The LNER Encyclopedia

I was just thinking that on the ECML in LNER days virtually every signal box, crossing cabins excepted. Had an arrangement of tracks with an up to down and down to up cross over so that single line working could be implemented quite quickly. The distance between cabins was quite small so minimal disruption was caused.
Roughly what distance is there between crossovers on todays ECML system?.

Just took a quick flick through my copy of quail maps for the ECML and it appears that South of Doncaster crossovers seem to be at an average of about 4 miles apart with the max between trailing crossovers of about 9 mile and with facing crossovers no more than 20 mile apart.
Emergency crossovers appear to be about every 4 - 5 mile between Tallington and Doncaster.
I count 48 crossovers from KC to Balby Bridge at Doncaster.

I have not checked Doncaster northwards.

Interesting i had visualised them being about 6 -10 miles apart these days.

52D wrote:Interesting i had visualised them being about 6 -10 miles apart these days.

One unfortunate side affect of privatisation in the 1990s was that the skills required to implement single line working were lost when staff were hived off to the various organisations, with those going to TOCs not being allowed to maintain their competency. Add the fact that their employers weren't exactly strangers to bus operation and you have the unhappy state of affairs which attained until quite recently. A glimmer of hope is the recent realisation that rail passengers would prefer to remain on trains, rather than be carted around by road. Moves are afoot to see what can be done to have more SLW, although this is not made easy by the need to rigorously seperate civil engineering staff from moving traffic in a way that was never thought necessary in the old days. On the Isle of Wight, though, the TOC staff can, and do, pilot working. What a refreshing change!

With current track renewal equipment, a lot of it is publicised by the manufacturer as being suitable for single line working. However when the H+S "Experts" start to worry and fret then you get the situation were all tracks have to shut down.
We were given the situation of doing a Relay + reballast on the 2nd road in of 4 south of York
The instructions received were "We must put in a system where all diggers must have slew pins engaged (Slew limiters not acceptable) when trains pass, (not good enough to place buckets in line and on the ground as has been done for years) the reason given was because "we might get a homicidal operator who would swing his bucket into the path of a passing train"

At a similar location we were also expected by the mainline operator to work with live lines either side with isolation only of the tracks being worked on.
We were still expected to get machinery and staff across to and from the access point.
Needless to say that did not happen and diesel haulage was in place with T2s for machine access purposes.

Apparently a new term has appeared instead of "Single line working"
Has anyone heard of the "Half capacity railway"?
SLW does not equate to half capacity and never could it do so.

Bryan wrote:Apparently a new term has appeared instead of "Single line working"
Has anyone heard of the "Half capacity railway"?
SLW does not equate to half capacity and never could it do so.

Don't you mean half capacity "managers"?