Pontefract Baghill & the Dearne Valley - is there any future?

70014IronDuke · 30 Jan 2018

Considering the various threads on some hopelessly optimistic reopenings, lost lines and the like, I'm surprised not to have seen more talk about this line and it's 'remainderisation" (if I can use that word).

I mean, the line EXISTS, and it wouldn't, presumably, cost anything in capital investment to run more trains down it. Do none of the passenger executives not believe there are passengers willing to use it? Could it be used as a route for some new service (how about Nottingham - Middlebrough/Durham Coast via Pontefract)? Or is it more capacity problems at Sheffield/York than no potential demand?

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Harpers Tate · 30 Jan 2018

AFAIK it still has some ludicrously slow speed limits in places, including certain junctions. I think for this to offer a meaningful route, these, at the least, would need some expenditure. I, for one, would certainly like to see an alternative route to the stupidly costly ECML to get to York - and I say that on the (possibly false or optimistic) assumption that another route and another operator might attract another more realistic fare structure.

YorkshireBear · 30 Jan 2018

70014IronDuke said:
Considering the various threads on some hopelessly optimistic reopenings, lost lines and the like, I'm surprised not to have seen more talk about this line and it's 'remainderisation" (if I can use that word).

I mean, the line EXISTS, and it wouldn't, presumably, cost anything in capital investment to run more trains down it. Do none of the passenger executives not believe there are passengers willing to use it? Could it be used as a route for some new service (how about Nottingham - Middlebrough/Durham Coast via Pontefract)? Or is it more capacity problems at Sheffield/York than no potential demand?

The service you suggest would never stand up on its own.

However I have always though that the stopping pattern of the existing service would work well. It would allow more stopping trains at Church Fenton and Ulleskelf without putting them on the Micklefield to Leeds section. Give pontefract new links. And provide an alternative to XC for Sheffield to York and direct links to meadowhall. I would look at it though as a Morecambe style frequency.

tbtc · 30 Jan 2018

Various reasons why it won't work.

The linespeeds (due to mining) make it tediously slow, but then a line with such poor frequency is going to struggle to justify millions of pounds of spending to upgrade it.

The fact that it doesn't serve anywhere large between Rotherham and York (i.e. no Doncaster, Wakefield or Leeds).

At the moment, you can go to Sheffield station in the morning and take...

09:21 to York (arrives 10:30, journey of 1h09, stops at Wakefield and Leeds)
09:30 to York (arrives 10:47, journey of 1h17, stops at Meadowhall, Rotherham Central, Swinton, Moorthorpe, Pontefract Baghill, Sherburn in Elmet, Church Fenton, Ulleskelf)
09:47 to York (arrives 10:39, journey of 52m, stops at Doncaster)

...so it's hard to find a niche for the Pontefract line - it's much slower but also doesn't serve anywhere of significance north of Rotherham.

Additional services would mean more trains at Church Fenton and Ulleskelf but then those places would be reluctant to lose existing services to Leeds, so I don't think you'd be able to speed other services up.

Talking of Leeds, the bigger priority in Pontefract would be additional Leeds services (possibly by diverting the Leeds - Castleford - Barnsley service to Pontefract instead?) - additional Sheffield/ York services might be "nice to have", but not essential.

You could come up with brand new services to try to justify it, you could try to entice passengers to sit on a slower service by offering artificially cheaper fares, but I'm not sure that either are the best use of resources.

70014IronDuke · 30 Jan 2018

Harpers Tate said:
AFAIK it still has some ludicrously slow speed limits in places, including certain junctions. I think for this to offer a meaningful route, these, at the least, would need some expenditure. ....

I hadn't realise that. I think the one and only time I used the line - it was on a Sunday NE - SW cross country way back, probably 1972, with a Class 45 or 46 - it seemed like an ok main line. (But it was a long time ago

)

YorkshireBear said:
The service you suggest would never stand up on its own.
...

I think I was being a bit flippant - but there is no emoticon for that - in the hope it might produce some alternative suggestions

tbtc said:
Various reasons why it won't work.

The linespeeds (due to mining) make it tediously slow, but then a line with such poor frequency is going to struggle to justify millions of pounds of spending to upgrade it.

The fact that it doesn't serve anywhere large between Rotherham and York (i.e. no Doncaster, Wakefield or Leeds).

At the moment, you can go to Sheffield station in the morning and take...

09:21 to York (arrives 10:30, journey of 1h09, stops at Wakefield and Leeds)

09:30 to York (arrives 10:47, journey of 1h17, stops at Meadowhall, Rotherham Central, Swinton, Moorthorpe, Pontefract Baghill, Sherburn in Elmet, Church Fenton, Ulleskelf)

09:47 to York (arrives 10:39, journey of 52m, stops at Doncaster)

...so it's hard to find a niche for the Pontefract line - it's much slower but also doesn't serve anywhere of significance north of Rotherham. ... .

Hmmm. All sounds a very solid argument for doing not much, if anything at all, I agree. Shame, really.

xotGD · 30 Jan 2018

tbtc said:
Various reasons why it won't work.

The linespeeds (due to mining) make it tediously slow, but then a line with such poor frequency is going to struggle to justify millions of pounds of spending to upgrade it.

The fact that it doesn't serve anywhere large between Rotherham and York (i.e. no Doncaster, Wakefield or Leeds).

At the moment, you can go to Sheffield station in the morning and take...

09:21 to York (arrives 10:30, journey of 1h09, stops at Wakefield and Leeds)

09:30 to York (arrives 10:47, journey of 1h17, stops at Meadowhall, Rotherham Central, Swinton, Moorthorpe, Pontefract Baghill, Sherburn in Elmet, Church Fenton, Ulleskelf)

09:47 to York (arrives 10:39, journey of 52m, stops at Doncaster)

...so it's hard to find a niche for the Pontefract line - it's much slower but also doesn't serve anywhere of significance north of Rotherham.

Additional services would mean more trains at Church Fenton and Ulleskelf but then those places would be reluctant to lose existing services to Leeds, so I don't think you'd be able to speed other services up.

Talking of Leeds, the bigger priority in Pontefract would be additional Leeds services (possibly by diverting the Leeds - Castleford - Barnsley service to Pontefract instead?) - additional Sheffield/ York services might be "nice to have", but not essential.

You could come up with brand new services to try to justify it, you could try to entice passengers to sit on a slower service by offering artificially cheaper fares, but I'm not sure that either are the best use of resources.

Ponte is getting more trains to Leeds, with the extension of the Knottingley - Wakey services to Leeds due from May.

jimm · 30 Jan 2018

70014IronDuke said:
Hmmm. All sounds a very solid argument for doing not much, if anything at all, I agree. Shame, really.

I think your summary is probably about right.

Probably the fundamental issue with this line is that it doesn't really fit with people's travel patterns - people from Pontefract want to go to Wakefield and Leeds, not Sheffield or York.

If it served places that had no other rail services, then more of an effort probably would be made with this route - but every station served between Sheffield and York, except Pontefract Baghill, has calls by trains on other routes that take the people living in those places to their key local centres.

greyman42 · 30 Jan 2018

The York-Sheffield route via Pontefract was the main cross country route in the 1980's. Were the line speeds considerably faster then?

lyndhurst25 · 30 Jan 2018

Not sure why all the negativity on this line. There used to be a daily service of around 6 trains each way in before it was "temporarily" downgraded due to a shortage of units in the early 1990s. On the occasions I used the local trains from Rotherham to York they were by no means empty. Just around the time of the downgrade, new stations were opened on the route at Meadowhall, Rotherham Central, Swinton, Thurnscoe and Goldthorpe. None of these are served by the fast trains that currently run between Sheffield and York. I don't think that anyone is in a position to say that an upgraded Sheffield to York stopping service wouldn't attract a reasonable number of passengers. The current service, being next to useless, is no guide. People from Pontefract travel to Leeds and Wakefield by train because those are the places with a decent service. I'm sure that York, Meadowhall and Sheffield as destinations would attract a decent number of passengers too. On this line it may be a case of "if you build it, they will come" (but you don't even have to build it as it's already there).

ashworth · 30 Jan 2018

Looking at the current timetable, I presume that one unit does two return journeys from Sheffield to York each day. Perhaps just one more additional return journey each afternoon would be enough to tap into the leisure market, especially on Saturdays to both York and Meadowhall. Currently passengers, especially from Pontefract, can travel out to both destinations in the morning but there is no train for the return journey late afternoon. No wonder the trains are so lightly loaded if there is no easy return journey. I can appreciate that there may not be demand for a regular service throughout the day, but even a sparse service can be timed to make it more useful.

billio · 30 Jan 2018

ashworth said:
Looking at the current timetable, I presume that one unit does two return journeys from Sheffield to York each day. Perhaps just one more additional return journey each afternoon would be enough to tap into the leisure market, especially on Saturdays to both York and Meadowhall. Currently passengers, especially from Pontefract, can travel out to both destinations in the morning but there is no train for the return journey late afternoon. No wonder the trains are so lightly loaded if there is no easy return journey. I can appreciate that there may not be demand for a regular service throughout the day, but even a sparse service can be timed to make it more useful.

The current service means that if you are travelling from York and stations south of there, you get just over one hour in Meadowhall and less in Sheffield before you have to return. The journey from Ulleskelf and Sherburn is significantly quicker than the route via Leeds. If the current service was properly balanced and more frequent, it would almost certainly be more widely used. There are new houses being built at Ulleskelf and a large new estate at Sherburn so the services on this line probably need a re-vamp.
(Off-topic: does the service at Ulleskelf suffer because the platforms are on the wrong pair of lines ?.)

philjo · 30 Jan 2018

In 1996/97 I travelled in a pacer which went that way from Scarborough via York to Sheffield.

jimm · 31 Jan 2018

billio said:
The current service means that if you are travelling from York and stations south of there, you get just over one hour in Meadowhall and less in Sheffield before you have to return. The journey from Ulleskelf and Sherburn is significantly quicker than the route via Leeds. If the current service was properly balanced and more frequent, it would almost certainly be more widely used. There are new houses being built at Ulleskelf and a large new estate at Sherburn so the services on this line probably need a re-vamp.
(Off-topic: does the service at Ulleskelf suffer because the platforms are on the wrong pair of lines ?.)

But how many people do you think actually want to go all the way to Meadowhall or Sheffield from Ulleskelf or Sherburn? And on a regular basis?

If you live in both those places, you will gravitate to York and Leeds for work, shopping or anything else. The same as people in Pontefract want to go to Leeds and Wakefield. If local travel patterns do not run along a particular axis, which they don't in the case of this route between Moorthorpe and Church Fenton, then it's hard to see where the traffic to justify more services is going to come from.

ash39 · 31 Jan 2018

All I can add to this topic is that, whilst the arguments against the line all make sense on paper, anecdotal evidence of seeing these services is that they are often pretty busy.

Where these passengers are travelling from/to I have no idea however.

lejog · 31 Jan 2018

While I've only travelled on this service a handful of times, it was noticeable that while there were a number of passengers boarding at York or Sheffield there were not many travelling through Pontefract, indeed I was the only through passenger in the carriage on occasion.

YorkshireBear · 31 Jan 2018

tbtc said:
Various reasons why it won't work.

The linespeeds (due to mining) make it tediously slow, but then a line with such poor frequency is going to struggle to justify millions of pounds of spending to upgrade it.

The fact that it doesn't serve anywhere large between Rotherham and York (i.e. no Doncaster, Wakefield or Leeds).

At the moment, you can go to Sheffield station in the morning and take...

09:21 to York (arrives 10:30, journey of 1h09, stops at Wakefield and Leeds)

09:30 to York (arrives 10:47, journey of 1h17, stops at Meadowhall, Rotherham Central, Swinton, Moorthorpe, Pontefract Baghill, Sherburn in Elmet, Church Fenton, Ulleskelf)

09:47 to York (arrives 10:39, journey of 52m, stops at Doncaster)

...so it's hard to find a niche for the Pontefract line - it's much slower but also doesn't serve anywhere of significance north of Rotherham.

Additional services would mean more trains at Church Fenton and Ulleskelf but then those places would be reluctant to lose existing services to Leeds, so I don't think you'd be able to speed other services up.

Talking of Leeds, the bigger priority in Pontefract would be additional Leeds services (possibly by diverting the Leeds - Castleford - Barnsley service to Pontefract instead?) - additional Sheffield/ York services might be "nice to have", but not essential.

You could come up with brand new services to try to justify it, you could try to entice passengers to sit on a slower service by offering artificially cheaper fares, but I'm not sure that either are the best use of resources.

Really good post.

Probably sums up the realistic prospects accurately. Despite my comments on the opportunities it could create, justifying them would be another thing.

Wolf · 31 Jan 2018

Harpers Tate said:
AFAIK it still has some ludicrously slow speed limits in places, including certain junctions.

Are you sure? Which junctions/sections are slow? I know a decent chunk of the route between moorthorpe and baghill is 60/75, obviously pacers and sprinters can do the higher speeds on a differential. The Rotherham central bit from aldwark to Holmes junctions is slow but apart from that i can remember what the rest of the route from moorthorpe - Fenton is like.

SprinterMan · 31 Jan 2018

From May, train services are going to be increased a full 50% on this line! 3 trains per day in each direction...

http://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/search/advanced/PFR/2018/06/13/0000-2359?stp=WVS&show=all&order=wtt

Better than nothing I suppose.

IanXC · 31 Jan 2018

I think a key opportunity for increasing service on this route will be when the Sheffield to Leeds via Moorthorpe stopper demands a half hourly service at the south end. It seems unlikely there is a path through Wakefield Westgate, but effectively running a Sheffield to Moorthorpe additional that happens to go to York would seem a more plausible option.

evergreenadam · 31 Jan 2018

SprinterMan said:
From May, train services are going to be increased a full 50% on this line! 3 trains per day in each direction...

http://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/search/advanced/PFR/2018/06/13/0000-2359?stp=WVS&show=all&order=wtt

Better than nothing I suppose.

Those timings would certainly be a step forward by allowing for a full offpeak day trip from Pontefract to York and for a half day offpeak trip from Pontefract to Meadowhall, the timings for a half day offpeak trip to Sheffield are too tight really.

An extra departure in the early evening from Sheffield would allow for a full offpeak day trip from Pontefract to either Meadowhall or Sheffield. But both can also be reached from Pontefract with a change of trains at Wakefield or Castleford.

An extra early evening departure from Sheffield would still not make the service good enough for commuters though, the services start too late in the morning in both directions to get to work.

70014IronDuke · 1 Feb 2018

SprinterMan said:
From May, train services are going to be increased a full 50% on this line! 3 trains per day in each direction...

http://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/search/advanced/PFR/2018/06/13/0000-2359?stp=WVS&show=all&order=wtt

Better than nothing I suppose.

One step - in each direction - at a time, eh?

At least it shows the service is not entirely forgotten, I suppose.

backontrack · 2 Feb 2018

A station at Ferrybridge would be a good idea.

47802 · 2 Feb 2018

An expensive Fresh air service which should be axed, No stations affected except Baghill but of course Pontefract has alternate stations and Services, last time I saw one of these services it was a case of spot the passenger. It annoys me when money is spent of this sort of nonsense when it could be better used on more important routes.

Bwlch y Groes · 2 Feb 2018

I think WYCA were supposed to be undertaking a study of potential extra stations as part of a regular service a few years ago. Not sure what the outcome was

The stations proposed were Ackworth, Ferrybridge, and Monk Fryston

Bevan Price · 2 Feb 2018

I think the best option for serving Pontefract Baghill would be to forget the local service, and instead run some existing Cross Country services that way, say every 2 hours, calling (north of Sheffield) at Meadowhall, Pontefract Baghill then York. (And also reopen Rotherham Masborough to put that town back on the long-distance network - the route via Rotherham Central is painfully slow.)

backontrack · 2 Feb 2018

Bwlch y Groes said:
I think WYCA were supposed to be undertaking a study of potential extra stations as part of a regular service a few years ago. Not sure what the outcome was

The stations proposed were Ackworth, Ferrybridge, and Monk Fryston

Ackworth would be a good idea.

Bevan Price said:
I think the best option for serving Pontefract Baghill would be to forget the local service, and instead run some existing Cross Country services that way, say every 2 hours, calling (north of Sheffield) at Meadowhall, Pontefract Baghill then York. (And also reopen Rotherham Masborough to put that town back on the long-distance network - the route via Rotherham Central is painfully slow.)

An interesting proposal.

peri · 2 Feb 2018

One thing all forum members should know is it is a very interesting run down from York.
Seems to be good views most of the way, best Northern line East of Leeds IMHO.

IanXC · 2 Feb 2018

47802 said:
An expensive Fresh air service which should be axed, No stations affected except Baghill but of course Pontefract has alternate stations and Services, last time I saw one of these services it was a case of spot the passenger. It annoys me when money is spent of this sort of nonsense when it could be better used on more important routes.

The last couple of times I have been on it it loaded to about 60%, plenty of people with Suitcases and Advance tickets too - presumably due to the occasions when it can be the fastest route.

a_c_skinner · 2 Feb 2018

peri said:
One thing all forum members should know is it is a very interesting run down from York.
Seems to be good views most of the way, best Northern line East of Leeds IMHO.

Yes, I suspect less interesting than a few years ago as coal traffic has waned.

johnnychips · 3 Feb 2018

Bevan Price said:
I think the best option for serving Pontefract Baghill would be to forget the local service, and instead run some existing Cross Country services that way, say every 2 hours, calling (north of Sheffield) at Meadowhall, Pontefract Baghill then York. (And also reopen Rotherham Masborough to put that town back on the long-distance network - the route via Rotherham Central is painfully slow.)

This would presumably be at the expense of the route via Doncaster. I am not sure if it would be quicker, but I am sure that Doncaster would generate more passengers and interchange opportunities than Pontefract.

You could rebuild Rotherham Masborough at considerable expense, but would XC want to stop there, considering they don’t even stop at Meadowhall; and would TPE and Northern want an extra stop on their fast services to Cleethorpes and Hull? Certainly they wouldn’t swap it for the Meadowhall halt. Rotherham has suffered a lot both retail- and transport-wise by the construction of Meadowhall, but I fear it’s too late to change now.

Pontefract Baghill & the Dearne Valley - is there any future?

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