Should Conwy Valley line be closed? Or is there an affordable way to keep it open?

[Kite159]

Moderator note: split from https://www.railforums.co.uk/thread...ere-an-affordable-way-to-keep-it-open.180002/

Some more money thrown at a lightly* used branch line to repair it yet again...

... How much more money will be wasted before someone decides to close the line for good, replacing the trains with buses alongside the road.

(* As in no freight and a passenger service which is quiet for some trains outside tourist season)

 

[CambrianCoast]

Some more money thrown at a lightly* used branch line to repair it yet again...

... How much more money will be wasted before someone decides to close the line for good, replacing the trains with buses alongside the road.

(* As in no freight and a passenger service which is quiet for some trains outside tourist season)

I don’t feel comments like that are particularly helpful to be honest and they’re becoming a bit of a cliche. The line is there, it’s important to the local economy so it’s essential it is repaired. I do agree however that Network Rail could do more to try and find a more sustainable solution to make the infrastructure along vulnerable parts of the line more resilient to ensure this doesn’t happen to the extent it does currently. Again however, this would have to be a multi-agency approach (Natural Resources Wales, Network Rail etc) which brings complexity. With regards to passenger numbers, there is the possibility that passengers don’t find services frequent enough, I certainly feel that. One train every 3 hours or so isn’t ideal; to drive demand, there must be a better supply. If they don’t trial it they’ll never know. It could be argued that the Conwy Valley has seemingly been dealt a poor hand for some time. ATW and now TfW taking services away when trains are needed to bolster services down south for instance. Every time I travel on it, which is fairly often, it seems well used and more importantly, appreciated.

 

[philthetube]

Thinking a little bit out of the box, as it is a low speed line would iut be possible to use a system similar to what the underground use and set the rails in concrete rather than using ballast to hopefully avoid some of the damage when the line floods.

 

[deltic08]

Thinking a little bit out of the box, as it is a low speed line would iut be possible to use a system similar to what the underground use and set the rails in concrete rather than using ballast to hopefully avoid some of the damage when the line floods.

You mean slab track?

 

[175001]

Some more money thrown at a lightly* used branch line to repair it yet again...

... How much more money will be wasted before someone decides to close the line for good, replacing the trains with buses alongside the road.

(* As in no freight and a passenger service which is quiet for some trains outside tourist season)

Calm down Chris Grayling

Here we are again on a rail forum where some want to see line closures. Shouldn't it be the opposite

Have you ever been on a the branch? It's busier than you think..

Have you ever been down the Conwy Valley by road? Even the A470 and B5103, the roads that follow both sides of the valley were underwater Replacement buses had to give up on Saturday.

I'm from there and the rainfall that we saw over the weekend is more than I've seen in 32 years on this planet.

When billions a being wasted on Crossrail and HS2, a couple of million on a "lightly used branch line" is a drop in the ocean...

 

[edwin_m]

You mean slab track?

Slab track is possible but expensive. However if undermined or damaged it's likely to be much more difficult to repair than ballasted. How long did they take to reinstate an important high speed line in Germany after it was damaged by a train fire?

 

[Bletchleyite]

You mean slab track?

Some kind of "bridges over nothing" is probably worth considering - normally there would be no water under it, but in case of flooding it could reduce pressure by allowing water through. Though I thought some work of that nature was done last time there was a major issue like this?

 

[modernrail]

Are the problems on this line becoming more frequent and if so, do we think it is more to do with increasingly severe weather or the poor state of underlying infrastructure.

There is a bit if me that wonders if this line will become our first example of climate change causing a rail line becoming too difficult and expensive to run. Of course that would only be the case if it is clear that the severity of storms have increased over recent years (as would fit the pattern predicted by the scientific community) and the ability to make the underlying infrastructure more resilient is not viable.

I hope works can be undertaken go stabilise the line. It feels like it could be much better used if for instance it had better services connecting with Virgin services from London. Those trains are full of people wanting to get into the hills and there are plenty of places on this line for them to head to, including the super surf centre.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Are the problems on this line becoming more frequent and if so, do we think it is more to do with increasingly severe weather or the poor state of underlying infrastructure

I think they are, and I think it's increasingly severe weather. Though that said, it might just be that we hear about them more often (which is also the case for e.g. perception of a high crime rate) - in the 1990s we'd never know unless planning to go there.

There is a bit if me that wonders if this line will become our first example of climate change causing a rail line becoming too difficult and expensive to run. Of course that would only be the case if it is clear that the severity of storms have increased over recent years (as would fit the pattern predicted by the scientific community) and the ability to make the underlying infrastructure more resilient is not viable.

I hope works can be undertaken go stabilise the line. It feels like it could be much better used if for instance it had better services connecting with Virgin services from London. Those trains are full of people wanting to get into the hills and there are plenty of places on this line for them to head to, including the super surf centre.

To boost custom we need to seriously look at the German branch line model - quality rolling stock (which it will get eventually, provided CAF manage to actually build a working DMU) and a more frequent (probably two-hourly) clockface service. It would also be worth looking at modernising signalling and crossings to allow a later evening service and an all-year Sunday service, as without those weekend-away traffic (which should be its core) is driven away to road.

 

[Kite159]

Calm down Chris Grayling

Here we are again on a rail forum where some want to see line closures. Shouldn't it be the opposite

Have you ever been on a the branch? It's busier than you think..

Have you ever been down the Conwy Valley by road? Even the A470 and B5103, the roads that follow both sides of the valley were underwater Replacement buses had to give up on Saturday.

I'm from there and the rainfall that we saw over the weekend is more than I've seen in 32 years on this planet.

When billions a being wasted on Crossrail and HS2, a couple of million on a "lightly used branch line" is a drop in the ocean...

A couple million this year, a couple million next year when another storm washes out another part of the line or collapses a tunnel, another couple million in 2021 etc.

 

[Esker-pades]

A couple million this year, a couple million next year when another storm washes out another part of the line or collapses a tunnel, another couple million in 2021 etc.

What solution do you propose?

 

[Bletchleyite]

What solution do you propose?

He proposed closing it and replacing with a bus, no? With the main road having been heavily upgraded, this must be the most vulnerable line in the UK to this kind of proposal, particularly as a clockface timetable would be operable on a shorter line to Betws were it to be truncated to there.

 

[Esker-pades]

He proposed closing it and replacing with a bus, no? With the main road having been heavily upgraded, this must be the most vulnerable line in the UK to this kind of proposal, particularly as a clockface timetable would be operable on a shorter line to Betws were it to be truncated to there.

That does esentially fob off the annual cost of flood damage repairs to the roads. As has been pointed out, roads are not immune to flooding.

Flooding is a problem on the whole line, so even if one did truncate it to Betws-y-Coed, it would still be vulnerable and require flood spending. We've already had a discussion about this proposed clockface Betws timetable in another thread.

More long term solutions to protect the line from the annual flood are better than shutting the whole thing down. However, this is unlikely to happen given the view that the line is "lightly* used". Long term solutions do need quite a bit of money, but save money compared to the short term patchwork (as well as it may be done).

Some more money thrown at a lightly* used branch line to repair it yet again...

... How much more money will be wasted before someone decides to close the line for good, replacing the trains with buses alongside the road.

(* As in no freight and a passenger service which is quiet for some trains outside tourist season)

To address the *, the definition doesn't really back up the word. "Quiet for some trains" can be applied to any line anywhere. (Some trains from London to Crayford are quiet. It doesn't mean the line should be closed.)
The some needs to be quantified. For example, in January, when I visited, none of the trains were lightly used. January! Hardly tourist season.

Why is repairing flood damage wasting money?

 

[Bletchleyite]

That does esentially fob off the annual cost of flood damage repairs to the roads. As has been pointed out, roads are not immune to flooding.

No, but the road isn't optional (the very obscure cases like Mam Tor aside).

 

[PaxVobiscum]

Perhaps Little (=NarrowGauge) Brother is watching and is preparing plans for yet another coup, this one involving a Deviation again. If all their fans and volunteers each brought a few barrowloads of waste slate downhill from Blaenau we could have an embankment sympathetic to the environment up in next to no time. I’d suggest getting the Army to help again but there’s not enough of them left.

 

[DPWH]

I propose to spend millions of quid restoring the line, only to have it severely damaged by flooding the next time it floods.

 

[Bald Rick]

It would be interesting to know how much has been spent on the line in the last decade or so. I’m willing to bet it’s over £100m. I’m not convinced this is the best use of that amount of money on the railways in North Wales, or even on the whole economy of North Wales.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Where have the flooding incidents mostly taken place? North or south of Betws? I think there is a very significant difference in the case for retaining the line north of Betws than south of it, but I fear the flooding is mainly on the northern section before it heads up into the hills.

 

[Dr_Paul]

Where have the flooding incidents mostly taken place? North or south of Betws? I think there is a very significant difference in the case for retaining the line north of Betws than south of it, but I fear the flooding is mainly on the northern section before it heads up into the hills.

From what I've read, the worst flooding is north of Betws, around Trefriw and Dolgarrog, where the line is close to the Conwy and there is a wide flood-plain which this time really did get flooded. Pictures on the Wales news websites show this flooding, and there are pictures of considerable lengths of track wash-outs, with the rails suspended several feet above what had been an embankment.

I would not like to see this line close, but I fear that it's only a matter of time before the relevant powers-that-be work out that the costs involved in rebuilding embankments twice a year or so outweigh the benefits of the line remaining in place.

As there is a substantial amount of rubble, some of which might well be radioactive, that needs to be removed from Trawsfynnedd power-station when demolition starts, perhaps the line is being kept open so that this can be taken away by rail. I think that it is once this job is done that the decision will be made whether or not to keep the line open.

 

[Bletchleyite]

FWIW, I think my opposition to closure is primarily due to the UK's appalling ability to operate bus services. If it was to be replaced by a proper quality bus service, using a coach-style vehicle with wheelchair lift and space for bicycles and large luggage (think something like the UCOC X5 vehicles, though the LWB 3-axle variant is probably not needed, or perhaps the "heavyweight" 12m single deckers you get in Austria and Switzerland), and that service could have an early start, a late finish (particularly on Fridays) and a 2-hourly clockface service, with ticketing integrated with rail, I'd say, with a heavy heart, go ahead and close it.

Indeed, it needn't even go to Blaenau - you could argue it would work best as part of a redesigned North Wales network and run something like Llandudno-Betws-Bangor, connecting up all the places people like to go walking etc with the North Wales Coast line, and just have a connecting minibus (guaranteed connection) to Blaenau, where almost nobody actually goes other than driving down for a ride on the FfR.

I'm basically talking the Swiss "Postauto" type model, which is what I think Trawscymru as a whole needed to be but isn't.

But what you'd get is an irregular service by one of North Wales's many disreputable independent operators, or possibly worse Arriva, which would be withdrawn a few months later for a bit of cost-cutting, and would end up rerouted via all manner of tiny housing estates and take two hours end to end.

So until that can be solved, I would oppose closure, as it would simply result in things being unserved entirely in the long term.

 

[krus_aragon]

A major cause of closures of the Conwy Valley line is when water levels have risen above a set level on the bridge south of Llanrwst, when the current rules state that the bridge is closed (as a precautionary measure) until the water levels recede enough for a visual inspection of the bridge foundations.

The issue of ballast being washed away, leaving rails hanging in the air, is a more infrequent (but arguably more serious) matter. But this flooding is an issue that affects the Llanrwst/Conwy Valley area as a whole, not just the railway. It may be more appropriate to consider flood alleviation strategies for the area in general, and consider the railway as part of the task.

 

[krus_aragon]

For those not too familiar with the area, there has been notable flooding (causing disruption to the railway) in:

• 1994
• 2004
• 2005
• 2015/2016
• 2017
• 2019

 

[Bald Rick]

FWIW, I think my opposition to closure is primarily due to the UK's appalling ability to operate bus services. If it was to be replaced by a proper quality bus service, using a coach-style vehicle with wheelchair lift and space for bicycles and large luggage (think something like the UCOC X5 vehicles, though the LWB 3-axle variant is probably not needed, or perhaps the "heavyweight" 12m single deckers you get in Austria and Switzerland), and that service could have an early start, a late finish (particularly on Fridays) and a 2-hourly clockface service, with ticketing integrated with rail, I'd say, with a heavy heart, go ahead and close it.

Indeed, it needn't even go to Blaenau - you could argue it would work best as part of a redesigned North Wales network and run something like Llandudno-Betws-Bangor, connecting up all the places people like to go walking etc with the North Wales Coast line, and just have a connecting minibus (guaranteed connection) to Blaenau, where almost nobody actually goes other than driving down for a ride on the FfR.

Exactly my position. There is no reason (other than politics) why TfW couldn’t specify all this in the rail concession, to quite a level of detail. As I’ve suggested before (probably even on this thread), they could provide three times the service frequency for less than half the operating cost; let alone having to drop several million quid every so often on replacing railway that has made a dash for freedom.

Perhaps the locals of the Conwy Valley and surrounding area should have a vote on it!

 

[randyrippley]

If the trackbed keeps getting flooded, just replace the line with an overhead monorail, or a cable car.
Just ride above the problem

well this thread is in "speculation"

 

[johnnychips]

^ and get Llyle Llanley to build it.

 

[Belperpete]

Express Motors' X1 service that ran between Blaenau and Llandudno was just as fast as the train, more frequent, cheaper, and more convenient for the shops at Llandudno. If the council hadn't allowed locals to use their free bus passes on the train, I suspect most of the locals would have deserted the train. Express Motors has now gone, and unfortunately the X1 service with it. However, the X1 service did serve to prove that a bus could provide a significantly better service than the train at fairly minimal cost, whereas the railway is going to require significant investment just to re-open "as is". Agreed that the road was also closed by the flooding, but the road is now open again, whereas the railway is still closed, and will remain closed for who knows how long.

My solution would be to provide an hourly Traws Cymru service from Porthmadog to Llandudno, subsuming the current hourly Porthmadog-Blaenau supported bus, and connecting with the existing Traws Cymru service between Bangor, Porthmadog and Aberystwyth. This would significantly improve journey times and opportunities, at significantly less cost than trying to make the Conwy Valley line flood-proof. I understand that the Traws Cymru services are supported from Assembly funds, so shouldn't be subject to the same kind of cost-pressures as council-supported bus services.

Much as I would hate to see the Conwy Valley Line close, hand-on-heart I have to say that the kind of money that needs spending on it could be much better spent to much better result.

 

[Bletchleyite]

The X1 was dross, operated with dirty, run down vehicles by one of the disreputable small operators of which I spoke, and on precisely the odd timetable of which I spoke. Not acceptable at all.

 

[yorksrob]

Rather than resorting to bus transportation, would it not be a more long term solution to build more bridges through the embankment to enable the water to wash through. If needs be, perhaps a DLR type viaduct, assemmbled from pre-fabricated sections might be the answer.

 

[ChiefPlanner]

I suspect , back in the day , the existance of the power station at Trawsfynydd was a major strategic factor in the retention of the route as there were reasonable numbers of nuclear trains running. (which also kept the section south of Blaenau functioning - an extant route which has had a few issues of late in potential "restoration")

So , there are no realistic options for strategic or other freight traffics, - there were unrealised slate waste trials a good few years ago.

The future is therefore on the passenger service. I suspect the economics are very precarious , particularly having assessed a Rail Partnership Programme bid in the days of the SRA , where the case fell at the very first hurdle on potential patronage. The cost / benefit ratio was well below acceptance level , and this was with 15x rolling stock , not some Swiss Rhaetish Bahn panorama trains or "scenery viewer" trains.

The answer clearly has to be how much money "UK PLC" feels that the line can absorb. Operationally and retention / restoration of the infrastructure.

 

[yorksrob]

Or to look at it another way, This sort of problem is only going to become more common across the network as the climate becomes more erratic. Given that this line is a little quieter than most, it seems an ideal opportunity for NR to develop and test a more permanent fix that can be used to replace vulnerable Victorian embankments elsewhere.