks, is it also necessary to provide tunnels for them?

Or was "newt" just another among the several instances of very sloppy editing in that article?

 

See http://www.newt-fencing.com/