The Hidden Glasgow Forums

The Scotsman has recently run this article


"GLASGOW's Queen Street Station is to undergo a multi-million pound expansion, Scotland on Sunday has learned.
The landmark – which dates back to 1842 – will get new and longer platforms and, sources suggest, an airport-style passenger terminal.

The upgrade will be made as part of the Scottish Government's proposed £1 billion revamp of the flagship Edinbur
ADVERTISEMENT
gh to Glasgow route.

Transport planners had long feared they would not be able to boost capacity between Scotland's two biggest cities because Queen Street, which is accessed through a long and narrow tunnel, could not handle longer and more frequent trains.

However, it is now understood they have come up with a plan to drive existing track right into what is currently the station's passenger concourse and add an extra-long curling platform in an area now used as a taxi rank.

Sources yesterday said the ambitious plans would leave little room for passengers in the current concourse, forcing station owners Network Rail and the Scottish Government to build a new two-level airport-style terminal next to the existing glass-ceilinged Victorian structure.

Network Rail, however, would yesterday only confirm it was looking at platform expansion. A spokesman said: "As part of the Edinburgh and Glasgow improvement programme we are examining how capacity at Glasgow Queen Street could be enhanced.

"The options under consideration include lengthening some existing platforms and creating an additional platform by utilising the current car parking space. This project is at an early stage and many elements, including funding, have yet to be finalised."

Scotland on Sunday, however, understands that the Scottish Government will almost certainly look to Network Rail to raise the funds needed for Queen Street's upgrade, probably, insiders said, by asking the state-owned company to borrow against its considerable track and other infrastructure assets.

A spokesman for First Minister Alex Salmond said: "Network Rail's borrowing powers are being used to improve the railways across Scotland.

"It is ironic that an agency of government has borrowing powers when the Scottish Government does not."

Sources said it was too soon to work out how much the station's expansion would cost.

Transport Scotland, the Scottish Government agency in charge of the nation's railways, said expansion plans at the Glasgow station were designed to allow the agency to meet its ambition of increasing the number of trains between Glasgow and Edinburgh from four an hour now to six an hour by 2016.

A spokeswoman for the agency said "Analysis is under way to assess the infrastructure improvements required at Queen Street to provide sufficient capacity for the requirements of the proposed 2016 timetable.

"The options being considered are designed to increase the operational flexibility of the station layout and consider combinations of realigned, extended and perhaps additional platforms."

The spokeswoman hinted that the station's passenger areas may be improved as well.

The Scottish Government has also been exploring potential sites for a third railway station for Glasgow. But proposals to reopen the old St Enoch station – at a site close to the shopping centre of the same name – now look unlikely to go ahead, sources said.

There are also doubts over an alternative third station site close to the existing Central Station. The so-called Central East Station would have been in Jamaica Street.

"Expanding Queen Street will buy us a decade," one source said. Ultimately, however, Glasgow may need new infrastructure if it is to cope with huge rising demand for train travel, transport insiders believe. The number of passengers using Queen Street alone has more than doubled in the past five years to nearly five million people annually."

Two-level airport-style terminal? this has cheap and nasty written all over it. The station is packed as it is at rush hour and we cant afford to lose more concourse space! What they should do is move the station offices elsewhere such as a new building in the car park and extend platform 1 back to where it was in the 70s, you could even get a platform 0 in there as theres plenty of space where the old stabbling point used to be.

This is too short term,Glasgow needs the infrastructure now,even a light rail system,

I have sen NR guys in measuring up. At the moment they are closing part of Caley Chambers and the staff will be housed in portacabins in the car park. we get snippets of info everyday , alot of it mundane rubbish but expansion is the word. One thing I wish they would do is cover over the end of the station we a sick of metal bariers and street cones coming flying over the wall. It wont be to long befroe sombody is maimed.

The word goes they platforms are to be expanded towards the Queen St. direction and out onto the current station taxi rank. Loads of gossip (it is railway talk after all) so we need to see what plans are set on stone for definite.

Best Regards

Jonathan McGurk

Railway and Freelance Photographer

www.jonathanmcgurk.fotopic.net

Plans to revamp around the Taxi rank area @ QS Station.

Hmmm....It's all fine a dandy adding new platforms, however it is the approach to Glasgow Queen Street that causes the biggest problem....that coupled with the slow acceleration of diesel multiple units up the incline. There is an unopened tunnel portal that was put there when the station built to allow for expansion. It sits ajacent to the current tunnel portal behind the cabin in the throat of the station. Now, I am not suggesting that a second tunnel be bored up to Cowlairs (as the cost would be astronomical and I have no idea how the cutting could be widened for 4 tracks), but if this tunnel was bored some way up the incline and an underground junction created halfway up with the existing tunnel, then the station throat would not get so conjested and I believe this would improve the flow of traffic in out of the station, increase capacity significantly thus would cause far less delays. Also, the platform alignment could be altered to lengthen and straighten the platforms as the track would not have to all converge on one tunnel portal.

Secondly, the electrification is coming, within 10 years, however, with 1 tunnel, I cannot see how that station could handle 6 edinburgh/Glasgow trains, and the anniesland/dunblane/alloa/aberdeen services per hour plus the odd inverness and Fort William/Oban services thrown in for good measure without delays on regular basis. I'm sure all their sophisticated calculations and rail management software they tells them that they can....but just look at the daily carnage at queen street with the current service level (especially at rush hours)....

i think the only extension to platforms, will be the current platform 1, which is only about three carriages long, there has been talk of that being extended, but that is as far as it has got, talk.

w.r.t. development, they will be filling, or rather covering up the daylight area at the end of the paltforms as Buchanan Galleries expands, so that it can have even more unoccupied units. Network Rail property have seen the ££££s for the wayleave, and bugger the passenger, sorry, customer experience who will feel even more so like they are in an underground station

StevenJ I work in the station and will be glad when it eventually gets covered in. If you go up to plt 1 when no trains are in the platform you will see some of the missles that get tossed over the bridge. Last week at 12.30 am a barrier came over and landed on the platform. Luckily it was empty but it could have been deadly.

that's a function of the scum on the street, and if they repaired the f'in bridge in the first place, they wouldn't need the barriers.

Well said, Steven

they’ll have a job incorporating the 52m tunnel section that runs below the car park area into their plans

what 52M tunnel section?

the archway that can be seen at Queen Street that is a dummy tunnel entrance, is just that, a dummy. There are no current plans to open a second tunnel.

it's not a railway tunnel

aha