If you were controlling the Reshaping of the railways, which lines would you shut or save?

muddythefish · 3 May 2018

ac6000cw said:
Cool it guys - this has nothing to do with the topic of this thread...

Fair point.

The actual problem is AOwen would build more motorways than Ernest Marples and makes a habit of denigrating members with whom he disagrees, usually with insults. I'm not the only one to have remarked on it.

RailUK Forums

Andrewlong · 3 May 2018

70014IronDuke said:
Now, whether the GC could have been singled and made into a basic railway ..... that's another story. I would love to have seen it tried. But if you are going to have to close one of the GC or the Midland - please, look at the plain facts. You don't have to be born in Derby with a silver Wyvern in your mouth to see those and make the right decision. You don't even need economics O level. A kid of 15 could do it.

BR did rationalise the GC from the 1950s onwards. Look on Wikipedia under GCR for all the country stations closed in 1958 and 1963. All this romantic talk of continental loading guages is worthless if your services are not stopping anywhere to bring in passenger revenue. Closing the GCR was a shame but really the business case for it in the first place was doubtful.

B&I · 3 May 2018

Metal_gee_man said:
My very honest scenario should have been, NO BRANCH LINES only through lines, creating circular routes, creating 2 paths to a destination not just one creating extra capacity but also providing a robust network when things go wrong, branch lines create a waste of resources and money! Imagine if the skegness route continued round the coast up via Grimsby and back towards Doncaster, or the Felixstowe route continued north via Ipswich and up towards Yarmouth/Norwich or most importantly if the Devon/Cornwall mainline had another route that didn't have to go via Dawlish, we all know that rising sea levels will eventually claim that line!
Portsmouth is an exception because its size, Liverpool is very much the same but circular routes work better in my opinion
Lines that shouldn't exist Isle of Sheppey to Sheerness, Marks Tey to Sudbury...I could continue!

Wasn't Liverpool originally supposed to have had a long loop off the WCML to a station on the waterfront, but the dock owners (rather stupidly, as if built with sufficient capacity it would have served their interests) kibboshed it ?

ChiefPlanner · 3 May 2018

Andrewlong said:
BR did rationalise the GC from the 1950s onwards. Look on Wikipedia under GCR for all the country stations closed in 1958 and 1963. All this romantic talk of continental loading guages is worthless if your services are not stopping anywhere to bring in passenger revenue. Closing the GCR was a shame but really the business case for it in the first place was doubtful.

Old story of "last in , first out" - heroic though the gesture was on the grand scale , all major cities were already well served by established operators , and the middle section was basically a traffic desert. Talked before about the loss of long distance coal flows from Notts etc to the South East which declined from the 1950's ......

I struggle to think of the "Continental Gauge" - not sure if it really was , and I doubt there was any meaningfull traffic as the GC was not brilliantly connected to either Dover or Harwich.....

B&I · 3 May 2018

yorksrob said:
Interestingly, Marks Tey - Sudbury used to be a secondary through route, but the closure programme truncated it into a branch.

If you were building a network from scratch, you would probably build mainly through routes, but some towns just aren't geographically suited to through routes, such as Sheerness.

You do wonder what the savings were on truncating certain through routes eg Sudbury, Lewes-Uckfield, Colne-Skipton, Buxton-Matlock, given the useful connections lost as a result.

yorksrob · 3 May 2018

B&I said:
You do wonder what the savings were on truncating certain through routes eg Sudbury, Lewes-Uckfield, Colne-Skipton, Buxton-Matlock, given the useful connections lost as a result.

I suspect considerably less than they'd anticipated.

Wilts Wanderer · 3 May 2018

I’m pleased my Padstow-Bodmin example has been received reasonably well. Whoever posted about Padstow being akin to St Ives in the summer is spot on. One point worth noting - however wealthy summer visitors are, if St Ives is any example, people might drive to/from their holiday but during their stay they often use the train to get around the locality for day trips etc. The Camel area has many amenities for local tourists. GWR has successfully promoted and developed this sort of useage of their trains in Devon and Cornwall over the last decade, meaning that the branches generate almost as much (or more) traffic than they receive via connections off the main line.

(Interestingly the Bodmin-Padstow bus route is considered sufficiently important to advertise through railway booking systems and on the CIS at Bodmin Parkway. Through tickets are available, so from a commercial perspective the branch still effectively exists.)

Gareth Marston · 4 May 2018

ChiefPlanner said:
Talked before about the loss of long distance coal flows from Notts etc to the South East which declined from the 1950's ......

Coal production in the UK in 1960 was two thirds of what it was pre World War 1. A cursory glance at the Reshaping Report shows that "Minerals" were a very profitable part of business even at the artificial rates imposed by the Railway Canal Traffic Acts. Its clear that the Victorian legislation structured the industry's finances in such a way that the profit from the carrying of Black Gold cross subsidized the rest of the system where Government held prices down.

The decline of King Coal explains a lot about the railways finances in the 1950's/1960's.

coppercapped · 4 May 2018

Gareth Marston said:
Coal production in the UK in 1960 was two thirds of what it was pre World War 1. A cursory glance at the Reshaping Report shows that "Minerals" were a very profitable part of business even at the artificial rates imposed by the Railway Canal Traffic Acts. Its clear that the Victorian legislation structured the industry's finances in such a way that the profit from the carrying of Black Gold cross subsidized the rest of the system where Government held prices down.

The decline of King Coal explains a lot about the railways finances in the 1950's/1960's.

Absolutely, there is truth in what you say about cross-subsidisation of much of the railways’ operations by the coal traffic. To add flesh to the argument it is interesting to look at trends in coal production. The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy has published an informative spreadsheet covering the quantity of coal mined each year since 1853 as well as the number of deep mines, opencast mines, imports, employment and consumption by various industries. It includes a list of output per year averaged over 10 year periods to even out such effects as the weather and the health of the steel industry in any one year. The figures for million tonnes per year for each decade are:

1893-1902 207
1903-1912 258
1913-1922 245
1923-1932 237
1933-1942 225
1943-1952 208
1953-1962 216
1963-1972 170
1973-1982 125
1983-1992 95
1993-2002 44
2003-2012 20

Interestingly there is a peak between 1953 and 1962, just at the time when the railways’ finances went into free fall. Possibly there were changes in haulage rates or the haulage distances reduced - a topic for further research!

Coal consumption by the railways remained between 14 and 15 million tonnes per year from 1913-1922 to 1943-1952 after which it declined.

The Ham · 4 May 2018

coppercapped said:
Absolutely, there is truth in what you say about cross-subsidisation of much of the railways’ operations by the coal traffic. To add flesh to the argument it is interesting to look at trends in coal production. The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy has published an informative spreadsheet covering the quantity of coal mined each year since 1853 as well as the number of deep mines, opencast mines, imports, employment and consumption by various industries. It includes a list of output per year averaged over 10 year periods to even out such effects as the weather and the health of the steel industry in any one year. The figures for million tonnes per year for each decade are:

1893-1902 207
1903-1912 258
1913-1922 245
1923-1932 237
1933-1942 225
1943-1952 208
1953-1962 216
1963-1972 170
1973-1982 125
1983-1992 95
1993-2002 44
2003-2012 20

Interestingly there is a peak between 1953 and 1962, just at the time when the railways’ finances went into free fall. Possibly there were changes in haulage rates or the haulage distances reduced - a topic for further research!

Coal consumption by the railways remained between 14 and 15 million tonnes per year from 1913-1922 to 1943-1952 after which it declined.

That's very interesting, thank you.

I quite like that it indicates that we are probably now using about the same account of coal nationally as the railways used to use when it was steam powered (which just shows how fast we've started to decarbon - which isn't too say that we've done enough but does indicate that we are certainly getting there with coal usage).

Gareth Marston · 5 May 2018

coppercapped said:
Absolutely, there is truth in what you say about cross-subsidisation of much of the railways’ operations by the coal traffic. To add flesh to the argument it is interesting to look at trends in coal production. The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy has published an informative spreadsheet covering the quantity of coal mined each year since 1853 as well as the number of deep mines, opencast mines, imports, employment and consumption by various industries. It includes a list of output per year averaged over 10 year periods to even out such effects as the weather and the health of the steel industry in any one year. The figures for million tonnes per year for each decade are:

1893-1902 207
1903-1912 258
1913-1922 245
1923-1932 237
1933-1942 225
1943-1952 208
1953-1962 216
1963-1972 170
1973-1982 125
1983-1992 95
1993-2002 44
2003-2012 20

Interestingly there is a peak between 1953 and 1962, just at the time when the railways’ finances went into free fall. Possibly there were changes in haulage rates or the haulage distances reduced - a topic for further research!

Coal consumption by the railways remained between 14 and 15 million tonnes per year from 1913-1922 to 1943-1952 after which it declined.

I think this graph of electricity generation largely answers your question.
https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.euanmearns.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/UK_electricity_generation_source.png&imgrefurl=http://euanmearns.com/uk-electricity-generation-statistics-1920-2012/&h=652&w=741&tbnid=-pP_IL3aAZa4_M:&tbnh=160&tbnw=181&usg=__Q8QgbahRuQRXe0oP0X__zP4reuE=&vet=10ahUKEwi3o7Kn_e3aAhXmBsAKHRiWA78Q9QEIMDAA..i&docid=z68kdalrUpYRJM&client=firefox-b-ab&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi3o7Kn_e3aAhXmBsAKHRiWA78Q9QEIMDAA

Theirs a definite post war boom in electricity generation which would have been nearly all coal. Power stations were built close to the coalfields or in them so a move from longer distance to shorter distance hauling to cities and ports (clean air, fewer exports) and therefore less £ revenue at fixed price per mile rates.

coppercapped · 5 May 2018

Gareth Marston said:
I think this graph of electricity generation largely answers your question.
https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.euanmearns.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/UK_electricity_generation_source.png&imgrefurl=http://euanmearns.com/uk-electricity-generation-statistics-1920-2012/&h=652&w=741&tbnid=-pP_IL3aAZa4_M:&tbnh=160&tbnw=181&usg=__Q8QgbahRuQRXe0oP0X__zP4reuE=&vet=10ahUKEwi3o7Kn_e3aAhXmBsAKHRiWA78Q9QEIMDAA..i&docid=z68kdalrUpYRJM&client=firefox-b-ab&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi3o7Kn_e3aAhXmBsAKHRiWA78Q9QEIMDAA

Theirs a definite post war boom in electricity generation which would have been nearly all coal. Power stations were built close to the coalfields or in them so a move from longer distance to shorter distance hauling to cities and ports (clean air, fewer exports) and therefore less £ revenue at fixed price per mile rates.

Thank you for the reference - I've now bookmarked it! I'd seen something similar somewhere else but for the life of me I couldn't find it again!
Apart from coal for electricity generation, coal for domestic use remained reasonably constant between 38 and 40 million tons per year - all those private wooden-bodied 10 ton 4 wheel wagons(!) - until 1955 when it started to decline following the Clean Air Acts and the discovery of gas in the North Sea. It fell to around 1 million tonnes per year by 2002 where it has remained ever since.

The Ham said:
That's very interesting, thank you.

I quite like that it indicates that we are probably now using about the same account of coal nationally as the railways used to use when it was steam powered (which just shows how fast we've started to decarbon - which isn't too say that we've done enough but does indicate that we are certainly getting there with coal usage).

The latest figures in the tables, for 2016, show total inland coal consumption in the UK for all uses as 18 million tonnes. The only inland mines are opencast with a production of some 4 million tonnes per year. Everything else is imported.

Gareth Marston · 5 May 2018

The report goes inot some length about coal, trends and method of working. Suffice to say that non electricity generating coal tons fell by 25% between 1956 and 1961.

If you were controlling the Reshaping of the railways, which lines would you shut or save?

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