Railway Geography: Winners and Losers

[Rail Blues]

York is a winner for sure. If the ECML went through Leeds

Plus there's the Manchester airport trains, an absolute boon for a night out in Leeds or Manchester if you live in York.

Wigan is incredibly well connected by both road and rail, people talk about how odd it was that the Wigan Casino in a smallish town became the preeminent venue on the northern soul scene. People from Liverpool, Manchester, Edinburgh, Birmingham and London could get there with comparative ease by rail, plus the M58 and the M6.

Growing up in a town with a population of circa 30k and no train station I certainly felt hard done to as a teenager so I'll nominate Burntwood in Staffordshire.

 

[AlastairFraser]

Bicester will be a future winner if that counts, currently frequent services to London, Oxford, Banbury and the Midlands, plus MK and Cambridge soon.
Bedwyn is a current winner, frequent services to Newbury, Reading and London, very small population, plus a few to the rest of the South West.
Leigh is a massive loser, because of Dr Beeching I believe, not too far from Atherton, but still that only gets you into Manchester (slowly) or Wigan.
Same for Skem the other side, Merseyrail really should have taken the whole line to Wigan because the links are very poor outside Wigan and Manchester.

 

[daodao]

York is a winner for sure. If the ECML went through Leeds, it would see a much lower level of service.

Middlesbrough is a loser. Other small towns in Yorkshire see a much better service.

The whole of Cleveland has a poor passenger rail service. Middlesbrough's rail services are poor, but those to Stockton and Hartlepool are worse. Darlington is effectively the main railhead for Tees-side, with its intercity ECML station, but there are no regular train services from Stockton and Hartlepool to Darlington.

 

[Envoy]

Cardiff appears to be poorly served for a capital city with an extensive highly populated hinterland feeding into it with local trains. The only proper Inter City service that runs to Cardiff is from London and thence westward to Swansea. You would think that it would have at least an InterCity service going to Newcastle - which could also call at poorly served Gloucester.

(Yes, I know that it has direct services to Manchester via Hereford and Portsmouth via Bath as well as Nottingham via Birmingham but you could handle call the type of trains used as ‘Inter City’). It also has slow stopping trains to the south-west. Bristol is far better served with proper Inter City trains.

 

[daodao]

Cardiff appears to be poorly served for a capital city with an extensive highly populated hinterland feeding into it with local trains. The only proper Inter City service that runs to Cardiff is from London and thence westward to Swansea. You would think that it would have at least an InterCity service going to Newcastle - which could also call at poorly served Gloucester.

(Yes, I know that it has direct services to Manchester via Hereford and Portsmouth via Bath as well as Nottingham via Birmingham but you could handle call the type of trains used as ‘Inter City’). It also has slow stopping trains to the south-west. Bristol is far better served with proper Inter City trains.

I lived in Cardiff for many years and considered that it had good rail links to most parts of England, albeit not directly to NE England/Yorkshire/East Anglia, which are somewhat distant. Same platform changing at Bristol Parkway or Cheltenham is relatively straightforward to connect into the XC SW-NE services. Services to Birmingham and Manchester improved markedly between 1984 and 2005. Cardiff also has extensive suburban rail services, albeit not to the East side of the city or Ely.

Inter-city style trains with premier class are only warranted on main lines to London or the longer-distance Anglo-Scotch services. Standard class only trains should suffice for all other journeys.

 

[DarloRich]

Anywhere on the route of one of the original mainlines = winner. Elsewhere = loser.

Rugby v Northampton is the example

 

[daodao]

Anywhere on the route of one of the original mainlines = winner. Elsewhere = loser.

Rugby v Northampton is the example

I agree.

I'm surprised that you didn't use Darlington vs Cleveland (Hartlepool/Middlesbrough/Stockton) as the example.

 

[Ianno87]

Anywhere on the route of one of the original mainlines = winner. Elsewhere = loser.

Rugby v Northampton is the example

Or Winner = any relatively minor place that happens to be at the intersection of a couple or more regional lines (e.g. Ely)

 

[Llandudno]

Winners:
Dovey Junction
Bidston
Battersby
Par
Combe Junction
Georgemas Junction


Losers:
Winsford, Hartford and Acton Bridge - can’t travel north (only to Liverpool), line is there but no services

 

[GoneSouth]

Bradford. An express railway backwater with both its stations on dead ends. I have always thought it gets the worst service for a city of its size in England

Think stations like Retford, Newark and Grantham are obvious winners

Have to agree with this, bypassed by the transpennine Express routes, no cross country intercity connections since the 80s, no link to the east coast for decades until the recent introduction of an hourly Hull service, link to Liverpool withdrawn in the 90s, London link moved to the run down FS station in the 90s and only relatively recently had a service back in the ‘main’ interchange station with Grand Central, no connection for the early Leeds to London services, no connection to the North’s major airport in Manchester, no connection with one of the major regional centres in Sheffield... I’d say that was a pretty poorly connected place!

 

[tbtc]

Croydon, good, helped by the physical geography of the lowest non-riverine crossing of the North Downs vs Sutton, which even when it did have trains to the coast, had them taking a long time because of some v tight curves at Streatham North and Mitcham Junction.

Ah, that's interesting - I don't know much of the underlying geography of south London (and it's hard to tell where rivers are in such built up areas, where rivers are often hidden away) - river valleys make a huge difference in some areas - e.g. the ECML is nice and fast because it runs just east enough of the Pennines to be able to cross (1) fewer rivers and (2) the rivers that it does cross are in much flatter valleys:

England topographic map, elevation, terrain

Visualization and sharing of free topographic maps. England, United Kingdom.

en-gb.topographic-map.com

Whereas the lines through Sheffield are very much determined by the Sheaf/Don valleys - anything else would require long tunnels.

The whole of Cleveland has a poor passenger rail service. Middlesbrough's rail services are poor, but those to Stockton and Hartlepool are worse. Darlington is effectively the main railhead for Tees-side, with its intercity ECML station, but there are no regular train services from Stockton and Hartlepool to Darlington.

Given the way that the winning Arriva bid for the Northern franchise sprinkled lots of improvements on the quieter fringes of the network (with a disproportionate focus on places like Barrow/ Bridlington/ Bishope Auckland/ Bentham than the busier areas in the Liverpool/ Leeds/ Sheffield "triangle"), I'm surprised that they didn't find resources for an hourly Sunderland - Darlington DMU (which would have provided an improved service to Hartlepool etc and better ECML connections for Wearside - could always have worked off the Saltburn - Darlington terminators too)

Have to agree with this, bypassed by the transpennine Express routes, no cross country intercity connections since the 80s, no link to the east coast for decades until the recent introduction of an hourly Hull service, link to Liverpool withdrawn in the 90s, London link moved to the run down FS station in the 90s and only relatively recently had a service back in the ‘main’ interchange station with Grand Central, no connection for the early Leeds to London services, no connection to the North’s major airport in Manchester, no connection with one of the major regional centres in Sheffield... I’d say that was a pretty poorly connected place!

I don't know about "Decades" - I think that the Blackpool - Bradford - York service was every couple of hours to Scarborough ("TransPennine" branding but part of the RRNE/ Northern Spirit/ Arriva Trains Northern - maroon liveried 158s etc)?

 

[GoneSouth]

I don't know about "Decades" - I think that the Blackpool - Bradford - York service was every couple of hours to Scarborough ("TransPennine" branding but part of the RRNE/ Northern Spirit/ Arriva Trains Northern - maroon liveried 158s etc)?

But that disappeared in the 90s and the Blackpool became hourly to York. I count a couple of decades there (Still Bradford’s only connection with York I think, which is only 1 service per hour)

 

[DarloRich]

I agree.

I'm surprised that you didn't use Darlington vs Cleveland (Hartlepool/Middlesbrough/Stockton) as the example.

Surely Middlesbrough is the ultimate railway geography winner: It only exists because of the Darlington and Stockton Railway

Northern Echo:
Early in 1828, Joseph Pease sailed up the River Tees towards what he was calling Port Darlington. His brain was working overtime. In front of him were 520 acres of bleak salt marsh spotted with a handful of houses occupied by no more than 40 people.

That evening, in his diary Joseph wrote: "Imagination here has very ample scope in fancying a coming day when the bare fields...will be covered with a busy multitude and numerous vessels crowding to these banks."
He was not wrong. Less than 20 years later, Cleveland's first historian, JW Ord, wrote that to a visiting stranger "this proud array of ships, docks, warehouses, churches, foundries, wharves etc would seem like some enchanted spectacle, some Arabian Nights' vision". Middlesbrough was born.

Complex birth of first railway town

Early in 1828, Joseph Pease sailed up the River Tees towards what he was calling Port Darlington. His brain was working overtime.

www.thenorthernecho.co.uk

 

[Western Sunset]

Has anyone mentioned Trent?

 

[A0wen]

MK was planned as a city to live and work, the railway is on the fringe, MK Central was opened later. But lots of people commute from there to London now, what went wrong?

Because as humans we don't behave as technocratic social planners would like us to. It's the same reason why the "new towns" in the south east such as Stevenage, Harlow, Hemel etc should also be regarded as failures.

 

[southern442]

Has anyone mentioned Trent?

As in, Stoke-on?
That would definitely count as a place that loses out. It's a weird one due to it being really just a collection of towns, and whilst the station is located in the city centre, the city centre isn't really the actual city centre. There aren't heaps of opportunity for railway expansion, either, what Stoke could really do with is a light rail/metro system working in combination with urban railway where possible.

 

[Mikey C]

Has anyone said Didcot yet small town good service, because it is a junction.

I was going to mention Didcot too!

A small and insignificant town, but the Parkway station is the railhead for a number of towns in the area, both for drivers but also for bus users, either because they're not on a railway or their station was closed to speed services on the GWML. It's amazing the numbers of places in the area, where to get there from London, the easiest way is taking a bus from Didcot - Wallingford, Abingdon, Wantage, Harwell etc

 

[Clip]

Is it not the case for the stations in towns/cities with low population s have the service they have due to operational needs - timetabling elsewhere on the route - rather than just by accident?

 

[southern442]

Is it not the case for the stations in towns/cities with low population s have the service they have due to operational needs - timetabling elsewhere on the route - rather than just by accident?

Pretty much, yes. The prime example here is Crewe, with York as another - if we used them as a base level then places like Stoke should be getting 20-30 tph! But obviously they don't all stop at Crewe and York because everyone wants to go there, it is just a rather strategic location to stop at. Although in an ideal world it would be nice if all Crewe-sized towns got the same quality level of service that Crewe does.

EDIT: Talking more along the lines of purely timetabling, I remember reading something in a magazine about something the Swiss do with their set service pattern requirements on various lines that results in various villages of under 1000 people being given a 6tph in each direction service! I can't remember any specifics though.

 

[Clip]

An even more orient example would be places like Morpeth which are smaller than Crewe or York but are added to the timetable so they fit in around Edinburgh/Newcastle/York and so on down the line for other services

 

[urbophile]

Towns and villages that really suffer are those on main lines who lost their stations in order to speed up long-distance traffic. Whereas similar sized places on secondary lines have often survived. And of course a small town that just happens to be adjacent to a railway line is likely to have (or at least had) a train service, while a small town in the middle of nowhere either never justified the expense of building a line in the first place, or lost its branch line years ago, probably before Beeching.

 

[Horizon22]

MK was planned as a city to live and work, the railway is on the fringe, MK Central was opened later. But lots of people commute from there to London now, what went wrong?

People who originally lived and worked in London moved there. Thus the demographics changed; I wouldn't say anything went "wrong".

 

[tbtc]

But that disappeared in the 90s and the Blackpool became hourly to York. I count a couple of decades there (Still Bradford’s only connection with York I think, which is only 1 service per hour)

Really?

I'm pretty certain that they were operating up until the end of the ATN franchise in 2004...

(the "Transpennine" services in those days included the Blackpool service through Bradford and also extensions of other services to Sunderland etc)

 

[stuu]

Because as humans we don't behave as technocratic social planners would like us to. It's the same reason why the "new towns" in the south east such as Stevenage, Harlow, Hemel etc should also be regarded as failures.

I would say it is more a function of the housing/job market in the south east - everywhere within ~100 miles of London is commuter territory to a far greater extent than when new towns were planned. I would bet more people travel to MK, Harlow and Stevenage to work than travel out too, so they are not too out of line with their founding principles

 

[Cricketer8for9]

On south London physical geography the trick is to avoid the Southern Heights (ie Crystal Palace) just as the main lines north avoided the Northern Heights (ie Hampstead). The main south London river, the Wandle, isn’t terribly helpful as it flows north west to Wandsworth from Croydon as opposed to north towards the city or West End (though the low grade route was used for the horse drawn Surrey Iron Railway.

It’s the North Downs which matter more as far as railways to the South Coast are concerned. The London and Southampton avoided the highest ground by heading west then south, the South Eastern followed the London and Brighton south before turning east at Redhill. The Orpington cut off of 1867 requires two long tunnels, Polhill through the chalk and Sevenoaks through the greensand Ridge which conveniently is also rather low immediately south of Croydon.

But enough of this; I’m getting a bit off topic.

 

[WelshBluebird]

I'd say the Welsh valleys that kept thier service are pretty big winners. It's incredibly easy to get to Cardiff from them compared with the areas nearby that lost their rail service (and of course the ones that lost their service are pretty big losers - 55 mins by train with a pretty frequent service from one place is a 90 minute bus journey with a much more limited service).

 

[daodao]

Welsh valleys that kept their service

Do you include the 3 that regained their service, to Ebbw Vale/Aberdare/Maesteg, as well as the 2 ex-TVR and 1 ex-RR retained lines?

I would also add the Cardiff suburban services. including the Coryton branch which was nearly closed post-Beeching (and which was personally useful to me for many years) and the Danescourt line.

 

[Envoy]

Do you include the 3 that regained their service, to Ebbw Vale/Aberdare/Maesteg, as well as the 2 ex-TVR and 1 ex-RR retained lines?

I would also add the Cardiff suburban services. including the Coryton branch which was nearly closed post-Beeching (and which was personally useful to me for many years) and the Danescourt line.

They now propose to continue the Coryton line westward to link with the valleys lines near Radyr. This could lead to a Cardiff Circle Line as part of the South Wales Metro project. They also propose building a new line coming off the City Line just N of Fairwater station and heading out to Cregiau which would serve all of the new housing in the area. Part of this would be on the bed of a former railway and part new build.

 

[johncrossley]

Haywards Heath and Three Bridges are little known outside the locality but they enjoy more frequent services than many famous towns. Three Bridges sounds like a little village station!

It’s a City!!

A city is also a town. City status is a peculiar British thing. There are not many countries where Ely would be considered more important than Milton Keynes.

 

[DarloRich]

MK was planned as a city to live and work, the railway is on the fringe, MK Central was opened later. But lots of people commute from there to London now, what went wrong?

People who originally lived and worked in London moved there. Thus the demographics changed; I wouldn't say anything went "wrong".

Nothing went wrong - the key at the time of planning and building MK was the car so connection to the M1 was more important. Trains were old fashioned and rubbish. The car was king. People could use Bletchley or Wolverton if they had to use a slow old train.

I am not even sure there was a plan for an MK station at the start or if there was the desire to build it was low!