Fleetwood,Lancashire has the tram to Blackpool but many blame the loss of the BR service on the towns decline.
I'd dispute that, as many other coastal places have also gone into decline, despite being on the NR network, e.g. Blackpool, Morecambe, Rhyl
I'm with Mikey here - many coastal places have declined (relative to big inland cities) for many reasons - the train service is probably a tiny reason (maybe you could even praise Dr Beeching for having the foresight to know many years in advance which towns would decline and therefore not need their trains... removing tongue from cheek)
Some of the coastal places that have had a renaissance are precious little to do with the fact that they kept a train station (the infrequent service means that the numbers arriving into Newquay/ Whitby by rail are pretty insignificant) or even coastal places with no train station that have done well.
We have been here before, and I don't think the topic should be considered as "trivia" - it's an important issue.
It's "trivial" for the purposes of this Forum though - it's an argument in which places make the most compelling cases, where people round up the population stats to come up with the biggest places then casually disregard inconvenient nearby stations (e.g. it sounds important if someone quotes the whole metropolitan borough of Oldham for the list and then decides that the fact that there is a train station inside that area doesn't count because it's not in central Oldham town)
Cirencester, 20k but nearest main station is Stroud and Kemble. Can even get a hourly bus to Cheltenham and Swindon although both take good 50 minutes.
The fact that it only sustains a hourly commercial bus service would count against any re-opening though
And it's a deeply unhelpful argument: regardless of council boundaries, we're ultimately still a decently large town in our own right with no rail connections (and increasingly few decent bus connections).
Genuine question then - what service would there be if a station opened?
I don't claim to know the Potteries situation as well as a local, so I won't pretend to... but a lot of the time on threads like this, there's suggestions for putting places "on the map" but no real discussion about what kind of practical service it could sustain.
Would it be a frequent shuttle from Newcastle to Stoke? Because my understanding from a few visits to the area is that the main local demand would be to central Hanley (at the top of the hill, far from the current Stoke station)... or would it be extending the current Manchester - Stoke service to Newcastle? Diverting some ex-Crewe services (Derby or London) to serve Newcastle instead? Is there a particular flow that would best suit Newcastle residents (or attract people towards the town)? Is a line through to Keele remotely feasible?
I can see the logic in a large urban area being connected to the network (compared to the quaint rural villages that people usually suggest on such threads) but I just don't know how a line would work/ what would be a reasonable enough service to justify it. A half hourly shuttle to Stoke? But the station in Stoke isn't well placed, so would a line only be of use for people in Newcastle changing there to get out of the Potteries on longer distance trains passing through Stoke?
There's a decent population there but for heavy rail to work there needs to be one big obvious flow - e.g. for Ebbw Vale there was the obvious big city of Cardiff to run to - if Portishead ever opens then a line to Bristol mirrors the regular commercial bus services - but how do you serve Newcastle? And, given the size of the place, would a train station even be that useful for a large proportion of households?
Yep, loads of examples throughout the country, but I guess bus deregulation makes it tricky...
Here are a few suggestions, feel free to add your own:
Bangor - Caernarfon
Blaenau Ffestiniog- Porthmadog
Ruabon - Llangollen - Barmouth
Matlock - Bakewell - Buxton
Exeter - Bude
Carlisle - Galashiels
Harrogate - Ripon
Keswick - Penrith
Gobowen - Oswestry
Hornsea/Withernsea - Hull
These are all rural routes with no major intermediate places, not really suited to rail
Once upon a time, the Ffestiniog railway marketed themselves as a way to bridge that particular gap in the network.
These days I think they've gone back to being purely a tourist attraction.
...which suggests that there's not much demand for everyday passengers (and a Sprinter isn't going to provide the same "experience" that tourists will shell out big money for)