Alone Beneath The Sky: Rumination: Morley Gets A New Station

New Station means Selfies!
at Morley 'New' Station.

After a rough start to the year, we finally managed to get a good turn on the walking year as passed through May and June, but as the midway point on the year arrives, we need to have a rest from the regular weekends on the trail, as we already feel like we've been spreading ourselves rather thin with the efforts of keeping myself going through working and walking in the midst of the post-covid experience and having put a decent wad of miles downs so far, a rest feels overdue, before we refocus ourselves on the task in hand, namely getting a whole 300 (Three Hundred!) miles down on the year, a triumphant sounding amount that's still less than half of what I achieved in 2022. It doesn't mean that we don't have things to talk about though, as there's not been a shortage of things going on locally, even if we're going to have to cast our minds back a bit, which shouldn't be too much of problem considering the usual condition of this blog, to two weekends ago, when the engineering possession through Morley station was only on its second day, and I decided to stay in to dedicate myself to writing and housework on Sunday 18th June, with full anticipation that redevelopment progress was going to be slow and the main activity of the long week would be tidily spread out and thus easily observable on the casual. This turned out to be a poor choice, as when I rose on the early morning on the Monday and progressed down to the station to await the rail replacement bus, we found that a lot of activity had gone on since my passing by on Saturday morning, with the footbridge span removed and the 'up' platform completely dug out, with the rails and ballast on the Manchester-bound side also removed and the alignment partially flooded, (due to rain or the spill out from the concealed stream below) with drainage being apparently installed, which pretty definitively drops the curtain on the old L&NWR Morley Low station after almost 175 years, marking my arrival there on the Friday as the last of the in excess of 6,000 journeys that I must have made via it since arriving in town in 2007.

My Last View of the active Morley Low station 16/06/23

All Change at Morley, view #1, 19/06/23

All Change at Morley Low, view #2, 19/06/23

All Change at Morley Low, view #3, 19/06/23

What thus follows turns into a regular attendance on site after work, regardless of where of I've been working or which bus I've been able to board for the late afternoon ride back up the hill from Leeds, in order to observe the heavy engineering as it progresses. which on the Monday evening sees a focus on digging out the ballast and trackbed on the 'Up' side, as part of altering the curve on the approach into Morley tunnel, to remove the speed limit through the station site, which probably impeded the camber of the track and also posed a problem to the future installation of electrification catenary, meaning that it had to be removed wholesale, work which is ongoing as the heavy jackhammer is brought out to remove more of the footbridge stub. For the Tuesday, the trains full of fresh aggregate return to the site, allowing the laying of ballast on the 'up' side and the re-laying of rails heading into the tunnel, illustrating just how much can be done when you get a lot of working men on the site, and a whole lot of materials shipped onto the site without having to work around a functioning railway, while on the Wednesday, there's also the small situation of getting the 'down' lines out as well, so the tunnel approach and the old station site can be wholly re-railed to allow the Novas and other TPEs to tilt through at speed as part of the ongoing Trans Pennine Route Upgrade plan. With all the new metals getting laid, all in situ by Thursday evening, with the tamping machine running through the station and a horde of workmen with spades following it to illustrate that a lot of heavy engineering still has a 19th century feel, it's easy to forget that there's a new station getting constructed as all this goes on, needing to be rendered functionally accessible before the turn of the weekend, and thus we have to turn our sights around to see what's going on to the northeast of the old station site, where the footbridge has gad stepped flights installed on both sides by the end of Thursday, and a tarmacked approach laid across the old car park site, and among the heavy plant, in place on Friday.

'Up' platform and line removed, 19/06/23

Footbridge demolition still in progress, 19/06/23

New Ballast on the 'Up' side in the old Station site. 20/06/23

Spoil Train on the new 'Up side, with 'Down' line removed. 21/06/23

New Rails in place at Morley Low, with Tamping Machine, 22/06/23

Accessible footbridge now in situ at Morley New station, 22/6/23

Best available reverse angle over the new station, 23/06/23

While we're taking all this interest in the New Morley station, it's also worth turning our gaze towards the very slowly progressing works at White Rose station to the north as well, where construction has been ongoing for 18 months, and stands apparently still far from final completion, despite work having started in late 2021, and this needs to be observed by alighting the buses on Churwell Hill and at the White Rose centre so we can get a much coverage of the site as is possible, where piles have been driven, canopies assembled and access towers built, but visible progress appears to be insanely slow, as if the impetus needed for rapid completion at Morley is entirely absent here. It doesn't look like we've even got much construction of the platforms as yet, and while the towers for the lifts and stairs cores have been in place for a while, the elevation of the footbridges has not yet taken place, as the metalwork appears to be on site and assembled, but no cranes are apparent as we pass by on Thursday and Friday evening, on the paths around the fields of Broad Oaks farm, pondering the very real probability that this is a project that could easily run on into 2024, meaning that even with modern construction techniques, the task of assembling platforms atop a pre-existing embankment might end up taking as long as the excavation of 2+ miles of Morley Tunnel in the 1840s. Otherwise, back on the Morley site, work appears to have quietened down as the weekend of the 24th-25th passes, with the work mostly looking like it's been set up to secure the access to the new platform beyond the car park and heavy plant storage, while no further work seems to be taking place to reuse or remove the 'Down' platform as yet, as a large generator or perhaps a pump now sits below where the footbridge stood, chugging away to its merry self, which makes it a certainty that we will have a wholly new station to use as the next week rolls around, just that bit further down the line than it was previously.

White Rose 'Up' platform, from Churwell Hill 22/06/23

White Rose 'Down' platform, from Churwell Hill 22/06/23

White Rose station, with towers and footbridge (not in situ) 22/06/23

White Rose station, from the footbridge - Broad Oaks path 23/06/23

Clear access to Morley New station established 25/06/23

Morley Low's 'Down' Platform still endures, for now 25/06/23

So Monday 26th June is thus our red letter day, and as I'm awake enough to be out of the house before 6am on the first day of my working week, I'll be heading down to observe the first services arrive at the new station, 75m further along the line than the old one and while there are still a lot of workmen on site, there seems to be little apparent hoopla to greet the commuters for the early train, which arrives at 6.17am to not be greeted by dignitaries, ribbon-cutting or bunting, and not even any detonators or a Geoff Marshall sighting, which is slightly disappointing, but might well have something to do with it not being finished yet, and being opened purely out of necessity after the old site was partially demolished. I'll troll around and observe the expresses pass through before travelling off to work on the third stopping service of the day, the 06.56, getting thanked for my patience by the Northern Rail staff as I ponder my first impressions, which have crystalised nicely once I return homeward on the 16.26 arrival in the evening, which is that I actually quite like the new station, which despite its increased distance from the town and long sloped walk away offers a site that's actually significantly larger than what it replaced, with apparently longer platforms, which are also deeper than they appeared when viewed from afar. It's also been good work to get the platform surface laid and increased quantities of shelters established too, which enhances the impression of getting an actual upgrade, though there are still significant shortcomings, the least of which being the lack of functioning display boards, and the absence of tannoy or ticket machines, because as we've observed the station is still a work in progress, with the footbridge not completed and the temporary scaffold step flights feeling rather rickety when a crowd ascends or descends, while the complete absence of lifts, with their cores not even in place yet rather spoils the promise of the fully accessible station that we were promised.

Being among the first visitors to Morley 'New' station, 26/06/23

'Up' Platform from the 'Down' Platform 26/06/23

The 0617 to Leeds is the first train from Morley 'New' 26/06/23

The 'Down' Platform from the 'Up' Platform 26/06/23

'New' Morley overview from the footbridge 26/06/23

Morley Low now passes into History 26/06/23

Of course, local opinion, or at least that which can be gleaned from the internet, seems to be universally negative, complaining of heritage being destroyed (which is really a problem dating back to the 60s), or bemoaning its remote location and lack of convenient access (which have been an issue since its construction in 1848), but I'll try to regard it more positively, through the eyes of someone who actually uses it and actively considers the social value of rail travel, to hope that the future of the Trans Pennine Route Upgrade might look away from the enhancement of express services and work to bring a more regular (like 3 trains an hour) local service and longer (like 5 or 6 carriage) trains on these lines to Leeds, Huddersfield and Calderdale, before electrification finally arrives on these metals in the 2030s. maybe?

~~~

Elsewhere, away from the wandering and observation of major civil engineering projects, June has also presented us with the unsurprisingly difficult business of attempting astronomy across the quarter of the year where night never seems to fall properly and the twilight arrives late and seems to endure almost until midnight, rendering it difficult to planet-spot from my vantage point at home, which makes for some rather challenging viewing across the month as Venus and Mars in Gemini and Cancer put on their final display in close proximity, with the latter passing within a degree on the Beehive Cluster (M44) on the 2nd, and the former reaching its greatest eastern elongation, to give maximum visibility across the evening on the 4th. Actually managing to capture Mars and the open cluster at a dim magnitude with my hand-held and underpowered camera might just be the most significant success for my sky-watching on the year so far, while the extended appearance of Venus seems like a bit feels like a disappointment as it's not all that bright until after 10pm when it's sitting very low in the sky. and it appearance in an alignment with Castor and Pollux the day prior seems more worthy of a jaunt out of the house and up the hill, and once Venus has moved to meet M44 on the 13th, it's too low in the sky and not dark enough to be at all visible from my perspective. The apparent closeness of Venus and Mars is then best visible around the Summer Solstice, on the 21st and 22nd, which coincides with the young moon passing by, neither of which are readily observable until well past 10pm as they rapidly sink below the apparent horizon, in skies that are still bright enough to render an extremely bright star like Regulus, in Leo, extremely difficult to spot, all of which sums up the difficulty of star-gazing at the point in the year when climatic conditions are best suited to being out and about to do it, which will probably put the crimp on this activity for a while, as I'm not chasing Mars or Venus as they reach their closest approach and pass out of visibility during July, and will probably await the reappearance of Saturn and Jupiter in the evening skies in the east come the Autumn.