Great Central Railway General Matters

Another idea, which has been considered, is to have two long narrow sheds either side of the running line (s). One (Two tracks wide) on the East side for full overhauls with an overhead crane. The other (two tracks wide) on the West side for the operational fleet with access to the North as well as to the South. There could be an overhead walkway between them over the running line.

 

Oh dear, I was going to say how about Ruddington.... is it possible though, and this is thinking outside several boxes, that the parcels of land that are available could be used to locate elements presently at Ruddington thereby releasing land there on which the shed could be built. I guess in theory that would be possible but would it be practicable? Even if it is practicable I guess it would take a lot of planning and time to do.

 

That sounds like an expensive way to use space inefficiently …

Tom

 

Or from the mad ideas department copy the Bakerloo Queens Park model and have the running line run through the shed. Plenty for folks to look at on the journey then. (Just joking!)

 

Ruddington is an interesting concept - No.1 Shed I believe has good facilities such as an overhead crane and a well kitted out machine shop. However this is much smaller than the current shed at Loughborough (I reckon max 6 tender locos) so I'm not sure whether the capacity No.1 offers for overhaul and maintenance would be enough for the capacity Loughborough currently needs, plus whatever extra capacity it would need to maintain the locos for an 18 mile line.
Then you have the fact that there is No.5 shed (intended to be the steam running shed eventually but currently in use for carriage maintenance) which I reckon also has space for maybe 6 tender locos, plus space immediately outside it which historically has been home to Diesels, but at the moment the diesels are more spread around the site. Under construction next to No.5 is what is planned to be No.4 which (if memory serves me correctly) is being built to be a new carriage maintenance shed, possibly solely/primarily for the GCR Rolling Stock Trust and the Barnums. Then the 125 Group are fundraising to build a new shed which will serve as an undercover storage and maintenance facility for the HST set. I think the HST group in particular would be rather annoyed if they had raised funds to build a purpose-built maintenance depot and then were turfed out of it so it could be adapted for whatever the GGCR wanted to use it for. And I'm not sure how much more space there will be to add more sheds or other facilities to increase the capacity that is already there.
Ultimately I'm not sure whether Ruddington as is has the capacity to serve the needs of a 20 mile GGCR, nore whether the space is there to increase that capacity. And that's even before you look at the politics of changing that. If you were to turf groups like the RST and 125 group out, where would they go? I guess the RST could possibly move to Rothley if the space is there, but if it isn't, where do you move them? I also think it would be less than ideal to only have one base at one end of the line, so if Ruddington were to be the main base, it might make sense to look to create a subsidiary base at the other end of the line, in the same way that the SVR has Bewdley, the NYMR has New Bridge and the WSR has Bishops Lydeard. So maybe a small operating base at Leicester North? Or Rothley and kick the carriage people out of there to find somewhere else?
I always thought that, space permitting, having the main operating and maintenance base at Loughborough made sense for likely operations of a GGCR, with Ruddington being retained as a subsidiary operating base for busier operation days and a subsidiary/specialist maintenance base for groups like the 125 group or RST. Only time will tell whether that is actually going to be possible by the time reunification is achieved!

 

On the contrary, it’s the blindingly obviously *best* use of the limited available space. Any other idea causes either the shed or the running line north to become hopelessly compromised.

My only observations are that perhaps the east shed should ultimately become a diesel/DMU running shed with heavy steam loco overhauls moved elsewhere. And in the shorter term, only the west shed is really needed; it can be built before the existing one goes and, for the time being, can become the workshop / overhaul space so that this work is disrupted as little as possible.

It’s so obvious to me that I don’t really know why so much energy has been wasted looking at nonsense schemes which just destroy the project’s credibility.

(Oh and by the way, for the person who mentioned Queens Park on the Bakerloo, yes the running line goes through the shed there but it is essentially an overnight stabling shed, not a workshop. Big difference.)


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Isn't overnight stabling part of what is needed? If they need space for a wide variety of purposes (steam, diesel, coaches, wagons, overnight, day-to-day maintenance, overhauls, long-term storage) but space at Loughborough is limited, a bit here for this and a bit there for that may be the only practicable solution. A Queen's Park arrangement could be part of that, for locos or rolling stock that are not currently being worked on.

 

Re the new (or relocated) engine shed, I suspect that the pandemic stalled the plans announced a couple of years ago - but I also suspect that things are going on quietly behind the scenes.

In June last year it was confirmed that the town of Loughborough had been awarded £16.9m of Government funding as part of the 'Town Deal' initiative: https://www.loughboroughtowndeal.co.uk

One of the projects being supported is:
"10. Great Central Railway - A new Heritage Locomotive Works, Education Centre & Museum for Loughborough"

There appears to be a sum of just under £1m proposed to allocate - so perhaps we have to let these things run their course and cross our fingers.

 

Interesting to hear about the tip stability issues. I work with invasive plants, but get involved with construction projects generally. A lot of old brown field sites (including tips and old mine workings) have soil stability problems. These can be overcome in different ways, use of a geogrid for instance or on one project (old mine working in Cornwall) the main contractor used a French company who literally compacted the site by dropping a sequence of large heavy weights onto it - worked well! Site was stabilised and is now a Travelodge, Costa coffee, KFC and pub.

 

(Deleted)

 

It all comes under the heading of 'made ground' on the Site Investigation Reports and Borehole Logs and, if present in considerable depth (ie- to the point it's not economically feasible to strip it away down to natural formation), can easily lead to 'interesting' construction issues, not just the obvious foundation design problems but even for the building contractor to actually work on the site. I've actually known a few projects in my professional life where my employer has taken one look at the soils report and backed out of tendering for the job.

In my opinion the GCR will probably do well to avoid the tip site, the tendering team for any contractor bidding for that work would see 'former landfill' on the tender documents and immediately start thinking along the lines of risks;
1) Unknown and almost certainly wildly variable geotechnical conditions, potentially leading to massive and unforeseen alterations to the subsurface permanent works which in the short term are going to hit the contractor in the wallet, probably the costs for which would have to be derived via remeasuring; would you be willing to undertake work you're not entirely sure you'll be fully paid for?;
2) Leading on to other commercial risks such as wrangling over the terms of the contract and which party is liable for which issues are uncovered and to what extent;
3) Once the contractor gets onto site there are going to be all manner of contaminants and other 'nasties' waiting to be uncovered and potentially result in health issues;
4) The nature of the ground is going to have an impact on how the permanent works are built, it's one thing saying the ground is poor so any foundations need to be piled, but then you've got to make sure the piling rig itself doesn't sink into the soil. At around £480 for 20 tonnes of properly process and graded rubble (and that doesn't exactly get you very far with building a piling platform), the contractor isn't going to want to have to build up a platform say 800- 1000mm deep even before breaking ground.

All of which is going to lead to two things;
1) Contractors would be very, very wary of bidding for such a project;
2) Any bids entered would be very conservative, err on the side of caution and the uncertainties about the soil conditions would be reflected in the quotes received.

 

This sort of beast?
An Army Compactor with 5t drop weight on Airfield Damage repair work.

 

What mr Harrison said...
Made ground can be anything and everything. When the Jubilee line extension was being built, one of the hazards was bomb craters - effectively a cone-shaped void filled with anything to hand at the time. A tunnel at the wrong height would take the bottom off the cone and it could all do an egg-timer impression into the tunnel...

You can make any ground work, but at great cost and time, which you either buy or take the risk. Neither seem a good idea if there is anywhere else to do it.

 

You'd probably want to be sure about UXO before doing that...

 

Thanks for the excellent news.
I followed the link to the Loughborough Town Deal and the boundary on the associated map appears understandably to be confined to the town's built up area. This includes the station and the track from just north of the Midland crossing and south to about the A6 & A6004 crossings are included.
Obviously Ruddington and Leicester North are outside.
Only two sites look available adjacent to the line: to the south the land west of the line between the roads just mentioned and to the north the Brush works site in the angle of the GCR and MR lines immediately north of "Bridge that Gap". The latter looks much the better bet for the museum and maybe because of levels, land suitability with a factory all over it and the site's status in the Deal.
Does this impact our discussions?

 

Any chance of building two narrower (3-road) sheds one behind the other, same lengths as existing shed, within the existing footprint on the east side, to allow double track to pass on the west side? If feasible, that would prevent having two narrow sheds either side of the running lines, with one shed as the running shed (accessed from the south) and the second for overhauls (accessed from the north). No doubt already considered, but in case not, just a thought.

 

I'm sure that many people have spent many hours trying to come up with a solution to this complex problem. Inevitable there will have to be a compromise which will hopefully please most people for most of the time.
I know there is the operational desire to have two tracks to the North for as far as possible from Loughborough Station, but I wonder if a single track with long passing loop over the canal and along the (to be built) embankment would actually suffice for many years, given the single track over the MML and the single track to Ruddington? Even if/when there is a passing loop at East Leake, the reality of operation up to Ruddington would mean only one or two trains in operation at any one time I would have thought. This single track could go to the West of the existing shed footprint.

 

I'm not sure if your idea factors into account the need to have a lot more than minimal clearance around and between the shed roads if any work at all - even just cleaning - is to be carried out within the shed, and for a maintenance facility there needs to be additional space on the side for ancillary stuff such as stores, machine shops and so on.

 

As far as I'm aware, the embankment north of the canal bridge will be single track for most of its length due to encroachment at the sides. The long single line north of the canal is precisely why two tracks up to the canal bridge are critical to the whole operation. Imagine a scenario where the southbound train gets stuck at East Leake with some problem, the northbound is sitting at Loughborough awaiting the road but can't leave until the southbound arrives, now you have a platform out of use. Meanwhile the other platform has a dining train in it which departs in an hour. So for the next hour the following train sits at Loughborough's home signal. Now imagine it's a gala so there is now another train at Quorn's section signal, another at Quorn's home signal and two or more stuck at Swithland... without the option of sending the northbound up to the canal, the following several trains (which are most likely Loughborough reversals) are just stuck. Nothing can go south. The only options are to wait, and wait... or to send the northbound train south again, which probably involves getting the northbound passengers off, persuading the crew (who booked on at Ruddington at 5 am) that neither they nor their loco are going home on time, and either way the entire timetable has collapsed into an utter farce. All because someone decided in early 2022 (or whenever...) that a single line past the shed "would do for now". No thanks. Also, putting this right later when there is an operational line through the north end as well as a loco shed would be an order of magnitude more complicated than getting it right first time.

All I will say is, look at the Loughborough south remodelling. It was a massive undertaking (9 new point ends and every signal at the south end of Loughborough changed its number, so a complete re-locking of the frame, re-stringing the signal wires etc.) and all done without losing a single weekend's running. Easier options were undoubtedly available but the layout which went in has proved to be the right one time and again, and has enabled many fantastic galas over the last 20 years. The people the GCR has at its disposal designing track and signalling layouts know their stuff; I hope they are allowed to do their thing with minimal interference.