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Derwent Valley Line, Doing good.

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dk1

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Just back from a weekend in Derby for the excellent beer festival in the superbly preserved roundhouse. On the Saturday i took a spin on the Derwent Valley line mainly to visit Crich Tramway Museum which was open for half term week.

Caught the 09.50 from Derby to Whatstandwell, 13.17 from Cromford to Matlock & the 13.36 from Matlock to Nottingham. What a difference from my last visit. Not only are the trains hourly now & direct to/from Nottingham but everything was so much improved. Stations where spotless with posters/noticeboards actually shouting about the recent success of the route. Sainsbury's at Matlock seems to have improved the station, Cromford is outstanding & Belper has even got an automatic ticket machine.

The trains where all very well used class 153s with the 13.46 full & standing for most of the journey. On arrival at Derby the guard, who hadnt stopped selling tickets, even advised beer festival folk to turn left at the top of the footbridge.

Of course it's a crying shame the route no longer continues to Buxton & Manchester but i left feeling very impressed with this line & checking the latest usage stats it is booming with Matlock alone up from 91k to 155k in just 3 years!!
 
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RichmondCommu

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The key here is the direct service to Nottingham. For people travelling from Belper (i think the biggest town on the line) to Derby the bus is more convenient given the distance from Derby station to the city centre. However on a journey to Nottingham (the biggest city in the E Midlands) the train wins hands down.
 

geoff10

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As a member of Friends of the Derwent Valley Line who have been campaigning for improvements to the service (hourly timetable, through service to Nottingham, better London connections) with Central Trains & EMT for some years, it is good to hear this positive feedback from users of the line. One problem of success of the hourly timetable has been the overloading of the single car 153's initially used on 2 trains out of the 3 hourly cycle, but in the latest Mon-Fri workings, EMT appear to have found sufficient units to make all trains 2 car. The recent opening of the Ecclesbourne Valley Railway from Duffield has brought even more numbers, and as and when Peak Rail extend into Matlock main station, we will be probably the only local line in the UK connecting to two heritage railways. If you want to follow the latest happenings on the line please visit our website at http://www.fdvl.org.uk
 
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dfishw

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hi yeh i agree its good to have the hourly direct service to matlock, esp during the holiday season. I also heard there was a service that went from duffield to i think wirksworth? If so it would to me be a good idea to run it to derby as this would be a more useful destination. Derby is a cty but duffield is a village i think/small town.
It is shame though that where as the derwent line produces very quick journeys from derby to sheffield, nottingham and the erewash line takes like 15 minutes longer......and is slow..I dont see why the line cant be as good and fast as the derwent line esp since its four tracked in a lot of places.
 

button_boxer

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hi yeh i agree its good to have the hourly direct service to matlock, esp during the holiday season. I also heard there was a service that went from duffield to i think wirksworth? If so it would to me be a good idea to run it to derby as this would be a more useful destination. Derby is a cty but duffield is a village i think/small town.

The main line and the Wirksworth branch (the Ecclesbourne Valley Railway) share Duffield station but there's no rail connection between the two. Apparently they looked at getting the branch re-connected but the main line is around 100mph through Duffield so the cost would have been... substantial is an understatement.
 

Wyvern

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The main line and the Wirksworth branch (the Ecclesbourne Valley Railway) share Duffield station but there's no rail connection between the two. Apparently they looked at getting the branch re-connected but the main line is around 100mph through Duffield so the cost would have been... substantial is an understatement.

But you can book a through ticket to Wirksworth from East Midlands operated stations. Doubt if it saves any money but on-board staff get commission.

It is shame though that where as the derwent line produces very quick journeys from derby to sheffield, nottingham and the erewash line takes like 15 minutes longer......and is slow..I dont see why the line cant be as good and fast as the derwent line esp since its four tracked in a lot of places.

I think the Erewash is regarded as mainly a freight line. It is one of the busiest around.
 

geoff10

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Although there's no connection at Duffield for through running, the Ecclesbourne timetable has been cleverly devised to give good connections in & out of the Derwent Valley line in both directions on Saturdays & the Wednesdays it runs (helped by the coincidence that the current Derwent Valley hourly service crosses near Duffield):-

EVR arrivals ex Wirksworth 1050, 1250, 1450, 1650
DVL Nottingham-Derby-Matlock, dep Duffield xx57
DVL Matlock-Derby-Nottingham, dep Duffield xx02
EVR departures to Wirksworth 1110, 1310, 1510, 1710

(Sunday is less good as the 2-hourly DV line service only has suitable connections in one direction).

As Wyvern recommends above, try to book a through EMT ticket to Wirksworth particularly if arriving from the Derby direction with an 8 minute connection time together with a lot of others on the train with the same idea.

Geoff10
Friends of the Derwent Valley Line
http://www.fdvl.org.uk
 

brianthegiant

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Agree, great line, nice to able to go direct from nottingham / beeston directly into peak district, walk along eg cromford canal & return from a different station. Yep shame about the lack of line to Buxton, but theres always the Trent Barton bus which goes nottingham-buxton & onwards along similar route.

Also the 153's for all their faults can squeeze in more bikes than other DMUs, which is handy for trains into a national park.
 

CaptainHaddock

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It's a great shame EMT can't reintroduce an occasional stop at Belper for their Sheffield-bound trains. I often use the line to go walking in the Derwent Valley area and it's a pain in the whatsit to have to travel 10 minutes south to Derby to wait for a train that will take me back the way I came. There must be commuters living along the Derwent Valley who work in Chesterfield or Sheffield?
 

geoff10

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One of the things Friends of the Derwent Valley Line (FDVL) are campaigning for (now that the branch timetable is so much improved) are more main-line stops at Belper. Currently one EMT service stops at 0726 going to Sheffield, but no return service, which is pretty nonsensical (due, we believe to a parliamentary undertaking dating back to Barbara Castle's day that after the withdrawal of the Derby-Chesterfield local service under the Beeching plan, one train a day would continue to call at Belper!)

EMT reckon they lose too much revenue from the additional journey time caused by an extra stop (though they managed a special stop at Duffield on the 0925 St Pancras-Sheffield 6/4/11 for the Duke of Gloucester & the Wirksworth reopening)

So we are putting together a business case showing the revenue they could gain from serving the Belper catchment area. We would like to see a minimum of two services call northbound in the morning for commuting to Chesterfield & Sheffield & two return services in the evening. There are a lot of students now travelling to Chesterfield College for instance. If you would like to support this campaign / have any views on the matter, please contact us via our website at http://www.fdvl.org.uk/Contact%20us. Thanks.
 

dk1

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Modern Railways this month also mentions the possibility of extending services through to Newark Castle calling at the intermediates. This would allow speeding up of Lincoln services.
 

4SRKT

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One of the things Friends of the Derwent Valley Line (FDVL) are campaigning for (now that the branch timetable is so much improved) are more main-line stops at Belper. Currently one EMT service stops at 0726 going to Sheffield, but no return service, which is pretty nonsensical (due, we believe to a parliamentary undertaking dating back to Barbara Castle's day that after the withdrawal of the Derby-Chesterfield local service under the Beeching plan, one train a day would continue to call at Belper!)

My very earliest railway memory is of a green liveried class 46 pulling into the up platform at Belper and my family boarding the train. We moved to York in 1974, so I guess it must have been in that year. My dad worked in the Research Department at Derby and tells me that this was the only long distance working at that time to call there, and that the Matlock DMU service was also lamentable.

There were certainly no long distance workings calling at Belper in the mid-80s when I began travelling extensively by train on my own, so I doubt it's a Parliamentary requirement if it was absent for so long. I agree though that Belper should be better linked into to network. Maybe one of the two Voyager workings per hour could call there, providing through running to Birmingham, and beyond Sheffield in the north. Potentially also better conections from Matlock to the north if the timings could line up.
 

Wyvern

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MML and EML were using HST's a great deal. Now most of the services have been taken over by Meridians it might be easier?

There was a campaign recently to reopen Clay Cross. Has that taken off at all? The road into Chesterfield used be absolutely chocker in the rush hour. Is that still the case? Would there be paths for a local service to Chesterfield (say)?
 

CaptainHaddock

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So we are putting together a business case showing the revenue they could gain from serving the Belper catchment area. We would like to see a minimum of two services call northbound in the morning for commuting to Chesterfield & Sheffield & two return services in the evening. There are a lot of students now travelling to Chesterfield College for instance. If you would like to support this campaign / have any views on the matter, please contact us via our website at http://www.fdvl.org.uk/Contact%20us. Thanks.

That wouldn't help me - I'd be going in the opposite direction!

In the past couple of years or so, EMT have increased their number of Sheffield to London services and generally now run a fast service from Sheffield at xx27 and a stopper at xx47.

I reckon that while the market may not be massive, there's a sound business case for having the stopper calling at Belper every couple of hours, perhaps removing the Long Eaton stop on these services to help create a suitable path. With the same pattern on the reverse London-Sheffield working.
 

button_boxer

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The "stopper" is at xx:35 most hours and takes an age from Chesterfield to Derby, as far as I can tell it ends up crawling behind the Matlock train from Ambergate down to Derby so a southbound stop at Belper would seem feasible. The northbound path is much faster (10 minutes ahead of the "fast" service from London all the way) but the train has a good 5 minutes wait in Derby station so if it could leave Derby earlier then a Belper stop might be possible.
 

geoff10

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It's EMT's intention to speed up the stopper so there are effectively two fast trains an hour to Sheffield, by (a) removing some standing time at Derby and (b) a later departure from Sheffield on those which leave at xx35 (they haven't got NR's go-ahead for that yet). The reason for this is that the S Yorkshire subsidy which underwrote the extension Derby-Sheffield is only temporary and EMT have to get the service to stand on its own financial feet before this ends. They reckon the best way to do this is to speed it up throughout (they have a formula for revenue between 2 points against journey time) . Hence our difficulty when asking for additional stops, unless we can show the extra Belper revenue offsets any potentially lost from the extra minutes incurred.

The mention of Meridians above - these have now been cleared by NR for the Matlock branch and have selective door opening, so they could provide more asset flexibility for additional services on the branch. (We have been pressing EMT for an additional peak hour service as currently the service is LESS frequent in the morning peak than the rest of the day).

Extension of services to Lincoln - I've not read the Modern Railways article but a previous experiment with a 'long distance' hourly service from the branch by Central Trains (Matlock-Birmingham some years ago) was disastrous in timekeeping and it was not unknown for trains to run a hour late. When EMT introduce the current service to Nottingham they built in plenty of spare time in the 3-train cycle at Derby & Nottingham. The result has been excellent punctuality, despite negotiating the Trent bottleneck, and no doubt any extension to Newark would be approached cautiously as well.

Other current happenings on the Matlock branch - the Peak Rail reconnection from Matlock Riverside in the last couple of days - a few pics at http://www.fdvl.org.uk/ArchiveNews2010-11/ArchiveNews35(which is no doubt mentioned in some other thread on this site). Hope to get some pics of the Kings Cross-Rowsley steam special on 22nd May on our website after the event.

For those interested in the Ecclesbourne Valley Railway (DVL's other connecting heritage railway), there are some pictures of the opening days a http://www.fdvl.org.uk/ArchiveNews2010-11/ArchiveNews32 and http://www.fdvl.org.uk/ArchiveNews2010-11/ArchiveNews33
 
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geoff10

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The Derwent Valley Line has a new claim to fame from this weekend now that it connects with two heritage lines along its short length, now that Peak Rail has extended its services to Matlock main station, in addition to the Ecclesbourne reopening earlier this year.

You can see some great pictures of the opening ceremony at Matlock on the The Friends of the Derwent Valley Line news page at http://www.fdvl.org.uk/News

Geoff10
Friends of the Derwent Valley Line
http://www.fdvl.org.uk

unable to post live links due to the quirks of the terminal i am on.
 
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