I seem to remember that the ASDA wasn't actually impinging on the alignment, but could be wrong...
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Petition launched to demand re-opening of Dumfries-Stranraer railway line
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R
RailUK Forums
Ahem.... is number 1 seriously TWICE that of number 2 ?
http://www.atoc.org/media-centre/at...g-by-rail-cuts-aviations-market-share-100822/
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ASDA was directly on the old alignment.
Compare old and new pictures you'll see that.
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Read it again. That is the top 10 domestic air routes by number of passengers. You can find that data online easily. It isn't the proportion of market share between air/ rail on each.
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I really can't see how you could get a railway from one side of Tesco's property to the other with a 'skew' without knocking down houses or industrial buildings or both. But I'm sure you know best.
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As I understand it, the plans to reopen the route were well advanced by the time the ASDA was built. It occupies the old goods yard and engine shed but not the actual track.
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I was thinking that. Where ever the ASDA Galashiels was built be it the old track bed or the old goods yard it was never going to be much of a task to slew around it. Looking at Google Maps as far as I can see you either knock down the Tesco or knock down houses/industrial buildings. There is no where to slew around it!
Agreed. It sits directly and diagonally across the old alignment, from Newspapers to booze and everything in between. Of course you can avoid it, and you probably would, but that means new alignment, and knocking down other buildings. Alternatively avoiding the town altogether, but that rather nullifies the point of the line. If it has one.
Slew just south of it, using what was the pointwork of the original junction of the Kirkcudbright branch. As I said the underbridge was 4 tracks wide, so plenty of room to get the necessary angle.
Ive looked at it enough times in the flesh.
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daodao
Established Member
Re-opening former strategic routes where the alignment was not protected is an expensive nightmare, and can only be justified if self-evidently there is a large untapped traffic demand (very dubious in the case of the Port Road). There is public/government support for reopening the Cambridge-Bedford line, but even this is an extremely difficult project and will take many years (if it ever happens). Compare the ease of re-opening this section of the former Cambridge-Oxford route with that of the re-opening of the Bicester-Bletchley section, which is currently being reconstructed.
Reopening lines is of most value for commuter passenger traffic to link relatively deprived major settlements to a nearby city where the distance is relatively short (up to 20 miles), and the track bed is extant, so that a single line (with dynamic loops) is easy to reconstruct. A good example would be the Ebbw Vale line and the proposed branch to Abertillery (but not beyond, as the route to Brynmawr has been reused for other purposes). As for rail freight, it is dying on small islands like Britain and Ireland except for dedicated train loads, but even these are declining year-on-year. How many coal and steel trains will there be in GB by 2025?
Reopening lines is of most value for commuter passenger traffic to link relatively deprived major settlements to a nearby city where the distance is relatively short (up to 20 miles), and the track bed is extant, so that a single line (with dynamic loops) is easy to reconstruct. A good example would be the Ebbw Vale line and the proposed branch to Abertillery (but not beyond, as the route to Brynmawr has been reused for other purposes). As for rail freight, it is dying on small islands like Britain and Ireland except for dedicated train loads, but even these are declining year-on-year. How many coal and steel trains will there be in GB by 2025?
Xenophon PCDGS
Veteran Member
I have looked at the wording used in the title of this thread and note the words "to demand the reopening". To me this seems a somewhat strange use of the English language when used in terms of a petition, as "to demand" suggests an authoritative or brusquely made action. In this instance, the only cohesive strength behind "the demand" would be the number of respondants in the affirmative to the petition, whereas the grouping of the English barons at Runnymede on 15th June 1215 when "demanding" that King John sign the Magna Carta had rather more of a back-up force in terms of their armed soldiers to "their demand".
They can demand all they like, but no-one has to listen to them!
As has already been said, the word "demand" was used by the journos at the Daily Record. The actual petition doesn't use that word: it simply states "Reopen the Dumfries -Stranraer Railway". I"m pretty sure SandyR also hasn't used that word on this forum, although I have neither the time nor the inclination to check.
As has already been said, the word "demand" was used by the journos at the Daily Record. The actual petition doesn't use that word: it simply states "Reopen the Dumfries -Stranraer Railway". I"m pretty sure SandyR also hasn't used that word on this forum, although I have neither the time nor the inclination to check.
ian959
Member
Rubbish, radio is interested in one thing - ratings. Ratings generate income through advertising/sponsorship/whatever. They have X number of hours of radio time to fill. They will use anything and everything to fill that time. The more stupid/controversial/inane the better as such content tends to encourage more feedback, especially on talk-back radio.
Altnabreac
Established Member
Here we reach the crux of the whole argument. A route with 8 buses per day does not have sufficient demand to justify reopening as a railway line.
Freight is non existent and any future Northern Irish demand could easily travel via Kilmarnock.
SailRail is dead and until air travel costs rise ten fold it isn't coming back.
An £800m reopening that only runs 1tp2h is blatantly not going to have any sort of business case.
All Scottish rail reopenings have had a business case that is driven by daily commuting. Freight, tourism, long distance traffic are all nice to haves but to make a business case you need regular daily users buying season tickets and driving both demand and revenue.
I've done a quick look at potential commuting demand from the 2011 Census. I haven't looked at detailed places of work just distance travelled. For each town on your route I have summed the total number of people who might be working in Dumfries based on their distance travelled to work.
Dalbeattie
Total in work 1847
Working nearby 962
Working in Dumfries distance band 520
Working further away 119
Other 246
Castle Douglas
Total in work 1768
Working nearby 1142
Working in Dumfries distance band 265
Working further away 149
Other 212
Kirkcudbright
Total in work 1444
Working nearby 1176
Working in Dumfries distance band 40
Working further away 55
Other 173
Gatehouse
Total in work 393
Working nearby 283
Working in Dumfries distance band 40
Working further away 10
Other 60
Newton Stewart
Total in work 1723
Working nearby 1428
Working in Dumfries distance band 50
Working further away n/a
Other 245
Stranraer
Total in work 4403
Working nearby 3650
Working in Dumfries distance band 241
Working further away n/a
Other 512
Other includes no fixed place of work, working on an offshore installation and working outside the UK.
So you have an absolute maximum potential market for your commuting service of 1156 people. Not all these people will be working in Dumfries and by no means all of them could or would use rail as their preferred method of commuting. So you are looking at a commuting market of somewhere in the low 100s of people, the majority of these people being based in Dalbeattie.
I'm afraid it's a total non starter.
I checked the historical maps and it appears you were correct, the edge of the ASDA does impinge on the running old main line. The current alignment was previously used by a siding/loop.
It was a condition of the planning permission for the store that a 5m corridor was kept free for future reinstatement of the line. Network rail was consulted to ensure that the alignment was workable before a single brick was laid.
No, not echoes of Ribblehead. Pretty much all that was wrong at Ribblehead was that the deck waterproofing and drainage needed to be renewed to stop water getting into the viaduct structure and to carry water down from the deck. And the area engineers had always done what they could to tackle the issues, with a limited budget, before the viaduct's condition supposedly became critical, conveniently just as BR wanted to shut the line. This work, and the major repair programme, included replacement of damaged stonework.
Big Fleet had required major reinforcement and maintenance work over many years of its life and that all came to an abrupt stop in 1965.
I don't know what work has been done since Big Fleet came under Sustrans' ownership, but while replacing the waterproofing and drains may stop further water damage and deterioration, it can't reverse the effects of many years of water ingress on a structure that engineers clearly had serious problems with long before the line was abandoned. Photos clearly show the sheer size of the brickwork reinforcing the piers and the amount of metal reinforcement holding the arches and deck together.
As for that 1856 route, you would require a substantial embankment and bridge or viaduct to get across the Fleet valley and then face stiff climbs to get up to the vicinity of the former Gatehouse station or out of the Fleet valley in the other direction. As an alternative to the route the railway eventually took, it has little to recommend it. And the 1858 variation has the same problem with the climb from the village to Gatehouse station.
Both appear to have been dictated by the opposition of the then owner of the Cally Palace to having a railway through his estate, which meant the engineers were on a hiding to nothing around Gatehouse village, which probably made trying to access the more sensible coastal route from Gatehouse to Palnure nigh on impossible.
By the 1980s, someone had invented the compulsory purchase order, hence the A75 Gatehouse bypass cuts straight across the estate.
In any case, it's all academic, because I'm afraid that the Port Road is as dead as a dodo. The passengers aren't there in the numbers required, either locally or travelling long-distance, and the freight is going to stay on the roads.
People's time and energy would be far better spent on trying to develop ways to secure the long-term future of the existing railway to Stranraer.
Apparantly they are as the English bankroll them.
Could you please refrain from flame-baiting.
Correct. i'm not 'demanding' it.
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I bet it won't though!
You'll win your bet.
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I'll save you the bother. I havent used that word. Neither did the local paper (Standard ) who simply said 'Bring back Paddy Line', the Record added 'Demand to...'
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Agreed.
For those who are interested. Here's a video of the line in the last years of its operation:
http://movingimage.nls.uk/film/3696
http://movingimage.nls.uk/film/3696
Xenophon PCDGS
Veteran Member
Grateful thanks. A most interesting video.
70014IronDuke
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It is, indeed. And thanks to he who posted it.
It should also be a fitting end to this thread: I'm sure there are some population changes since 1965, but watching this makes the Settle and Carlisle look like a railway passing through densely populated suburbia.
Talk of reopening after seeing this is pure fantasy.
Ditto from me - I can just remember a holiday in the area - brilliant film.
Indeed. I had previously included the Port Road in the 'worth keeping open if it hadn't been shut' category, now I'm not even sure it is that.
Stewart2887
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Yep-enjoyed that!
47271
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Great video but no, dear God please don't revive this thread or attract the attention of the OP. Just seeing it again has given me flashbacks.
och aye was the OP and posted the video as well. It's Sandy R that you should be afeared of.
70014IronDuke
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I confess I had similar feelings on seeing this thread reappear.
The video, especially the first one, does make the jaw droppeth, however, when one thinks of the enginemen and other operating staff who kept that line running from November to April each year, especially in wartime, when, as the commentary says, the line came into its strategic own. It looks nice in the day of the shooting, but it can't have been much fun starting out at the bottom of those banks with a Black 5 and the snow coming down thick and fast on a cold January night. Even standing on the platforms to exchange tablets would have been an ordeal.
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The commentary at some point (maybe at the beginning of the second part) does say that landowner objections made the line go inland, AWAY from what population centres there were, and jeopardising the line's economic viablity even before it was built.
47271
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Oh no you're right! Very many apologies to the entirely balanced and rational och aye.och aye was the OP and posted the video as well. It's Sandy R that you should be afeared of.
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