Petition launched to demand re-opening of Dumfries-Stranraer railway line

[bangor-toad]

If these trailers could be accomodated on rail wagons however . . .

If you think that's a lot of trailers, check out the numbers waiting at Heysham:
https://binged.it/2aj4bnu

Of note is the railway that already runs by the staging area...
If there was a (cost effective) way of getting trucker trailers loaded onto rail this surely would be one of the places to try.

(Incidentally, if you are needing to drive to/from NI, it is well worth checking to see if there's space on the Seatruck freight ferry for you and your car. If you have an interest in transport it's a fascinating counterpoint to ro-ro car ferries.)

Cheers,
Mr Toad

 

[Dr Hoo]

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15 containers is break even point. Stand on the A75 anywhere for 10 minutes and count the Irish lorries going by.

Not heard the '15 containers = break even' claim before, especially with an inevitable brand new, unshared terminal and road leg. Care to elaborate?

Many of the lorries don't appear to be carrying containers anyway.

 

[Philip Phlopp]

Piggyback freight has been tried and it just cannot be made to work financially.

EWS and Porterbrook splurged on FHA 'Eurospine' wagons with Russells and Royal Mail investing in a handful of customised (as in very low height) trailers and it didn't work - not enough space to reach the GVW and make it viable.

The trailers were at Carlisle Upperby yard, where several never operated in service.

 

[6Gman]

15 containers is break even point. Stand on the A75 anywhere for 10 minutes and count the Irish lorries going by.

Never mind standing on the A75 - how many boxes are landed at Cairn Ryan each year?





Have just checked the official statistics for 2014.

Total number of containers landed at CairnRyan ...

(drumroll)

0, zero, nil.


Good luck with that then!

 

[MarkyT]

Piggyback freight has been tried and it just cannot be made to work financially.

EWS and Porterbrook splurged on FHA 'Eurospine' wagons with Russells and Royal Mail investing in a handful of customised (as in very low height) trailers and it didn't work - not enough space to reach the GVW and make it viable.

The trailers were at Carlisle Upperby yard, where several never operated in service.

That's not to say that it could NEVER work in the UK though. Fuel and driver costs, permitted hours, availability and the attractiveness of the profession could all come into play together with tax and subsidy incentives. Piggyback, both accompanied and unaccompanied is certainly becoming more popular today in Europe, particularly on trans-alpine routes, although clearly they have a loading gauge advantage (and some nice new base tunnels to shorten transit time either already in service or soon about to be!).

 

[HSTEd]

You might get a business case for piggyback freight if you could do Calais-Ireland in a single rail move. But even with an Irish Sea crossing you would need newbuild railway the length of the UK because some idiot decided to set the CTRL to such a small loading gauge.

Such a pity.
How much would a single channel tunnel gauge track with dynamic loops cost from Folkestone to Stranraer?
I imagine rather a lot.

Would probably get a better cost benefit from the Grand Contour Canal at this stage.
BUt I still want an Irish Sea Crossing - kerosene is an imported commodity with limited supply, electricity is not.

 

[Philip Phlopp]

You might get a business case for piggyback freight if you could do Calais-Ireland in a single rail move. But even with an Irish Sea crossing you would need newbuild railway the length of the UK because some idiot decided to set the CTRL to such a small loading gauge.

Such a pity.
How much would a single channel tunnel gauge track with dynamic loops cost from Folkestone to Stranraer?
I imagine rather a lot.

Would probably get a better cost benefit from the Grand Contour Canal at this stage.
BUt I still want an Irish Sea Crossing - kerosene is an imported commodity with limited supply, electricity is not.

You're right, but wrong at the same time.

HS1 is capable of carrying HGV tractor and trailer units upto 4.0 metres in height, which is all you really want to convey over to continental Europe given that's the height restrictions you'll find on other piggyback routes such as SBB's RAplin service (and the Gotthard Base Tunnel). The Channel Tunnel itself only allows 4.2m high trailers.

If SBB aren't going crazy for higher vehicles, given their strategic role in the freight industry, I'd doubt it's worth it for us to try something outrageous.

You would need a gauge of around 6.2m to support the 5m high trailers, and you've got to do something about strong crosswinds because you'll have flat top or open piggyback wagons having the tallest vehicles being blown clean off them, you'll end up looking at partially covered wagons ballasted to stop them from blowing over themselves and I can see a forest of trees disappearing for the paperwork for all of that mess.

 

[Altnabreac]

If I were looking for rail investment priorities for D&G, I'd focus on:

1. Beattock station, way overdue
2. Thornhill station
3. Ensuring the Nithsdale route gets electrified and Dumfries receives a fast service from Glasgow
4. A Stranraer-Cairnryan connection coupled with Girvan-Stranraer improvements

SWESTRANS, the Regional Transport Partnership actually set out their priority ordering for railway investment back in 2014 and it was as follows:
1 - Refurbishment of Stranraer Rail Station
2 (joint) - Reopening Thornhill station and reopening Eastriggs station.
4 - Reopening of Dunragit / Glenluce Station
5 - Reopening Beattock Station

A Pre assessment of the four re-openings was recently carried out by Peter Brett Associates with the following recommendations:

• Further work could be done to investigate the potential for stations at Thornhill and Eastriggs based on consideration of their use as dual purpose passenger / rail freight hubs but it is noted that justifying and delivering either station at present would be challenging. Re-opening Closeburn rail station to serve the Thornhill areas has not met the criteria to pass the option sifting stage.
• Further work could be done to explore the potential for a rail station at Beattock given the future opportunity if/when High Speed 2/3 comes forward, however, again it is noted in the report that justifying and delivering a station at Beattock at present would be challenging.
• A rail station at Dunragit should not be pursued. The public survey highlighted the public desire for road and bus improvements over rail and the distance involved in accessing the station by many in the study area (in The Machars, Newton Stewart etc.) makes the case for implementation challenging given people may complete their full journeys by bus rather than interchanging, and given the close proximity of Dunragit to Stranraer. Improving bus and rail timetable integration at Stranraer is more likely to provide benefits in terms of rail accessibility.

The SWESTRANS Board Meeting on 15 July was asked to choose a priority from this list but it is unclear which if any of the options they might puruse as a full Scottish Stations Fund application:
http://www.swestrans.org.uk/CHttpHandler.ashx?id=18405&p=0

My guess would be that Eastriggs probably has the best chance of proceeding as there are potentially three markets to be served there:

• leisure / commuting to Carlisle;
• leisure / commuting / healthcare to Dumfries;
• commuting to Gretna Outlet Village.

£5-10m for a new station serving a village of 1,500 people is always going to be difficult to justify without some serious development planned for the area though.

Probably the best rail investment that could be made in D&G is to refurbish Stranraer Station as part of a wider re-development of the Harbour / Waterfront area.

 

[70014IronDuke]

I'd posit that the volunteer efforts (and any money) would be better spent campaigning for an improved G&SW - higher line speed, etc and an effort to improve the appalling Sunday service.

 

[Bald Rick]

BUt I still want an Irish Sea Crossing - kerosene is an imported commodity with limited supply, electricity is not.

Supply I can't argue with. Imported I can. Much of the kerosene used in this country is refined in this country from oil produced in this country.

Meanwhile a notable fraction of the electricity we use is imported from France and the Netherlands (about 9% right now). And up to about half the rest is generated from fuels that are imported: coal, biomass, and natural gas.

Arguably the wind and hydro is imported too, and I will now collect my coat

 

[Sandy R]

However how far do those containers have to travel in order to break even? From what I can gather distance is the key factor here along with ensuring that there are enough containers traveling in the same direction.

Honest question here; how many of those lorries are carrying containers?

DRS / Malcolm clearly think its viable to run a container train just 47 miles, Grangemouth to Elderslie.
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Not heard the '15 containers = break even' claim before, especially with an inevitable brand new, unshared terminal and road leg. Care to elaborate?

Many of the lorries don't appear to be carrying containers anyway.

Refers to the contract between Asda and DRS/Malcolm to run containers from Grangemouth to Aberdeen.

 

[Philip Phlopp]

Refers to the contract between Asda and DRS/Malcolm to run containers from Grangemouth to Aberdeen.

Do you have the commercial details of the contract, or is this one of those 'it must make a profit so an identical length flow will also make money' type things ?

 

[Sandy R]

A common misconception on both counts. The borders line cost began with a '4' (and not low 4s either) when you include all the costs of all stages by all parties concerned. Which you have to do to get a true representation of the cost of future projects.

Inflation in the construction industry is quite different to inflation for the 'basket of goods' that makes up CPI / RPI.


To put this simply - if the railway existed now it would lose a ton of money, with subsidy perhaps heading north of £50 per passenger. There can be no socio-economic argument, at any time, that could justify introducing a new service with that level of subsidy, when potential alternatives have much lower subsidy levels.

And all that assumes the railway exists - which it doesn't. Proposing to spend what would be the best part of a billion quid, to then be left with a service requiring that level of subsidy, is just nonsense.

Borders line £354 million, 30.75 miles, equals £11.5 million per mile. Dumfries to Challoch junction (via 1856 surveyed route ) 65.75 miles, approx. £756 million. But as I said it will be less, no City bypass to divert, less stations per mile of route, etc etc. It will NOT cost a billion. Fact.
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If there are that many lorries heading for England then improving Belfast-Heysham is the answer. It's already rail-connected and is a lot closer to northern England.

This is about Dumfries to Stranraer, not Belfast to Heysham. Start another thread about that if you so desire. Its totally irrelevant to this thread because it serves a different market.

 

[Philip Phlopp]

It will NOT cost a billion. Fact.

You're arguing with the wrong person there son.

I feel safer with Bald Rick's guesses than most other people's facts when it comes to this forum.

 

[Sandy R]

My point exactly. And there aren't enough people there to justify building a railway line! You talk about 55000+, but the vast majority of that is in Dumfries and there's not a huge demand for them to do West.



How could I forget about the sprawling metropolis that is Dalbeattie? You fail to point out that these settlements are small in the grand scheme of things.



You'll need to provide evidence for that. Tourist trains are a minimal number all in all. Freight can go via Kilmarnock, and you'd need to demonstrate that a new route would be more attractive to freight operators and generate a substantial increase in demand.



As true as all that is, it doesn't make a rail link viable. You forget that the numbers are exceptionally low, the population density sparse and likely frequency will be poor. Tourists and freight will probably continue to use the road for many reasons. It simply is not feasible.

The 57, 000 is the population of Galloway , does not include Dumfries which is 43,000 on top of that.
I never mentioned anyone 'going west', you did.
You are trying to say that a 65 mile diversion via Kilmarnock is sensible ?
Re Dalbeattie , what is the population of Stow ? Or Tweedbank ? Both much smaller.
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I always feel that the people who say that re-opening this railway will be a great benefit to Gatehouse of Fleet have never actually been there. When the railway was open, Gatehouse station was seven miles from the actual village, in unpopulated moorland, linked to the village by a narrow road that didn't go anywhere else in particular. This hasn't changed.
In fact people in Gatehouse who use public transport are likely to be worse off if the railway reopens. At the moment they at least do have 10 buses a day on weekdays along the old A75 to Newton Stewart and Stranraer in the one direction and to Castle Douglas and Dumfries in the other, but if longer distance passengers forsake the bus for the train, the viability of the bus will be damaged and it will likely become even less frequent. Who is going to run a bus shuttle to a re-opened Gatehouse station, and how many trains a day would actually call there?

Castle Douglas manages 30 buses a day on weekdays to Dumfries, so living there and working in Dumfries is hardly difficult now.The buses follow different routes serving different combinations of villages, and half of them serve Dalbeattie on the way.

Look at the Facebook page re the 1856 surveyed route, which would serve Gatehouse at the town's north-eastern periphery.
Re bus services.
Dalbeattie to CD by bus 18 minutes , train 6 minutes.
Dalbeattie to Dumfries by bus 24 minutes, train 15 minutes.
CD to Dumfries by bus 30 minutes, train 22 minutes
Gatehoues to Dumfries by bus 1 hour, train 35 minutes.

 

[Bald Rick]

Borders line £354 million, 30.75 miles, equals £11.5 million per mile. Dumfries to Challoch junction (via 1856 surveyed route ) 65.75 miles, approx. £756 million. But as I said it will be less, no City bypass to divert, less stations per mile of route, etc etc. It will NOT cost a billion. Fact.

Stating something is a fact doesn't make it so.

The Borders line did not cost £354m. The £294m construction element you quoted earlier was the budget in 2012, before work started. This was nearer £350m by the time it was completed. That didn't include the land, design, consents process, or the costs of various other parties (you mentioned £60m, I'm told it's more, but let's stick with £60m).

Also, whilst some of the borders railway is difficult to get too, some isn't. Whereas almost all of Dumfries - Stranrarer is. To build such a railway you will be shipping huge quantities of material and equipment to some very remote places. For the most part it will have to go by road. It will be about half a million tonnes of ballast, 350,000 tonnes of sleepers, 150,000 tonnes of rail, Lord only knows how much structural concrete, steel and base stone for formation. Plus a large workforce, who will need transporting in and out (and will want paying for that). All by road. It starts to get very expensive; I would argue more expensive than Borders.

Then add inflation to the mid point of the scheduled construction period of your railway, and it will be over a billion, easily.
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Refers to the contract between Asda and DRS/Malcolm to run containers from Grangemouth to Aberdeen.

No doubt if there was a freight or logistics company that had a similar daily quantity of containers all going from a single logistics hub at one end of the line to a small geographical area as per the Asda example (9 stores in the Aberdeen area) and received a subsidy from the Scottish Governement for doing so, as per the Asda example, then it could be comparable.

 

[Sandy R]

Let me add a little from a Northern Ireland perspective...

There's no way that such a rail link would be useful for NI based freight.
Most of the goods coming into NI are delivered by truck and the systems in place for that are very efficient. The unaccompanied trailer model works fantastically well - if you are ever nearby just look at the trailer staging areas at the Cairnryan and Heysham.

If you're not familiar with this, essentially it means a mainland driver hauls a trailer as far as the port, drops it off at the port and picks up another that arrived on the last sailing. They then take that off wherever they need to go. It makes scheduling straightforward and you don't have the truck drivers wasting their time on a ferry.
Loading/unloading of the trailers is incredibly quick. All it needs are a few little tractor units to move the trailers around. There are very low infrastructure costs involved.

Transhipment of goods off a ferry, then to a loading yard some miles away, then loading them onto a train that has a fixed, probably only a few times a day, schedule, unloading them from the train and onto a truck for final delivery is inefficient and costly. That's assuming the goods are nicely containerised and easy to handle.
The time and cost of using a short rail link for freight will be far to high.


As for NI passengers - it's quicker, easier and invariably cheaper to fly. This is the modal shift of the last 20 years. In the past the SailRail train to the ferries were packed. Now each SailRail connecting coach service has a tiny number of passengers. (That's from observations of many trips myself)
"Quicker" is key. Assuming I leave my building here in Belfast I can get a taxi to either airport, checkin, fly and reach almost any UK destination before the ferry leaving at a comparable time would have docked in Scotland.

The foot passenger market has gone and there are vanishingly few passengers who would travel NI - ferry - train through Carlisle to points east or south. A new railway from Stranraer to Carlisle via Dumfries is not going to make any change. Perhaps there would be the opportunity to get the passengers off the 2 or 3 coaches a day that go that route but it's not big numbers.


So, if you're looking for a new railway it's not going to have much justification from strategic long distance NI traffic. Instead you're looking solely at the local population and as almost everyone else says - it just isn't enough and it's too widely dispersed.

Sorry to be negative about ideas but realism does need to come into it...
Mr Toad

I take our point re the trailer system, but railfreight runs all across Britain, so it must be viable. Even sometimes over relatively short/medium distances, eg Aberdeen-rangemouth, Mossend-Inverness, Mossend-Aberdeen etc.

Re flying, taxis etc, we are living in a greener world now, rail reopenings will happen because Beeching went too far with his cuts.

You will regularly find the Port Road listed in railway press as 'one of Beeching's 10 worst cuts in Britain'. These are railway experts writing these words, not trainspotters or boffins.
g
Also you forget in your taxi/plane analysis time factors like check in time at the airport ,waiting time at baggage collection etc etc. none of which ou have to endure by train.And where does your flight get you to ? A city centre ? no, miles from it, with another taxi ride at the other end.

 

[najaB]

Borders line £354 million, 30.75 miles, equals £11.5 million per mile. Dumfries to Challoch junction (via 1856 surveyed route ) 65.75 miles, approx. £756 million. But as I said it will be less, no City bypass to divert, less stations per mile of route, etc etc. It will NOT cost a billion. Fact.

What does this remind me of...

 

[Sandy R]

For anyone interested in Beattock reopening, they're actually quite (okay, reasonably) far down the line, and indeed with Transpennine as the operator.

http://www.beattockstationactiongroup.org.uk/

My comment upthread on a rail link to Cairnryan was no more than a common sense means of ensuring that as many people use the Stranraer train as possible, no point in going to a harbour without boats, and I'd put it a distant fourth after the other priorities.

There's not enough foot passengers on the Cairnryan-Larne or Loch Ryan-Belfast routes to justify passenger trains to Cairnryan. That's not really a big factor in the case for reopening the line.
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I appreciate that many on the Forum have an obsession with re-opening old routes through scenic parts of the country well way from any large conurbation (e.g. over five hundred posts in the thread about Aberystwyth to Carmarthen), but even by such standards this is a weak case.

If the freight argument is so strong then when was the last freight train from Dumfries to Stranraer? Or even from Glasgow to Stranraer? What's stopping someone running rail freight today via Kilmarnock (with a short siding to Cairnryan, which you'd have to build anyway)? Could it be the absolute lack of any sensible business case?

Does anyone really think people in Stranraer will be willing to put up with a four hour round trip on the train to work in Dumfries every day? Just how many jobs will there be in Dumfries to attract people?

Ayr is roughly the same size as Dumfries, though a little closer to Stranraer - how many commuters are there between the two places?





I completetely disagree.

Transport spending should be focussed on areas where there is real (and quantifiable untapped) demand.

You wouldn't spend the same money on flood defences in every county, you wouldn't spend the same money on motorways in every county - you prioritise spending to where it is needed.



Interesting question.

From all the comments enthusiasts make about the "success" of the project, you'd assume it was making a profit, but I retain a healthy scepticism in that regard...



The line wasn't built because it had a good BCR, it was built as the price of the LibDems propping up a minority Labour administration at Holyrood.

That's why the "beating passenger forecasts" guff should be taken with a pinch of salt, because the line wasn't built because of a healthy business case, it was built because of political pork-barrelling.



"Strategic link" tends to be used on this Forum as a straw-clutching exercise, along with "useful as a diversionary line on a couple of weekends a year", "unquantifiable social benefits" and "would put Insert Town Name Here on the map".

Flimsy.



...spread over a fairly wide area (i.e. the kind of population density unsuited to mass transportation.



The question should be "how long does Belfast - Heysham - Manchester/ London take" - since the vast majority of the lorries on the A75 are going beyond Dumfries and down the M6.



Oh there are some tourist attractions, but nothing "big league"

(look at how pretty much everything that brings in the big numbers is either in the central belt or Highlands - e.g. https://www.visitscotland.com/blog/culture/most-visited/ )

So your quote about D&G "voted top tourist destination in Scotland" is either some internet poll that has no bearing on reality or is a little disingenuous.



^ probably the most interesting contribution to the thread - factual, informative, realistic.

I didn't know about the unaccompanied trailer model, but can see that it's a great idea.

Kilmarnock is a 65 mile diversion, that is why there is no freight at present.
The fact 'most lorries are heading to the M6'. Correct, and that's why freight would have enough volume to be viable ,because its going to large conurbations, without a 65 mile detour.
The line links Scotland, England and Ireland. Fact. look at a map.
The A75 is called the 'Gretna-Stranraer' Euroroute. Fact.
Stranraer to Dumfries would be 1 hour 15-20 minutes on a modern line, not 2 hours, and I never suggested people would commute the entire length of the line.
In that regard though im sure Dumfries and Galloway College will be interested as it would shorten their student's days by over 2 hours.

 

[MarkyT]

Probably the best rail investment that could be made in D&G is to refurbish Stranraer Station as part of a wider re-development of the Harbour / Waterfront area.

Ideally moving it closer to the town centre as part of a more integrated transport interchange in the process. See attached for a suggested location.

 

[6Gman]

I take our point re the trailer system, but railfreight runs all across Britain, so it must be viable.

But railfreight doesn't run "all across Britain". There are big chunks of Britain where there's either no freight traffic or just a few very specific flows.

[For the record I worked in the railfreight industry for several years]
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You will regularly find the Port Road listed in railway press as 'one of Beeching's 10 worst cuts in Britain'. These are railway experts writing these words, not trainspotters or boffins.

Citations needed.

 

[Sandy R]

Stating something is a fact doesn't make it so.

The Borders line did not cost £354m. The £294m construction element you quoted earlier was the budget in 2012, before work started. This was nearer £350m by the time it was completed. That didn't include the land, design, consents process, or the costs of various other parties (you mentioned £60m, I'm told it's more, but let's stick with £60m).

Also, whilst some of the borders railway is difficult to get too, some isn't. Whereas almost all of Dumfries - Stranrarer is. To build such a railway you will be shipping huge quantities of material and equipment to some very remote places. For the most part it will have to go by road. It will be about half a million tonnes of ballast, 350,000 tonnes of sleepers, 150,000 tonnes of rail, Lord only knows how much structural concrete, steel and base stone for formation. Plus a large workforce, who will need transporting in and out (and will want paying for that). All by road. It starts to get very expensive; I would argue more expensive than Borders.

Then add inflation to the mid point of the scheduled construction period of your railway, and it will be over a billion, easily.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---


No doubt if there was a freight or logistics company that had a similar daily quantity of containers all going from a single logistics hub at one end of the line to a small geographical area as per the Asda example (9 stores in the Aberdeen area) and received a subsidy from the Scottish Governement for doing so, as per the Asda example, then it could be comparable.

You're saying a line twice the length will cost 3 times the price, which is clearly not true, even allowing for time-related cost increases.
Galloway is no more or less accessible than the Borders, 2/3rds of the line will be within spitting distance of the A75 and all of the line will be within 6 miles of it, so getting construction materials to it will be no more costly than the Borders line, perhaps less costly.

 

[47271]

SWESTRANS, the Regional Transport Partnership actually set out their priority ordering for railway investment back in 2014 and it was as follows:
1 - Refurbishment of Stranraer Rail Station
2 (joint) - Reopening Thornhill station and reopening Eastriggs station.
4 - Reopening of Dunragit / Glenluce Station
5 - Reopening Beattock Station

A Pre assessment of the four re-openings was recently carried out by Peter Brett Associates with the following recommendations:

• Further work could be done to investigate the potential for stations at Thornhill and Eastriggs based on consideration of their use as dual purpose passenger / rail freight hubs but it is noted that justifying and delivering either station at present would be challenging. Re-opening Closeburn rail station to serve the Thornhill areas has not met the criteria to pass the option sifting stage.
• Further work could be done to explore the potential for a rail station at Beattock given the future opportunity if/when High Speed 2/3 comes forward, however, again it is noted in the report that justifying and delivering a station at Beattock at present would be challenging.
• A rail station at Dunragit should not be pursued. The public survey highlighted the public desire for road and bus improvements over rail and the distance involved in accessing the station by many in the study area (in The Machars, Newton Stewart etc.) makes the case for implementation challenging given people may complete their full journeys by bus rather than interchanging, and given the close proximity of Dunragit to Stranraer. Improving bus and rail timetable integration at Stranraer is more likely to provide benefits in terms of rail accessibility.

The SWESTRANS Board Meeting on 15 July was asked to choose a priority from this list but it is unclear which if any of the options they might puruse as a full Scottish Stations Fund application:
http://www.swestrans.org.uk/CHttpHandler.ashx?id=18405&p=0

My guess would be that Eastriggs probably has the best chance of proceeding as there are potentially three markets to be served there:

• leisure / commuting to Carlisle;
• leisure / commuting / healthcare to Dumfries;
• commuting to Gretna Outlet Village.

£5-10m for a new station serving a village of 1,500 people is always going to be difficult to justify without some serious development planned for the area though.

Probably the best rail investment that could be made in D&G is to refurbish Stranraer Station as part of a wider re-development of the Harbour / Waterfront area.

So come back in ten years and that'll be a new bit of lino on the floor at Stranraer station given the speed that things move at in Wigtownshire.

I didn't know about Eastriggs or Dunragit but neither strike me as particularly likely. Beattock and Thornhill (or Closeburn, hmm) at least provide direct connections to Edinburgh and Glasgow on existing main lines, are adjacent to reasonable populations - like small towns - by D&G standards, and are also at the confluence of A roads or motorways heading in multiple directions.

 

[najaB]

The fact 'most lorries are heading to the M6'. Correct, and that's why freight would have enough volume to be viable ,because its going to large conurbations, without a 65 mile detour.

I'm confused. You objected to improving Belfast-Heysham because it 'doesn't serve Scotland', yet at the same time you say that most of the HGV traffic is headed for the M6 and England.

Which is it?

 

[me123]

The 57, 000 is the population of Galloway , does not include Dumfries which is 43,000 on top of that.
I never mentioned anyone 'going west', you did.

Regardless, the population is very dispersed. Outside Dumfries, the biggest town is Stranraer with a population of just 10,000. Even it is struggling to retain the rail link it already has. Galloway is a very large area, with lots of small towns. There is no chance that the proposed route would pick up anywhere close to 57,000 passengers in its catchment area. Other than Stranraer, you're looking at small towns with populations less than 5,000. The population is dispersed rurally, so lots of the people in the region will need to take their car to the station, which seems unlikely - they'll just drive all the way. The traffic in D&G is nowhere near as bad.

You are trying to say that a 65 mile diversion via Kilmarnock is sensible ?

For the limited amount of traffic, it is more sensible than spending hundreds of millions of pounds reopening a railway line. You haven't demonstrated yet that there would be considerable freight demand on the line - in fact plenty of other posters paint a bleak picture of rail freight and potential rail freight in the D&G region.

For rail freight, a 65 mile detour is relatively minimal. I can't imagine much of the traffic using this route to Ireland would be urgent.

Re Dalbeattie , what is the population of Stow ? Or Tweedbank ? Both much smaller.

The Borders route is a very different prospect to this. Borders line links lots of communities with a much larger catchment area and linking it to a major economic centre. Dumfries does not even remotely compete with Edinburgh. Stow is small, and has a low service frequency accordingly (only half of the trains call). Calling at Stow is possible because the train continues on to serve the important town of Galashiels. Stow station would never have been built otherwise (and indeed, it almost wasn't). Tweedbank is a small village too, but in essence the town's station serves as a park and ride facility for points south (including Melrose, Selkirk and Hawick) rather than just serving the village. The park and ride idea works here because driving through Edinburgh is a painful experience, involving negotiating Sheriffhall Roundabout, so it's preferable to leave the car in Tweedbank. The same is not true in Dumfries.

I admire your passion, and my heart would like to see the line reopened. But there is no rational case for reopening this line.

 

[Sandy R]

That's interesting. Somewhat lower than what one of my chums reckons. (He runs one of the Freight operating companies).

So don't shoot the messenger, argue with DRS/ Malcolm.
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Regardless, the population is very dispersed. Outside Dumfries, the biggest town is Stranraer with a population of just 10,000. Even it is struggling to retain the rail link it already has. Galloway is a very large area, with lots of small towns. There is no chance that the proposed route would pick up anywhere close to 57,000 passengers in its catchment area. Other than Stranraer, you're looking at small towns with populations less than 5,000. The population is dispersed rurally, so lots of the people in the region will need to take their car to the station, which seems unlikely - they'll just drive all the way. The traffic in D&G is nowhere near as bad.



For the limited amount of traffic, it is more sensible than spending hundreds of millions of pounds reopening a railway line. You haven't demonstrated yet that there would be considerable freight demand on the line - in fact plenty of other posters paint a bleak picture of rail freight and potential rail freight in the D&G region.

For rail freight, a 65 mile detour is relatively minimal. I can't imagine much of the traffic using this route to Ireland would be urgent.



The Borders route is a very different prospect to this. Borders line links lots of communities with a much larger catchment area and linking it to a major economic centre. Dumfries does not even remotely compete with Edinburgh. Stow is small, and has a low service frequency accordingly (only half of the trains call). Calling at Stow is possible because the train continues on to serve the important town of Galashiels. Stow station would never have been built otherwise (and indeed, it almost wasn't). Tweedbank is a small village too, but in essence the town's station serves as a park and ride facility for points south (including Melrose, Selkirk and Hawick) rather than just serving the village. The park and ride idea works here because driving through Edinburgh is a painful experience, involving negotiating Sheriffhall Roundabout, so it's preferable to leave the car in Tweedbank. The same is not true in Dumfries.

I admire your passion, and my heart would like to see the line reopened. But there is no rational case for reopening this line.

Stow has a low service frequency ? Twice that of Dumfries. and that is not because of lack of demand at Dumfries, it because many drive or bus to Lockerbie, which is still quicker than the Nith Valley line, so there is loads of suppressed demand at Dumfries.
Of the 57,000 population of Galloway, 28, 000 would have stations directly on the line, and another 11,000 no more than 3 miles from it. If you want the breakdown of that, its long winded but i'll do it.
Re Killie diversion, simple. Time is money.
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I'm confused. You objected to improving Belfast-Heysham because it 'doesn't serve Scotland', yet at the same time you say that most of the HGV traffic is headed for the M6 and England.

Which is it?

I wasn't aware Heysham had been moved to Carlisle.
There's a fair bit of England north and east of Heysham, why would traffic from Newcastle or Sunderland for instance travel south west to take a longer distance route and a longer crossing ? As far as Manchester is concerned , is it really quicker to travel via Heysham's long crossing time than drive to Cairnryan ? I wouldn't have thought there was much in it.
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Stating something is a fact doesn't make it so.

The Borders line did not cost £354m. The £294m construction element you quoted earlier was the budget in 2012, before work started. This was nearer £350m by the time it was completed. That didn't include the land, design, consents process, or the costs of various other parties (you mentioned £60m, I'm told it's more, but let's stick with £60m).

Also, whilst some of the borders railway is difficult to get too, some isn't. Whereas almost all of Dumfries - Stranrarer is. To build such a railway you will be shipping huge quantities of material and equipment to some very remote places. For the most part it will have to go by road. It will be about half a million tonnes of ballast, 350,000 tonnes of sleepers, 150,000 tonnes of rail, Lord only knows how much structural concrete, steel and base stone for formation. Plus a large workforce, who will need transporting in and out (and will want paying for that). All by road. It starts to get very expensive; I would argue more expensive than Borders.

Then add inflation to the mid point of the scheduled construction period of your railway, and it will be over a billion, easily.
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No doubt if there was a freight or logistics company that had a similar daily quantity of containers all going from a single logistics hub at one end of the line to a small geographical area as per the Asda example (9 stores in the Aberdeen area) and received a subsidy from the Scottish Governement for doing so, as per the Asda example, then it could be comparable.

As for the Borders costs, you can dispute with Transport Scotland and Network Rail, which is where I got the figures from.

 

[Philip Phlopp]

You're saying a line twice the length will cost 3 times the price, which is clearly not true, even allowing for time-related cost increases.
Galloway is no more or less accessible than the Borders, 2/3rds of the line will be within spitting distance of the A75 and all of the line will be within 6 miles of it, so getting construction materials to it will be no more costly than the Borders line, perhaps less costly.

Your ability to dig a hole is impressive, but the figures quoted are reasonable, fair and realistic. You can't avoid needing the quantities of material listed above, that's what it takes to build a railway.

The structural elements would worry me - you would really need to re-build the route to be RA8 or better capable with reasonable line speeds even for freight, 75mph and RA8 capability won't be cheap, that needs some significant and serious structures from culverts through to overbridges.

Electrification from a preliminary review wouldn't present any major issues, but feeding the line at the Stranraer could be costly and complicated, there's 275kV at Auchencrosh (the HVDC Moyle interconnector) which will need around 15 to 20 miles of cabling to reach the line. There's 132kV at Dumfries which feeds the other end perfectly well (subject to capacity) and 132kV also at Newton Stewart (but on the same circuit as Dumfries).

 

[ChiefPlanner]

I will throw in some of my ex career comments on freight into that part of the world - we used to move cider , beer and cars (+ some sensitive MOD traffic) into Stranraer for export to Northern Ireland. I am talking about my days as a Customer Service and Plannig Manager for Speedlink.

The volumes were quite decent - the rates seemed OK - BUT - on analysis it was found that the railway got (a) no back traffic - so all the wagons came back empty (b) we only got the traffic that road hauliers did not want - i.e they got the regular flows and the back loads (c) the tranship and port costs were so high - the net revenue was embarasingly low (d) the movement costs by rail were very high.(e) traffic was seasonal.

Now in good old BR , we paid avoidable track costs and direct costs for shunters , locomotive , fuel etc .....when the "Network 90" study was done , surprise , surprise - long feeder trips to this part of the world from Carlisle and Mossend were triple flagged "red" .....

However , if anyone can prove to me - in my retirement - you can cover all these costs AND fund new infrastructure - I will happily come and wave off the first train. Old school style. (green flag)

As for Holyhead - where we have still good infrastructure etc - I am amazed (Welsh Government please have a hard look) - how we can not justify the cheapest bit of concrete and a reach stacker to get some of the port traffic to rail and off the A55..the loss of Freightliner traffic to and from Holyhead was really down to the penal costs of what was Sealink and the operational costs of the crossing ,the terminal and port. (against vicious competition for RO/RO etc from other ports....

 

[Sandy R]

Your ability to dig a hole is impressive, but the figures quoted are reasonable, fair and realistic. You can't avoid needing the quantities of material listed above, that's what it takes to build a railway.

The structural elements would worry me - you would really need to re-build the route to be RA8 or better capable with reasonable line speeds even for freight, 75mph and RA8 capability won't be cheap, that needs some significant and serious structures from culverts through to overbridges.

Electrification from a preliminary review wouldn't present any major issues, but feeding the line at the Stranraer could be costly and complicated, there's 275kV at Auchencrosh (the HVDC Moyle interconnector) which will need around 15 to 20 miles of cabling to reach the line. There's 132kV at Dumfries which feeds the other end perfectly well (subject to capacity) and 132kV also at Newton Stewart (but on the same circuit as Dumfries).

I'm not disputing the quantities of materials needed, im saying that the line is juts over twice the length of the Borders line , and therefore would be approximately twice the cost. As I said previously, it would be far more likely to cost LESS per mile than the Borders route as there is no City bypass to divert, no tunnels to refurbish, land acquisition /re aquisition will be cheaper, (certainly than the northern section of the Borders line) and there will be less stations per mile than the Borders line.

 

[Liam]

If I were looking for rail investment priorities for D&G, I'd focus on:

1. Beattock station, way overdue
2. Thornhill station
3. Ensuring the Nithsdale route gets electrified and Dumfries receives a fast service from Glasgow
4. A Stranraer-Cairnryan connection coupled with Girvan-Stranraer improvements

Before all of these I would prefer to see:

An hourly Glasgow-Dumfries-Carlisle service, or at least hourly Dumfries-Carlisle.
A much improved Sunday service as there is only 5 trains to/from Carlisle, 2 to/from Glasgow and nothing at all before 1 in the afternoon.
Improved bus connections at Lockerbie would be great too, especially on Sunday, improving access to/from Edinburgh from D&G. Many Doonhamers I know prefer to use Lockerbie as a railhead for Dumfries whether going to Glasgow or Edinburgh.