Putting right Norfolk’s £150m rail mistake
Hunstanton’s new campaign to rejoin the national network is a ‘how to do it’ lesson for others, says HOWARD JOHNSTON
If you need any evidence that British Railways deliberately drove many of its secondary routes out of business in the 1960s, you need look no further than King’s Lynn-Hunstanton, a once healthy and prosperous line that underpinned the North West Norfolk economy and did its job well.
It is now 49 years since the last trains ran, and locals are asking the same straightforward question: How do we get the 15¼-mile railway back into one of the UK’s finest coastal resorts, and how quickly? A petition that started on the worldwide
change.org website by Ely-based campaigner Georgina Turner in May 2017 has gained such momentum that the idea of reinstatement is being actively discussed by Norfolk county transport strategists, district planners, and MPs and local politicians forever looking for oxygen. At the same time, protesters are also mobilising themselves to stop any new railway ploughing through their back gardens.
The clear ambition is to get Norfolk County Council to include it in its definite transport plan. The King’s Lynn-Hunstanton Railway Project team will then have done its job, and it can take its foot off the pedal.
We are talking about a line that was once closely associated with the Royal Family (the intermediate station at Wolferton is on the doorstep to their winter retreat at Sandringham House and has hosted many European heads of state).
Poet Laureate Sir John Betjeman also made a short black-and-white film in 1962, which is readily available on YouTube.
The project group has already been sensibly advised to steer clear of such romantic nostalgia, and study instead the tactics of successful groups such as SELRAP (the Skipton East Lancashire Railway Partnership), which started a campaign that has at long
This is part of a greater game plan to get control of disused railways everywhere in the county, even where they have been built over.
last persuaded the Government to relay the 12-mile missing link between Skipton and Colne.
A rail revival in Norfolk as soon as practicable will defuse several potential time bombs. First, the number of residents aged over 60 in North West Norfolk is a worrying third above the national average, and they need better transport to get to the nearest hospital at King’s Lynn. Second, there is little skilled work for young people, who tend to leave the area as soon as they leave school.
Day tripper sun and sand seekers are crucial to the local economy, but they regularly turn the main A149 single carriageway road into gridlock for long periods throughout the summer. This also prevents communities further along the coast being able to get to King’s Lynn without long journeys.
A significant potential freight customer would be the exploiter of the vast silica sand deposits that are located near Dersingham, halfway along the old/new railway route. This would successfully address concerns from residents not wanting hundreds of noisy heavy goods vehicles keeping them awake at night.
Use of rail transport could, crucially, finance the reconstruction of much of the railway without having to resort to the taxpayer.
There has been a quantum shift in the
attitude of local authorities over the last year. Transport policymaker Norfolk County Council has coincidentally turned pro-rail, and at the end of January announced a £ 350,000 study to acquire the trackbeds of the Hunstanton and Lynn-Fakenham routes with a view to converting them to cycleways and footpaths. Sources close to the author have revealed that this is part of a somewhat greater game plan to get control of disused railways everywhere in the county (even where they have been built over), and identify detours around obstacles. Any new cycleway would have space for co-habiting with trains at some future date.
West Norfolk Borough Council, which is responsible for granting planning approval, soundly dismissed any railway revival in its 2008 Hunstanton town development document, describing it twice in a tiny 100word panel as “unviable”. The concept is now being actively discussed in open forum.
The builders of the original King’s LynnHunstanton line went to some lengths to avoid heavy engineering. Despite some encroachment by new development since closure in 1969, there is plenty of open space for a new route to be laid out to better serve the large-scale housing over the last 50 years.
Until just a couple of years ago, little or no regard was given to encroachment. The worst travesty is possibly the Lynnsport leisure complex, built across the trackbed just north of Kings Lynn in 1991 when there were clearly other sites available. The intermediate stations survive in relatively good order at North Wootton (private house) Wolferton (private homes and museum), Dersingham (builder’s yard), Snettisham (private house), and Heacham (guest house and private museum). None is likely to be reused.
By-passes for the villages thankfully resisted the temptation to adopt the trackbed,
The line could go either side of the A149 road, and there are still two ‘live’ Network Rail locations where junctions could be installed.
although the A149 severs the railway on the western edge of Snettisham and a large housing estate has been built immediately north of Heacham station. Immediately south of Hunstanton, a roadway uses the alignment to serve the Searles leisure and holiday homes complex. Just before the former Hunstanton terminus (now a council-owned car park), planners have quite recently sanctioned a new home on the site of the old level crossing, and a pub/restaurant close to it.
You can take your pick - it could go either side of the A149 road, and there are still two ‘live’ Network Rail locations on the east and west sides of King’s Lynn where junctions could be installed.
A western line would use the docks branch, which despite being partly submerged in undergrowth is still officially operational, and follow the Wash coastline a little more
closely. This would reach the silica sand deposits quite easily.
An eastern line would make use of the Middleton Towers branch, which the short remaining section of the old King’s LynnDereham line used by sand trains. From a new junction, it would run due north past the Queen Elizabeth Hospital (the area’s largest employer with 2,400 staff), and new light industrial and housing developments. The line might then straddle the A149 to serve the major villages of Dersingham and Snettisham (one new station for both villages might suffice), avoid a blockage at Heacham, and reach a new terminus about a mile beyond.
At the northern end, the vast area once occupied by Hunstanton station and its sidings is now a vast asphalted car park, which is heavily used in the summer. The solution therefore might be new parkway-style platforms on what is currently a school sports field (relocation would need to be considered), and being next to the A149 would also be convenient for large outlying communities such as Brancaster and Docking.
It can be hoped that service provision can be incorporated into the next Great Northern passenger franchise, with through services from London King’s Cross if electrification is possible.
The present Cambridge-King’s Lynn main line suffers from the short-sighted singling of the Littleport-Downham Market section in the 1980s. Train crews also blame much of the late running on the congestion caused by Virgin Trains and local services over the double-track bottleneck Welwyn Viaduct on the East Coast Main Line south of Hitchin.
There is also scope to integrate with the proposed new March-Wisbech service. In the much longer term, if railways really are revived in a big way, the former King’s LynnWisbech line could be fairly easy to reinstate over agricultural land from the old main line junction at Watlington (formerly Magdalen Road), although there are problems with new development blocking the Wisbech end.
This service would take some of the pressure off the precarious A47 riverbank road between Wisbech and Guyhirn, and provide through trains again to the East Midlands via Peterborough (unavailable since 1968).
While breached here and there by development, the old 15¼-mile King’s LynnHunstanton line benefits from not having any major structures to replace; a new alignment would only require a single rail bridge over the A149 road.
The construction cost might be in the region of £100m to £150m - two thirds of the cost of the Cambridge-St Ives guided busway in 2011.
The construction cost might be in the region of £100 million to £150m (two thirds of the cost of the Cambridge-St Ives guided busway in 2011). For comparison, the EdinburghTweedbank Borders Railway (35¾miles) cost £ 295m to reinstate (through rugged terrain) back in 2016. The new 8¾-mile Norwich Distributor Road, part of which opened at the end of last year, has cost £179m so far, and the final bill might be over £ 200m.
New railways need not be expensive. The last line to be completed by the Great Northern Railway across Lincolnshire was from Bellwater Junction (on the BostonGrimsby main line) to Woodhall Junction (east of Lincoln) in 1913.
Similar to King’s Lynn-Hunstanton, it was 15 miles long, but double track throughout. Including the purchase of land, constructing five intermediate stations with freight sidings, a number of bridges and level crossings, the planning-to-opening was achieved in just under three years. The cost was £ 215,000 (£ 24m today).
The opinions in this article are entirely those of the contributing writer, with special thanks to Peter Risebrow and Stanley Jenkins (author, the Lynn & Hunstanton Railway, Oakwood Press).