We’ve been here before on the Ivanhoe Line

YET again, the Mercury has run an article about the possibility of the rail line between Burton and Leicester being reopened for passenger traffic in the light of the government’s willingness to fund a feasibility study (“Businesses encouraged to support rail line bid”, Mercury, October 7).

Forgive my cynicism, but haven’t we been here before?

In 1974, I came to live in Kirby Muxloe and bought a house only yards from the railway.

Almost everyone I met told me how convenient the railway had been for getting to and from work or school and what a pity it was that it had closed.

I was also told how it took so much longer to get into Leicester by car, and how frustrating it was to be stuck in traffic in Hinckley Road while a well-loaded freight train went bowling past.

During those years that I lived in Kirby Muxloe, the possibility of the line reopening for passengers was frequently on the agenda, and was often said to be about to happen.

From time to time the county council would commission a feasibility study only to conclude – inevitably – that there was no case for reopening the line.

However, I remember buying an A-Z guide in the early 1980s which showed the locations, and names, of the reopened stations as if in anticipation of an imminent reopening.

British Rail even produced costings and a draft plan. But this all got lost when the railways were privatised.

The supreme irony, of course, is that Kirby Muxloe, the only part of Blaby District Council to be represented by a Green Party councillor, is the one place which will not benefit from any reopening – there is no space left to build a station.

Of course, the councillor concerned should not and cannot be blamed for this.

I left Kirby Muxloe 32 years ago to live, firstly, in North Wales, later settling in Thurmaston. The possibility of the line reopening seems no nearer to becoming a reality than it was in 1988.

How many feasibility studies, how many consultants’ reports will it take to arrive at the conclusion that the line will never reopen? Indeed, there are some doom-mongers around who maintain that one of the economic effects of the Covid-19 pandemic will be a programme of railway closures that will make the Beeching cuts seem like a little gentle pruning.

We know, of course, that HS2, a vanity project par excellence which will be of no real benefit to Leicestershire, will continue to be funded regardless of budget over-runs and delays. But why?

For a fraction of the sums wasted – sorry, “expended” – on HS2, lines like the Burton to Leicester route, which is in place and in regular use for freight traffic, could be brought back into life very quickly with tangible benefits.

A new, north-facing link on to the Midland Mainline allowing trains to run direct into Leicester station could probably be installed at a cost about the same as HS2’s chief executive’s monthly salary.

But the political will doesn’t really exist, does it?

As a Londoner, I have to say I am ashamed at the way successive governments have thrown money at infrastructure projects in the south of England while ignoring or rubbishing quite reasonable projects proposed for the rest of the country.

Do they think we still get around by horse and cart up here in the Midlands?

Colin V. Marsh, Thurmaston