Apparently there may be no investment next year.
Virgin Trains are hoping to start a train service using the tunnel in 2030 so they seem happy enough to invest.
I hope that plan continues to be viable. It’s difficult to see how 2 separate companies can share a small pair of lines effectively and both do well when at certain times of year that railway is booked solid.
You’d think there was a budget coming up and they wanted to influence it. Or something.
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Surely that’s the point? If there were more services running on the route there would be greater availability of tickets - hopefully at competitive prices.
2 separate sets of rolling stock, business overheads etc. plus coordination of traffic. There are often delays now with a single business running the schedule. I’m obviously going to wait and see, but have concerns.
It’s all about infrastructure investment and unpredictable and excessive rates increases. Good interview with the Tunnel CEO on R4 last week. He’s putting a shot across whatever department is supposed to manage these things bows.
Pull up the tracks and put tarmac down.
Not an improvement, and also not workable. The Channel Tunnel carries a much bigger volume of vehicles and goods in its current rail format than it could if it had been built as a drive-through road tunnel.
It currently caters for 400 trains a day, but theoretically could be upgraded to take up to 1200 a day. It carries 30% of UK exports and 22% of imports.
Also, it could not be converted from rail to road.
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Thanks. It was a tongue in cheek comment but I obviously don’t know enough about it. Are several trains being loaded at the same time in “sidings” ?
Sorry! I can be a bit literal minded at times!
I need jokes to have smileys!
I don’t know the details but I would think they do load more than one at a time. And I would guess that some freight trains would come pre-loaded and just be given a Chunnel loco and taken straight through.
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I’ve definitely seen lorries and cars in separate queues and on separate platforms at Ashford but we haven’t travelled via that route for a while.
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There are many platforms and loading can happen simultaneously in lots of different places. It’s not done on one platform, and lorries appear to be loaded entirely separately, probably on to specially designed trains.
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Been on one of those.
Drivers and any passengers cannot travel with the vehicle. Once loaded a shuttle bus collects everyone and takes them to a passenger carriage.
Lots of Yorkie eating lorry drivers squashed into a small area.
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What were you travelling in, JohnBoy?
My transit van, was maybe 15 years ago. The carriages are open so not safe to travel in.
Also had to drive into a large Xray shed where you had to disembark while a massive sliding Xray passed over and around the van.
There are no “sidings”, it’s shuttle. You drive on one end of a two tier train in France. After a 30 minute pause while they move it to Folkstone, you drive off the other end in the UK. It’s slick and very efficient. In the many years I’ve used it I couldn’t fault it.
There are no “platforms”, just you drive onto the end of the train through a side door.
They are twice the height of cars, so can’t use the two tier train carriages.
Nothing wrong with a nice Yorkie. Probably need a couple for the thirty minutes.
Thats a lot of trains. One every 70 seconds? I thought it was about 8/hour
So assuming that the 400 is for both directions, then we have 200 going in one direction per day which equates to one train every 7.2 minutes with 4 trains going the same way in the tunnel at any one time. 1,200 trains a day would require one train every 2.4 minutes, with 12 trains going in each direction in the tunnels at any one time. With only a 2.4 minute separation between trains I reckon it would require a very fancy control system and some very well trained Rail Traffic Controllers. Not to mention three times the number of the existing loading tracks.
Sounds like a bit of a recipe for disaster to me.