Glasgow Crossrail - a disfunctional and negative loss

[rjhowie]

In pointing out a while back in this thread that 37040 was bypassing what Glasgow Crossrail was meant to be and that wasn't as he described what the situ was. The thing was to give clear running from trains from Edinburgh through to the west coast and a new situation where suburban services in a wider way would in fact be more general than they are both sides of the Clyde centrally. The bridge across the Clyde from the St Enoch station days and that line that curves over Glasgow Cross is still intact and a few hundred yards of connecting in the Gorbals side would have revolutionised the system. Had this been done 20 years ago it would have been well below the terrible sums of today. It is a loss. A wee while back I watched a video of a rail enthusiasts train going over that bridge then across the Cross.

 

[JCitron]

In pointing out a while back in this thread that 37040 was bypassing what Glasgow Crossrail was meant to be and that wasn't as he described what the situ was. The thing was to give clear running from trains from Edinburgh through to the west coast and a new situation where suburban services in a wider way would in fact be more general than they are both sides of the Clyde centrally. The bridge across the Clyde from the St Enoch station days and that line that curves over Glasgow Cross is still intact and a few hundred yards of connecting in the Gorbals side would have revolutionised the system. Had this been done 20 years ago it would have been well below the terrible sums of today. It is a loss. A wee while back I watched a video of a rail enthusiasts train going over that bridge then across the Cross.

It's sad when projects like this aren't done yet new projects are started. Up in Boston, the "T" is doing a study to push the Lechmere Green Line (trams) to Union Square in Somerville, which is a few miles away. Funny... There were once trolleys there and even a big trolley barn there which I remember as a kid. The tracks were still in the road, but cut off from the rest of the system. Along came progress, the trolley barn became a bus repair shop, tracks dug up, and a supermarket moved in. Why didn't they just rebuild a system that was already in place instead of selling off the land and building a new line which is going to cost us a ton of money.

The other line is the Blue Line which follows the ROW of the old Boston, Revere Beach & Lynn Narrow Gauge RR. The BRB&L disappeared in the early 1940s, just before WWII and just after the war, the current Blue Line which runs to Logan International Airport and then on to Suffolk Downs Race track was built on the ROW. There have been talks to reopen the line again following the old ROW which still exists to Lynn, but some developer squeezed someone's hand very well and built some condos on top of the ROW near the Saugus River crossing. This will cause the project to balloon astronomically because they'll have to reroute around, under, or through the complex somehow, and for sure the NIMBY-Yuppies won't want trains too close. Again, an route that should have been mothballed, or railbanked as they call it here, but instead allowed to be ruined by a developer who you know will surely cash in big time if the project goes through.

John