Hope Valley is a trans-Pennine railway line between Sheffield and Manchester which dissects the scenic Peak District National Park. The route connects Liverpool, Warrington, and Manchester Airport to the West and Nottingham, Norwich, and Cleethorpes to the East. Rail traffic on the route is mixed and the train service delivered a poor rail connection between Manchester and Sheffield, compared to other comparably sized cities.
The line has recently received an upgrade to provide more reliable and better rail journeys, and Rail Engineer recently met Graeme Whitehead, senior sponsor Network Rail for the Hope Valley Railway Upgrade to hear more of its success.
The origins of the project go back to the Manchester / Northern Hub programmes to improve and increase train services in the north and reduce journey times. The Hope Valley Railway Upgrade started in Spring 2021, was completed to plan in Spring 2024, and has removed several bottlenecks to allow passenger trains to overtake slower freight trains along the line.
The main improvements include: a new platform and accessible footbridge with lifts at Dore & Totley station; a new railway loop between Bamford and Hathersage; improved safety at Hathersage West with a new overbridge to replace the foot crossing; signalling improvements and recontrol to improve reliability; and platform extensions to allow for more train carriages.
Passenger services on the line are operated by Northern Trains, East Midlands Railway, and TransPennine Express, with the quarries around Hope Valley producing stone and cement which are carried predominantly by rail freight operators. The route therefore has to accommodate both local, long distance passenger trains, and freight traffic all on a two-line railway.
The route is a designated up line towards Sheffield and down line towards Manchester. From Sheffield, the line follows the Midland Main Line through the south-west of the city to Dore & Totley station, where the Hope Valley line branches off to run through the 5.7km Totley Tunnel. When the tunnel was completed in 1893, it was the second-longest in the UK – the Severn Tunnel being 1.3km longer. Only in 2007 did Totley Tunnel become the fourth longest mainline railway tunnel in the UK, after the two High Speed 1 tunnels were opened south of London.
The line emerges in the picturesque Hope Valley area of Derbyshire, where it passes through the stations of Grindleford, Hathersage, Bamford, Hope, and Edale before entering the 3.4km Cowburn Tunnel, the deepest railway tunnel in England at 875 feet (267 metres).
From the western portal of Cowburn tunnel, the line runs through Chinley then splits. The northern branch runs via New Mills Central towards Manchester Piccadilly and the southern branch passes through the 3.5km Disley Tunnel before merging with the Buxton line. It then heads to Stockport to join the West Coast Main Line into Manchester.
Upgrade interventions
The Hope Valley Railway Upgrade is essentially a capacity scheme to provide more services and better reliable connectivity between Sheffield and Manchester, and onto Manchester Airport. The changes have provided the capability for an additional fast train path per hour, although currently constraints at Sheffield and Stockport prevent the introduction of the additional services.
From Edgely Junction to Hazel Grove, signalling interventions have been carried out and commissioned in January this year to increase the line speed from 40mph to 60mph, and Woodsmoor level crossing has been made ‘auto lower’ (operated by train detection) to help manage the signallers workload at Edgeley Junction Number 1 signal box when the additional train path on the route takes place. Some power cable and other minor signalling renewals have also been carried out in the area.
Targeted interventions have been implemented along the line out to ‘smooth out’ the castellated speed profile along the route which had some very short sections (typically a few hundred metres) of higher line speed. Drivers would never have achieved the line speed over such a short distance, so the changes have improved the driveability of the route, the track category and maintenance regime requirements, and provided some small carbon benefits.
No significant changes have been made to New Mills, Chinley, Edale, and Earls Sidings signal box areas, but both Grindleford and Totley Tunnel East mechanical signal boxes have been closed, with the control area resignalled and recontrolled to York Rail Operating Centre (ROC) and Sheffield outer work station using Alstom Smartlock signalling, a new lineside SMART I/O interface and Frauscher axle counters. Earles Sidings signal box is now the fringe to the York ROC, and the regional boundary between the North West & Central Region and Eastern Region has been moved west. This is to ensure that there is consistency with operational control, asset stewardship, and maintenance delivery.
The resignalling of Grindleford also supports the connection into a new loop between Bamford and Hathersage stations to allow passenger trains to pass slower freight trains. The loop is located on the up side, so it will benefit both the pathing of the cement traffic from Earls sidings and other freight trains travelling East. Often, when freight loops are provided on the network, they can be accommodated on railway land previously used for railway lines, but the Bamford loop has required an order under the Transport and Works Act 1992 (TWAO) together with land acquisition.
A TWAO process allows the secretary of state to make to an informed view on whether it is in the public interest to make a TWAO and there is a lengthy robust set procedure to allow anyone to give their views on the proposals. So, a lot of work was required to obtain the TWAO before any physical work could commence.
Constructing the loop required some significant earthworks and structures construction, including a bridge extension in Bamford and three culvert extensions to allow water to adequately run beneath the railway. Extensive soil nailing was required to support the new earthworks along with substantial under bridges, one of which went over an aviation fuel pipeline and a power cable. The records for the route were found to be inconsistent with the as-built position and alterations to the initial design were required to ensure the bridge extension did not adversely affect the services. This required involvement of the utilities owner to resolve the issue. The loop itself required a total of 1,323 sleepers, with 3,600 tonnes of ballast for the bottom and top stone.
Hathersage West level crossing has been replaced by a footbridge to improve public safety and another project has provided a Miniature Stop Light (MSL) installation for Hathersage East level crossing.
Dore & Totley station
Originally opened as Dore and Totley in 1872, in 1894 the station became the junction for the then new Dore and Chinley line (now the Hope Valley line). Over the years the line between Sheffield station and Dore was widened, and Dore Station junction was made to the north of the station.
In the 1960s the station was closed to main line traffic and became an unstaffed halt and in 1971 was renamed Dore station. The island and eastern platforms were demolished in the mid-1980s and in 1985 the Hope Valley line through the station was converted to single-track, with trains in both directions stopping at the one remaining platform. The name Dore & Totley was restored in April 2008, but as more train services have been introduced the single-track section through the station became a significant bottleneck.
So, as part of the Hope Valley Railway Upgrade an additional ‘down’ platform (new Platform 1) has been constructed and connected to the station via an impressive fully accessible footbridge. The existing platform (was Platform 1 up and down, now Platform 2 up) has been lengthened from 100 metres to 152 metres in order to accommodate six-car trains rather than four. The previous single line has also been doubled between Dore West Junction and Dore Station Junction. The platforms have been constructed to a high standard, with the facilities including customer information displays and public address.
Dore South curve runs from Dore South Junction to Dore West Junction and is used by freight trains from the Midland main line connecting to the Hope Valley route. The curve has been extended to cater for 500-metre-long trains and to provide more standage on the curve to prevent freight trains standing on the Hope Valley down line. This has required extensive work to enlarge the cutting towards Totley Tunnel. Some of the embankment was stabilised using thousands of soil nails. Due to unfavourable ground conditions the design required amendment further towards the station and a contiguous piled retaining wall has been used to replace the soil nails due to the sheer amount and weight of the earthwork being held back.
Between Dore and Sheffield there have also been some minor speed increases introduced on the Heeley Loop located on the down line.
Joint venture delivery
The main works needed to improve capacity and connectivity between Sheffield and Manchester were delivered by a VolkerRail and Story Contracting Joint Venture (JV), called VolkerRailStory JV. Volker Rail undertook the signalling and telecoms (supported by Alstom signalling), together with the track scope, and Storey undertaking the civil engineering works. The VolkerRailStory JV also delivered community projects, including volunteering, schools engagement, work placements and other opportunities for young people. Keller Ltd delivered the extensive soil nailing and a video showing the extent of the works can be found by following the QR code.
A signalling simulator for the Hope Valley line was provided at the York ROC by Hitachi. Hitachi’s simulation, known as TREsim, emulates the Alstom workstation and provides trainee signallers with an environment controlled exactly as the live railway, with the ability to run scenario-based sessions.
An innovation which the Hope Valley had to introduce and commission was the first use of the Alstom SMART I/O interface for the Frauscher axle counters. This interface provides the ability to connect devices to the Alstom IP network-based architecture object controller, instead of using legacy communications back to the interlocking. This allows faster troubleshooting and enhanced availability.
A number of other projects were planning to commission the new interface and be ‘first in class’ before Hope Valley, but for various reasons their timescales slipped, so the Hope Valley upgrade project had to take on the product trial and approval leadership. This occurred only five weeks before commissioning. The Hope Valley project was added to the trial certificate and additional test paths were required to prove the new product. However, all went well, the device was approved and installed, and this did not affect the Hope Valley timescales.
The works to create Bamford Loop were undertaken throughout 2023 due to the nature of all the interventions and multiple under bridges, with commissioning early in 2024 along with the resignalling and recontrol of Grindleford and Totley East signal boxes.
Edgely Junction to Hazel Grove speed and other improvements were originally planned for September 2023, but were changed to January 2024 because of issues with driver training material. The Dore and Totley track doubling and station works were delivered during a nine-day blockade, with commissioning on 25 March, and the final track drainage works were completed during a five-day blockade at the end of April.
Conclusion
In addition to signalling and station improvements, a total of 3,923 metres of new track, including the new loop, has been installed to provide additional passing places for trains and improve the reliability of services along the Hope Valley route. We hear of some railway projects with escalating costs and extended timescales, but quietly in the background there are projects such as the Hope Valley Railway Upgrade, making the most of the resources available to improve public transport with more reliable and better rail journeys. Everyone involved in the Upgrade deserves to be congratulated for its success.
Image credit: Network Rail
