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Proposal to reopen Kemble-Cirencester branch
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I think it would need to be a branch within commutable distance of London to be truly comparable. Henley? Marlow? they are perhaps too close...The point being that Cirencester is a potential, if rather long, London commute and very definitely a Swindon commute. Being a tourist centre, through-the-day loadings should not be too different from peak loadings. Therefore I am not sure this is quite the basket case that some are suggesting. However, I cannot see any local authority which will push hard for this particular reopening.
Very slightly off topic, but I hope you will forgive me. Is there a good book or other resource on the basic economics of railway operation and building? Are there parallels for attempts to rebuild a railway at a very low cost? Obviously the preservation movement has done good work in retaining certain rail routes, but so far very few have then gone on to become useful public transport resources. The most interesting such experiment seems to me to be the proposed Wareham to Swanage commuter service, now expected to be trialled next year 2017. But too often the conflicts of interest between heritage operations and the rigour of providing a year-round, early morning, into-the-evening commuter service are too great to overcome.
After dinner, having read the post from MarkRedon, dealing with commuting prospects, I got to thinking about possible competing proposals in the Cotswold area, that would be a more attractive proposal. I could not help thinking that a resurrection of the Golden Valley service could be much more attractive. To that end, a reversal at Kemble by a Cirencester branch train, together with a reopening of the stations at Brimscombe, Chalford, would perhaps find a good BCR. Perhaps a tram /train proposal could be envisaged. After all, the old 'motor' train was almost that anyway.
Edit: I note that Cirencester is only 50 kms from Bristol (where there is money to be found!) so perhaps an interchange near Stonehouse could be interesting. I believe there as been some local pressure for that.
Edit: I note that Cirencester is only 50 kms from Bristol (where there is money to be found!) so perhaps an interchange near Stonehouse could be interesting. I believe there as been some local pressure for that.
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route:oxford
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Then combine it all together. Cirencester is all but 8 miles from the former "end of the line" at Fairford.
High-Speed (60mph) tram is the way to go with this. Start at Kemble, bit of street running through Cirencester, then onwards to Fairford, Carterton, Witney and Oxford. Use legacy formations where suitable, new formations where not.
The Cirencester-Lechlade section would potentially be a touch passenger light, but this would be mitigated by having a single depot at RAF Fairford.
Reliable public transport does drive growth though, and with a potential journey time of around 45 minutes from Cirencester to Oxford and house prices in Cirencester quite cheap by comparison - it would be a quite attractive commute.
Harbornite
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Best of luck to them. Personally, I think Long Marston/Honeybourne to Stratford on Avon is a better cause.
Just because custom is at a certain level in current circumstances proves nothing when it comes to what applies in other communities, nor when it comes to offering something new - a regular quick rail link with Swindon would offer an option that just isn't there now in Cirencester.
Not really, because most people in Witney prefer to drive on the far easier and safer road to Hanborough now that the recent car park extension gives them a decent chance of finding a space there.
The particular stations I had in mind were Hanborough and Kingham - because they have pretty much the same level of service as Charlbury. As I said, Witney people now use Hanborough - hence the explosion in traffic there over the past decade, nor does it involve heading towards Oxford, it is on the road to Woodstock - and Chipping Norton people use Kingham as a general rule - again the roads to Charlbury aren't great. So you're not looking at a population anything like 30,000 and the small population of Charlbury uses the train a heck of a lot - because it is an attractive, practical, viable option, into Oxford - and beyond - which beats driving hands down. An option which is not available in the town of Cirencester right now.
No one is pretending anything - the campaigners believe it is an idea worth exploring, as is their right. As for reasonably good access, trying to drive from Kemble to Cirencester and negotiate the T-junction where the A433 joins the A429 or the crossroads near the Thames Head Inn is not my idea of good anything. Trying to turn at either place can be downright dangerous - and the magnetic pull of another 330 parking spaces at Kemble won't assist matters.
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muddythefish
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This is another good rail revival proposal and like all reopening schemes that have come to fruition there's no doubt it would be popular and well used. It's unlikely to get very far though without a fundamental rethink in government about future transport policy when the DfT's default mode is still to back road improvements over public transport projects - witness the knocking back today of the Leeds trolleybus scheme. Good luck to the Cirencester revivalists though.
Xenophon PCDGS
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On this former branch line, there were two intermediate single-platform stations at Park Leaze Halt and at Chesterton Lane Halt, both of which stayed open until the line closure on 6th April 1964 (the date of my 19th birthday).
Anyone local to the site of the line with any knowledge of those two halts and of any remains.
Harbornite
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In case anyone is interested, here are some recent pictures of Kemble Station.
http://www.urban75.org/railway/cirencester-platform-kemble-station.html
http://www.urban75.org/railway/cirencester-platform-kemble-station.html
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Andyjs247
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This. That was something I was wondering myself. Fairford itself seemed an unlikely terminus for the branch from Witney and Yarnton Junction / Oxford. Had it continued via Cirencester to somewhere else eg Kemble or Cheltenham, would it have survived Beeching.
I don't know the history why it didn't continue to Cirencester at least, but to my mind it would be far more useful as a through route. If you're going to open from Kemble why not make the missing link to Carterton, Witney, Oxford that probably should have existed years ago? I don't see that the terrain would be particularly difficult for new build. And it would be far more useful than say extending the new Borders line between Tweedbank and ultimately Carlisle.
Doctor Fegg
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Nope. More Chippy people (no-one calls it "Chipping") use Kingham than Charlbury. More Witney people use Hanborough than Charlbury - it depends, but the crucial factor is whether you have to go via the West End roundabout to get there.
Charlbury's catchment is fairly widespread, but most of its custom comes either from the town itself (where I live) and its immediate neighbours, or from a "western A40" arc - Burford, Lechlade, the Wychwoods, and so on. Get off any train at Charlbury and watch how many cars are heading up Forest Road towards Burford - which is certainly not the road you'd take towards Witney.
The A419/A417 is not a whole bunch of fun, and unless you've travelled it at rush-hour, I'd be very wary of making judgements based on green lines on a map. Birdlip/Air Balloon is appalling in the evening rush: 10 minutes would be a very good day. Blunsdon is better than it used to be but that end still isn't terrific. I wouldn't say that Cirencester-Kemble is guaranteed to succeed (whereas Witney-Oxford, I think, would be), but I certainly wouldn't dismiss it out of hand.
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DynamicSpirit
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For what it's worth... Using Altnabreac's golden rules for a successful reopening
All the same, possibly 3 of 4 conditions seems a reasonable start.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---
I believe I'm quite interesting, though I say so myself...
- Population of 10,000+ I think Cirencester's c. 20K counts
- 60 minutes (75 at a push) journey time of a major employment centre. Does Swindon count as a major employment centre? How much employment is easily accessible from Swindon station?
- Extant or mainly unobstructed trackbed I think this passes.
- Ability to extend an existing service so more terminal capacity is not required. This doesn't work. It would be most likely be an entirely new service. There are a couple of possible workarounds, but neither of them look satisfactory. Perhaps you could extend the Swindon-Westbury service, having it reverse at Swindon, but that service isn't nearly frequent enough to be very useful at Cirencester. Alternatively, perhaps you could build a triangle junction near Kemble and have Swindon-Cheltenham trains reverse at Cirencester, but that has obvious implications for journey times for those trains.
All the same, possibly 3 of 4 conditions seems a reasonable start.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---
I believe I'm quite interesting, though I say so myself...
I would say that Swindon counts as a major employment centre. It's a large distribution centre and there's certainly a number of large businesses on the southern side of the town.
The East Gloucestershire Railway was originally conceived as a railway from Cheltenham to Farringdon, with a branch to Witney. In the end GWR objections reduced it to running from Fairford to Witney - the design at Fairford shows it was intended as a through station.
Yawn - add it to your crayonista pipe-dream list of other unrealistic schemes you keep championing along with Northampton - Peterborough.
It would certainly be nice and a big boon for the town: no matter how "convenient" Kemble is, actually having a station proper is a big plus. However I likewise see it as rather unlikely when there are roads to be funded. Perhaps it's small enough that something could be done on a more local level (not heavy rail of course).
With IEP there will be an hourly Cheltenham-London service replacing the shuttle (AFAIAA).
If it were magically to be funded as a heavy rail reopening, retaining the shuttle between IC services and travelling via Ciren would work. With the couple of million that were saved by the reopening being under budget, I'd open stations at Quedgeley and Brimscombe and get a proper local rail service
. And a chord down to Bristol at Stonehouse of course...
With IEP there will be an hourly Cheltenham-London service replacing the shuttle (AFAIAA).
If it were magically to be funded as a heavy rail reopening, retaining the shuttle between IC services and travelling via Ciren would work. With the couple of million that were saved by the reopening being under budget, I'd open stations at Quedgeley and Brimscombe and get a proper local rail service
. And a chord down to Bristol at Stonehouse of course...
sprinterguy
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This sounds like a pretty good idea to me and I am surprised that it is attracting so much negative comment on this forum. In my view the line has parallels with the Stourbridge shuttle (shorter, but serviced by a third party light rail operator and finishing outside of the town centre, albeit closer than the Cirencester scheme could achieve) and the Princes Risborough - Aylesbury line (heavy rail, slightly longer, but also served by a dedicated shuttle), neither of which as far as I am aware are considered to be basket cases.
If a third party organisation wishes to fund the construction of a self-contained shuttle between Kemble and Cirencester and make a go of it (although probably with Cotswold District Council support?), then good on them. Cirencester could do with an improved public transport infrastructure to reduce its' current car bound state for the influx of visitors to the town.
If a third party organisation wishes to fund the construction of a self-contained shuttle between Kemble and Cirencester and make a go of it (although probably with Cotswold District Council support?), then good on them. Cirencester could do with an improved public transport infrastructure to reduce its' current car bound state for the influx of visitors to the town.
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Stroud Valleys
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If the Witney-Oxford line was reopened as well as the Cirencester-Kemble line, then it naturally falls as a potential to reopen to Fairford.
Problem is there has never been a railway line between Fairford and Cirencester.
How would a railway be built from Cirencester to Fairford, especially with the road layouts around Cirencester?
Problem is there has never been a railway line between Fairford and Cirencester.
How would a railway be built from Cirencester to Fairford, especially with the road layouts around Cirencester?
The opening of some kind of public rapid transit between Witney and Oxford (I suspect more along the lines of some kind of high-speed light rail - or, more likely, guided busway, regrettably - rather than heavy rail - would make sense, and quite possibly even make a profit. There is a fair amount of commuting, and the current transport infrastructure (A40) is by all measures inadequate to cope with peak-hour traffic.
I'm far less convinced by Cirencester to Kemble however, for several reasons - economic and demographic ones, above all.
You can start by comparing the existing provision of public transport in Cirencester as compared with in Witney as a starting point to suggest why. Witney has a frequent premium bus service to Oxford, which still runs at relatively high frequencies (20-30 mins) in the evenings and on Sundays; Cirencester's public transport provision is more limited. Could a faster public transport link that continued to Swindon tap unmet demand? Perhaps, but it would need to be frequent, and properly linked to the town. But realistically I can't see where the demand would come to make the service sufficiently frequent for it to work.. And whereas Oxford is the only major town within easy range of Witney, Cirencester's big-city allegiances are torn between Swindon, Gloucester and Cheltenham. The current (and long-term) miserable state of the bus services between Cirencester and Kemble also is telling.
I don't think the comparison with Stourbridge stands up, either. The economic and social situation of Cirencester is very different from that of Stourbridge!
I'm far less convinced by Cirencester to Kemble however, for several reasons - economic and demographic ones, above all.
You can start by comparing the existing provision of public transport in Cirencester as compared with in Witney as a starting point to suggest why. Witney has a frequent premium bus service to Oxford, which still runs at relatively high frequencies (20-30 mins) in the evenings and on Sundays; Cirencester's public transport provision is more limited. Could a faster public transport link that continued to Swindon tap unmet demand? Perhaps, but it would need to be frequent, and properly linked to the town. But realistically I can't see where the demand would come to make the service sufficiently frequent for it to work.. And whereas Oxford is the only major town within easy range of Witney, Cirencester's big-city allegiances are torn between Swindon, Gloucester and Cheltenham. The current (and long-term) miserable state of the bus services between Cirencester and Kemble also is telling.
I don't think the comparison with Stourbridge stands up, either. The economic and social situation of Cirencester is very different from that of Stourbridge!
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The same way the road builders smashed through and took over the railway lines?
Seriously, cars can be geared to go over steep humps and climb out of deep hollows, so roads can easily be diverted. If you see the Air Balloon Loop scheme linked to earlier, I think it proves how easy this is to achieve.
I had a further thought about my reopening of the suburban route from Glos to Cirencester. Perhaps Kemble could be made a triangular station and those trains or tram trains would not need to reverse there, even.
What on earth is natural about reopening to Fairford? There was nothing natural about the line in the first place, as Witney-Fairford (more accurately a field a mile outside Fairford) was, as noted above, the only bit to be built of a scheme that was otherwise stillborn. And it may be a town, but the population is all of 4,000.
Going west of Witney to Carterton/Brize Norton would make sense to serve another town with a fast-growing population and the RAF's largest base but Fairford is not really part of the Oxford travel to work area, nor is Cirencester, where most people commuting for work go to Swindon, Gloucester and Cheltenham.
MedwayValiant
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I think that has to be right. As things stand, Cirencester has a half hourly bus to Swindon (the second bus is a recent addition, and when that was tried before a few years ago it didn't last very long), and an hourly bus to Cheltenham. There are also less frequent buses to Stroud, Gloucester, and Kemble Station.
That "miserable" service to Kemble Station is currently six buses a day, and it's never been substantially more. The small operator which runs that service might not be in a position to put on a bus in connection with every train even if it wanted to - but Stagecoach certainly could if it wished.
Stagecoach doesn't miss many tricks, and they'd have tried it if they thought it even might work. Doesn't that rather reinforce the idea that the demand does not and will not exist?
Ergo my suggestion of resurrecting the Golden Valley service, extended to Cirencester, wthout reversal at Kemble, due to my new 'Ambergate' suggestion at Kemble..
Harbornite
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Well done for noticing my mistake...
route:oxford
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Probably because the roads are awful.
It's why I once turned down a decent pay increase to work in Dunfermline. Whilst it's "only" 22 miles or so from Bridge of Allan - the reality is around an hour by car.
If West Oxfordshire & East Gloucestershire were opened up by public transport, it's likely that more people would consider commuting and it would drive a massive home-building programme.
For Wiltshire, hundreds of BMW staff do the 420 daily as it is far better lifestyle to buy a house in Swindon and drive it than to live in a rented room for at least £600 a month in Oxford.
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I was going to make a similar point. A bus connection between Kemble station and Cirencester will never be of much interest to Stagecoach as it would leech revenue from their services to Swindon and make more money for First Group. Surely First should be more interested in providing a regular link - do they have any services/infrastructure in the area?
Not sure that your suggestions would work that well without a complete rebuild of Kemble station, a new approach road and replacement of a lot of car parking.
And I can't see any point in reopening stations in the valley east of Stroud. Precious few people live there, the mills which once created traffic are now light industrial units and the like, employing precious few people, and while plenty of new homes have been built in Chalford they are all up on the top of the hill, not anywhere near the railway.
A massive house-building programme? What do you think has been going on in West Oxfordshire and the Cotswold district of Gloucestershire - notably in Witney, Carterton and Cirencester - for 40 years, with plenty more housing already in the pipeline, never mind what eventually goes into the new Local Plans.
Where a massive housebuilding programme is actually needed is in Oxford, rather than piling ever more homes into the likes of Witney, Carterton, Didcot and Bicester, or exporting them even further afield into Gloucestershire. Would the BMW workers live in Swindon if they could find a home at a sensible price in Oxford? Of course not.
First Group doesn't have a bus operation anywhere near the area - and Stagecoach won't run anything at all that doesn't make it plenty of money, hence the last bus out of Swindon for Cirencester is as early as 18.35. Stagecoach used to run lots more services around Cirencester but pulled out of these routes as the subsidy on offer declined.
I'm not sure about that logic. It could just be that the initial investment (and initial running at a loss) is not something Stagecoach is willing to risk, perhaps sensibly as they are a commercial organisation, even if in the long run you could build a profitable route out of it.
There's also a cultural issue - buses outside cities are generally seen as being for pensioners and school children, and lots of people would never consider boarding a bus in a million years. Typically Cirencester-Kemble's business would be commuters, and to be blunt commuters are not typical bus users outside cities (many rural bus routes, even well-established and profitable ones, don't even try to run at practical times for commuters). Also there is the issue of legislation which makes co-operation between buses and trains very difficult to do legally, and also makes it difficult for local authorities to step in and do anything to improve the situation.
I do think that drives a lot of these campaigns for completely non-viable rail re-openings - there's a demand for public transport, and people would use a train (because it doesn't have the issues of how buses are run and marketed in the UK) but it's hopelessly unaffordable for the purpose.
muddythefish
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Yawn - add this thread to your usual rubbishing of revivalist schemes while you promote more roads so you can drive more easily at the taxpayers' expense. Like all the others, you've been shot down in flames on this thread too by people who actually know what they are talking about.
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I've been wondering about this - I can see why a short branch might be seen as attractive as a cheaper option, but given the primary benefits of rail are usually seen only over longer distances, I can't see this making sense unless part of a wider long-term scheme to restore the link between Cheltenham and Swindon, abet connecting to the Golden Valley line into Swindon.
It would have more potential by virtue of covering a wider area, would be more direct to Swindon (and its connections), and would serve Blundon (pop. 12k+) directly. If capacity on the Golden Valley line isn't an issue and the increased costs don't stack up against the wider coverage, then rebuilding the branch as planned, but with the station aligned for an extension towards the former line to Cheltenham would seem a *much* better idea than a sharp turn and terminating in the middle of nowhere to avoid a simple bridge over Spratsgate Lane, surely? Even a station on the south side of Wilkinson Road would seemingly make more sense.
Getting protections into the council's development plan could suffice to work towards eventually reacquiring a corridor back from further development through the industrial estate to the former site of Watermoor, and then it's not that many buildings to acquire and you've made it to the former trackbed north out of town, even if you have to build the line up on a modern-style viaduct to account for the modern road layouts.
Unless you have something grander in mind, I just can't see how such a short branch can wash its face, and I'm not even sure a grander scheme could wash its face either. :/
It would have more potential by virtue of covering a wider area, would be more direct to Swindon (and its connections), and would serve Blundon (pop. 12k+) directly. If capacity on the Golden Valley line isn't an issue and the increased costs don't stack up against the wider coverage, then rebuilding the branch as planned, but with the station aligned for an extension towards the former line to Cheltenham would seem a *much* better idea than a sharp turn and terminating in the middle of nowhere to avoid a simple bridge over Spratsgate Lane, surely? Even a station on the south side of Wilkinson Road would seemingly make more sense.
Getting protections into the council's development plan could suffice to work towards eventually reacquiring a corridor back from further development through the industrial estate to the former site of Watermoor, and then it's not that many buildings to acquire and you've made it to the former trackbed north out of town, even if you have to build the line up on a modern-style viaduct to account for the modern road layouts.
Unless you have something grander in mind, I just can't see how such a short branch can wash its face, and I'm not even sure a grander scheme could wash its face either. :/
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