Closure of Teesside Airport station

[MarkyT]

As for Newhaven Marine, it no longer served any useful purpose. What "drags the legal process into disrepute" is that it took so long to formally close Marine, and for most of that time an empty train had to run once a week or whatever to a platform that had no public access for safety reasons anyway.

Marine to Harbour stations, ramp to ramp, was around 160m. Marine was really just an extra platform for Harbour, dedicated to ferry traffic, but, because it was on a line constructed under a different, later, Act of Parliament than that establishing Harbour station, it was classed as a separate entity legally so was subject to the full closure process, unlike many places where a platform has been removed from a station that otherwise remains without such formalities.

 

[The Quincunx]

Marine to Harbour stations, ramp to ramp, was around 160m. Marine was really just an extra platform for Harbour, dedicated to ferry traffic, but, because it was on a line constructed under a different, later, Act of Parliament than that establishing Harbour station, it was classed as a separate entity legally so was subject to the full closure process, unlike many places where a platform has been removed from a station that otherwise remains without such formalities.

DfT did look into whether Marine could be considered just a platform of Harbour station (as it had been considered in the past) and therefore only subject to the far less rigorous Minor Modification provisions. But the key thing that went against that notion was that there was a separate lease and Station Access Annexe for Marine as a station in its own right, created in 1995. How it had come to be built was not a factor, as this has no bearing on the closure provisions.

 

[MarkyT]

The passenger terminal was close to the station in 1971. Then the airport owners relocated the passenger terminal to a different part of the airfield that is quite some way away from the station, which rather shows how small a proportion of air passengers started/finished their journeys by train even then, or they'd have chosen a different site. There isn't any way of getting the station nearer to the current passenger terminal without completely rerouting the railway itself. The idea of a shuttle bus was tried and hardly anybody used it, so it was abandoned. There were frequent scheduled buses from the airport to Darlington and to the Teeside towns, but these have dwindled away too.

I'm not sure if this is true. ISTR having seen a photo of an old passenger air terminal near the station site in the dim and distant past, but can't find any trace of that online now. Published histories suggest the current terminal site, albeit since further rebuilt, has been in use since opening by Princess Margaretha of Sweden in 1966.

The big question for me is what was this structure, seen here as a metal framework in 2000?

That's the earliest it appears clearly on Google Earth historic imagery. It's shown in subsequent images until 2008 but had been removed by 2014.
Was this an abandoned new construction never finished, or the remains of something decommissioned? A freight terminal? admin building? Certainly a good position for a rail served passenger air terminal if one was desired, with apron and taxiway arrangements altered to suit.

So there are three options: do nothing, and wait for the station to fall down (which is what has actually happened), or move the terminal building again, or move the entire trackbed. Since the last two involve very large amounts of public money which would be very hard to justify even if every single airport passenger and worker used the train (because there are so few of them) it is most unlikely anything will happen at all unless the airport closes and is redeveloped for commercial/housing/industrial purposes. The airport is once again in public ownership and the local elected mayor has a lot of political capital invested in this, so...

When the station was built, it looks like the current terminal site had already been chosen and built. Early airport developments rarely took any account of what developers often considered the outdated and soon to be abandoned railway network. By now we should all be zoomng to the airport in our flying cars anyway.

 

[omnicity4659]

The closure has been confirmed by Northern in a Twitter reply.

https://twitter.com/northernassist/status/1521001831484338178

Morning Patrick. I can confirm this station is closed until further notice from Sunday 1 May and the weekly train will currently not be calling there. Sorry for any hassle caused here. ^JD

 

[MarkyT]

DfT did look into whether Marine could be considered just a platform of Harbour station (as it had been considered in the past) and therefore only subject to the far less rigorous Minor Modification provisions. But the key thing that went against that notion was that there was a separate lease and Station Access Annexe for Marine as a station in its own right, created in 1995. How it had come to be built was not a factor, as this has no bearing on the closure provisions.

Interesting, thanks. Makes sense as a separate lease for Marine. Was the Marine lessee the ferry/port operator rather than the usual local TOC at Harbour? That could explain why two separate leases might have been created, or could the split have been due to a legal complication arising from the platform's original creation?

 

[mangyiscute]

Guess this is what I get for putting off my trip to visit it - guessing like a 0.01% chance of it ever re opening

 

[Darandio]

The big question for me is what was this structure, seen here as a metal framework in 2000?

I believe it was intended to be a private hangar. As you have noted it was started in the early part of the milennium and then abandoned before the then airport owners re-purchased the land and pulled it down.

 

[MarkyT]

I believe it was intended to be a private hangar. As you have noted it was started in the early part of the milennium and then abandoned before the then airport owners re-purchased the land and pulled it down.

Thanks. Perhaps being built for some private flyer who wanted to get to the airport by train (at certain very limited times of the week)!

 

[Starmill]

There is no possibility of a commercial future for the airport or the railway station in passenger traffic. Only with the airport in public hands and using public money and influence is there a chance. The station is in too poor a condition now for it to be reused and it serves no purpose at the moment anyway.

See this as a good thing. It means that people's time isn't wasted with their train making a stop there for no benefit.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

What is the position with those two "in limbo" stations in Staffordshire?

 

[AviationFR]

Barlaston & Wedgwood? Last I heard was a plan to close Wedgwood completely, and reopen Barlaston completely

 

[WesternBiker]

There is no possibility of a commercial future for the airport or the railway station in passenger traffic. Only with the airport in public hands and using public money and influence is there a chance. The station is in too poor a condition now for it to be reused and it serves no purpose at the moment anyway.

You're right there: the airport was making a substantial loss even before the pandemic... If I was a Council Tax payer in Middlesbrough, I'd be asking hard questions...

 

[_toommm_]

Guess this is what I get for putting off my trip to visit it - guessing like a 0.01% chance of it ever re opening

You could still visit it. There's no gate to access the platform, so unless Northern decide to erect fencing to stop access to the platform, you could still go. It's a roughly 35/40 minute walk from Dinsdale, and an easy walk (I went there when I had a broken foot and was in a big boot and Í managed the walk easily in that time).

If you do go, make sure to access it from the minor road and the looped back on the bottom half of the screenshot a few posts above. There's no access from the main road, and indeed the footbridge is closed so you'd have incredible trouble getting on/off that platform.

 

[Jonny]

Why demolish it? I like disused stations.

Because redundant infrastructure will still require maintenance(not just money and materials, but manpower and potential disruption to the line), and/or it may pose a potential hazard depending on how it deteriorates.

---

A big problem is the station site is neither convenient for the current passenger air terminal, nor for any likely housing or other development surrounding the airport. A new location near the A67 roundabout would be much better I think.

A good idea, it could be targeted at the business/aviation parks while having the bonus of being slightly nearer the Airport Terminal. It is also nearer than the current station to the eastern part of Middleton St. George, which is where new development is more likely. Also there is some creative naming potential around the site, that could carry over to the station.

The drawback is that it is slightly closer to Dinsdale station, where everything (Northern) calls anyway, and happens to be in the middle of Middleton St. George village.

 

[Bantamzen]

As for only having one train a week, again it's a chicken and egg situation. If all trains stopped, and had a connecting minibus included in the price of the rail and flight ticket, surely the station would see a reasonable amount of use. Even just some calls scheduled around the time of the flights would be better than nothing.

Perhaps the Mayor could even introduce drop off/pick up charges to encourage people to use rail rather than driving.

It's all perfectly feasible, there is just no political will to do it

Its isn't a chicken & egg situation though, Teeside Airport currently sees between 4-8 flights a day. Repairing the station & having more services won't attract airlines to the airport, especially when there is still plenty of capacity at other airports in the area. And without more flights there is little for the statin, do better to close it than spend money on it for no good reason.

 

[The Quincunx]

Interesting, thanks. Makes sense as a separate lease for Marine. Was the Marine lessee the ferry/port operator rather than the usual local TOC at Harbour? That could explain why two separate leases might have been created, or could the split have been due to a legal complication arising from the platform's original creation?

The only element in the lease between NR and Southern was a metre-wide strip of platform. Everything else was owned by the Borders Agency.

 

[ainsworth74]

You're right there: the airport was making a substantial loss even before the pandemic... If I was a Council Tax payer in Middlesbrough, I'd be asking hard questions...

And Redcar & Cleveland, Stockton, Hartlepool and Darlington. We're all on the hook here in the Tees Valley as it was a Combined Authority scheme. But for the time being people, despite never actually using the blasted thing (see my "last bank in the village analogy" above), like the idea of having a local airport so remain happy to see it being very white and elephant shaped rather than closed to anything but private aviation and the other few business users (assuming that's enough to keep it going of course).

At some point the money will dry up or and difficult questions will need to be asked ("would we rather pay for Ethel's home care or keep chucking money at the airport") and it will then all end in tears. Though with the way things are going Houchen will be long gone by then and probably off being the MP for somewhere or other. Meanwhile the Council Tax payers of the Tees Valley and tax payers generally will get to enjoy shutting the thing down having squandered many millions that could have been spent on actually improving local transport and connectivity. Still, it got the Tories some good headlines for a few years and possibly helped enrich a few of their friends (I'm sure the lack of any real public scrutiny of the operations and funding arrangements of the airport mean that everything is clean as a whistle).

 

[Watershed]

Its isn't a chicken & egg situation though, Teeside Airport currently sees between 4-8 flights a day. Repairing the station & having more services won't attract airlines to the airport, especially when there is still plenty of capacity at other airports in the area. And without more flights there is little for the statin, do better to close it than spend money on it for no good reason.

It's not necessarily about attracting more people to the airport, but about allowing those who do fly to at least use an environmentally friendly method of transport to get to the airport. With one train a week, the station was never going to see any real sort of patronage.

 

[Bletchleyite]

It's not necessarily about attracting more people to the airport, but about allowing those who do fly to at least use an environmentally friendly method of transport to get to the airport. With one train a week, the station was never going to see any real sort of patronage.

Wouldn't surprise me if an electric taxi (as most will be soon enough) was better overall for low passenger numbers than the extra diesel burn for stopping and restarting a DMU.

 

[Darandio]

It's not necessarily about attracting more people to the airport, but about allowing those who do fly to at least use an environmentally friendly method of transport to get to the airport. With one train a week, the station was never going to see any real sort of patronage.

But even when the station has seen more regular services in the past the patronage wasn't there. There was a dedicated regular and free bus service direct to and from Darlington station to the airport, that never worked either. Nothing will, it's all a waste of time.

 

[yoyothehobo]

[Sarcasm] This is quite clearly the thin end of the wedge. Close this station and in a couple of years time they will be closing Manchester Airport station. [/Sarcasm]

The list further up this thread, IBM, British Steel Redcar and Newhaven Marine. All stations people on here were furious about their improper closure and how it has lead to route closures and the like. None of this has happened and if the railway can stop using resources on things that are massively underused and with no clear purpose. (Not village stations, but railway stations currently serving nothing at all) then we can cut the cost and subsidy.

To repair the platform you would need to book a possession, the equipment, the materials, the staff at a cost at which you could probably just taxi everyone there from dinsdale or Darlington for the next 30 years.

Good riddance to old rubbish.

 

[Mcr Warrior]

This is quite clearly the thin end of the wedge. Close this station and in a couple of years time they will be closing Manchester Airport station.

Sorry mate, that's complete hyperbole, which is a shame, as it undermines the rest of your post, which did actually make some good points.

 

[yoyothehobo]

Sorry mate, that's complete hyperbole, which is a shame, as it undermines the rest of your post, which did actually make some good points.

I thought it was obvious sarcasm

 

[swt_passenger]

I thought it was obvious sarcasm

“Slippery Slope” though, as seen in all the “end of the world” posts about Newhaven…

 

[Mcr Warrior]

I thought it was obvious sarcasm

You need to first use the [Sarcasm] [/Sarcasm] function to highlight the relevant text before posting.

 

[Bantamzen]

It's not necessarily about attracting more people to the airport, but about allowing those who do fly to at least use an environmentally friendly method of transport to get to the airport. With one train a week, the station was never going to see any real sort of patronage.

If there was a bottomless pit of money I'd agree, however there isn't. Teeside Airport station serves no useful purpose other than being a box ticker for rail enthusiasts looking to do all the stations. It is too far away from an airport that sees only a few hundred passengers every day using it, closing it is the most logical course of action instead of throwing money at something that is very unlikely to ever see reasonable use.

 

[yoyothehobo]

You need to first use the [Sarcasm] [/Sarcasm] function to highlight the relevant text before posting.

Done

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

[Sarcasm] This is quite clearly the thin end of the wedge. Close this station and in a couple of years' time they will be closing Manchester Airport station. [/Sarcasm]

Even with the clarification made, there are still some poor unbenighted souls on this website who live in the past who are not aware of Manchester Airport and only know of an airport called Ringway Airport.....

 

[MarkyT]

I thought it was obvious sarcasm

I got the sarcasm! Don't think closing an individual small station establishes major savings from day-to-day maintenance which is very minimal at a site like this. Major repairs and renewals avoided on the other hand can save a lot of money and effort that might be expended more beneficially elsewhere.

 

[Dai Corner]

I got the sarcasm! Don't think closing an individual small station establishes major savings from day-to-day maintenance which is very minimal at a site like this. Major repairs and renewals avoided on the other hand can save a lot of money and effort that might be expended more beneficially elsewhere.

Rather like Pilning, near Bristol, where the Down platform is closed because it wasn't considered worth replacing the footbridge to gain sufficient clearance for electrification. Patchway, the next station, has gained passenger lifts.