On 14 Mar, 15:26, John Hearns wrote:
Was just thinking about the ELL (yes I truly have no life) and got to
thinking:

On the subject of the ELL, how is it going to be electrified?
(Yes, I know it has electrification at the moment and steam trains no
longer run under the river).
Perhaps a stupid question, but on any part of the proposed orbital
railway (ie. ELL, NLL etc) are there any overhead lines?
I guess not.

Currently, NLL is electrified 2 tracks OHLE from Acton to Camden Road,
then one track OHLE and 2 tracks DC to Dalston, then 2 tracks combined
OHLE and DC to Lea Junction, then DC to Stratford:

http://www.networkrail.co.uk/documen...NLL.pdf#page=6

SLL is third-rail-only, and the WLL is third-rail south of North Pole
and AC-electrified north of it. GOBLIN is unelectrified except for a
few bits round Barking and (IIRC) Walthamstow.

In the future, the Cross-London RUS suggests converting the NLL east
of Camden Road to fully AC-electrified and leaving the WLL as-is:

http://www.networkrail.co.uk/browse%...us.pdf#page=36

The SLL will remain third-rail-only until the ex-Southern Region
converts to overhead AC, which will be never. If the GOBLIN is
electrified, it will be overhead AC.

This leaves the ELL itself. I'm fairly sure this is third-rail from
New Cross / New Cross Gate to Dalston: although I haven't read
anything explicitly stating that this is the case, none of the TfL
publicity pics have OHLE masts in them and I'd be sceptical that the
tunnels have the necessary clearance.

Beyond Dalston, there's an implication that either the ELL
Electrostars (which will continue initially to Highbury, maybe later
further on) may need to be dual-voltage with a switch-over at Dalston,
that the conversion of the NLL to OHLE east of Camden will not take
place, or that a dual-voltage section of track will be required
between Highbury and Dalston.

Not sure which is happening here. One suggestion is to re-instate four-
tracking between Camden and Dalston, which would be sensible, and then
to dedicate one pair of tracks between Highbury and Dalston
exclusively to the ELL with the other shared between NLL and freight,
which would be barking mad, given that ELL and NLL trains will run at
the same speed in the same direction making the same stops and freight
won't. But if this did happen then you'd expect the NLL tracks to be
OHLE and the ELL tracks to be DC.

--
John Band
john at johnband dot org
www.johnband.org