Should the closed stations between Preston and Lancaster be reopened? ?

[JamieL]

Travelling between Preston to Lancaster the other day on a stopping service, I was quite surprised to find there were no intermediate stops between the two stations. Its not an area I know at all really other than travelling through it on intercity services but it seems odd. A quick Google reveals this wasn't always the case as in the days of the Lancaster and Preston Junction Railway there were many stops. Is there really no demand for modern train travel from intermediate locations between the two cities? Again, a quick Google shows small communities adjacent to the WCML at:
* Broughton
* Brock
* Holins Lane
* Galgate
* Bailrigg (University Campus)

So why is this stretch of railway so poorly served by the railway? I am guessing there is a capacity issue what with the WCML here being just two tracks. Any other reasons?

 

[GRALISTAIR]

There just is not the demand.

 

[miklcct]

There just is not the demand.

Is it because the intermediate stations are so rural that they can't even support a station?

 

[JamieL]

There just is not the demand.

How is that determined in the modern era though? I mean Bailrigg alone must have hundreds of students that commute regularly via the railways and go for nights out in Lancaster or Preston.

 

[miklcct]

How is that determined in the modern era though? I mean Bailrigg alone must have hundreds of students that commute via the railways and go for night's out in Lancaster or Preston.

The number of population around the station is a good indicator.

 

[zwk500]

How is that determined in the modern era though?

With clever modelling, using a variety of datasets.

I mean Bailrigg alone must have hundreds of students that commute regularly via the railways and go for nights out in Lancaster or Preston.

Hundreds? be serious. Lancaster Uni isn't that big, and students can get 4 in a cab for a reasonable bill. Even well-served rail routes like Newcastle-Durham-York-Leeds don't see students apart from on a handful of trains. And students get discounts, so the revenue is less valuable.
On that part of the WCML the key revenue is Anglo-Scottish traffic principally between Glasgow/Edinburgh and Manchester, Birmingham and London (I.e. the 2 largest cities in Scotland and the 3 largest cities in England and the UK). This traffic is rather time-sensitive and the line needs to press the capacity for all it's worth to work in the mix of Local trains to Windermere & Barrow and freight heading up to the central belt. If you did try and run a Preston-Lancaster service you'd need to send it further up the line to turn round or take a long time over the slow junctions reversing at Lancaster.
The only settlement of any size is Garstang, which is 7,000 people but 1.2miles from a potential station site.

 

[JamieL]

With clever modelling, using a variety of datasets.

Hundreds? be serious. Lancaster Uni isn't that big, and students can get 4 in a cab for a reasonable bill. Even well-served rail routes like Newcastle-Durham-York-Leeds don't see students apart from on a handful of trains. And students get discounts, so the revenue is less valuable.
On that part of the WCML the key revenue is Anglo-Scottish traffic principally between Glasgow/Edinburgh and Manchester, Birmingham and London (I.e. the 2 largest cities in Scotland and the 3 largest cities in England and the UK). This traffic is rather time-sensitive and the line needs to press the capacity for all it's worth to work in the mix of Local trains to Windermere & Barrow and freight heading up to the central belt. If you did try and run a Preston-Lancaster service you'd need to send it further up the line to turn round or take a long time over the slow junctions reversing at Lancaster.
The only settlement of any size is Garstang, which is 7,000 people but 1.2miles from a potential station site.

All fair points and you confirm what I thought about capacity being key. But what if the line was reworked to four lines for a portion of the distance and the new stations were served by the existing Preston to Barrow-in-Furness service though? Of note, Lancaster University lists its student populace as 13,000 although I am guessing that is across multiple campuses. Broughton lists its population as 2,500 - surely that is modest enough for a station?

I appreciate this is a fairly niche topic but I can't help feel some areas - this one included - are poorly served by the railways.

 

[Mcr Warrior]

But what if the line was reworked to four lines for a portion of the distance and the new stations were served by the existing Preston to Barrow-in-Furness service though?

With the very greatest of respect, that's really not going to happen so that a few University students can have an inexpensive evening out! Cheaper to provide free taxis!

 

[JamieL]

With the very greatest of respect, that's really not going to happen so that a few University students can have an inexpensive evening out! Cheaper to provide free taxis!

I agree its not going to happen and fully acknowledged that there are budget, capacity and other issues that conspire against changes like this. But think of the benefits of adding quad lines on portions of the WCML. It would create greater capacity for slow freight trains and enable engineering works that didn't necessarily have to be a full blockade. Imagine if Carstairs had a bypass for example - we could have avoided weeks of misery.

 

[anothertyke]

All fair points and you confirm what I thought about capacity being key. But what if the line was reworked to four lines for a portion of the distance and the new stations were served by the existing Preston to Barrow-in-Furness service though? Of note, Lancaster University lists its student populace as 13,000 although I am guessing that is across multiple campuses. Broughton lists its population as 2,500 - surely that is modest enough for a station?

I appreciate this is a fairly niche topic but I can't help feel some areas - this one included - are poorly served by the railways.

So, at £10 mill per station minimum plus who knows what for the turnouts and signalling, you are talking in the hundred or two hundred mill plus bracket. That's assuming its railway land.

Then put another six stops in on the Barrow trains with three Avantis and TPEs an hour zooming past and do the sums on trains needed to maintain the service level,

 

[zwk500]

I agree its not going to happen and fully acknowledged that there are budget, capacity and other issues that conspire against changes like this. But think of the benefits of adding quad lines on portions of the WCML. It would create greater capacity for slow freight trains and enable engineering works that didn't necessarily have to be a full blockade.

If fast lines were to be added, you'd build them off-line and call it HS2-Scotland Extension. Once the ICs are off the line, then you could look at putting in maybe a Lancaster South and Garstang Station, if you also built entire new towns around them.

Imagine if Carstairs had a bypass for example - we could have avoided weeks of misery.

The whole point of the blockade was to build a bypass of Carstairs station (very close to it admittedly), and during the blockade trains were diverted via alternative routes. But a rebuild on that scale happens once every 40-50 years. Poor justification for a pair of new lines. (However the justification of being able to move IC trains out of the competition with freight and stoppers would be good justification.

 

[driver9000]

How is that determined in the modern era though? I mean Bailrigg alone must have hundreds of students that commute regularly via the railways and go for nights out in Lancaster or Preston.

The University has a daytime bus frequency approximately every 4 minutes into Lancaster city centre and the fare is far lower than the rail fare would be. They also have the convenience of the bus going right into the centre of the campus and many of the students live off campus in the city anyway so a rail service for the university would be of no use to them whatsoever anyway

Of note, Lancaster University lists its student populace as 13,000 although I am guessing that is across multiple campuses.

Lancaster is one campus but a lot of students live spread across the city particularly the Bowerham, Primrose and Greaves areas along with the city centre accommodation as well as on campus. There is also the University of Cumbria campus in Bowerham.

 

[yorksrob]

I can remember in my student days (around 25 years ago) there was discussion about a new station in Garstang. It seems that this is always too disruptive of the main line services.

 

[childwallblues]

I can confirm that the university has a high frequency service which extends through the city centre to Morecambe and Heysham.

 

[The exile]

That stretch is by far unique in terms of main lines with no local stations - Didcot - Bristol Parkway being another example. Local demand was insufficient to justify the retention of stopping trains over the speeding-up / intensification of Intercity services. While there might now be sufficient demand to justify retaining stopping services if they had survived - getting them replaced is a much higher hurdle. For a start it almost certainly has to be done as a “big bang” - because there’s nothing to do incremental improvements on.Big Bangs cost big bucks and require a lot of coordination and collaboration!

 

[amywok]

A station at Bailrigg to serve Lancaster University and South Lancaster would be a huge asset to these communities. Lancashire County Council as the strategic planning authority has pursued the concept with Network Rail and the DfT arguing that the Bailrigg sidings offer a great foundation for the station infrastructure, enabling stoppers to get off the fast lines.

It is not only the 18,000 or so students that travel to campus daily, thousands of staff do the same, many commuting by car over long distances. My own department has staff commuting from, Bucks, Carlisle, Durham and Edinburgh for example.

Demand would also come from the expanding communities of Scotforth, Bailrigg and Galgate all of which have new house-building projects. There are also the constant stream of visitors to campus who seeing how poor is the bus route four service from the Station to campus, resort to taxis.

Huge demand will come from the Bailrigg Garden Village scheme which plans around nine thousand new homes at Burrow. This is the land immediately to the west of Bailrigg sidings, and development will increase demand for better, sustainable transport links. While the enabling road scheme has been pulled for now, as builders control much the land at Burrow, future development is a certainly.

The bus service to campus contributes to the chronic congestion and pollution in Lancaster City centre which has some of the worst air quality anywhere. Try sitting in Dalton Square at peak times! Buses are not a sustainable transport solution for Lancaster. A better way is needed for moving people into campus from the City where, thanks to the many new student accommodation blocks, increasing numbers now live.

Predictably the response from NR and DfT was negative on grounds of cost and lack of capacity on the WCML. Yet local campaigners including Lancaster Civic Vision keep a Bailrigg station on the authorities’ agenda, as they do better rail links to Morecambe to support the Eden project.

It may be a long haul, but the business case for Bailrigg station is strong.

 

[greyman42]

Even well-served rail routes like Newcastle-Durham-York-Leeds don't see students apart from on a handful of trains.

I'm not so sure about that.

 

[zwk500]

I'm not so sure about that.

I'll admit my experience is a bit old, but my experience was that outside of term start/end weekends and the odd busy nights, most students go out in their own towns. And certainly nothing like enough to make the revenue a serious case.

With a massive development around Bailrigg planned, I can see the case getting stronger, but you'll need the IC traffic moved somewhere else before you can start running stoppers.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

I lived in Lancaster for about 20 years, so I think I can claim some local knowledge

Is it because the intermediate stations are so rural that they can't even support a station?

Not really. It's more likely to be because they closed a very long time ago and no-one has thought about/been able to provide the money to reopen them.

Off the top of my head and from @JamieL's list:

* Broughton - if suitably placed and with access to the M25, would make an excellent parkway station for Preston, as well as serving a reasonably sized community.
* Brock - probably too rural
* Hollins Lane - definitely too rural
* Galgate - would work reasonably well for Galgate village and a parkway for the area to the South, although might be semi-redundant if you have a station at Bailrigg too.
* Bailrigg (University Campus) - yes, definitely

And I would add to that list:
Possibly Garstang, which is easily big enough to justify a station, but the problem is the rail line doesn't quite go near enough to the town.
Blackpool Road Preston to provide rail access to a very densely populated residential area.

The other thing that is missing from this discussion is that Lancaster-Preston is a decent and well used commuter route that is currently very badly served: Lots of long-distance trains that are not designed for commuters and add up to lots of services but at wildly irregular intervals. If you built new stations along the route and had them served by something like a half-hourly Preston-Morecambe, then I'm pretty sure that would be well used, attracting both Morecambe/Lancaster-Preston commuters and people using the new stations. I'd also have the Windermere and Barrow trains, and possibly the Manchester-Scotland ones also stop at Bailrigg.

Unfortunately the elephant in the room is that none of this will be possible without 4-tracking the route because of the issue of delaying the trains to Scotland, which would make it a very expensive project. On the other hand, as far as I'm aware there aren't that many barriers (other than financial) to doing that. For most of the route there is enough space around the tracks that you could 4-track without really needing to demolish much. The only real problem is going to be the Galgate area.

I'll admit my experience is a bit old, but my experience was that outside of term start/end weekends and the odd busy nights, most students go out in their own towns. And certainly nothing like enough to make the revenue a serious case.

With a massive development around Bailrigg planned, I can see the case getting stronger, but you'll need the IC traffic moved somewhere else before you can start running stoppers.

It wouldn't just be students on nights out, although you'd get some traffic from that. The real benefit of the station would be students and staff (remember there are lots of University staff too) commuting from Preston/etc. And you'd pick up some traffic from the large stream of visitors that any University tends to attract. Plus a station at Bailrigg would to some extent serve as a south parkway for Lancaster (admittedly somewhat restricted by congestion on the road through Galgate: Arguably, Galgate would be a better location for a Lancaster South Parkway station). (EDIT: I see @amywok has beaten me to make similar points)

The University has a daytime bus frequency approximately every 4 minutes into Lancaster city centre and the fare is far lower than the rail fare would be. They also have the convenience of the bus going right into the centre of the campus and many of the students live off campus in the city anyway so a rail service for the university would be of no use to them whatsoever anyway

The bus is however very slow. It's fine for students who live in Bowerham or further South, and reasonable for those who live in Lancaster City centre, but not for anywhere beyond. A long time ago, it was common for students to live in Skerton or Morecambe, but that has largely been killed by the slowness of the buses and road congestion. A Morecambe-Preston train that served Bailrigg would probably reopen Morecambe and add the area around Marsh to the places where University students and staff could reasonably live, which would help balance Lancaster's housing market better, and provide quite a few passengers for the railway, as well as giving a much needed economic boost to some deprived parts of Morecambe.

 

[70014IronDuke]

That stretch is by far unique in terms of main lines with no local stations - Didcot - Bristol Parkway being another example. Local demand was insufficient to justify the retention of stopping trains over the speeding-up / intensification of Intercity services. While there might now be sufficient demand to justify retaining stopping services if they had survived - getting them replaced is a much higher hurdle. For a start it almost certainly has to be done as a “big bang” - because there’s nothing to do incremental improvements on.Big Bangs cost big bucks and require a lot of coordination and collaboration!

That stretch is far from .... (Correct that for you).

See also a certain route termed the ECML from Huntingdon to Newcastle - with the exception of Chester-le-Street.

EDIT: I do think a case for a station serving Lancaster University area could be made if a) there were paths available and b) a suitable service in place to serve it.

But Avanti won't want to stop there for certain, and TPE, when they feel like running, probably wouldn't either. That leaves you with the odd Northern Preston - Barrow train, which would be useless.

But I'm sure paths would be critical in any case for most of the day.

 

[The Planner]

No one will touch Preston to Lancaster until Preston gets resignaled, and even then Im not convinced any new infrastructure would get built.

 

[Springs Branch]

That stretch is by far unique in terms of main lines with no local stations - Didcot - Bristol Parkway being another example. Local demand was insufficient to justify the retention of stopping trains over the speeding-up / intensification of Intercity services. While there might now be sufficient demand to justify retaining stopping services if they had survived - getting them replaced is a much higher hurdle.

Not too far south along the WCML from the OP's question - between Preston and Warrington - there are occasional local rumblings about re-opening the closed stations at Golborne and Coppull.

Both those settlements have seen change in demographics & travel patterns, plus house building, compared to when the original stations closed in 1961 and 1969 respectively.

Golborne is at least on a four-track section of the WCML, so this could mitigate disruption. The original station had platforms on the slow lines only and was close to Golborne town centre. It's not clear whether rebuilding on the slow lines at the original site would be optimal, or whether Golborne and surrounding areas would be better served with a station more easily accessible from the East Lancs Road ("Golborne Junction Parkway"?)

I think the biggest sticking point about Golborne might be there aren't any existing train services on that stretch of the WCML suitable to call there. Local journeys to Wigan & Warrington have adequate bus connections, and for the Manchester or Liverpool directions, it's not that far to Newton-le-Willows or Earlestown.

A re-opened Coppull could neatly be served by the trains which already call at Euxton Balshaw Lane - Northern's Lime Street - Blackpool North service. The problem here is the station would need to be located on the two-track section south of Balshaw Lane Junction, so stopping trains there would hold up all other traffic on the line. Not sure whether it's now possible to re-instate the original four-track layout by moving Balshaw Lane Junction to somewhere south of Coppull (e.g. back to the original Standish), but even if feasible, the infrastructure expense would certainly kill the business case for the new station.

Both proposals raise their heads from time to time and might appear on 'aspiration lists', but never seem to get anywhere.

 

[The Planner]

Golborne is reasonably advanced and would be served by a Wigan Manchester service.

 

[GRALISTAIR]

My UK home is in Broughton and backs onto the WCML at the bottom of the garden. All my life I have dreamed of a station at Broughton but even with the new housing in Sandygate Lane area I can’t see where you would put the station nor any financial justification.

 

[Bald Rick]

Imagine if Carstairs had a bypass for example - we could have avoided weeks of misery.

Imagine if every bit of railway had another bit of railway to bypass it… But what happens when you need to replace the bit of railway where the two railways meet?

If fast lines were to be added, you'd build them off-line and call it HS2-Scotland Extension.

Exactly. LGV Écosse.

the business case for Bailrigg station is strong.

on what basis? Detailed economic analysis or “thoughts and prayers?

Broughton - if suitably placed and with access to the M25

That is a very long access road!

 

[Philip]

The priority for this section should be to improve the Lancaster-Preston-Manchester service offering, which is currently quite poor because of the unreliability of the Northern Cumbria and TPE Scotland services. This, in addition to long distance services to/from the south often being subject to disruption, means even Lancaster-Preston is often unreliable.

I propose diverting one of the Manchester-Blackpool services into a Manchester-Lancaster 6-car EMU, with perhaps some running as portion services to Preston (the rear set continuing to Blackpool), depending on passenger capacity pinch points on both routes and track capacity at Preston. This would provide a reliable Manchester-Preston-Lancaster service throughout the day, which the route desperately needs, and would absorb many of the passengers currently using (and crowding out) the TPE and Avanti services to make this journey.

Even without any portion workings, Blackpool would still have its own hourly 6-car Manchester service, with numerous other options available by changing at Preston.

 

[JamieL]

Imagine if every bit of railway had another bit of railway to bypass it… But what happens when you need to replace the bit of railway where the two railways meet?

Comments like this aren't very helpful but are entirely indicative of the whole problem on the railways IMHO. I think this thread pulls it out nicely - there clearly would be a benefit to intermediate stations between Preston and Lancaster but, due to cost and logistics, the railway is unable or unwilling to meet that requirement. Entrenched attitudes don't really help and, I really do feel, if there was a little 'how could we achieve this', rather than 'it is what it is', the overall offering could be better.

 

[zwk500]

I propose diverting one of the Manchester-Blackpool services into a Manchester-Lancaster 6-car EMU, with perhaps some running as portion services to Preston (the rear set continuing to Blackpool), depending on passenger capacity pinch points on both routes and track capacity at Preston. This would provide a reliable Manchester-Preston-Lancaster service throughout the day, which the route desperately needs, and would absorb many of the passengers currently using (and crowding out) the TPE and Avanti services to make this journey.

Portion working at Preston would fail the 'more reliable' requirement quite spectacularly. Lancaster is currently a very awkward place to terminate because of the extremely slow crossovers between Up and Down main due to the curvature. Although Manchester-Carnforth hourly EMU would not be a bad idea.

Comments like this aren't very helpful but are entirely indicative of the whole problem on the railways IMHO. I think this thread pulls it out nicely - there clearly would be a benefit to intermediate stations between Preston and Lancaster but, due to cost and logistics, the railway is unable or unwilling to meet that requirement. Entrenched attitudes don't really help and, I really do feel, if there was a little 'how could we achieve this', rather than 'it is what it is', the overall offering could be better.

The problem is weighing up the benefit of a local station like Garstang or Bailrigg, which serve small local flows that might provide a reasonable local benefit but nationally don't move the needle at all, against the trains currently using that line which do have a major impact as it brings trade to/from London (avanti) or overseas (freight). Rail is very expensive to build and maintain, there's no getting away from it and it's all very well blaming entrenched attitudes but when these things are addressed for real the costs cannot be disregarded as 'a lack of ambition'.
FWIW it's people you deride for 'entrenched attitudes' that are responsible for getting things like Okehampton, EWR and the Northumberland Line reopened and keeping projects like Fawley and Portishead on the table.

 

[Bald Rick]

Comments like this aren't very helpful but are entirely indicative of the whole problem on the railways IMHO. I think this thread pulls it out nicely - there clearly would be a benefit to intermediate stations between Preston and Lancaster but, due to cost and logistics, the railway is unable or unwilling to meet that requirement. Entrenched attitudes don't really help and, I really do feel, if there was a little 'how could we achieve this', rather than 'it is what it is', the overall offering could be better.

Ok, fair enough… I’m rather grumpy at the moment and should have been more circumspect.

It’s not an entrenched attitude though. With my experience of developing, building, maintains and operating railways / stations (existing and new) I have a better handle than most on how much it costs to build stuff like this. And with my experience on the ‘business’ side, I have a good idea of how much benefit you get from such projects. I also know most of the rocks upon which such projects founder - put another way, the things that projects promoters often don’t think about. The three most common are:

1) that their project is different and therefore will be cheaper than other similar projects,
2) how you actually build it, and
3) how the train service will actually work with other train services, ie the timetable.

To put it in context, 4 tracking (I refuse to use the term “quad tracking”, dammit I just did) from somewhere around Broughton to somewhere around Bailrigg, and building say three stations, is going to cost a minimum of a billion pounds. There are no Northern service routes that cover their direct operating costs, so any new service provided to call at the stations would need ongoing subsidy. That means a requirement for very significant levels of social benefit, the scale of which simply isn’t there in this location.

As @zwk500 said, if you‘re going to be building new lines in that area, it would be better in terms of benefit (and probably cheaper), to build them High Speed and leave the existing well alone.

 

[The Planner]

Comments like this aren't very helpful but are entirely indicative of the whole problem on the railways IMHO. I think this thread pulls it out nicely - there clearly would be a benefit to intermediate stations between Preston and Lancaster but, due to cost and logistics, the railway is unable or unwilling to meet that requirement. Entrenched attitudes don't really help and, I really do feel, if there was a little 'how could we achieve this', rather than 'it is what it is', the overall offering could be better.

There is plenty of "how can we do it", it is the "how can we afford it" that is the issue.