'Awkward' towns without railway stations

[Flying Claret]

So, this is a Greater Manchester town whose nearest station is in Merseyside.

Or, a Lancashire town who's nearest station is in Lancashire....

 

[MP33]

In addition to Canvey Island. Coggeshall, Kelvedon Hatch and Wix are places in Essex that have never had a railway line or station. There was a line that was abandoned shortly after construction started which would have gone near Wix.

 

[snookertam]

Loads of examples in Scotland, many of which already mentioned.

I’d say St Andrews probably fits the bill here too. Loads of traffic to and from nearby Leuchars, so no prospect of reopening the link to the town itself.

Cumnock could arguably be included here too, possibly Mauchline. The Glasgow and South Western actually passes these places, no chance of any station reopening.

 

[gomango]

Loads of examples in Scotland, many of which already mentioned.

I’d say St Andrews probably fits the bill here too. Loads of traffic to and from nearby Leuchars, so no prospect of reopening the link to the town itself.

Cumnock could arguably be included here too, possibly Mauchline. The Glasgow and South Western actually passes these places, no chance of any station reopening

Another example in Scotland is Grangemouth, with a freight line already existing and the trains go along the freight line to turn at Falkirk Grahamston anyway, also there are lots of people who would benifit from a station there as they would not have to get the bus to Falkirk before geeting a train. Another point is that at Grahamson they come up the freight line and sit for 35 minutes anyway, plenty of time to run the train up to Grangemouth and back, however there are no current plans to do so.

 

[A S Leib]

Loads of examples in Scotland, many of which already mentioned.

I’d say St Andrews probably fits the bill here too. Loads of traffic to and from nearby Leuchars, so no prospect of reopening the link to the town itself.

Cumnock could arguably be included here too, possibly Mauchline. The Glasgow and South Western actually passes these places, no chance of any station reopening.

And there's a bus which runs eight times an hour with journey times of below 30 minutes to Dundee, which I'd guess is the most (or second-most, after Edinburgh?) common destination from St. Andrews.

 

[Bevan Price]

Statto said:


Leigh, the nearest station is Newton Le Willows, although the railhead for Leigh is Wigan.

Atherton's quite handy if you want to stay in the GMPTE area.

Atherton station is about 2 miles closer to Leigh than Newton Le Willows.

 

[Tayway]

And there's a bus which runs eight times an hour with journey times of below 30 minutes to Dundee, which I'd guess is the most (or second-most, after Edinburgh?) common destination from St. Andrews.

The 99 must surely be one of the busiest and most frequent interurban bus services in Scotland. I think it's success makes a rail link far harder to justify than if public transport between Dundee and St Andrews was as poor as most other nearby towns!

 

[Acfb]

I suppose Brackley could be another one although at least the 500 bus has been extended through to Bicester at the other end Mon-Sat so there is better/quicker access to Bicester for southbound journeys as a railhead (to both London and Oxford) now. King's Sutton isn't too far away but the access is poor and service is limited and the bus takes a little while to Banbury.

It's too small to have station on HS2 and impractical to try and rebuild the Great Central.

 

[Sprigibax]

Stourport-on-Severn. Near enough to Kidderminster and Hartlebury, but it doesn’t have its own station.

 

[yorksrob]

Statto said:


Leigh, the nearest station is Newton Le Willows, although the railhead for Leigh is Wigan.


Atherton station is about 2 miles closer to Leigh than Newton Le Willows.

Atherton's generally cheaper to get to from the Manchester side, being within GM.

 

[deltic08]

I read recently that the short Clevedon branch was almost at break-even operationally before it was axed. Another short-sighted closure decision.

I discovered 20 years after closure that the Harrogate-Ripon-Northallerton line was making a healthy profit. Beeching was ignorant of or blatantly disregarded that there were two sources of income. He only took the farebox income from Ripon as the income for the whole line. He disregarded Harrogate passengers using the Queen of Scots Pullman, non-stop between Harrogate and Darlington, and Liverpool-Newcastle trains that were rerouted when the line closed and removing through trains from Harrogate, a large spa town then in the West Riding of Yorkshire.
What he failed to add was the Army income at two large camps from personnel travel warrants, regular whole troop trains from Ripon to various parts and equipment brought in and out of Ripon by pickup goods trains. The MOD paid for this traffic directly to BR. This made a loss from the booking office into a small profit.
He also ignored profit from the goods yard yet included the operating costs of non-stop passenger trains and freight trains even though they were routed this way as an operating convenience to avoid congested York. If they had been routed away by another route then it would have reduced the operating costs and losses.
What I cannot find is the income generated by the daily pick up goods train to the naval ordnance factory at Melmerby just north of Ripon.
Locals considered our rail line was stolen from us by incompetence.

 

[Irascible]

I'll throw in Tiverton as I usually do in these discussions, it's 7 miles from a railway & the good road goes at 90 degrees from where most people want to go for ... about 7 miles. Exeter is 13 miles away in a straight line, roughly. I might as well throw in Ilfracombe as usual too

All those Somerset towns who once had a choice of railways ( Wells, Radstock etc ) have all grown up but the network has entirely vanished.

Chard in South Somerset, decent sized town though close to Crewkerne and Axminster railways stations and would need the line rerouting to serve the town centre, as station at Chard Junction could work but by the time you've travelled to it you might as well have gone to Axminster.

Amusingly, the home of Brecknell-Wills the pantograph manufacturers. At least they don't really need a rail connection!

Oswestry seems a relevant candidate. Reasonably size market town with large catchment area. I very much doubt there’s a sound business case (despite the govt hilariously suggesting so recently when culling HS2) to reopen the line up to Gobowen 3 miles away.

I think that link is an aim of the preservation society? if they manage the route then I guess the case for a public service operation becomes a bit easier.

 

[dgl]

Amusingly, the home of Brecknell-Wills the pantograph manufacturers. At least they don't really need a rail connection!

Quite, although not for much longer as the manufacturing side of the business is moving elsewhere.
I remember as a kid going into Chard and wondering what the big building was for as it only said Brecknell-Willis part of the Fandstan(?) Electrical Group

 

[75A]

I discovered 20 years after closure that the Harrogate-Ripon-Northallerton line was making a healthy profit. Beeching was ignorant of or blatantly disregarded that there were two sources of income. He only took the farebox income from Ripon as the income for the whole line. He disregarded Harrogate passengers using the Queen of Scots Pullman, non-stop between Harrogate and Darlington, and Liverpool-Newcastle trains that were rerouted when the line closed and removing through trains from Harrogate, a large spa town then in the West Riding of Yorkshire.
What he failed to add was the Army income at two large camps from personnel travel warrants, regular whole troop trains from Ripon to various parts and equipment brought in and out of Ripon by pickup goods trains. The MOD paid for this traffic directly to BR. This made a loss from the booking office into a small profit.
He also ignored profit from the goods yard yet included the operating costs of non-stop passenger trains and freight trains even though they were routed this way as an operating convenience to avoid congested York. If they had been routed away by another route then it would have reduced the operating costs and losses.
What I cannot find is the income generated by the daily pick up goods train to the naval ordnance factory at Melmerby just north of Ripon.
Locals considered our rail line was stolen from us by incompetence.

There are few other places that would say the same.

 

[deltic08]

There are few other places that would say the same.

Such as?

 

[Fermiboson]

I've always thought it weird that Brackley and Buckingham didn't get their own train station (they used to, but the branch to the Varsity line was closed down shortly before the Varsity line itself). Now that EWR is a thing and goes through Winslow according to the old Varsity trackbed, I doubt anyone is in any hurry to rebuild the line. Buckingham is about 9km from Winslow. The X5 stagecoach bus goes Milton Keynes - Buckingham - Bicester, but because the A421 goes off to the north the bus spends a lot of time chugging along the small A4421. There's no convenient connection to Banbury either. Brackley is even worse off - no bus between Brackley and Buckingham, or anywhere but Banbury really, means that the fastest routes from Brackley to anything on the WCML is via Coventry, which is a rather ridiculous detour.

The route itself would be able to serve an area wider than just the two towns as well. Fastest Banbury - MK journey currently is, again, via Coventry at certain times of the day (though the bus via Bicester takes similar amounts of time at others). EWR will improve this somewhat, but it will still be significantly slower than car.

In the same area, perhaps Towcester (12km from Northampton, 18 from MK) is also such an awkwardly placed town between the Chiltern and WC mainlines. It's on the A43, which is a major artery, but again any eastward link from Towcester is highly unlikely with the route EWR currently takes.

 

[Killingworth]

Such as?

The more direct line from York to Hull via Markwt Weighton?

 

[Irascible]

Quite, although not for much longer as the manufacturing side of the business is moving elsewhere.
I remember as a kid going into Chard and wondering what the big building was for as it only said Brecknell-Willis part of the Fandstan(?) Electrical Group

Hurrah, the region's small towns have a surfeit of industry, be good to shift some elsewhere! ( just to be clear, I can't be more sarcastic. It's literally *all* gone where I am ).

This sort of thing just makes better transport even more of a necessity.

 

[Krokodil]

I'm surprised that no one has mentioned Dudley. A string of stations just outside the town, but none actually in it. Looks like the plan is to add it to the tram network.

 

[BeijingDave]

I'm surprised that no one has mentioned Dudley. A string of stations just outside the town, but none actually in it. Looks like the plan is to add it to the tram network.

Probably not mentioned because it does have two stations named for it (even if they are not convenient for the centre)

There are various Potteries towns which one would expect to have their own station (Hanley, Newcastle being the obvious ones).

 

[AlastairFraser]

The X5 stagecoach bus goes Milton Keynes - Buckingham - Bicester

Just wanted to clarify that the X5 goes to Oxford, not Bicester, and that the new EWR station will be on the north side of Winslow and only around 15 mins on the MK-Buckingham-Aylesbury X6 bus from the middle of Buckingham (so rather convenient).
Brackley and Towcester are in a significantly poorer position for public transport provision,yes,however Towcester has a bus to MK Central station and Northampton in 40-45 mins.
Brackley needs a better link to MK/Northampton, if they don't want to reinstate any railway connections.

 

[Dave W]

I'm surprised that no one has mentioned Dudley. A string of stations just outside the town, but none actually in it. Looks like the plan is to add it to the tram network.

I always bring this up in this sort of thread (not sure how I missed it originally!)

Neither Dudley Port nor S&D (which is in Oldbury anyway) are within an hour's walk of the High Street. Even in terms of the Metropolitan Borough, only 4 stations are within Dudley - both Stourbridges, Lye and Coseley. Ironically neither Port nor S&D are.

 

[snookertam]

Glenrothes. The station called Glenrothes with Thornton is actually in the village of Thornton, whilst Makrinch, which was in the timetable as ‘Markinch for Glenrothes’ is in…. Markinch!

I feel as though most of East Kilbride applies here too. The station is in the old village of East Kilbride and very much serves the north of the town, Hairmyres is similar, nothing towards the south and I think it’s very much car country the further you go from the town centre.

 

[uglymonkey]

Bude, Tavistock?

 

[Krokodil]

Tavistock

That's one that may well happen

 

[A S Leib]

Is Plymouth – Gunnislake only every two hours because of infrastructure or (perceived) demand? If it's the latter, or if it's the former and easily fixable, could an hourly service as far as Bere Alston then alternating between Gunnislake and Tavistock work?

 

[Mark J]

I always thought that terminating GWR Thames Valley services at Bedwyn was really weird when Gt. Bedwyn itself is so tiny and nearby Marlborough (with its large school) would have been a far more logical terminus. Now, it's a fairly short car journey from Marlborough to Bedwyn or Hungerford, so the cost of reinstating branch line and station outweighs any benefit.

I've always agreed with this. The few short miles of railway west of Bedwyn should be reinstated to Marlborough, with Bedwyn Services should terminate there instead.

Also putting Marlborough back on the rail map.
------
Also can add Thame amd Cirencester to the list of 'Awkward towns without Rail Stations'.

Especially Cirencester, with a extremely poor bus connection to Kemble.

 

[D6130]

The few short miles of railway west of Bedwyn should be reinstated to Marlborough,

Are you advocating reopening the branch from Savernake to Marlborough?

 

[Mark J]

Are you advocating reopening the branch from Savernake to Marlborough?

The branch that used to join up with the Reading-Taunton line just west of Bedwyn.

Certainly possible to get a line into and a Station on the southern side of Marlborough.

Certainly makes more sense to terminate Bedwyn services at somewhere of more significance (and that currently has no rail service) than the nowhere place of Great Bedwyn.

 

[deltic08]

The branch that used to join up with the Reading-Taunton line just west of Bedwyn.

Certainly possible to get a line into and a Station on the southern side of Marlborough.

Certainly makes more sense to terminate Bedwyn services at somewhere of more significance (and that currently has no rail service) than the nowhere place of Great Bedwyn.

This seems very logical but how long is the branch? At £40million a mile and a new station can we afford it?