Date set for electrification of line between Leicester and St Pancras

“This is more fantastic news for Leicester - with all the excting events happening in our great city (king Richard) there has never been a better time to live and invest in Leicester. We are geographically well placed, have amazing history, beautiful county and some fantastic skilled people .... the electrification of the line brings us withing the golden hour of London and the best station in the world St Pancras and onward to Europe and nay the world

GO Leicester !! the place to be
Leicester Advocate Rosie Clark”

“Sounds good, but how much will tickets price rise to by 2019…I hate to think!”

“Let me think. Which countries other than the Uk have a taken a train in the last few years.

Belgium
Netherlands
Germany
Norway
Sweden
Finland

All electric. All ran on time (give or take about 5 mins late on a few occasions). It's not the technology to blame its the management or mismanagement of said technology. Lets be honest current UK train times are not exactly the most reliable be it diesel or electric.”

“I'm no expert on these matters but I really find it very difficult to believe that successive Governments in the UK, as well as most other countries, when developing new fast rail systems, or updating existing lines, would consistently and persistently use electrified railways if they carried with them all the negativity that these comments suggest.”

“Good luck to all Leicestershire Rail Travellers. When living in Leicester I enjoyed a comfortable usually reliable diesel powered rail service to London. I now live in Norfolk where the line Norwich-Liverpool Street London is electrified and unreliable because of double maintenance of track and over head catenery means regular transfer to uncomfortable double decker buses for 50 miles or more or cancellation of trains from London with a full compliment of 125 stock oassengers being sardined into a 3 car rail car routed vias Cambridge and Ely with no access to tolilets. Electric power may be fast when it runs, but been there and done it I feel sorry for Leicester travellers I would not wish the years of disruption during construction on my Leicester kin! 'Rutland Fox completely on right lines”

“The governmnet are doing this to benfit the contruction companies, not the rail user. Come on get a grip, you know no government would do anything to assist travelling as they want you to stay put and cause no trouble but pay your taxes.
Hardly anyone will be able to afford a rail journey by 2019 so they need not bother building much new rolling stock. Just business people and local councillors ( all on expenses) will be on the trains the peasants will be on the buses or you stay at home.”

“Let us get some facts straight. Journey times will not be affected by electrification. Modern diesels can be just as powerful and fast as electric for the mostly non stop runs on the line to London, electric is best at very high speed running such as the TGV lines in France and stop start commuter lines in the South. The current track layout restricts the current train speeds on many sections North of Bedford to Leicster and Nottingham which this plan will sort, it is not the electrification that improves the journey time unless the maximum speed limit can be raised for 125 mph

The second thing electricity is not free and has to be generated from somewhere using fossil fuel or new Nuclear plants as we are no where near self sufficient on renewables and the more we shift to electric cars and trains, the more this will get worse.

The other point not mentioned is that reliability falls over as soon as you go electric. Multi engine diesels such as HST125 and Meridians are very reliable with redundancy built in so that the train can always keep the passengers supplied with heat and power as well as bing able to carry on its journey. Have an incident on an electric with the overhead line pantograph and the train is dead with no power. The same if there is any wind, ice or mechanical damage to the overhead lines, all trains are stopped other than diesels. The recent incident at Barrow would have shut the whole railway down for a week as the wagons would have taken out the overhead line gantry's at the side which would have been out until the bank was repaired. You only have to look at how often the Westcoast and Eastcoast mainlines get closed for such damage and remember, you will be stuck on a train with no power. Wrong direction IMHO and a waste of public funds”