Rail Reopening Schemes: Part Two
The reopening of old railway lines that have been closed for more than 50 years is much higher on the public transport agenda. Graeme Pickering looks at more national schemes that would bring benefits to commuters, and in one case, a new freight route.
Graeme Pickering returns with another crop of long-closed rail routes that are being touted as candidates for reopening.
Exeter-Okehampton-Tavistock-Plymouth
THE damage caused by storms in February 2014 cut off England’s South West peninsular from the railway network.
At Dawlish, which is regularly subjected to the ravages of rough seas, 80 metres of track were washed away, severing the main (and only) line linking Cornwall and much of Devon (including Plymouth) with Exeter and London.
A major repair operation succeeded in making the line fit for reopening eight weeks later, but it prompted calls to investigate the resurrection of an alternative route between Exeter and Plymouth, via Okehampton and Tavistock, known as the ‘Northern Route’.
Torridge & West Devon MP Geoffrey Cox, supported by three other local MPs, is sponsoring a bid by the Northern Route Working Group (NRWG) for funding from the Restoring
Your Railway scheme to develop a preliminary strategic outline business case.
Devon County Council already has plans to reopen the 5½ miles of line between Tavistock and Bere Alston on the Tamar Valley Line, which would restore the town’s rail link with Plymouth. The council is also making a bid to the scheme to advance this project.
“It’s really important that we have more connectivity in the west side of Devon and for those people who currently live in Tavistock and that surrounding area who are plagued with a big congestion problem when they go into Plymouth,” says Andrea Davis, Devon County Council’s cabinet
member for infrastructure and development. “More than 20 per cent of the Tavistock workforce actually commute into Plymouth and 94 per cent of those are in private motor cars.”
She adds that road links are likely to be further constrained with the building of up to 2,000 new homes in the area.
Coun Davis, who also chairs the Peninsula Rail Task Force (a partnership of councils and local enterprise which campaigns for rail investment across the South West), envisages that Tavistock to Bere Alston will be just the first stage towards the overall aim of restoring the entire ‘Northern Route’.
She adds: “Plymouth, I understand, is the only larger city in the country with only one main line route going into it.
“Of course, once there is a problem on that Paddington route there are three million people affected in the far South West where they can’t get in or out by rail so it is part of the phased development of a Northern Route.”
NWRG says it has submitted a serious and credible bid involving rail industry experts and already begun examining options for services. It has engaged with local councils and gained support from Plymouth University, Devon & Plymouth Chamber of Commerce, Visit Cornwall, Heart of South West Local Enterprise Partnership and the Peninsular Rail Task Force.
Matlock to Buxton
A BUSY passenger and freight artery linking Manchester with Derby and London once ran through the middle of the Peak District, but between 1966 and 1968 traffic declined.
The Midland Pullman used the route as part of its 3 hours 15 minutes journey between Manchester Central and St Pancras, but these services were withdrawn in 1966.
Freight too was diverted and local passenger services ceased in March 1967. Withdrawal of the remaining express trains between Manchester and St Pancras came the following year.
The line beyond Matlock, which divided into two routes just past Miller’s Dale, one continuing to Buxton and the other forming the main line route via Chinley, was closed, although a section of the latter line and spurs east of Buxton remain open for traffic from local quarries.
This important aggregate traffic forms a key part of two competing reopening bids, both of which have applied for support to develop their cases from the Department for Transport’s Restoring Your Railway Fund.
For more than three years, the heritage Peak Rail operation has been working on proposals that would see the 12-mile extension of its current heritage services (which run over four miles between Matlock and Rowsley South) to Buxton, thereby offering passengers connections to the national rail network at both ends, as well as reopening the line to freight.
“As things stand at the moment, cars journeying through to the beauty spots of the National
Park really are committed to having to go straight through,” says Peak Rail project director Paul Tomlinson.
“There is no way for a park and ride situation. A reinstated Peak Rail route through the National Park would allow people to forget about using car transportation and they could access places like Miller’s Dale and Bakewell in a much more carefree, and shall we say, environmentally friendly manner.”
Manchester and East
Midlands Rail Action Partnership (MEMRAP), which was established at the beginning of last year, has proposals to return the line to use as a through freight and passenger route.
“We propose a different tack in that it would be a fully fledged double-track railway as it used to be from Matlock to Buxton with a full passenger service,” explains MEMRAP director John Harpur.
“The one we would concentrate on would be the slow service from Derby to Buxton and to Manchester. An all-stations service giving a benefit to all the local communities and then a semi-fast which would go from maybe Leicester, Derby, Matlock, Bakewell, Buxton onto Manchester – the main stations.”
The promoters of both bids are keen to highlight the potential of the route to remove quarry traffic from the Manchester to Sheffield Hope Valley Line and potentially create capacity for additional passenger services as a result of the diverted freight flows.
The route runs through the Peak District National Park, and 8½ miles of trackbed (including viaducts and tunnels) are now occupied by the Monsal Trail, one of the UK’s most popular routes for walking, cycling and horse riding.
Both bidders are satisfied they can suitably accommodate the trail within their plans, although the National Park has warned against an ‘over-engineered’ diversion, which could detract from the area’s scenic beauty.
Regardless of the outcome of its plans or those of MEMRAP, Mr Tomlinson says Peak Rail has “every intention” of continuing its current heritage operations in the future. He says heritage services could work around freight movements on weekdays and would be unaffected at weekends.
“We want to see the line available for heritage as well,” adds Mr Harpur.
Stratford-upon-Avon to Honeybourne
THE Stratford-upon-Avon to Cheltenham ‘Honeybourne Line’ had been reprieved by British
Rail and was scheduled to be modernised, but damage caused by the derailment of a coal train at Winchcombe on August 25, 1976, unfortunately coincided with a national financial crisis.
Amid intense scrutiny over spending and a changing economic climate, BR decided to close rather than repair the route.
The Shakespeare Line Promotion Group, Cotswold
Line Promotion Group and the Leamington Spa & Solihull Rail Users’ Association have jointly submitted an application to the Restoring Your Railway Fund for up to £75,000 for an economic impact assessment of the section of route between Stratfordupon-Avon (which, since 1976, has been the southern terminus for trains from Birmingham and Leamington Spa) and Honeybourne on the Cotswold Line.
The bid is being supported by Mid-Worcestershire MP Nigel Huddleston and has the backing of Warwickshire, Worcestershire and Gloucestershire County Councils, Wychavon, Stratford-on-Avon and Cotswold District Councils, and the West Midlands Rail Executive.
At the Honeybourne end of the line, a section remains in use to serve the rail development and rolling stock storage site at Long Marston. Just under six miles of track would be needed to reconnect it with Stratford on an alignment which has been protected from further redevelopment.
At the nearby former airfield, work on the first phase of a garden village has begun. Ultimately, 3,500 homes are planned for the site with scope for significantly more elsewhere in the area.
The submission to the DfT makes reference to a 2012 study for Stratford-on-Avon District
Council, updated last year, which indicated that the reinstatement of the route was feasible by using the protected alignment and the creation of a short cutting south of Stratford station to negotiate a road at Evesham Place.
The original alignment was double track, but the bid document suggests a new one could be a mixture of single and double track.
Although protected, between Long Marston-Stratford the line is occupied by the Stratford Greenway walking and cycling route, and this would have to be retained alongside the new railway.
Campaigners say the route would offer the possibility of an orbital and bi-directional service connecting the south with the West Midlands and through services from Stratford to Oxford and Worcester, as well as making it easier to reach destinations such as Heathrow Airport and London.
They believe a journey time to Birmingham of 50 minutes from
Long Marston and an hour from Evesham would be possible.
South Wales routes
IN SOUTH Wales, there are hopes of further railway reopenings to add to those which have taken place since the 1980s.
Aberdare to Hirwaun, Treherbert to Tynewydd and Pontyclun to Beddau are just three of the possibilities that have been mentioned locally in recent years. Passenger services over the former Taff Vale route to Aberdare ceased in 1964, but resumed between Cardiff and a new station in 1988.
Beyond, the line continues in a north-easterly direction through Hirwaun and was used to serve Tower Colliery until its closure in 2008.
Treherbert is the current terminus of the Rhondda Line, but the Rhondda and Swansea
Bay Railway ran north from here through Tynewydd, which was served by Blaenrhondda station.
The station and the section of the R&SBR between here and Cymmer closed in February 1968 after a weakness was found in the Rhondda Tunnel.
Originally part of the Taff Vale Railway’s Llantrisant to Pontypridd route, the stretch from the South Wales Main Line (just north of Pontyclun station) to Cwm Colliery saw regular traffic until 1984. Proposals for the South Wales Metro could see the village linked into the system, along with Talbot Green, Llantrisant and Creigiau (the latter of which had a station on the Barry Railway).
“More and more people have become reliant on travelling to the Cardiff area or somewhere along the coastal strip for work in particular,” says Railfuture
Wales chairman Peter Kingsbury. “There’s been quite a lot of growth in jobs in the Cardiff area in the last few years.”
He adds: “Pontyclun station is very well-used now by commuters going into Cardiff and if you reopened a branch that went towards Beddau, five or six miles, that would potentially tap into a lot more commuter traffic and, on a weekend, shoppers potentially coming into Cardiff.
“Anything that’s able to go in that direction, from Pontyclun toward Pontypridd is potentially a worthwhile scheme.”
Harrogate-RiponNorthallerton
PART of the Leeds Northern Railway, the line between Northallerton and Harrogate via Ripon, remained relatively busy in terms of number of services until closure to passengers on
March 6, 1967.
It had been the usual route for trans-Pennine trains to and from the North East, providing a shorter route to Leeds than today’s journey, which uses the
East Coast Main Line as far south as York. It relieved the ECML of some slow freight and provided a diversionary route.
Ironically, it served that latter function for the final time, almost five months after passenger closure, when it was used by northbound main line traffic following the crash involving DP2 on July 31, 1967 at Thirsk.
Soon afterwards it was severed as a through route, although freight services lingered on until 1969.
“It was tragic that the Harrogate-Ripon-Northallerton main line was shut in 1967, and it hit the city of Ripon very hard, and made travel north from Harrogate less convenient,” says Brian Dunsby, transport spokesman for Harrogate District Chamber of Commerce.
“Since this closure Ripon has lost various sources of employment, such as a college and army barracks, which may well still exist if Ripon enjoyed a rail service.”
A preliminary engineering and environmental assessment study carried out by Ove Arup for North Yorkshire County Council (NYCC) in 2005 concluded that reopening 11 miles of the line from Harrogate to Ripon would offer potential for economic regeneration and would increase tourism in the city as well as well as making it possible to commute by rail, thereby reducing road traffic.
Lord Newby, the Liberal Democrat Leader in the House of Lords, is a Ripon resident and believes there’s a strong case at least for that partial reinstatement.
He says: “Ripon is about to get quite a large addition to its housing stock with the redevelopment of a Ministry of Defence site, and at the moment there’s very little public transport to get people to work. There is in effect one bus route to Harrogate, which is inadequate.
“I think the town, which has a wonderful cathedral and has a terrific atmosphere to it, gets a very low level of tourism because it’s so difficult to get to.”
NYCC’s 2017 strategic
transport prospectus states: ‘A new railway from Leeds to Harrogate, Ripon and then joining the ECML north of Northallerton will bring much needed resilience to the ECML and enable the East Coast ports to expand.
“In the longer term (post 2030) it could also potentially help with plans and aspirations for housing and business growth in the central A1(M)/ECML corridor, and it will help to enable the North East, Tees Valley and Yorkshire & Humber economies to act as a single market’.
“I fear that the coronavirus crisis is going to knock the whole economy sideways. It’s going to make any project of any sort more difficult just because there’s going to be so much current expenditure,” observes Lord Newby, but he adds: “This doesn’t affect the underlying case. These projects are long-term anyway.
“If we were going to have a line open by 2031, there would need to be progress fairly soon in terms of getting all the consents.
“Although building a line, certainly from Harrogate to Ripon, isn’t going to be a decadelong job, I think beginning to make progress of preliminaries makes a lot of sense because you’re never quite sure at what point Government is going to be able to turn the taps on or turn the taps off on infrastructure.”
The social distancing measures in place as the UK tries to contain the spread of Covid-19 have already begun to have an impact on the selection process for bids to the Restoring Your Railway Fund.
As The RM closed for press, the DfT was preparing to update first round applicants.
Groups bidding for support had originally been expected to pitch their proposals in late March, but were informed in a letter from Rail Minister Chris Heaton-Harris that because of the situation with the coronavirus, he would instead chair a “virtual panel” of “ministerial, local authority and rail industry representatives without direct representation from the promoters”.
“This will enable us to identify any bids that are sufficiently advanced and provide funding so that more detailed studies can be progressed,” the letter continued.
Concerns have been expressed as to whether the lack of direct representation could hamper bid promoters in making their cases prior to the selection of the winners.
The RM contacted the DfT for clarification and was told that it expected to post an update online at gov.uk during the final week of April. ■