Hope Valley is hopeless… Woodhead must be revisited
Regarding Philip Haigh’s article on the possibility of reopening the Woodhead route ( RAIL 844), I have three concerns over future travel between Manchester and Sheffield: capacity, speed, and protection of the Woodhead route for rail use.
The Hope Valley Line has many tight corners and three of the longest tunnels in the country. The junction at Stockport Edgeley is flat and sharply cornered.
Manchester to Sheffield via Woodhead by rail is 41¼ miles, against Hope Valley via Stockport at 42½ miles. The current time taken by supposedly fast trains is 52 minutes, an average of 49mph. At the time of writing, Google maps showed a road time of 1hr 43mins for 40 miles.
Capacity: Freight coming from the quarries on the Hope Valley Line is a serious capacity constraint. Also, to provide an hourly stopping service and three fast trains per hour is impractical, as the fast trains will catch up the stopping services (even without the addition of freights). I do not see parking stopping services in loops while fast trains pass as a viable option.
Building a four-platform station at Hope, to allow fast trains to pass stopping services, would attract a lot of opposition from those concerned with protecting the Peak District.
The timekeeping of the fast trains is poor on this route, so relying on one passing point would cause issues with holding stopping services for delayed expresses.
With the traffic offering, at least three fast trains per hour are required.
Speed: The Sheffield City Region Transport Strategy (currently out to consultation) proposes a 30-minute journey time between Manchester and Sheffield. This will never be possible on the Hope Valley. If trains are to achieve these journey times, they will catch up the locals even faster and so cause more capacity problems.
The only way to get a fast journey time between Manchester and Sheffield is for a new high-speed line, and the obvious route for this is Woodhead.
Route protection: The Transport for the North Strategic Plan (also out to consultation) proposes a partially tunnelled route along the line of the A628.
This, in practice, would use the existing rail tunnels and prevent reopening of Woodhead.
This proposal must be rejected. The rail industry, local authorities, industry and politicians and other stakeholders must continue to emphasise the importance of retaining Woodhead as a rail route.
The Woodhead route would logically serve a reopened Sheffield Victoria station, and provide connections to points east. Some fast (although not high-speed) trains would continue to run through the Hope Valley, calling at Dore & Totley and providing connections for those travelling via Sheffield Midland.
Mike Rose, South Yorkshire Lead, Railfuture Yorkshire