Robin Hood Line: time for an extension?
In May 1993, the first stage of Nottinghamshire’s Robin Hood Line was opened, ahead of full services commencing to Worksop five years later. PAUL STEPHEN considers the mounting arguments for now extending the route to Ollerton
Stick a pin in the middle of a map of Nottinghamshire, and it will roughly land on the town of Ollerton.
Once a sleepy rural backwater, the town has now grown to almost 10,000 residents owing to the rich legacy of coal mining in the surrounding area.
Ollerton Colliery was sunk in the 1920s and was one of almost 50 to operate in the Nottinghamshire coalfield throughout much of the 20th century, to help satisfy the nation’s insatiable appetite for coal.
At its peak in the 1960s, the county’s coalfield produced in excess of 25 million tonnes a year. More than 90% of it went straight from the ground to feeding the boilers of a string of power stations in the Trent Valley, via a constant stream of merry-go-round trains.
Ollerton Colliery was one of Nottinghamshire’s most productive pits. It reached the major output milestone of one million tonnes a year in December 1968, while providing employment to hundreds of men.
As other coalfields declined, new mines were still being opened in the county at Cotgrave (1962) and Bevercotes (1965), resulting in large numbers of new homes being built by the
National Coal Board on purpose-built estates in Ollerton and elsewhere.
But in the 1980s, ‘King Coal’s’ fortunes began to change rapidly. In the face of falling profitability, large-scale colliery closures were commenced by Margaret Thatcher’s government across great swathes of the country.
Ollerton and other Nottinghamshire pits also became the scene of some of the ugliest battles between police and pickets during the infamous 1984-85 miners’ strike, when a majority of the county’s miners controversially chose to work through the year-long dispute.
Their loyalty brought them few favours from government, however. Nottinghamshire’s once proud coalfield was whittled down to just a handful of deep mines by the time of British Coal’s privatisation in the mid-1990s.
Ollerton was just one of 18 mines to shut locally between 1986-99. The last to close were Annesley (2000), Clipstone (2003), Harworth (2006), Wellbeck (2010), and then finally Thoresby (2015).
With the industry in full retreat, Nottinghamshire County Council (NCC) seized the opportunity in 1991 to embark upon a long-held ambition to reinstate passenger services on the former Midland Railway route between Nottingham and Worksop.
Closed as a through route under the Beeching cuts in 1964, the line passed through Mansfield, which (with almost 100,000 residents) had gained notoriety for being the largest town in England without a railway station.
Not only did reinstatement provide an opportunity to help combat the prospect of mass unemployment across the Nottinghamshire coalfields, it could also be implemented relatively quickly and costeffectively - large stretches of the line had remained fully operational since the 1960s, to cater for the healthy volumes of coal traffic that was still being generated.
Under the leadership of the County Council, a £ 28 million funding package was put in place to reopen the 30-mile route in three stages, with £13m coming from central government, £ 6m from the European Union, £ 0.5m from British Rail, and the remainder from Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire County Councils.
Stage one was to restore services from Nottingham to Newstead, where the route had remained intact to serve collieries at Newstead (closed 1987), Hucknall (1986) and Linby (1988). New stations were built at Bulwell, Hucknall and Newstead, from where services commenced in May 1993 under the bold new brand name ‘Robin Hood Line’.
To the north of Newstead, a three-mile gap existed as far as Sutton in Ashfield, where track had been lifted, Kirkby Tunnel had been infilled with colliery waste, and land in the centre of Kirkby in Ashfield had been sold off by British Rail.
Stage two was therefore to re-excavate the tunnel and rebuild the link to Sutton in Ashfield, from where the remainder of the former Midland Railway line to Worksop remained in daily freight use to serve what remained of Nottinghamshire’s more
Pound for pound it must be the cheapest new rail project anywhere in the country. If we’re going to invest anywhere in the country, then surely this is the right one to do? Mark Spencer, Sherwood MP
northerly pits.
To minimise costs, the decision was made not to buy back the land through the centre of Kirkby in Ashfield. Instead, a new stretch of line was built to connect Kirkby Tunnel with the former Great Northern line (to the west of the town) which had run from Ironville Junction on the Midland Main Line through to MR metals.
This enabled Robin Hood Line services to be extended to Mansfield Woodhouse in 1995, and then finally to Worksop in May 1998.
In the 20 years since services resumed to Worksop, the line has been lauded by rail campaigners across the UK as an unmitigated success, and as an exemplar local authority-led rail scheme (see panel).
With an hourly two-car Nottingham-Worksop service operated by East Midlands Trains, and a half-hourly frequency to Mansfield Woodhouse, the 3,500 passengers carried each day now comfortably exceeds initial predictions, while 37% of regular users indicate that they have switched to rail from using their cars - helping to cut congestion on the local road network.
The increased mobility offered to residents of former pit towns along the route has been credited with helping to regenerate large parts of the former coalfield, by improving access to the county’s main centre of employment in Nottingham. It has also encouraged the relocation of major employers to mid and north-Nottinghamshire, such as Sports Direct in Shirebrook.
However, one town did not benefit from this rail renaissance. Ollerton, although connected by rail to the Robin Hood Line, lies eight miles to the east of the nearest station (Shirebrook).
The town sits on a branch line that runs from Shirebrook Junction to the site of the now decommissioned High Marnham power station, and which itself once formed part of the former Lancashire, Derbyshire and East Coast Railway that ran between Chesterfield and Lincoln until its closure to regular passenger services in 1955 and to summer holiday excursions in 1964.
From Shirebrook, much of the two-track line was retained to serve the northern part of the Nottinghamshire coalfield and power station, which produced a regular stream of coal traffic until the final closure of Thoresby Colliery in 2015.
Fortunately, the line has clung on and the track is still maintained by Network Rail in order to access its Rail Innovation & Development Centre at Tuxford, which it opened in 2009 to test engineering and on-track plant.
Keen to extend the economic and social benefits of the Robin Hood Line to Ollerton, Nottinghamshire County Council first drew up plans to incorporate a large part of the branch line in 2009.
But having spent more than £ 200,000 between 2009-15 to fund six individual pieces of development and feasibility work, NCC is now seeking a sizeable contribution from central government to turn the proposal into reality.
According to a report compiled by council officers for NCC’s Transport and Highways Committee in February 2016, there is a funding gap of more than £ 20m for the scheme. This includes up to £ 7.5m to reconstruct new stations at Ollerton, Edwinstowe and Warsop, where only the derelict platforms have remained in situ since full closure in 1964.
A further £ 7.2m is needed for associated signalling and track work, while it will cost an estimated £ 7.5m to make alterations to NR’s RIDC and test track which currently runs east of Ollerton towards Tuxford. NCC anticipates that approximately 1¾ miles of track could be upgraded at the branch’s eastern end towards High Marnham, to compensate NR for the loss of track near Ollerton.
The report also identifies a number of potential funding streams, including the Government’s Local Growth Fund administered by the D2N2 Local Enterprise Partnership for track and signalling work.
The Department for Transport’s New Stations Fund could be used for physical works at the stations, although the report concedes that it would not cover up to £ 2m of outstanding development work required before renovation could begin.
NCC says that this development cost should not be entirely borne by local taxpayers, and has sought a 50/ 50 split with the DfT.
Crucially, there is also a need for ongoing revenue subsidy, which NCC has requested DfT to fund and specify within the next East Midlands franchise (due to commence in August 2019).
The gross cost of operating an hourly service has been estimated to be £1.6m per annum, which would halve when offset by £ 840,000 in likely fares revenue.
The DfT included an aspiration to extend services to Ollerton in the East Midlands franchise public consultation documents (published in July 2017). The Invitation to Tender (ITT) was due to be published at this issue of RAIL went to press, and a winning bidder is scheduled to be announced next April, by which time the DfT’s final determination on revenue support will be known.
Nottinghamshire County Councillor and Communities and Place Committee Chairman John Cottee tells RAIL: “We need the Government to take the lead and identify funding to help make the new extension to the Robin Hood Line a reality, as well as agreeing to fund the ongoing running costs.
“Nottinghamshire County Council has already funded more than £ 200,000 towards an initial feasibility study into the scheme. And given the many difficult decisions all local authorities need to make when it comes to our budgets, we feel it is only right that an infrastructure investment of this size is met by Government funding sources.
“The Robin Hood Line is a vital rail link connecting the city with the north of our county, serving more than a million passengers per year. Rail improvements, such as this proposed extension from Shirebrook-- Ollerton, are much-needed to help boost our local economy, and create better access to jobs and local tourism sites.”
NCC’s proposal is also supported by local MPs, including Sherwood MP Mark Spencer whose constituency covers both Edwinstowe and Ollerton.
Having been born in nearby Calverton, which itself lost its colliery in 1999, Spencer says he is acutely aware of the importance of delivering this scheme for his constituents.
He explains: “Unless you’ve grown up in and understand the multi-layered challenges of these former coalfields, you can’t fully appreciate the challenge that social change has had on this part of north Nottinghamshire. So it’s my job to keep banging the drum and to make sure government understands that.
“Historically, these communities were built around the local colliery, and so connectivity and public transport didn’t matter all that much. There was employment at the pit, and welfare and social facilities in the town. But with changes in society, the disappearance of those pits and having a more mobile population, you now need to be able to get in and out of these places more efficiently.
“That’s why I’m desperate to see improvement in rail services and public transport, to help those communities aspire and get more employment either there or elsewhere.”
Spencer says that improved connectivity will become even more essential for Ollerton once planned residential and commercial developments are completed in the surrounding area.
The Robin Hood Line is a vital rail link connecting the city with the north of our county, serving more than a million passengers per year. John Cottee, Nottinghamshire County Councillor
This includes 800 new homes proposed for the site of Thoresby Colliery near Edwinstowe, and a £ 3.3m energy village in Ollerton which will include 32,000 sq ft of commercial floor space for business and industrial use.
There is also scope to further exploit the area’s fabled association with the legend of Robin Hood, by attracting greater numbers of tourists to Sherwood Forest. It contains an attractive 450-acre country park and visitor centre, and is also home to a Centre Parcs holiday village and a number of activity centres for popular outdoor pursuits such as paintballing, quad-biking and archery.
Spencer adds: “It’s a two-way railway, of course, and north Nottinghamshire and Sherwood Forest has quite a lot to offer in terms of recreation and walking and leisure activities. We need to try and drag people out of Nottingham and Sheffield to come and walk in Sherwood Forest, and spend money in local shops and restaurants.”
Having made the extension a key part of his election campaigns in 2010 and 2015, Spencer has consistently lobbied for progress in Whitehall, including raising the matter at Prime Minister’s questions in the House of Commons.
In October 2014, he welcomed former Rail Minister Claire Perry to Ollerton in order to meet with local stakeholders, before brokering a meeting between Perry, senior representatives of D2N2 and NCC Leader Alan Rhodes at Westminster in February 2016, so that high-level talks could begin.
Frustratingly, those talks now appear to have lost momentum, due to the unexpected decision to hold a General Election in 2017, and the changes that have since inevitably been made by Prime Minister Theresa May to her ministerial team.
Spencer adds: “My plan was to help deliver this before the 2020 election, but of course the Prime Minister decided that we were going to have a snap General Election. I suppose that has given me two more years to deliver it, but I feel like there have been a lot of warm words and not many new trains on the track.
“All I can do is keep banging the drum until it’s easier for [Secretary of State for Transport] Chris Grayling to give me a new railway line rather than putting up with my moaning. Everyone thinks this is a good idea, and it’s just a case of pulling all those threads together and making sure we do it.
“I think some people don’t believe it will ever happen, so it is my mission to prove them wrong. I’m privileged at the moment to have been given this role that grants me access to the right people to deliver it, but talk is cheap.
“There’s a lot of ducks to get in a row, but I’m hopeful that when the next franchise starts in 2019 then it will be included. As long as the PM doesn’t have a reshuffle and Chris Grayling remains in his job, then I’m pretty optimistic.”
Spencer rules out the prospect of third party finance to get the scheme off the ground, owing to the lower-than-average house prices in the area. With higher capital gains to be made by developers funding enhancements elsewhere on the network, it looks likely that the public purse will need to bear the full cost of reopening.
Even so, the social value of the scheme remains high, he adds - as demonstrated by the original Robin Hood Line 25 years ago.
“I think it has to be government-led. We’re talking about a part of Nottinghamshire where house prices are quite low, and so you don’t release as much capital through development as you might in other parts of the country.
“Reopening Wisbech-March is perhaps a good market-led proposal, but in Cambridgeshire I’m sure house prices are much higher than in the north Nottinghamshire coalfields. The social impact of having a railway would be much greater up here, though.
“Pound for pound it must be the cheapest new rail project anywhere in the country, making it the lowest of low-hanging fruit. If we’re going to invest anywhere in the country, then surely this is the right one to do?
“The existing Robin Hood Line has been more than twice as successful as anyone would thought it would be, which I think goes to show that there is the appetite for more of the same. As long as the service is regular and reliable, then the community will embrace it and make sure the numbers stack up.”
All I can do is keep banging the drum until it’s easier for Chris Grayling to give me a new railway line rather than putting up with my moaning. Mark Spencer, Sherwood MP