Cash to restore Beeching cuts offers hope for historic lines
RAIL SERVICES
A HISTORICAL reduction of the rail network in Leicestershire is set to be reversed after development funding was secured.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson pledged to “restore many of the rail services lost in the Beeching cuts” in the 1960s.
Projects to benefit from the latest round of funding include “improved services from Melton Mowbray”.
The government has previously allocated £500 million towards the reopening of closed lines and stations.
Ten schemes were given development funding in May, with a further 15 announced on Wednesday under the National Infrastructure Strategy.
Others are Ferryhill station, County Durham; reinstating links between Bolton, Radcliffe and Bury, Greater Manchester, and restoring the link between Stratford-uponAvon and the Honeybourne/ Worcester/Oxford line.
Sim Harris, managing editor of industry newspaper Railnews, described the announcement as “welcome but tantalisingly vague on details, on money and exactly what is proposed”.
He told the PA news agency that the £500 million budget would “barely pay for one short line”.
He added: “They’re going to need quite a few billions to do something like this.”
British Railways chairman Dr Richard Beeching published a report in 1963 which led to the rail network being decimated, including many lines in Leicester and across Leicestershire.
He recommended the closure of more than 6,000 miles of railway and
2,300 stations due to low demand and high costs. This was around a third of the network.
The announcement of the feasibility study into reopening some of the old lines gave renewed hope to advocates of reopening the so-called Ivanhoe Line between Leicester and Burton, via Coalville and Ashby, as a passenger route.
The 31-mile Ivanhoe stretch is one of the routes that could be returned to use, with stations proposed in Ashby, Coalville and Moira.