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Help! What's ‘boiling frogs' in Welsh?
In 2002, a £1.60/tonne tax was imposed on newly quarried aggregates as an incentive for the construction industry to use recycled materials. This was good news for Alfred McAlpine Slate which has around 370 million tonnes of slate in waste tips at Blaenau and Penrhyn.
Blaenau is connected to the network at Llandudno Junction by 28 miles of single track which has been kept in pretty good nick since it was used by the nuclear flask trains serving Traws – as we used to call Atomffa Trawsfynydd in my youth. The aim was for McAlpine to start with reception sidings and loading plant at Blaenau Ffestinog delivering crushed slate by rail to construction sites in the Northwest and West Midlands . If this were successful, a five mile long conveyor belt could be installed, linking Penrhyn quarry with a new loading plant on the main line west of Bangor . If demand forecasts were achieved, the combined output could rise to 2 million tonnes a year.
This scheme emerged back in 2001. It assumed that 25 to 30 trains a week would run, the standard formation being 13 wagons with a payload of 800 tonnes. Obviously the track would need improving from Route Availability (RA) 7 to RA10 to take 25.4 tonne axle loads.
A survey was commissioned, at a cost of £12,500 which showed that the track structures were indeed in good condition. This was not surprising given that British Nuclear Fuels had paid to have the line maintained at a higher standard.
An early estimate put the cost of upgrading the track to RA10 at £2million. If additional capacity was needed to handle five freight trains a day, passing loops might be needed, increasing the cost to £4million.
Naturally, Railtrack as was wanted to include resignalling controlled from Llandudno Junction, passing loops and so on. In February this year Network Rail came back with the news that to meet RA10 the single track would need relaying. No doubt the experience of Settle & Carlisle where a ‘Sprinter' quality formation was beaten to death by coal traffic loomed large. It this work were to be carried out during a total blockade, the cost would be around £20million.
Now £740,000 a mile may sound a bit on the pricey side, but save your concern. Because according to Welsh informed sources, Members and Officials of the Welsh assembly were subsequently told by a senior Network Rail North West Region manager responsible for freight that the new cost for infrastructure work to handle say six freight trains was now between £15million and £230 million. Yes, pounds two three zero million.
Faced with this incredible cost escalation the Assembly commissioned a consultants report into the upgrading of the line. Parkman, which is responsible for monitoring structures in the Zone offered to revisit the original survey for £12,500. However, given their existing responsibility it was decided that the Welsh Assembly would commission an entirely new review, which is costing around £100,000.
This report should have been completed by the time this issue is published. It is expected to shoot the Network Rail estimate down in flames. Informed Sources reckon that even Network Rail's £15million bottom--of-the-range estimate is outrageous. Chums at the SRA, who would be asked to provide grant support reckon that at £20million for loading facilities and track iupgrade the scheme does not represent value for money.
What appals everyone is that anyone could even suggest a maximum cost of £230million with a straight face. I make it £8.2million a mile. That's in the same ball park as the Selby Diversion, a brand new electric railway on embankments, the new Leuven-Liege line and TGV Est – all around £10 million/mile.
This sort of stupidity explains why the Government is back to throwing money at the roads. Adding an extra lane to each carriageway of 26miles of the M1 south of Milton Keynes is budgeted at £623million in the recent announcement. That works out at £12/mile for each lane, which will carry far more traffic than the Blaenau Branch. Anybody heard from the Railway Conversion League lately?
Oh, I forgot to mention, the Ffestiniog Railway was approached on the possibility of shipping out the slate through Porthmadog harbour. Well, said the FR, we could probably fit in an hourly train carrying up to 300 tonnes for most of the year. Sadly, this ultimate triumph of private enterprise over the monolithic state infrastructure provider was frustrated by problems with the re-opening of the harbour to commercial shipping.