A Leicester Mercury story begins:
The electrification on the Midland Mainline will be extended into Leicestershire, the Government has confirmed.
Transport ministers have said Network Rail has been instructed to draw up plans upgrade the rail route as far as Market Harborough.Searching this blog, I find that I reported this news in June of last year.
My source was a comment to the Nottingham Post by Sir Peter Soulsby, the mayor of Leicester, after the publication of the invitation to tender to provide the service on this line.
So the campaign by Harborough's MP Neil O'Brien to have the wires reach the town may have been pushing at an open door all along.
Even when electrification was planned to stop at Kettering, there was to be a substation at Braybrooke, a couple of miles from here, where power lines cross the railway.
It's not clear if the we shall gain much from this decision, but the further north the wires go the better.
The Tories fought the last election promising to electrify the line all the way to Sheffield, even though a decision had already been taken to stop 100 miles south of there.
Hmm. Any chance of an extension of the electrification from Cardiff to Bridgend, at least? (At the same time as the Midland Mainline electrification was canned, the Tories also went back on the coalition's decision to electrify the GW line to Swansea.)
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