The original link is
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5z9lrtox0w and it looks like it still works.
My fettled version (along with the others) can be downloaded by a torrent client that can handle DHT:
Info hash v1: 07c592143beb2ebc6fb24d9a5c15dcb5b0f90663
Info hash v2: 2bb8e4999d09fb007a56a1bad23b2cb7d4af42244e69d879d78fc761ef8b20f8
Magnet link:
magnet:?xt=urn:btih:07c592143beb2eb...1ef8b20f8&dn=midland-route-wath-to-goose-hill
(Hoping the magnet link does not cause the forum software to get its knickers in a twist...)
(Well, it does a bit... it's not supposed to come out with "http://" on the beginning, nor a slash instead of a colon after "magnet". Dunno what to do to stop that, argh.)
Basically, yes, although as jfowkes points out someone needs to get Dyno-Rod to have a look at the drains on the section south from Goose Hill that doesn't still have tracks on it. I don't consider that as much of a problem since it's more or less normal for a route that's being reopened to need the formation extensively rebuilt; the important point is that the route is still all there and doesn't need anything knocking down or relocating before you can start rebuilding it.
The difficulties are further to the south. For a start, they never fixed the slip at Haw Park Lane where the viaduct that was partly buried inside the widened embankment without filling the voids when the route was widened to four tracks finally collapsed. (Someone in the cab points out the location in one of the abovementioned videos, but there's not a lot to see.) The new steel bridge carrying the two new tracks was unaffected, but personally after all this time I would consider it important to determine whether or not there has been any further lateral movement of the collapse zone that nobody has bothered to care about for a line speed of 15mph.
The A628 has cut through the embankment about 500m south of the divergence of the line to Monk Bretton, but I don't immediately see anything too impossible about putting a bridge in.
The A6195 has eaten about 500m of the trackbed just beyond where they put the hairpin curve in to go round the jolly 'orner to Grimethorpe colliery. As always this is an awkwardness, but probably less so than many such; it rather depends on how closely the adjacent soggy bits constrain the options, I think.
Someone appears to have dug a pond on the trackbed at Millhouses and a few encroaching buildings have appeared there, but it is only a handful of buildings that would need to be bought up and knocked down, so I can't see it being more than a rather small and unimportant percentage of the cost of reopening the route in total.
The main awkwardness is what they have done with the old Manvers Main site, ie. ruined it. An industrial estate has gone splat across the trackbed in such a way as to leave no room to reconnect to the extant railway without a screechingly slow curve. By bestriding the site with a viaduct it would be possible to leave the current units partly intact, but even so a goodly chunk of them (maybe 40%-odd) would still have to be wholly or partly demolished where they cannot be bestridden. Nevertheless, I am pretty sure that some local planning bodies have looked not unfavourably on the idea of doing this; but I think that having got that far the idea was then pushed onto the ever-growing stack of good ideas that have been set aside "until we see what HS2 does" (excrement be upon its name).
Still, I think this is rapidly getting more appropriate for "Speculative Discussion" than for the current thread!
