That’s the area covered by that particular live section. ElectricTrain can hopefully give the details?
This is the flaw in the
GW» Electrification, the original risk assessment would have taken such events into account. However the major flaw is Reading Depot loosing all power during Isolations Kensal Green / Maidenhead and Didcot / Maidenhead this has made it very difficult to plan in 2 sets of work requiring isolations between Paddington and Didcot; this will become very acute over the next few years with the all line blocks at Old Oak Common to construct the
GWML▸ HS2▸ station
Stuving sums it up, I suspect the commissioning and live system testing may be happening over Christmas. Holly Cross was originally part of the "Freight Spine" that would have seen 25kV electrification from Southampton to the Midlands including
EWR▸ , the reason for retaining it as in feed point is purely down to a 400kV Grid location, there is nothing in the Reading area with the capacity required and be future proof
The are a few challenges of electrifying Reading / Basingstoke the local train service is just not sufficient to justify the cost, it would need the Cross Country and Freight to be able to go North of Didcot (Oxford if Didcot to Oxford electrification gets complete) and the
AC▸ /
DC▸ interface at Basingstoke is not a small piece of work.
I was surprised to learn that a tree falling on the overhead wiring at Goring initially took out the power all the way from Maidenhead to Didcot Parkway and Newbury. Presumably that is down to the way the current is fed. Just seems a very wide area to be affected, and on two different routes, by one incident.
The power feed stations are at Didcot and Kensal Green - the extra feed from Bramley to Reading is due on line next year. Switching is possible at Maidenhead and Reading, so the outage could be limited to Didcot-Reading. For some reason it appears that didn't happen - possibly there was not enough power available from Kensal, which has to power the Crossrail core too. I'm sure this is the kind of situation the Bramley feeder was meant to help with.
Coincidentally, today the contractors working on the railway's substation at Bramley (Enable Power Systems and Enable Infrastructure, formerly known as BCM) put out
a news item and video. The 25-0-25 kV cable from the Bramley grid substation goes to an ATFS by the railway at a site called Holly Cross, and from there the "low level" feeder runs along the railway to Reading SATS/ATFS. At first sight it's odd there has to be a substation with loads of switchgear at this point, but there is - maybe it is still being built (as if) to power an electrified Reading-Basingstoke line, though no real plan for that exists.
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