On Wed, 3 Oct 2007, Paul Scott wrote:

"Tom Anderson" wrote in message
.li...

On the subject of double-decker trains in the UK, and now crossposting
to uk.railway, has anyone seriously looked at doing it for intercity
trains? The WCML is cleared to W12 or some such tall gauge, right? So
could we run double-decker trains on it as is? Does the W12 not extend
into the city terminals (freight not usually needing to go that way)?
How much work would be needed for a London - Brum - Manchester
double-decker service?

The DfT have tacked a report on the costs of gauge clearance for DD trains
onto the recent 'supporting info' section of the White Paper website.

Excellent tip, cheers! It be he

http://www.dft.gov.uk/about/strategy...ovevalddtrains

Needless to say they don't use your example route...

No. For the benefit of our readers: they look at outer suburban commuter
routes like those to Brighton, Oxford and Colchester.

The conclusion is that for 23 m cars, you can use a 1+2 (!) lower deck,
and get 24% more seats. Funnily enough, if you use a higher-density
seating layout, you only get a 9% improvement, but if you use 20 m trains,
it's the other way round: low density gets a 8% improvement, high density
26%. Uh? Anyway, this is not nearly as good as the ~50% increase European
trains get, all due to the fact they they're 26 m long. Apparently, we
can't run 26 m trains.

Also, all these trains are 4320 mm tall, which is UIC GB; that's big by UK
standards, W12, i think. Certainly enough that they talk about having to
do an awful lot of civils on the lines they study.

The W12 WCML would not have so much problem with clearance, but still,
given the constraint of length on capacity, we're looking at only a 25%
increase in capacity, which is rubbish.

If it so happened that the WCML could handle longer trains, or could be
improved to do so, things might be different. But the WCML is very wiggly
in places, and it's curves that constrain train length, so i doubt this.
The ECML is less wiggly, but not currently W12, and not as important a
line within England - unless you could run trains off it and into the
Midlands, or wanted to go all the way to Scotland, it's not going to fly.

tom

--
And he talked about the future, underneath a giant sphere