New Stations

If I remember correctly, the council's LDP included building an entirely new business park on the east edge of St Mellons. Surely if this is to happen then train stations in the east should be top priority. In fairness to the council, they have at least made it clear that this issue will be one of the first to be tackled by the metro plans.

I'm speaking from memory here but I think I'm right in saying that there's a capacity problem when it comes to stations on the GWR mainline east of Cardiff.

It's something to do with it being two rather than four tracks in places. Opening stations in Saint Mellons etc is doable and necessary - but it's a much bigger project than it might appear.

It's possible electrification which allows faster braking and quicker acceleration will ease the problem.

Could a spur off the mainline work?

Could a spur off the mainline work?

It could do - I'm not an expert!

I did have the problem explained to me once. It's down to Dr Beeching apparently. Up until the 1960s the mainline could be used by both express and stopping services because most of the East-West freight went either via the Taff Vale Extention Railway or the Heads of the Valleys line. With those two closed the GWR mainline has to carry all the freight as well as Inter City and Cross Country services and is pretty close to capacity as a result.

It's much like the Queen Street Bridge bottleneck on Valley line services. Electrification is supposed to imrove capacity there, so it could have the same effect between Cardiff Central and Newport.

Electrification will have no impact on frequency of valley line services if delivered in heavy rail configuration.

You're right, it won't improve capacity but will slightly improve journey times. Capacity has been improved by the re-signalling of the south Wales area and the extra platforms at Queen St and eventually Central.

extra platforms at Queen St and eventually Central.

Anyone know when this extra platform at Central will open, they seem to be doing the work at a snails pace, the track bed had been down for months. It like things are being done just to satisfy a Rail Track accountant!

It's the slowest construction project of all time. I'm sure they are trying to break some kind of world record. If the new northern entrance is going to be done by the same people then I would rather they not bother. It would literally take them about 10 years at the same pace as this one, and that's without trying to break this world record which I am sure they will want to do.

The new platform won't open until 2017 I think, there was some track work that was supposed to be done outside Central which has been put back a year and the platform is reliant on this. I think the south entrance is finished though.