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My suggestion to re-open the Whole Great Central route

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6Gman

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I have asked on another thread about the notion of freight, based on the major flows of today, which is intermodal, what use would it be?

You've beaten me to it! I keep hearing people claim that the GC would be good as a freight route ...

But how? As far as I can see the only trailing crossover to feed into the GC at its southern end would be Neasden Junction.
 

OverSpeed

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I think in a ideal "cryonista world" this idea would be high upon the list, but it's not.
And I live not to far from the old Gcr route in rugby, and travel around the local area's that the route used to go through, and i can say it would not be of any benefit for those whom live in the towns,and cities the GCR used to serve.

Once HS2 gets up and running, there will be enough capacity on the WCML and MML as well, to serve the people of the west & East Mids and also the North west too.
 

6Gman

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I think in a ideal "cryonista world" this idea would be high upon the list, but it's not.
And I live not to far from the old Gcr route in rugby, and travel around the local area's that the route used to go through, and i can say it would not be of any benefit for those whom live in the towns,and cities the GCR used to serve.

Once HS2 gets up and running, there will be enough capacity on the WCML and MML as well, to serve the people of the west & East Mids and also the North west too.

As I think I commented upthread, it would - had it survived - have been of some benefit. Rugby to Nottingham, for example, would be far more straightforward.

But it didn't survive. And to restore it, at enormous cost, for the penny numbers making such journeys would be wasteful.
 

Bevan Price

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The Great Central Railway London Extension was never really necessary. It was only built because Sir Edward Watkin had bought the Manchester, Sheffield & Lincoln Railway (MSLR), and simply HAD to have his own line to London, instead of paying other railways to carry MSLR traffic to & from London.

That is what happens when people consider the "free market" to be more important than sensible, logical planning.

Once built, it provided some useful links, and deserved a better fate. It could still have provided a useful service to some of the medium-sized towns between Chesterfield & Nottingham, but in later years, the services were painfully slow due to the effects of mining subsidence, and were allowed to wither away. As a route to/from London, it duplicated the MML. The only non-duplicated links were to Rugby,, Aylesbury, and to Banbury for Oxford and the south. Sadly, these were not enough to save the line, and it would now be almost unaffordable to restore it.
 

RPM

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Yet again I'm prompted to point out: the GCR main line was not built to continental loading gauge or anything like it. It's a myth.
 

ChiefPlanner

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Last built - first closed.

End of debate. Unless there is a resurgence in coal burning and gasworks in the London area....
 

3141

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About 30 years ago there was a proposal to reinstate the route of the Great Central, to create a freight route from Liverpool to the Channel, and I think they used the name Grand Central. If they'd got it under way before privatisation and the growth of services on what's now Chiltern, maybe it would now be there. Maybe. But they had major problems identifying a suitable and acceptable route round London, and I'm not sure how they proposed to deal with the Woodhead issues. A might-have-been, like the idea of this thread.
 

markindurham

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Yet again I'm prompted to point out: the GCR main line was not built to continental loading gauge or anything like it. It's a myth.
Exactly. It was slightly more generous than most other British railway company loading gauges, but it didn't go all the way, as it were...
 

edwin_m

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About 30 years ago there was a proposal to reinstate the route of the Great Central, to create a freight route from Liverpool to the Channel, and I think they used the name Grand Central. If they'd got it under way before privatisation and the growth of services on what's now Chiltern, maybe it would now be there. Maybe. But they had major problems identifying a suitable and acceptable route round London, and I'm not sure how they proposed to deal with the Woodhead issues. A might-have-been, like the idea of this thread.
I think it was "Central Railway". New route from the Channel Tunnel following the M25 round the west of London, then GC to south of Leicester, MML slow lines to Trent, Erewash Valley and "old road" to Sheffield then via Woodhead to Manchester. So very similar to the current proposal. I think a Liverpool extension was also contemplated but I don't recall the route.
 

Railwaysceptic

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If it hadn't been closed, it would have made a good freight route. But too much has been obliterated.

The London extension was never a good freight route.

When the route was constructed the only link to other lines in the London area was the Neasden curve, providing access to the Dudden Hill line and Acton Wells Junction. There was no link to east London, the docks or the lines from Liverpool Street or Fenchurch Street.

It's illuminating to compare this disregard for connections to other railway companies with the attitude adopted by The Midland Railway when it built its own route from Bedford to St. Pancras. The Midland constructed the Goods Line (Aka Dudden Hill Line) from their mainline to Acton Wells, then a link to the Metropolitan Railway and Snow Hill Tunnel, and also Carlton Road Junction which provided access to the Tottenham And Hampstead Line and the whole of east London. The Midland Railway was clearly determined to make a success of its London freight business.
 

The Planner

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Judging by the Facebook page they have given up on the southern section already....
 

edwin_m

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The London extension was never a good freight route.

When the route was constructed the only link to other lines in the London area was the Neasden curve, providing access to the Dudden Hill line and Acton Wells Junction. There was no link to east London, the docks or the lines from Liverpool Street or Fenchurch Street.

It's illuminating to compare this disregard for connections to other railway companies with the attitude adopted by The Midland Railway when it built its own route from Bedford to St. Pancras. The Midland constructed the Goods Line (Aka Dudden Hill Line) from their mainline to Acton Wells, then a link to the Metropolitan Railway and Snow Hill Tunnel, and also Carlton Road Junction which provided access to the Tottenham And Hampstead Line and the whole of east London. The Midland Railway was clearly determined to make a success of its London freight business.
And yet we read that the route was heavily used by relatively fast bulk trains taking coal southwards, presumably to London. Where did they all end up?

Although not in London itself, the GC had good links to the GWR.
 

47802

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This is the trouble with the Government even hinting at possible rail re-openings it will bring out every crackpot cryonista in the country. The Government should have kept its mouth shut, HS2 and current infrastructure investment is enough to be getting on with and any rail re-opening should generally limited to freight routes that still exist not nonsense like this.
 

markindurham

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And yet we read that the route was heavily used by relatively fast bulk trains taking coal southwards, presumably to London. Where did they all end up?

Although not in London itself, the GC had good links to the GWR.
Coal usage is pretty much finished, and the infrastructure is long gone, replaced by shopping malls, housing or car parks in the main.
 

Dr_Paul

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I agree with many of the dissenters here. The coal traffic down to London has long gone; I'd venture that one of the reasons the line was closed was because that traffic was in decline by the early 1960s. There was little use in having two main lines from the East Midlands to London, especially if one of them managed to miss most of the intervening towns and had fewer connections with other lines.

As for rebuilding today, would Calvert to Rugby, to connect with the West Coast line (not an impossibility), be that useful? I can't see that there would be much call for passenger services from the West Midlands to Aylesbury, Amersham, etc; freight services, as others have stated, would be hampered by the lack of direct connections through to the Thameside wharves and Felixstowe.
 

swanhill41

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Just a pure daydream...There is a fellow who is seriously suggesting a piggy back,ro-ro lorry operation over Woodhead from Sheffield to Bredbury....Grand Northern I think it is called....Has he not heard of electric lorries,squadron packs of say 4 lorries tied together by software...Thats the future....Does not know ownership of Woodhead Tunnel,says his plans are well advanced etc etc.....Cloud nine>>!!
 

NSEFAN

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Just a pure daydream...There is a fellow who is seriously suggesting a piggy back,ro-ro lorry operation over Woodhead from Sheffield to Bredbury....Grand Northern I think it is called....Has he not heard of electric lorries,squadron packs of say 4 lorries tied together by software...Thats the future....Does not know ownership of Woodhead Tunnel,says his plans are well advanced etc etc.....Cloud nine>>!!
I would expect that railway trains carrying freight lorries would still be preferable to software-linked convoys of trucks, if only because of the efficiency. Even with electric lorries and regenerative braking, road transport is inherently more wasteful given the amount of power burned by heating the rubber tyres, whereas railway trains have a much lower rolling resistance.

Our rubbish loading gauge and the cost of improving this seem to be the main thing which stops us from using rolling highways like the Swiss do.
 

swanhill41

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Swiss have them as road routes are very restricted by the Alps,so tunnels are the only means of going say Switzerland to Italy...Pennines top out at 1500 or so feet...The idea is riddled with holes ,mainly as no one bar the single person proposing it can see any sense in it for numerous reasons ,main one being the very high cost of building it,other than logistics and whether they have done serious checking of traffic flows....Oh and finally Woodhead Tunnel...Apparently I have heard that were geological reasons for shutting the line,this being in connection with Woodhead Tunnel/s......Far more important things to be suggesting...Keep away from things other than railways !
 

ashworth

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Most of it is either been obliterated by development or is in the middle of nowhere with no practical use, unfortunately.

Maybe more of it should have been salvaged at the time, but we can't undo that now. (Nottingham Victoria I think was the better placed station, but too late to do anything about it now)

Nottingham Victoria wasn’t just a more centrally better placed station than Nottingham Midland but was also architecturally a wonderful station. Such a shame when it was demolished.

However, it could never really function as Nottingham’s only station because of the Great Centrals lack of easy connectivity to other important destinations. Even getting to Derby was a bit of a roundabout route and only served Derby Friargate. Getting to Birmingham was also not easy. Any journeys to Leeds, York and the North East, meant missing out Sheffield or reversal at Sheffield Victoria.

The only thing I wonder is, if it had been retained and upgraded to speeds of up to 125 mph would HSTs have been able to do Sheffield, Nottingham and Leicester to London Marybone in a quicker time than the MML to St. Pancras. Probably not, because the line at the London end into Marylebone is congested and probably not able to allow high speed running.
 

HSTEd

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However, it could never really function as Nottingham’s only station because of the Great Centrals lack of easy connectivity to other important destinations. Even getting to Derby was a bit of a roundabout route and only served Derby Friargate. Getting to Birmingham was also not easy. Any journeys to Leeds, York and the North East, meant missing out Sheffield or reversal at Sheffield Victoria.

Indeed, but if they had been minded to retain Victoria instead of the Midland station you could have got somewhat.... creative with demolitions and construction of a chord or two to enable access to the Midland lines via the location of the ex-station (in this scenario).
You could have branched off the viaduct and connected to the existing line to Derby that way, or used the track that appareantly ran to Long Eaton via Clifton Colliery

Would have been more expensive than the solution that they ultimately took, but it allows the Midland line to Derby to be used whilst retaining the routing for London trains to Sheffield as going through Nottingham rather than Derby (which is an inferior traffic centre, even then I think)
EDIT:

I think there is enough room to build a chord from London Road High Level on the line to Grantham, and loop around over the London Road low level (now the gym), and join the line going west with a long enough run up that you wouldn't even have to demolish Midland station to get under it.
 
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6Gman

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I think we may have upset him. His Facebook page is full of words like "knockers" and negativity.

Interestingly he reckons the route through Rugby is clear. To be fair a fair chunk of it appears to be a long-distance footpath, BUT

1. It will need an impressive viaduct over the WCML
2. There's a rather large industrial estate just to the NE of the WCML
3. The people in all the new houses built alongside the footpath might have reservations about trains rattling by a few yards away.
 

TheBeard

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Thanks for your knowledge and advice. Starting from nothing, and looking at what is and isn't easily achievable, is really helpful. Think aspiring later to a London Extension and being pragmatic is sensible- a freightliner friendly East West corridor is what the North needs. 12 miles of line rebuilt and something amazing can be achieved. The M62 simply cannot cope anymore and some of this freight needs to go elsewhere. Calls to reopen the Woodhead are no longer simply calling- its a future need.
 

6Gman

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Thanks for your knowledge and advice. Starting from nothing, and looking at what is and isn't easily achievable, is really helpful. Think aspiring later to a London Extension and being pragmatic is sensible- a freightliner friendly East West corridor is what the North needs. 12 miles of line rebuilt and something amazing can be achieved. The M62 simply cannot cope anymore and some of this freight needs to go elsewhere. Calls to reopen the Woodhead are no longer simply calling- its a future need.
But why Woodhead?
 

6Gman

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Thanks for your knowledge and advice. Starting from nothing, and looking at what is and isn't easily achievable, is really helpful. Think aspiring later to a London Extension and being pragmatic is sensible- a freightliner friendly East West corridor is what the North needs. 12 miles of line rebuilt and something amazing can be achieved. The M62 simply cannot cope anymore and some of this freight needs to go elsewhere. Calls to reopen the Woodhead are no longer simply calling- its a future need.

Are you aware that the number of HGVs using the M62 in 2017 was actually lower than the figure in 2005?

(Source. DfT Official Figures)

What traffic do you expect to switch to "a freightliner friendly East West" railway?
 

Shaw S Hunter

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Thanks for your knowledge and advice. Starting from nothing, and looking at what is and isn't easily achievable, is really helpful. Think aspiring later to a London Extension and being pragmatic is sensible- a freightliner friendly East West corridor is what the North needs. 12 miles of line rebuilt and something amazing can be achieved. The M62 simply cannot cope anymore and some of this freight needs to go elsewhere. Calls to reopen the Woodhead are no longer simply calling- its a future need.

If your prime concern is actually relieving the M62 I don't see how re-opening the Woodhead route, assuming it's remotely possible, will help. How much of that M62 HGV traffic is actually running to/from Sheffield or its immediate environs? And where to/from on the western side of the Pennines? Also bear in mind that finding additional paths for freight to run east/west across Manchester at any time other than overnight is challenging and likely to remain so no matter how much of NPR/HS3 eventually comes to fruition. Far more realistic are the on-going moves to improve rail access to/from the Port of Liverpool which can achieve an increase in railfreight without spending £Billions. Simple economics means freight-on-rail needs a decent length run, typically 150 miles+, to be commercially viable. That generally means the flows most likely to be profitable are to/from the ports. The heaviest such flows currently are containers landed at Southampton/Thamesport/Felixstowe to destinations along the WCML. A reopened GC is of no relevance to such flows. It could also be argued that the best way to ease congestion on the M62 is to build HS3 and reduce the numbers of cars using it, leaving more room for HGVs!
 

furnessvale

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Our rubbish loading gauge and the cost of improving this seem to be the main thing which stops us from using rolling highways like the Swiss do.
Even the Swiss only achieve what they do, by severely restricting HGV use and heavily subsidising the "Rolling Road" trains.

For a fraction of that subsidy we could put all that traffic into containers and swap bodies and forget our loading gauge problems.
 

LowLevel

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And yet we read that the route was heavily used by relatively fast bulk trains taking coal southwards, presumably to London. Where did they all end up?

Although not in London itself, the GC had good links to the GWR.

The coal largely ran between Annesley concentration yard outside Nottingham where it was tripped from local pits and formed into block trains and then ran to the Woodford Halse yards from where it was dispatched as required - quite often to the Western Region I believe.
 

johnnychips

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Just a pure daydream...There is a fellow who is seriously suggesting a piggy back,ro-ro lorry operation over Woodhead from Sheffield to Bredbury....Grand Northern I think it is called....Has he not heard of electric lorries,squadron packs of say 4 lorries tied together by software...Thats the future....Does not know ownership of Woodhead Tunnel,says his plans are well advanced etc etc.....Cloud nine>>!!

Oh dear. This was seriously put forward as a case against the Mottram-Hollingworth-Tintwistle bypass a few years ago, but with the ex-freight sidings between Hattersley and Broadbottom put forward as the loading point. Not sure about the other end. Forget about electric lorries etc. - just grit teeth and queue up through the villages for 20 minutes or so, or wait till 2020 when half the bypass will be open. In any case, a lot quicker than that idiocy. How do these people get taken seriously?
 
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