Trivia: Reopenings that have been "Proposed" the longest.

[Bald Rick]

Valid points - though this particular strand of the conversation started with the £130m (apparently) being spent on the aim to link the Metropolitan line to Watford, via the old Croxley Green branch to Watford High Street / Junction - with no apparent progress on the ground (beyond some vegetation clearance in 2013). I'm aware that enabling works can be expensive, but it still seems a lot - or has someone inflated the figure?

I don’t know if the £130m is correct or not (it seems high), but the costs before full construction can be significant. Especially, as in this case, when you have to go through a major primary consents process (eg Transport & Works Act Order), and all the design etc to get there. Then the costs of buying land, utilities diversions, etc.

 

[Mcr Warrior]

Have there been any line (as opposed to station) closures, in the past fifty years or sixty years or so, where there hasn't subsequently been any serious reopening proposals?

 

[24Grange]

Have there been any line (as opposed to station) closures, in the past fifty years or sixty years or so, where there hasn't subsequently been any serious reopening proposals?

At a guess , Tipton st John to Exmouth and Sidmouth Junction to Sidmouth. never heard a pip about those.

 

[Dr Day]

Not advocating these but the ones that I'm surprised don't get more call for re-opening are those joining up nearby biggish places/commuter towns on radial routes into London with each other. eg Didcot-Newbury-Winchester, Hereford-Gloucester-Oxford. Not necessarily putting many new places on the map, just filling in a few gaps to create a better network and creating more non-London commutable journey opportunities. Maybe enough regional planners realise the economics of rail for such trips don't stack up, the desirability of land in those places means the key bits linking into the existing network are built over and the enthusiasts have already done those stations.

East-West rail will be an interesting case study in establishing the benefits of 'joining bits up', as would more 'bus links on rails' - ie services in the timetables and fares systems with all the integration benefits of being part of the 'railway network'. But that's for a different thread...

 

[zwk500]

eg Didcot-Newbury-Winchester,

The XC service via reading satisfies passenger demand over this corridor.

Hereford-Gloucester-Oxford.

Hereford-Gloucester and Hereford-Oxford is already possible via Worcester, and Oxford-Gloucester is possible via either Worcester or Didcot & Swindon.

Not necessarily putting many new places on the map, just filling in a few gaps to create a better network and creating more non-London commutable journey opportunities.

But critically not filling in gaps in demand, only on a map.

East-West rail will be an interesting case study in establishing the benefits of 'joining bits up'

Are there any other 'gap-fillers' that connect a town of 250,000 people which is itself a major employment centre with 2 high-value employment cities? Let's also not ignore the VAST amount of housing development along the route that will be providing passengers commuting to those 3 destinations.

 

[tbtc]

Not advocating these but the ones that I'm surprised don't get more call for re-opening are those joining up nearby biggish places/commuter towns on radial routes into London with each other. eg Didcot-Newbury-Winchester, Hereford-Gloucester-Oxford

I suppose one problem with these kind of suggestions is that there's not much in Hereford that isn't in Gloucester and not much in Gloucester that isn't in Hereford (both lovely places, mind you!) - whereas the re-openings that do gain traction are the ones where there's a clear imbalance between places (e.g. people in the rural town will want jobs in the big city, people in the big city will be able to move to the rural town to afford a bigger house on the edge of the countryside)

For example, in West Yorkshire, there are pretty frequent trains from Bradford/ Huddersfield/ Wakefield into Leeds, but the service between Bradford/ Huddersfield/ Wakefield is pretty sparse and demand low because there's not much in Huddersfield that Bradford doesn't have, and not much in Wakefield that Huddersfield doesn't have and not much in Bradford that Wakefield doesn't have... whereas they all benefit from a link to the jobs/shopping/leisure of the big city of Leeds (and Leeds people have the option to trade their expensive flat for a suburban semi)... same goes in South Yorkshire with the fairly low public transport demand between Barnsley/ Doncaster/ Rotherham (but all places have good services to Sheffield)...

...would Winchester offer the people of Didcot that much? (especially when there's Oxford/ Reading etc on the line from Didcot)

I don't mean to be negative, apologies if it comes across like that, I just feel that "medium sized place to medium sized place" isn't always a winner for heavy rail, whereas "small place to big place" can do pretty well, since there's a clear reason to move between the two places

 

[WesternBiker]

Have there been any line (as opposed to station) closures, in the past fifty years or sixty years or so, where there hasn't subsequently been any serious reopening proposals?

I suspect it's quite a long list, as 60 years takes you back to pre-Beeching. Thinking of where I grew up, I have not been aware of any serious proposals for reopening the lines from Taunton to Chard, Barnstaple or Yeovil; the Exe Valley Line; or the Highbridge-Evercreech Jn section of the Somerset & Dorset Jt Rly. Those all closed in the 1960s.

 

[CarltonA]

Barnstaple-Bideford was, I believe, the reason for the Speller Act of 1981. Despite the track having been lifted, it looks (on Google maps) as though the biggest problem would be the road junction west of Barnstaple station: there appear to be no domestic properties affected. I would be surprised if there are not still some people pushing for reopening.

Knowing Barnstaple fairly well I believe this reference from the Wikipedia article on Barnstaple station is correct:

"In 2006 the bridge that carried Sticklepath Hill (the A3125) across the former Torrington and Ilfracombe lines was demolished to make way for a road junction for the Barnstaple Western Bypass, which opened in May 2007. The roundabout here has been built on a raised platform in order to allow for the reopening of the line to Bideford should this be proved viable in the future."

Barnstaple railway station - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[philthetube]

That's a great example to contrast with the S&C (which obviously remains open and only sees a Sprinter every couple of hours, rather than the amazing Thames Clyde Expresses and Nottingham - Dumfries services and half hourly freight and regular steam specials and HSTs from Leeds to Glasgow and all the other wonderful things that would surely be promised if BR/Portillo had closed it down in the 1980s)

If Skipton - Colne had remained open then my guess is that today's service would have just been at lest an extension of the hourly stopping DMU that served Colne (i.e. a single 142 for decades, recently replaced by a single 150) - low speed single track with a loop at Colne - I can't see it having been electrified when BR were doing the Leeds - Skipton line (let's face it, BR had a lot of other priorities that didn't get wired at the time) - the DMUs would trundle up and down with a couple of dozen passengers at best...

...but it was closed, which allows the daydreamers to envisage scenarios where it's a double track electrified line taking Hull - Liverpool expresses, removing lots of freight from the Diggle line, finally giving East Lancashire a direct link to the prosperity of Leeds (if you ignore the long established hourly service via Hebden Bridge!) - the SELRAP website (https://www.selrap.org.uk/Project.html) even talks about "the possibility of a direct link to Manchester airport from points from Shipley to Skipton" (because of course the Castlefield corridor needs new services!) and it'll "massively drive economic growth, open up new job opportunities, encourage business growth and stimulate new development throughout East Lancashire" ..."new jobs, businesses, economic growth and greater prosperity" (two hundred and fifty thousand people are quoted as the population of East Lancashire, which suggests that they are hoping nobody notices that a large number of those people already have an hourly service via Hebden Bridge!)

It's a lot easier to grieve for closed lines and imagine just how amazing they could have been today if only we had hundreds of millions of pounds to re-open them - much more exciting than dealing with the reality of several lines where the hourly Sprinter rarely has passenger numbers that would trouble a minibus

I do suspect that had the Preston Skipton service continued to Leeds we would be looking at a different scenario here, however that is off topic , sorry

 

[A0wen]

Have there been any line (as opposed to station) closures, in the past fifty years or sixty years or so, where there hasn't subsequently been any serious reopening proposals?

A few in Herts I can think of - Welwyn - Luton - Dunstable (unless you count the frankly insane suggestion of a heritage railway at the Dunstable end), Harpenden - Redbourn - Hemel, Welwyn - Hertford and St Margarets - Buntingford.

All 4 were low traffic, 1 was closed pre Beeching (Welwyn - Hertford), 1 lost its passenger service pre Beeching (Harpenden - Hemel). I don't think any have ever gone beyond the crayonista fantasy.

The only one which keeps cropping up in Herts is (apart from Met to Watford Junc, which is techincally a new build) Hatfield - St Albans - which will never happen for the simple reason the formation particularly at the Hatfield end is long gone and it really doesn't solve any problems.

 

[Dr Day]

I don't mean to be negative, apologies if it comes across like that, I just feel that "medium sized place to medium sized place" isn't always a winner for heavy rail, whereas "small place to big place" can do pretty well, since there's a clear reason to move between the two places

Don't worry - I completely agree with you heavy rail isn't the answer but was trying to say that I'm surprised given the discussion time 'small rural town to even smaller rural town through pretty scenery in a peripheral part of the UK' re-openings gets, that lines linking decent sized growing populations in areas with traffic congestion and some local commuting don't come up more often. Development gets focussed on towns with rail services to London/Birmingham/Manchester but trips from those towns can be in other directions too.

Maybe not the best example but whilst there may not be a huge market between say Gloucester and Hereford themselves (and you can travel between them via Worcester if you have to), a lot of more orbital journeys can be remarkably difficult to make by train. Purely an observation that surprised there isn't more call for those types of connections to be re-instated or even built from scratch that reason alone, given the oft-cited negative network impacts of the Beeching cuts. Again, heavy rail unlikely to be the right mode given the capital and operating costs relative to the demand, but when has that ever stopped anyone?

 

[WesternBiker]

I don't mean to be negative, apologies if it comes across like that, I just feel that "medium sized place to medium sized place" isn't always a winner for heavy rail, whereas "small place to big place" can do pretty well, since there's a clear reason to move between the two places

That's spot on: if one looks at some of the more successful re-openings of recent times (to Aberdare, Maesteg and Ebbw Vale in the Welsh Valleys), they are exactly about connecting small to mid-sized communities to larger centres of employment within a reasonably commutable distance.

The most spectacular success in this category to my mind is Edinburgh to Glasgow via Bathgate - both Bathgate and Livingstone now generate well over 1m passenger journeys a year - on a line which is double tracked and electrified. I'm not sure how many others might really be in this category, though. It'll be interesting to see whether East-West Rail is anything like as successful.

But the crown of re-openings must surely go to the Snow Hill tunnels, to create Thameslink. Hard to imagine now that it didn't exist until 1990...

 

[zwk500]

The most spectacular success in this category to my mind is Edinburgh to Glasgow via Bathgate - both Bathgate and Livingstone now generate well over 1m passenger journeys a year - on a line which is double tracked and electrified. I'm not sure how many others might really be in this category, though. It'll be interesting to see whether East-West Rail is anything like as successful.

I suspect EWR will be fairly popular from the off and only get stronger. Especially if they get the Aylesbury-MK service up and running. That's a surprisingly big commuter flow.

But the crown of re-openings must surely go to the Snow Hill tunnels, to create Thameslink. Hard to imagine now that it didn't exist until 1990...

Challenged all the way by the other Snow Hill tunnels reopening, in Birmingham!

 

[Bald Rick]

But the crown of re-openings must surely go to the Snow Hill tunnels, to create Thameslink. Hard to imagine now that it didn't exist until 1990...

1988, but I’m splitting hairs.

 

[WesternBiker]

1988, but I’m splitting hairs.

I was thinking services rather than tracks - but, yes, work started in (I think?) 1986 and tracks were laid in 1988. I recall a last visit to Holborn Viaduct in 1989 (it closed early in 1990).

 

[Bald Rick]

I was thinking services rather than tracks - but, yes, work started in (I think?) 1986 and tracks were laid in 1988. I recall a last visit to Holborn Viaduct in 1989 (it closed early in 1990).

Through services started May 1988. HV stayed open until the route was rebuilt for City Thameslink in 1990.

 

[WesternBiker]

Challenged all the way by the other Snow Hill tunnels reopening, in Birmingham!

Touche - I had forgotten that! And I had actually walked through part of the abandoned tunnel as a student in Birmingham in the early 1980s...

Through services started May 1988. HV stayed open until the route was rebuilt for City
Thameslink in 1990.

Ah - that explains it. Thank you for that.

 

[A0wen]

Alternatively, that could be 'Which proposals should have been buried long ago, because there's precisely 0 chance of them ever being built but instead because of 5 angry old blokes we have to sped £80K on an economic study every 10 years that says the same thing every time.'

Ha - I can give you a long list of these!

On this happy subject, if you haven't already stumbled across the website of the 'English Regional Transport Association' https://ertarail.co.uk/ then you can have look and a good laugh there.

These are the guys (I'm assuming no girls) behind such wonderful wheezes as

- rebuilding the Brackmills branch to Northampton station to allegedly provide improved transport links onto Brackmills Industrial estate, with it as a pre-cursor to a full re-build of Northampton - Bedford so that Thameslink can be extended from Bedford to Northampton and Birmingham
- rebuild Rugby - Leicester (using a mix of the old Midland and old GC routes) to enable a Northampton - Leicester service
- the 'Welland Valley Rail Link', basically an expensive curve between Seaton and Luffenham (via Morcott tunnel) so as to enable a Kettering - Wisbech service

and lest you think their focus is solely around the south Midlands, they're also cheerleading Shoreham - Christs Hospital - Guildford, Woodhead and a full reinstatement of the Great Central.

 

[Bald Rick]

the 'Welland Valley Rail Link', basically an expensive curve between Seaton and Luffenham (via Morcott tunnel) so as to enable a Kettering - Wisbech service

We’ve had that one on here - wasn’t it proposed by a teenager?

 

[A0wen]

We’ve had that one on here - wasn’t it proposed by a teenager?

No, you're thinking of the Northampton - Daventry - Banbury one tied up with reopening Weedon station because Weedon is *such* an important place it warrants slowing down the whole WCML to serve it - and these are also being championed by ERTA.......

But Welland did turn up around here and was soundly ridiculed at the time.

 

[lachlan]

No, you're thinking of the Northampton - Daventry - Banbury one tied up with reopening Weedon station because Weedon is *such* an important place it warrants slowing down the whole WCML to serve it - and these are also being championed by ERTA.......

But Welland did turn up around here and was soundly ridiculed at the time.

Weedon is one to think about once HS2 is open. Maybe.

 

[A0wen]

Weedon is one to think about once HS2 is open. Maybe.

Not even close. Weedon is a village of fewer than 3000. Daventry's only 25,000 and Long Buckby's about the same distance as Weedon.

Weedon reopening is crayonista nonsense.

Reopening Roade would make *far* more sense as Roade is growing as is Towcester for which it would be closer than Northampton or MK.

 

[lachlan]

Not even close. Weedon is a village of fewer than 3000. Daventry's only 25,000 and Long Buckby's about the same distance as Weedon.

Weedon reopening is crayonista nonsense.

Reopening Roade would make *far* more sense as Roade is growing as is Towcester for which it would be closer than Northampton or MK.

I wasn't thinking about reopening the line, just the station as a parkway. I suspect the WCML would still be too full, even after HS2

 

[topydre]

Have there been any line (as opposed to station) closures, in the past fifty years or sixty years or so, where there hasn't subsequently been any serious reopening proposals?

Nantlle Branch??
Horse-worked until closure in 1965. I doubt anyone's proposed reopening...

 

[WesternBiker]

On this happy subject, if you haven't already stumbled across the website of the 'English Regional Transport Association' https://ertarail.co.uk/ then you can have look and a good laugh there.

and lest you think their focus is solely around the south Midlands, they're also cheerleading Shoreham - Christs Hospital - Guildford, Woodhead and a full reinstatement of the Great Central.

In the case of Shoreham - Christs Hospital - Guildford, they are (at least in part) following the lead of Surrey County Council, British Rail, the Railway Development Society and ATOC in either recommending or investigating restoring the Guildford end as far as Cranleigh (styled as 'England's biggest village' - population c. 12,000).

The studies have, however, shown the return on investment would not justify reinstatement. But it might qualify, in this thread, as one of the lines subject to the most reopening recommendations!

The route is now protected by the local district council as a 'movement corridor' under its local plan - but solely on the basis of its use for walking, equestrian use and cycling.

 

[Railwaysceptic]

- rebuild Rugby - Leicester (using a mix of the old Midland and old GC routes) to enable a Northampton - Leicester service

Is this physically possible?

 

[zwk500]

Is this physically possible?

Sort of. You'd need a brand new chord (and flyover) at Rugby to the M6, then deviations around Broughton Astley and Countesthorpe, before a new section of track to link in to Wigston Junctions. Of course, capacity at Leicester will not be easy to find, and Rugby-Northampton capacity may find itself in conflict with freights.

 

[Cambus731]

While acknowledging this thread is mainly about lines, I'd like to mention an individual station, ie Cherry Hinton.
It must have been one of the very earliest railway stations to close, when it did in May 1854, only having been opened in Octobee 1851. I think there has been a campaign to create a new Cherry Hinton station for at least 30 years now, probably longer.

 

[stuu]

There's quite a useful summary here on the District Line to Watford Junction saga. I can't vouch for all the details, but it's incredible to think £130m might have been spent already - with nothing above ground to show for it, and no sign currently that it will ever come to fruition.

They have a lovely new bridge next to Watford General, and an entire train!

What has puzzled me about that is how Herts CC, who had a lot of experience building road projects - they had just finished the Baldock bypass - managed to get the civils side so drastically wrong, from memory it went from £28m to £110m.

The rail side is equally puzzling as the costs went to something like £120m for the track, junctions at each end and signalling modifications. Which for a mile of double track seems a bit steep

 

[zwk500]

The rail side is equally puzzling as the costs went to something like £120m for the track, junctions at each end and signalling modifications. Which for a mile of double track seems a bit steep

The junctions and signalling can easily be that expensive, and then some.