West Coast Line Hand

The West Coast Hand Line (WCML) , the principal line of the west coast, is one of the most important railway arteries of the the United Kingdom. It starts with the Gare of Euston to London and finishes at the end of 640 km in the North-West at the central station of Glasgow. This line serves several of the more big cities of the country, of which Milton Keynes, Northampton, Rugby, Nuneaton, Coventry, Birmingham, Wolverhampton, Stafford, the Stoke-one-Trent, Crewe, Warrington, Wigan, Manchester, Liverpool, Lancaster and Carlisle.

History

The line was built section by section in the Années 1830 and the Années 1860, the first parts constituting the Grand Junction Railway (Warrington - Birmingham) and the London and Birmingham Railway, both completed about 1830.

In front of the need for calming concerns and the irritation of the bordering owners of the line, the layout with due often avoiding imprtantes agricultural strips of land; it is resulted from it from the turnings and many curves. The WCML also crosses some of the most mountainous areas of the Great Britain, such as the Trent Valley, the mounts of Cumbrie and the area of Leadhills in the south of Lanarkshire. That led to speeds maximum lower than those of the East Coast Main Line, and the principal solution with this problem was the adoption of pendular trains, initially unfortunate the Advanced passenger train S of British Rail, and later on the Pendolino S, brought into service by Virgin in 2003.

The WCML is not a simple line. Although its main axis directly connects Glasgow to London, the line includes/understands also derivations buckles of it which deviate some to serve Manchester, one via the Stoke-one-Trent and another via Crewe, with return to the principal line with |Preston. Another loop serves Northampton. There are also junctions towards Crewe and Liverpool and Rugby, Birmingham and Wolverhampton, with return to the WCML with Stafford.

The line was modernized and electrified by stages between 1959 and 1974 - the first electrified section was it in 1959 between Crewe, Manchester and Liverpool, the remainder of the southern section of the line according to a few years later. The part between Weaver Junction (from where the branch forks towards Liverpool) and Glasgow was electrified in 1974.

An big operation of modernization, which relates to almost all the length of the line, is currently in hand. According to the plan initial, the cost of this modernization was considered at 2 billion pounds sterling, being completed in 2005, and to make it possible to reduce in one hour the run time from London Birmingham (instead of 1:40 min) and 1:45 min from London in Manchester. After a series of hitch, in particular the bankruptcy of Railtrack, the revised forecasts indicate a cost of 10 billion books, an expiry deferred to 2008 and a maximum speed for the pendular trains of 200 km/h instead of 225 km/h envisaged in the beginning (against 175 km/h authorized before work). The first phase of modernization, to the south of Manchester, brought into service the September 27th 2004 carried the run time from London to Birmingham to 1:21 min and from London to Manchester at 2 a.m. The final stage was announced for an opening the December 12th 2005, with one run time from London to Glasgow of approximately 4:30 hours, although considerable work like the quadrupling of the ways in the Trent Valley, the modernization of the slow ways, the second stage of the replanning of Nuneaton, and the replanning of the stations of Stafford, Rugby, and Coventry, are still programmed and remain to be made.

See too

List of the railway lines of Great Britain

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