AVE High Speed Train Murcia to Almeria

If any one has the details, please let me know 

It will be much appreciated

Brian

Is this what you want, Brian ?

http://www.railway-technology.com/projects/spain/spain1.html

from http://www.railway-technology.com/projects/spain/

Thanks

I have seen this site but I am looking for a more detailed route which show the track in relation to the various Towns and Villages en route 

Eventually it may come here but as yet there is no link for the Murcia - Almeria section.

http://www.altavelocidad.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=section&id=6&Itemid=62#levante

If it is to follow the old line route it will probably branch off in Almendricos and join the existing Almeria - Granada line.  Sorry but cant be much more use than that.

The map on this web page is old so it may be out of date -

http://www.asafal.com/digistorico/especial_2.htm But it shows a completely different alignment (than the old line) for the route (so you can ignore my comment above).

If you do a search on the Spanish yahoo there were several press reports on the route in 2007.  As best as I can make out (as my Spanish is poor) there will be 2 AVE stations at Lorca and Vera between Murcia and Almeria.  Dont know if this means that there will be no regional services on the line or not.

Has anyone read anything re the cancellation of the upgrade of the line from Alicante to Murcia (to high speed operation).  I think that the AVE will still come to Murcia but it will be like British Rail from Alicante to Murcia and trundle slowly to its final destination.

Does anyone have any info on this? Thanks.

Stephen

As far as I know it is part of the regional budget and as the Spanish Prime Minister has bought a holiday home in Vera PLaya , to be cynical, I would be surprised if it did not go ahead

Also I think the AVE is part of a EU initiative for the main centres in the whole of EU to be connected by a high speed train  

I understand this project is definitely going ahead and that preparatory ground work has begun in places.

There is still some dispute over details of the project though, but I am sure these will be resolved.

The media has confused this project with another one, namely the re-opening of the old railway route from Almendricos. It is by no means clear whether this is really going ahead and if so when and who will pay. In my opinion this project is a bit of wishful thinking.

There is also some dispute over the routing of the high speed line in the Elx area. It seems the Madrid government want to see the high speed train use the existing line here meaning it will trundle at little above the speed of the current trains. This is in stark contrast to the plans they presented some five years ago. The local government is furious.

Just for clarification and in some sort of attempt to clarify (or confuse?) what is waht and what isn't.

As far as I am aware, the projects are the following

- Mediterranean arc, stretching from Barcelona to Alicante. Work on this began some 10 or more years ago and many sections are already in service. It was initially sold as a realignment of the old railway (which it is) but has since aquired the high-speed tag. The completed sections have already lead to a significant improvement in speeds but the maximum speed is still not being operated as they have yet to invest in a new signalling system. Further sections are in works and in some places work has yet to begin.

- Madrid to Valencia and Alicante high speed corridor. This line is currently under construction. The line forks at Alabacete with one arm going to valencia and the other to Alicante.

- Alicante - Murcia -Lorca - Almeria. This line should act as an extension to both of the above. Work is in progress in places but very much in a patchwork fashion. I feel this line is a bit of a "try to please everybody" approach. Besides the high speed trains, it will also be used by local services and freights, basically replacing chunks of the current rail system. This has led to some compromises which in turn have angered people.

- Murcia - Albacete, planned to avoid having to send high spped trains coming from the South on the detour via Alicante, this would basically replace the existing line via Chinchilla. This project is very much hyothetical at this stage and tends to come up at election times and be forgotten in between.

- classic network, in addition to these schemes, there are plans to invest in the classic netwok for the benefit of local services. These are confsuingly also called high speed lines, with the press and politicians thinking high speed and modern are synonymous. Most notably, projects under consideration are:

- local lines around Cartagena (I think this means the Los Nietos line) which would either be converted to normal gauge or converted to a tram

- the (Lorca) -Almendricos- Aguilas line which would be converted to standard gauge and electrified

- the (Lorca)- Almendricos - Baza line which would be reopened.

-various as yet undefined projects in the Murcia and Alicante metroplitan areas.

Most of the latter are highly speaculative at this point and some designed to placate or appease special interest groups rather than serving real improvements. Others do amke real sense. They may change or be dropped as time goes by.

http://www.laverdad.es/murcia/prensa/20071029/murcia/trenes-llegaran-region-20071029.html

Hope your Spanish is OK, check out this article re this discussion.

The european rail magazine that I subsribe to seems to suggest that the line from Alicante to Murcia will only be upgarded to 210kmh operation in some sections only, as you suggest a piecemeal approach and that the full highspeed ave at 300kmh will not happen.

Do you include the Murcia tram www.tranvimur.es as one of the undefined projects?

Hi,

I know this post is a few years old, what is the latest on this train system. has it been built or is it still at the planning stage. its been a few years since i was in vera, thinking about going again in september.

Except for odd newspaper article promising future date for completion !!!.....all as it was before and sans obras started.

Check out railway station at La Hoya in middle of country  looks great  - no railway just station 

Do you include the Murcia tram www.tranvimur.es as one of the undefined projects?

The Murcia tram has made huge progress since my last post on this thread.

Other projects that are still in limbo is the question of the future Murcia station. Murcia wanted the station and its approaches to be entirely underground, eliminating numerous level crossings and permitting the neighbourhoods currently severed by the railway tracks to grow back together. However, in times of austerity the transport ministry has become much less generous towards this sort of thing. Burying rail lines for purely urbanist reasons is urbanist investment, not transport investment, and so it shouldn't come out of transport funds. But of course local authorities are good at telling other people to spend money but don't like spending their own money, so there is a standoff.

There is also a bit of a "me too" attitude here. If Valencia or Alicante has something, then its just unfair if Murcia doesn't get it, and the toys will be thrown out of the plan until the ministry comes around and concedes to their wishes.

Big chunks of the Alicante to Murcia high speed line appear to be under construction right now, but there is still a dispute about what it will do in Elche (use the present railway, or do something new) and the section between Elche and Alicante, whether or not it will serve Alicante airport etc and again this dispute is fuelled by lots of unrealistic ambitions with little regard for the cost or available funds. What seems definite though is that the section along the coast at Agua Amarga up to San Gabriel  will be dismantled in favour of a yet to be defined inland route avoiding the need to reverse trains at San Gabriel (and thus saving heaps of time and also costs). This proposal seems to hang together with the ambition to develop the waterfront at Agua Amarga, although in my opinion the presence of the railway line is far from the only obstacle to this. The spur from Alicante Termino to San Gabriel is being retained but will no longer see passenger trains: Although it is difficult to recognise because it so overgrown, this track actually continues beyond San Gabriel to the port (this was the old Andaluces main line from Benalua) and Alicante wants to see rail freight traffic to the port revived and thus needs to safeguard this track. This story has run into its own deadlock though over yet another quibble with ADIF.

There have also been some murmurings that the line to Torrevieja could be reopened for a Cercanias service from Alicante. This sounds to me like a major reconstruction project as the original line has been built on at the Torrevieja end. This will probably remain a long-term pie in the sky project.

Also taking a bumpy road right now is the proposed coastal railway from Alicante to Valencia serving Benidorm, Denia and Gandia. The project was officially stopped as an austerity measure but money has since been allocated for further planning work. The line will broadly follow the corridor of the coastal motorway south of Gandia (running mostly to the inland side of the motorway to avoid interfering with the numerous urbanizacions), and use the existing railway north of Gandia (presumably with some realignment for higher speeds). This line is being called a high speed line in the press but speeds are unlikely to be in excess of 220kph and will be operated more as a cercanias-style railway, although Benidorm would like there to be through trains from Madrid - and why not?. (I have a personal interest in this one as the proposed new El Campello station would be within walking distance of my house)

Thanks to everyone for all the details.

from this, it will be a while more before the high speed train gets to vera,

thanks again to every one who replied

Does anyone have any recent news on this? The last I heard the Murcia-Almeria section was effectively dead in the water (despite >€1bln already being spent on tunnelling etc) and I personally don't see it being revived anytime within the next decade, since I understand it needs many billions more before reaching Almeria (let alone Cordoba, which I believe was the original intention - to link in to existing AVE to Seville/Malaga) but what of Alicante-Murcia?

Are they keeping the classic line, and if not what is going to happen to the Cercanias service, and services using that route to head on to Cartagena and Lorca? I don't see how they could realistically re-use the Elche section for high-speed, as the existing tunnel through Elche city centre is (if I recall correctly) only single-track. The whole thing things a bit of a mess, actually - but I'd like to know just what is happening, and what's been dropped.

I'm not sure about the Elche section. Definietly there are many locations between Elche and Orihuela where construction work is stil in progress, so I guess this section will be finished. My understanding is that once the high speed line is complete, the Cercanias services will also use this (in places the Cercanias trains have already switched to the new trackbed). I'm not sure whether this means they will switch to standard gauge when the line is done or remain broad gauge. The present diesel trains are approaching the end of their commercial life cycle and the opportunity could be taken to replace them with something electric and standard gauge. During the planning phase, there was talk of one of the tracks being retained as dual or broad gauge but I'm not sure if this is still being pursued, or indeed what the point would be. Freight possibly, although there is not very much of that going on right now. I haven't seen a freight train here in many years.

High speed trains will definitely not use the present tunnel under Elche but will serve an entirely new station on the edge of town. I don't know whether Cercanias trains will continue to use the tunnel. Doing so would make sense but there doesn't appear to be much sense in the planning of the high speed network (what happened in Villena is a prime example of lack of joined up thinking). I'm also not sure whether the plans for a station at Alicante airport are still being actively pursued. I heard the tram line to the airport has been postponed but the train doesn't seem to get mentioined much at all.

As for the Almeria extension, like you I've heard that this is dead in the water, despite the billions already spent on it. I'm not sure where the line will end. Possibly Murcia. I don't know what's happening on the Cartagena line. There have been several weekend cloures over the last years apparently for engineering work but I don't know if this implies the high speed line or some other unrelated construction. I don't think the line beyond Murcia and towards Almeria will be completed for many years, if ever.

The classic line that went beyong Almendricos to Almeria was closed in the 1980s (although some Renfe maps continue to show it). There was until the final years evern a Granada to Barcelona "express" that went by this route. Although partially dismantled, the line remains in GIF ownership and apparently stil carries live communications cables (including broadband) so GIF/RENFE don't want to give it away. The new line (whether or not it ever gets completed) would thus not affect any existing train services on this section. Every couple of years somebody suggests reopening the old line but nothing ever comes of it and its very difficult to see a business case for it, unless maybe the high speed line is one day definitely and permanently abandoned. The Aguilas branch will remain broad gauge for the forseeable future. If the Talgo through trains from Madrid are to be retained thgis would require a gauge changer in Murcia.