A Technical Report submitted to Derry City and Strabane District Council has quashed claims that there are any safety and practical reasons to prevent trains entering a restored Waterside Railway Station in Derry, rail campaigners claimed today.
The report has been compiled by rail lobby group Into the West, in consultation with technical staff at Network Rail in Britain. Network Rail is in charge of all the railway infrastructure in Britain, and Northern Ireland Railways follows its guidance.
Council is to hold a meeting on Wednesday to discuss the Translink plans for the station which stipulate that the trains must remain outside, and the Into the West counter-proposals.
An Into the West spokesperson said:
Local rail operator Translink have submitted a planning application to the Council to replace the city’s inadequate current 1980s train station with a new one incorporating the old historic railway station located on Duke Street (built in 1875). Translink originally proposed creating an entirely separate new-build station for the city, but a public campaign in 2013 forced them to agree to re-use the city’s historic building instead. Now they have submitted plans to the Council to create new train platforms outside the old building, claiming that practical and safety reasons prevent the original train shed from being re-used.
Translink have presented three reasons for this : exhaust fumes from the diesel engines, the required distance between buffer stops and the passenger concourse, and the curvature of the track in Derry. In the letter they sent to the Council with their application on 20th October 2017, they concluded that “when all these railway safety regulations are taken into account…there is insufficient floor area to incorporate the requirements of a modern day Multimodal Transport Hub”. Into the West has sought technical advice on these three claims from railway professionals, and checked the legal and technical rules books which govern rail across the UK, and have produced a report which robustly challenges them.
The claim on diesel fumes is easy to rebut, as many similar stations throughout Britain and Ireland also house diesel trains without any issues. Into the West technical spokesperson Jim McBride commented “Simple ventilation methods resolve this issue easily Diesel trains will be phased out across the UK and replaced fumeless electric ones in the coming years anyway”.
Translink also say that a 20 metre exclusion zone is needed between the train buffers and the passenger concourse, claiming that that would require so much space that there would be no room left for trains to enter the old railway shed. They refer to a specific Rail Safety and Standards Board (RSSB) guideline for this (GI/RT 7016, Clause 6.3.1.1, March 2014). However that guideline clearly states that it only applies to “new structures”. As an existing railway structure being brought back into use again, Derry’s historic rail station has an allowable deviation from that guidance. Mr McBride commented again “Our technical report to the council has provided examples of other existing and restored terminus stations in Britain and Ireland where a significantly smaller buffer exclusion zone of approximately 5 metres is the standard. In particular – Birmingham Moor Street Station is similar to Derry’s historic structure, and was completely restored and reopened in 2010 after being unused for twenty three years. It does not have 20 metres of quarantine space behind its buffers, proving that this is not a rule that would be applicable to Derry’s station either”.
And on the issue of curvature of the track, Into the West have also provided examples of stations elsewhere in the UK where curved platforms are not a problem in historical terminus stations. Two new platforms have been opened recently at the main station in Liverpool (Lime Street), and both are curved and have buffer zones of less than 5 metres. They have also pointed out that Derry’s old station not only had a curved platform originally, but also contained 3 lines - so has sufficient room for two now, even if one did have a slight curve.
Mr McBride summarised “Both rail industry technical guidelines and physical evidence from stations elsewhere prove that the three arguments presented by Translink to rule out trains entering Derry’s historic station simply do not hold. The bottom line is that Translink have never wanted to use the old building for trains from day one. They are resorting to imbalanced interpretations of technical and safety rules to try to force the council to agree with them”.
Into the West have also received written confirmation from the Department for Infrastructure (DFI) that forcing Translink to alter its proposals for the station would not put the project’s EU funding at risk. The EU’s INTERREG programme is providing financial assistance to the station redevelopment, and the DFI have confirmed that the funding is available for use through to the end of December 2020. Mr McBride concluded “Translink have stated that the creation of the new station in Derry will take two years, and DFI have confirmed that the funding is available for the next 2 years and 10 months. There is therefore more than enough time for the council’s planning committee to tell Translink to go back to the drawing board and return with proposals to fully restore the old station to its original purpose and design, creating a station for Derry status as an important regional gateway and Ireland’s most historic city. We have the time to get this right for the future of our city, so it is important we use the time available to do that. Derry deserves better than the sham-station proposal it is currently being offered”.
Into the West launched an online petition last week to enable the public to show their support for the campaign to have Translink change its plans. The petition had already attracted over 2,300 signatures.
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