Trivia: Reopenings that have been "Proposed" the longest.

[Djgr]

The Edinburgh Sub was being repeatedly championed when I was at university there in the 1970s!

Circular services seem to have a bizarre fascination for transport amateurs, despite them having a string of practical downsides. The geography of the line also militates against it, it is well removed from being an actual circle, it forms more a very flattened oval where trains from the champions' principal south-side points have to make a long run out east or west and back again to get to the centre. I reckon I could (well, at least, back in those days) run faster from Newington to Waverley than the train would take.

Given that the Edinburgh has always (then and now) had one of the most frequent, dense and comprehensible bus networks anywhere, with outside Newington or Morningside stations always seeming to have a bus for Princes Street in sight, it was no wonder the former rail service died a death.

I did travel on it one weekend out to Slateford when Haymarket Junction was being rebuilt and the Shotts line was operating out of the east end of Waverley. Someone took lineside photos of the dmu passing and got the Evening News to print an accompanying story that BR were running test trains for a resumption!

Unless I'm mistaken Cross Country run one train a day along it?

It's the 2105 from Glasgow Central. Note how the journey time is longer than normal

 

[Bald Rick]

Is the line between Middlewich and Northwich on the cards for reopening or is this one going to be talked about forever like the Leamside line?

It is open! No regular passenger services of course.

Wasn’t there a thread titled something like ‘One last push to get Middlewich line reopened’ .... about 5 years ago?

 

[Tumbleweed]

Beddau to Cardiff, via Pontyclun or Creigiau.

 

[GrimsbyPacer]

Reopening the East Lincolnshire line to Louth, either from Grimsby or Firsby Junction has been mentioned since at least 1980 from what the heritage railway says.

As TBTC points rightly out in general, lines like it will likely be the same as the existing Barton Line or Skegness Line with just a rare sprinter if it did re-open and it will never make a profit, by a long shot.
Railways are infrastructure, it makes no financial sense to build a road or telecommunications to every village, but nevertheless, it's important that loss making transport and communications are available to all communities, if bus services aren't meeting the required speed or route then people have to campaign to reopen their local line to provide a more permanent solution (rail services are less likely to be cut at short notice, so is a lifeline).

One line I really hope reopens is the Fleetwood branch, I used to live in the town and there is a substantial market there willing to travel the short distance to Preston.

 

[PR1Berske]

Interesting question.

I kind of admire the blind devotion that some proponents have to their favourite scheme, their creativeness in trying to find new (and sometimes contradictory) justifications - e.g. the way that the Leamside can be both a slow freight line and also a Durham-avoider for HS2 and also a stopping Metro service

It's almost a shame for them that some lines remained open because I can imagine just how much they'd be boasting about what a success the line could be if only it weren't for "short-sighted" people in the 1960s not predicting exactly how things would be over fifty years later - e.g. if the Settle & Carlisle had closed in the 1980s as was planned, we'd have regular threads bemoaning the closure and how, if only it was still open in 2021 there'd be regular services, loads of London and Nottingham to Glasgow trains, the S&C would be hosting WCML diversions every weekend, there'd be huge passenger numbers at all these incredibly important villages that were now without a train station...

...whereas in reality, there's only a bi-hourly Sprinter (with nothing running north of Carlisle and only one train per week running south of Leeds), none of the stations north of Settle have passenger numbers worth writing home about, the much vaunted "diversionary resilience" sounds nice in theory but clearly doesn't happen in practice, not much freight - it's a heavily loss making route with low passenger numbers...

...now, listen to what the enthusiasts say the Tavistock - Okehampton route could be (regular services, loads of London trains, lots of diverted services too etc) and consider whether it'd be worthwhile if the reality is just a bi-hourly Sprinter (with pretty much nothing running east of Exeter/ west of Plymouth)...

...or the Matlock - Buxton people (who talk of fast St Pancras - Manchester services whilst also taking freight off the MML, despite the single track sections to accommodate the Monsall Trail etc) would still want to spend all that money if it was just a local DMU every hour or two..

...not that the people demanding we re-open such lines will worry about the reality of how the routes that did survive "Beeching" etc are often pretty quiet with underwhelming numbers at intermediate stations and very little of the exciting freight/ London trains/ diversions

True faith means never having to worry about pesky evidence (e.g. you can pretend to yourself that an Uckfield - Lewes line would see lots of diversions when the main London - Brighton line is closed, despite the fact that the Horsham line could be used for such diversions yet generally isn't)

It's tough love to say it but true. Re-opening doesn't mean a rail renaissance will occur. You're right about S&C: it's romantic to have it open, it's not practical, it's certainly not much use to anybody.

Staying local to me, the Burscough Curves and/or Midge Hall station have been talked about so often, I fear some campaigners have been employed, happily retired and sadly passed on in the intervening years and with no progress at all on either. It feels to me - and I became interested in the railways in the 1990s - that both schemes have been constantly spoken about for 30-odd years and counting without progress. Colne-Skipton (which I had once supported but now see its massive problems similiar to what you have posted above) is another one.

 

[nw1]

Only just seen this thread, sorry.

Locally: Totton to Fawley seems to keep getting mentioned every couple of years since the late 1990s, but nothing has happened.

This one has two advantages:
a) there is already a line there
b) there are several relatively large settlements with much modern (1970s+) housing that probably wasn't there at closure. Marchwood, Hythe, Holbury and Blackfield in particular.

While the bus is fine for journeys into Southampton, the area suffers from lack of connectivity to more distant places. I am sure that if it was opened, with an hourly service, it would see good passenger numbers.

Another article I saw some years ago was the more ambitious Brockenhurst to Ringwood (terminating there). Not sure if this would ever happen as it's doubtful a dead-end branch would get the numbers, even though much of the line is not built over. Extending to Bournemouth via Ferndown possibly would but there's probably too much obstruction in the way to make it viable.

No-one ever seems to make a success of running a bus (of any description, either fast along the A31 or slow via Lyndhurst) either from Ringwood to Southampton, either these days even though one did run for quite some time in the 90s. Surprising, as it means that Ringwood is literally cut off from direct services to points east via public transport. Maybe a rail-operated bus with through ticketing would work?

 

[THC]

Reading this thread with interest. It would be helpful to differentiate between those proposals that emanate from campaigning groups and individuals and those proposed or backed by MPs, local authorities and other statutory agencies. On the surface anyone can call for a "reopening" - this forum is testament to that - but without any form of official backing or sanction it's largely meaningless.

THC

 

[tbtc]

Colne-Skipton (which I had once supported but now see its massive problems similiar to what you have posted above) is another one.

That's a great example to contrast with the S&C (which obviously remains open and only sees a Sprinter every couple of hours, rather than the amazing Thames Clyde Expresses and Nottingham - Dumfries services and half hourly freight and regular steam specials and HSTs from Leeds to Glasgow and all the other wonderful things that would surely be promised if BR/Portillo had closed it down in the 1980s)

If Skipton - Colne had remained open then my guess is that today's service would have just been at lest an extension of the hourly stopping DMU that served Colne (i.e. a single 142 for decades, recently replaced by a single 150) - low speed single track with a loop at Colne - I can't see it having been electrified when BR were doing the Leeds - Skipton line (let's face it, BR had a lot of other priorities that didn't get wired at the time) - the DMUs would trundle up and down with a couple of dozen passengers at best...

...but it was closed, which allows the daydreamers to envisage scenarios where it's a double track electrified line taking Hull - Liverpool expresses, removing lots of freight from the Diggle line, finally giving East Lancashire a direct link to the prosperity of Leeds (if you ignore the long established hourly service via Hebden Bridge!) - the SELRAP website (https://www.selrap.org.uk/Project.html) even talks about "the possibility of a direct link to Manchester airport from points from Shipley to Skipton" (because of course the Castlefield corridor needs new services!) and it'll "massively drive economic growth, open up new job opportunities, encourage business growth and stimulate new development throughout East Lancashire" ..."new jobs, businesses, economic growth and greater prosperity" (two hundred and fifty thousand people are quoted as the population of East Lancashire, which suggests that they are hoping nobody notices that a large number of those people already have an hourly service via Hebden Bridge!)

It's a lot easier to grieve for closed lines and imagine just how amazing they could have been today if only we had hundreds of millions of pounds to re-open them - much more exciting than dealing with the reality of several lines where the hourly Sprinter rarely has passenger numbers that would trouble a minibus

 

[zwk500]

Locally: Totton to Fawley seems to keep getting mentioned every couple of years since the late 1990s, but nothing has happened.

Really? There's been regular test runs, multiple economic and timetable studies and it's getting very, very close attention as part of the Restoring Your Railway fund.

 

[341o2]

Reading this thread with interest. It would be helpful to differentiate between those proposals that emanate from campaigning groups and individuals and those proposed or backed by MPs, local authorities and other statutory agencies. On the surface anyone can call for a "reopening" - this forum is testament to that - but without any form of official backing or sanction it's largely meaningless.

THC

Indeed, you only have to look at the site for the Campaign for Better Transport

https://bettertransport.org.uk/re-opening-rail-lines#sw

Which advocates reopening the Somerset & Dorset!
Quote from site

Chard Junction - Chard Town - Taunton

• Exeter - Bude
• A railway line linking Yeovil Junction station to the Westbury-Weymouth line [Note: in December 2015 trains began running between Yeovil Junction and Pen Mill stations for the first time in 50 years!]
• Newton Abbot - Moretonhampstead
• Exeter - Newton Abbot (Teign Valley Line)
• Frome - Radstock
• Somerset and Dorset Railway, from Bath to Bournemouth

 

[Ianigsy]

Gateacre to Hunts Cross, " suspended " three months before I was born. I'm 49 tomorrow.

 

[Bald Rick]

Reading this thread with interest. It would be helpful to differentiate between those proposals that emanate from campaigning groups and individuals and those proposed or backed by MPs, local authorities and other statutory agencies. On the surface anyone can call for a "reopening" - this forum is testament to that - but without any form of official backing or sanction it's largely meaningless.

THC

The differentiation needs to be between those proposals that someone is willing to put money behind, regardless of who supports it. MPs and local politicians will often ‘support’ a proposal, but support doesn’t pay the bills.

 

[nw1]

Really? There's been regular test runs, multiple economic and timetable studies and it's getting very, very close attention as part of the Restoring Your Railway fund.

I suppose what I meant is that it's been proposed for a long time but no commitment to definite reopening has been made yet. However good to hear things are moving in the right direction.

 

[Dr_Paul]

Surely Skipton Colne tops the list.

It seems odd to me that this line was closed in the first place, considering that one of the complaints about Britain's railways was that there were too many dead-end branches, and closing this line turned a through line into one (this isn't the only example, of course; Uckfield being a prize one).

 

[Bald Rick]

considering that one of the complaints about Britain's railways was that there were too many dead-end branches

Surely it would have been that there were too many dead-end branches that didn’t have any traffic?

 

[zwk500]

I suppose what I meant is that it's been proposed for a long time but no commitment to definite reopening has been made yet. However good to hear things are moving in the right direction.

You have to get a long way down the road before anybody will commit fully. However a big reason Fawley struggles to get to firmer ground is that timetable/capacity studies show Southampton is rather busy, and economic studies show if the trains don't run to Southampton then nobody is going to use them. No point committing to definite reopening unless you can actually run a useful service, otherwise it's money down the drain that could instead be spent on other projects like Access for All.

 

[Pigeon]

it's incredible to think £130m might have been spent already - with nothing above ground to show for it, and no sign currently that it will ever come to fruition.

The "incredible" bit is not so much what has happened in one specific instance, but the way this sort of thing has been allowed to become standard practice, and that people are so often much more keen to defend it vehemently (usually with some pseudo-argument on the lines of "this is how things happen to be done at this particular point in time therefore it is utterly impossible to even conceive of doing it any other way") than to decry the practice. Officialdom may eventually be compelled to acknowledge the existence of a public desire to have a route reopened, but they can't be compelled to actually share in that desire; after all to actually do something effective would require them to break their accustomed routine of "disengage brain and go through the motions while indulging fatly in fantasies about their own importance". Unfortunately they have realised that they can evade the pressure by hijacking the proposal as a means of diverting money to pay parasitic groups of their cronies and old school friends to hold endless talking shops and produce expensive PDFs full of made up numbers, which - bizarrely - seems to confuse the public into thinking it constitutes some kind of progress being made even though it so patently fails to achieve anything.

The thread topic really ought to be not "reopenings that have been proposed the longest" - as various people have said, that is basically the same as "lines that closed the longest time ago" - but

Which reopening proposals have resulted in the most enormous amounts of money being spent on interminable blah and blithering on without even one stone of ballast to show for it?

- and a subcategory: Which of those proposals took the least amount of time for the amount of money being wasted on blithering to exceed the original cost of reopening?

 

[tbtc]

Which reopening proposals have resulted in the most enormous amounts of money being spent on interminable blah and blithering on without even one stone of ballast to show for it?

I'd suggest the Aberystwyth - Carmarthen line; every time there's any kind of election someone seems to promise it, and it seems a popular policy because it plays well to certain core bases and a sense of unfairness/ being left behind (as well as the "why should we have to travel via England" brigade)

There are probably several generations of the same family who've worked on the Aberystwyth - Carmarthen Business Case community - it's provided gainful employment for many people over the years

 

[zwk500]

Officialdom may eventually be compelled to acknowledge the existence of a public desire to have a route reopened, but they can't be compelled to actually share in that desire; after all to actually do something effective would require them to break their accustomed routine of "disengage brain and go through the motions while indulging fatly in fantasies about their own importance". Unfortunately they have realised that they can evade the pressure by hijacking the proposal as a means of diverting money to pay parasitic groups of their cronies and old school friends to hold endless talking shops and produce expensive PDFs full of made up numbers, which - bizarrely - seems to confuse the public into thinking it constitutes some kind of progress being made even though it so patently fails to achieve anything.

1. Officials should not be compelled to share in a passionate desire. That way lies billions of wasted taxpayer pounds on political vanity projects.
2. You've confused 'Officialdom' with 'Politicians'. Officials are fully aware they are no more than worker ants and have very little influence on the awarding of contracts.
3. Politicians will say whatever they think will help them get elected the next time their seat is up. Because rail projects tend to have lead times of more than 4 years, they will not push any money that way for fear of handing their opponent an open goal when the line actually does come up. That's a problem with elections and term lengths, not officialdom and bureaucratic process.
4. Studies are not full of made up numbers. However I will concede that economic forecasts can tend to be rather wide of the mark. That is the nature of trying to predict the future.
5. Studies are progress. How can you know whether it is right to invest in a project without knowing A. What it costs B. What it's benefits will be and C. If it's even possible in the first place, from and engineering and operational view?

Which reopening proposals have resulted in the most enormous amounts of money being spent on interminable blah and blithering on without even one stone of ballast to show for it?

Alternatively, that could be 'Which proposals should have been buried long ago, because there's precisely 0 chance of them ever being built but instead because of 5 angry old blokes we have to sped £80K on an economic study every 10 years that says the same thing every time.'

 

[Bald Rick]

Alternatively, that could be 'Which proposals should have been buried long ago, because there's precisely 0 chance of them ever being built but instead because of 5 angry old blokes we have to sped £80K on an economic study every 10 years that says the same thing every time.'

Ha - I can give you a long list of these!

 

[Glenn1969]

Elland station. Was supposed to open when Brighouse did and is still at the planning stage 23 years later. And I guess given that the last costing I saw is £38m for a 2 platform station it may get put on hold again ?

 

[Deepgreen]

Both Guildford to Christ's Hospital and Shoreham-By-Sea to Christ's Hospital get an occasional mention.

They must both be extremely remote possibilities - with low traffic potential and very high local car ownership.

 

[THC]

The differentiation needs to be between those proposals that someone is willing to put money behind, regardless of who supports it. MPs and local politicians will often ‘support’ a proposal, but support doesn’t pay the bills.

It is a precondition, which is why I delineated in the way I did. Having funding in place is in itself no guarantee of delivery - the Metropolitan line extension is a prime example. That it failed was down to political will or lack thereof, nothing else.

THC

 

[Bald Rick]

It is a precondition, which is why I delineated in the way I did. Having funding in place is in itself no guarantee of delivery - the Metropolitan line extension is a prime example. That it failed was down to political will or lack thereof, nothing else.

THC

I’m afraid in that example it was down to poor (at best, inexperienced) programme management.

 

[krus_aragon]

As recently discussed elsewhere, The Anglesey Central branch (Gaerwen-Llangefni-Amlwch) has had serious proposals for reintroducing passener services since the 1980s (i.e. before freight dried up and the line was mothballed).

 

[Deepgreen]

The full Waverley route and I claim my five pounds.

Seriously, proposals for reopening start almost immediately after any branch is closed, so the question would be which route with decent ridership closed the earliest?

Uckfield to Lewes closed in its entirety on 4 July 1969. Parts of the Waverley route remained open until 28 June 1972.

 

[Railwaysceptic]

They must both be extremely remote possibilities - with low traffic potential and very high local car ownership.

Guildford to Christ's Hospital would facilitate through services to Horsham and Gatwick Airport from places like Woking and Aldershot. I'd have thought that would generate considerable traffic flow, particularly in (non-Covid) summer.

 

[zwk500]

Both Guildford to Christ's Hospital and Shoreham-By-Sea to Christ's Hospital get an occasional mention.

They must both be extremely remote possibilities - with low traffic potential and very high local car ownership.

Shoreham to Christ's Hospital is physically impossible because the Steyning bypass took the rail alignment and Bramber castle prevents any other route for road or rail. Realigning closer to the river east of Bramber castle would need to raise the line on an embankment and that would have an unacceptable impact on flooding in Bramber itself.

Guildford to Christ's Hospital has similar issues through Cranleigh, in addition to a much less clear demand level. At least demand for travel from Steyning, Bramber and Henfield to Brighton and London is fairly clear.

 

[Bald Rick]

Guildford to Christ's Hospital would facilitate through services to Horsham and Gatwick Airport from places like Woking and Aldershot. I'd have thought that would generate considerable traffic flow, particularly in (non-Covid) summer.

Those flows are easily done connecting at Guildford. A direct connection would clearly increase traffic, but not that much.

 

[WesternBiker]

1. Officials should not be compelled to share in a passionate desire. That way lies billions of wasted taxpayer pounds on political vanity projects.
2. You've confused 'Officialdom' with 'Politicians'. Officials are fully aware they are no more than worker ants and have very little influence on the awarding of contracts.
3. Politicians will say whatever they think will help them get elected the next time their seat is up. Because rail projects tend to have lead times of more than 4 years, they will not push any money that way for fear of handing their opponent an open goal when the line actually does come up. That's a problem with elections and term lengths, not officialdom and bureaucratic process.
4. Studies are not full of made up numbers. However I will concede that economic forecasts can tend to be rather wide of the mark. That is the nature of trying to predict the future.
5. Studies are progress. How can you know whether it is right to invest in a project without knowing A. What it costs B. What it's benefits will be and C. If it's even possible in the first place, from and engineering and operational view?

Alternatively, that could be 'Which proposals should have been buried long ago, because there's precisely 0 chance of them ever being built but instead because of 5 angry old blokes we have to sped £80K on an economic study every 10 years that says the same thing every time.'

Valid points - though this particular strand of the conversation started with the £130m (apparently) being spent on the aim to link the Metropolitan line to Watford, via the old Croxley Green branch to Watford High Street / Junction - with no apparent progress on the ground (beyond some vegetation clearance in 2013). I'm aware that enabling works can be expensive, but it still seems a lot - or has someone inflated the figure?