Just had the opportunity to go on 6.12 ABC Brisbane’s Steve Austin Drive for an interview about the Exhibition Station. Will try to get the audio clip when available.
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Platform screen doors and compulsory automatic train operation would prevent the running of the ever popular steam services to the Ekka.
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I know but these special services to the Ekka won’t run for ever.
Rowan is on from the 20 minute mark. Well done @rowangray !
Here is the interview: mp3 4.4mb
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There’s no reason that they shouldn’t be able to run for as long as the steam locomotives remain operational.
I was passing Roma Street this morning on the M2 and noticed that they are busy with building platform 1 and the awning supports for it.
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I have a few concerns about Sector 2 (Shorncliffe/Airport/Doomben-Ipswich/Springfield/Indooroopilly) in our rail network after CRR is complete.
Regarding the Ipswich-Springfield lines, I wonder why why the line pair is considered as a ‘long-distance express’ service, implying a 30min off/counter-peak frequency for the Airport and Ipswich lines. I feel like the two lines are both able to run at least every 15min all day. The only reason why the Ipswich line ran every 30min in the off/counter-peak is due to the 3-track corridor from Northgate to Petrie that impedes the capacity of the through-running Caboolture/SC trains pre-CRR.
Regarding the Indooroopilly-Doomben lines, I have a feeling that the Indooroopilly trains should run every 15 min as well; the 15min frequencies of the Indooroopilly trains will combine with the 15min frequencies of the Springfield line, resulting in a 7.5min all-day frequency serving the high-density areas from Indooroopilly to Milton. Since the Doomben line can only run on 30min frequencies, half of the Indooroopilly trains will through-run with Northgate, providing more services for the TADs of Toombul and Nundah.
However, with half of the Indooroopilly terminators running to Northgate, the timetabling will be quite irregular with the combination of 15min Shorncliffe-Springfield trains and 30min Northgate-Indooroopilly trains. I wonder how you could normalise the combined frequency of trains to Northgate to every 7.5 min (15min Shorncliffe + 15min Northgate) without resulting in irregular service frequency on the Indooroopilly/Springfield/Ipswich lines. Have half of the Northgate terminators terminate at Roma St?
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Yeah it is a bit complicated. But with a small investment, the track from just past Eagle Junction to Clayfield can be duplicated, and if the second platform at Doomben is also opened to regular use, 15 minute services could be serviced making the following patterns:
- Springfield Central - Shorncliffe
- Indooroopilly (although logistically Corinda better) - Doomben
- Ipswich - Airport.
One thing I’d really love to see is 7.5min all-day frequencies to Northgate. Nundah and Toombul are both high-density areas that can be well served by rail (especially Nundah). It kind of hurts to see such a dense area only being served by a 15min frequency train service (Shorncliffe/Northgate-Cleveland/Cannon Hill), especially considering that Caboolture trains stopped at Nundah before the opening of the Redcliffe line.
One solution is to have the SC and Redcliffe trains stop at Nundah for an interchage with the Shorncliffe line rather than Northgate. But Northgate is a much more appropriate station for an interchange since it has much more facilities for passengers and staff compared to Nundah. So the other option is to double the frequency of Shorncliffe to/from Shorncliffe and Northgate for an all-day rail frequency of 7.5min, which I see is more realistic.
But during peak-hour where the combined frequency at Nundah and Toombul stations being 5min (10min Shorncliffe + 10min Northgate), I wonder how much trouble the 5min frequencies to Northgate will cause for the 15min-frequency Airport line trying to branch off from the NCL on the flat junction. Perhaps this could be solved by having the northbound and southbound services of the same line arrive at Eagle Junction at the same time. For example, a City & Ipswich service and an Airport service both arrive at Eagle Junction simultaneously. Will that do much to ease the problem of conflicting Shorncliffe and Airport services on the flat junction?
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Doomben and Airport lines are already timetabled to cross at EJ 
I always see the northbound Doomben train cross the southbound Shorncliffe train.
You know what? That’s probably better than having trains on the same line crossing at Eagle junction; the northbound Doomben/airport lines are guaranteed to not collide with the southbound Shorncliffe trains, since there won’t be another train occupying the southbound subs track in 5 minutes.
Huh. Guess I’m wrong about Doomben.
Definitely true for Airport though, because the single track section to International is 7 minutes, so for 15 minute frequency to work trains must cross ~at both ends of that.
Huh, so that means the branch out to the airport will be a lot tighter if we consider true turn-up-and-go rail service to Northgate.
If the airport trains cross over at EJ between the Shorncliffe/Northgate trains, the next southbound train from Shorncliffe/Northgate will arrive in 2.5min. So the northbound airport train will have a 2.5 min window to branch out to the airport.
At least the airport line will be through-running with the more reliable Ipswich line from the GC line as it won’t be headbutting an all-stop service (thanks to the 4-track corridor fro Corinda to Roma St).
There is ETCS2
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How long will it take until they implement ETCS2 on inner-city Sector 2? Here is the map where ETCS is currently undergoing construction (blue), planning (orange), and procurement (red).
The Sector 2 northside is still coloured grey to Doomben, Domestic Airport, and Northgate from the City; we would have to wait for quite a while for ETCS to be implemented to allow for reliable running of the northside Sector 2.
So a bit of an out there idea (pipedream probably with the cost) but maybe possible if linked in with Toombul redevelopment.
Would it be possible to move the current Toombul station South, closer to the junction with airport line, rebuild the bus station at Ross park, and turn Toombul into the new Eagle Junction.
Would need to be somewhat elevated for flood reasons and to connect properly to the viaduct.
I’ve always thought Toombul station is in the wrong place.
Eagle Junction is not a great transit experience with busy roads and not much of the way in generators itself. Turn it into more of a local station. Locals likely will be a bit happier as it should ease the street parking burden somewhat
Linked with a TOD (ensuring easy access over Sandgate Rd), closer to the more trip generators and built to properly transfer people from the airport line north and south. Also will free up EJ somewhat to allow higher frequencies.
CRR stopping patterns would be Northgate-Toombul-Albion-Exhibition
With this I would likely advocate the Doomben line be switched to BRT(metro) where you would have metros go from Toombul south down Sandgate road, head left down into a relocated Clayfield station a bit further south, head down past ascot, and then either racecourse Rd or Nudgee Rd into Hamilton then KSD into the city.
If metros to the airport become a thing, they could come out of airportlink, stop at Toombul, then continue to DFO and then the airport (although a train station at DFO would likely be a better option provided the line would come back into public hands to enable cheaper fares)
I mean, if you’re gonna redraw and rebuild the whole junction at Toombul then you could go all the way and make it a flying one connecting the airport line to the fast pair.
Doing that would allow to keep the Airport - Gold Coast pair on a more attractive Toombul - Albion non stop run making the service a true express service.
And yes I still believe the Doomben line should be converted to a busway or tramway to allow for an untangling of the track layout and service simplification.
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If you want to keep GC-BNE then the latter has to go to 9-car eventually, too. I think platform extension at International might be possible with no track changes but Domestic looks a lot harder.
DFO’s pretty much always on a curve at the best of times so I suppose that doesn’t really change things.
I take it this is going with a Northgate-Petrie quad to get Redcliffe out of CRR, no (QR) northside tunnelling. I suppose you could add a NWTC into FG to use that capacity up.
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The NCL would have many more stops compared to the NWTC, and diverting the Redcliffe line to NWTC would make the SC trains stop all stations from Northgate to Strathpine due to the SC line being the only line serving the NCL.
What if the SC line gets diverted onto the Boggo Road to Alderley via Southbank & Anzac Square corridor instead with express running from Bowen Hills to Alderley? The inner Ferny Grove line (Bowen Hills-Alderly) might be a bit slow, but the fast running on the NWTC (140-160kph) would make it faster than the original NCL route.
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