Didcot, Newbury and Southampton Railway Revival

[nickswift99]

Local campaigner holds a public meeting to seek to revive this line.

http://www.newburytoday.co.uk/2014/rail-enthusiasts-call-for-line-revival

The founder of Didcot, Newbury and Southampton Railway Revival (DNSRR), Rex Hora, said the revitalisation of the disused lines, including the former Lambourn Valley Railway line – closed to passenger traffic in 1960, and to freight traffic in 1973 – would relieve pressure on local roads.

DNSRR aims to convince Network Rail, the Government and local authorities that re-opening is practical and desirable for both passengers and freight.

Mr Hora said: “The purpose of the meeting is both to inform the public about our plans and to receive feedback. “Local knowledge will help us to get things right, so please come and tell us what you know.”

The group has been galvanised by recent Government approval for the re-opening of part of the Oxford to Cambridge route as ‘East-West Rail.’

Mr Hora said: “We expect the DNSR route to become ‘North-South Rail.’ We foresee re-opening in three stages. “First, Didcot to Newbury; second, Newbury to Whitchurch; third, Whitchurch to Southampton. For the first two stages we plan to follow the existing route as far as possible, although some deviations may be necessary.
“South of Whitchurch, the route is still under discussion.

Although I'd love to see the route from Didcot to Newbury reopened I really can't see much of a business case and there's a fair bit of the line that has been built on.

Nick

 

[Diplodicus]

Oh, they could find it from the savings in not building the A34/Newbury bypass.

Oh no; too late!

 

[The Planner]

Rose tinted glasses I am afraid, not going to happen. Regardless of the Newbury bypass being built on a load of it 15 odd years ago, a substantial amount of the route was lost to other A34 improvements long before that.

 

[nickswift99]

Oh, they could find it from the savings in not building the A34/Newbury bypass.

Oh no; too late!

I note that there is a suggestion to narrow the A34 to permit reinstatement of the line

 

[The Planner]

Then that's immediately lost any bit of credibility the idea had.....

 

[Peter Mugridge]

Just build it alongside the A34...

 

[Greenback]

It has about as much chance of happening in the next twenty years as I have of designing a spacecraft that will transport me safely to Mars and back again.

 

[HowardGWR]

The initiative does remind us of one issue; there is no decent North-South freight railway. Starting from scratch, no planner would want to have such traffic crossing the GWML at Reading, ergo all the flyovers and fly-unders now under construction there and all the investment at Basingstoke. Nor would it be desirable to see the relief lines between Reading and Didcot being used either. Having written that, the DN&S line was a flat crossing at Didcot so similar expense to that at Reading would be needed there. Of the three southern north-south lines that closed under Beeching (S&DJR, M&SWJR and DN&S), the M&SWJR would have been probably the best not to have closed, although a GSJ would have been needed at Andover and a new formation around the south of Andover, but at Savernake and Swindon, there was no conflict with east-west lines.

The next bottleneck emerging, due to the loss of those lines, is Didcot to Oxford, that looks to me as though it will need to be 4 tracked (?). Am I wrong thinking that any money connecting Newbury to Didcot would be better spent doing that?

 

[overtonchris]

As a local to the area of the "proposed scheme" I sadly think it's "Pie-in-the-sky"....As already stated so much of the original route is either under the A34, housing, and Industrial units, especially in the Whitchurch area...and locals are generally pretty militant about any changes to anything in their own back yard....(Remember the Newbury By-pass, Twyford Down?- lots of "bandwagoning admitted") - and ongoing campaigns against turning Micheldever into a town and the Bullington Wind Farm project....blah, blah.

All this coupled with large amounts of work (and monies spent!) to the bridges etc on the Salisbury to Battledown flyover section of the West of England (SWT) line to allow for larger sized containers,.... the masses of work in Reading + goodness knows what else in areas that I have no knowledge of is going to make this a dead duck. (Our 2 new / refurbed bridges in Overton parish are very nice by the way)

Shame about the proposal I suppose, as I'm all in favour of getting stuff off the roads onto rail, but you've got to be realistic.....

 

[cle]

Could Didcot to Oxford be quadded? Surely that'd be a huge help for many reasons...

 

[Buttsy]

Could Didcot to Oxford be quadded? Surely that'd be a huge help for many reasons...

There aren't too many over/under bridges between Kennington Junction & Didcot North, the main problems are likely to be around Appleford and Culham stations (the latter grade 2 listed I believe) as there isn't a great deal of room either side of those. Possibly the way around this is a new route from Didcot North, running to the east of Appleford, crossing the Thames heading back west, running between the government buildings and JET project (Thame Lane), joining back with the main line with a GSJ after a new 2nd Thames crossing, in the area of the old Abingdon Junction.

North of Kennington Junction, a route can be made via Hinksey Yard, but a new bridge over the Thames would be needed to 4 track it, otherwise there is enough room to 4 track from here.

 

[The Planner]

Re-signalling will take the brunt off this in the next couple of years, but I suspect there are fag packet options for either some dynamic loops or quad tracking going around.

 

[muddythefish]

Great idea and would be extremely useful but more than 20 years too late. Where were these people when the Newbury bypass was being proposed and built ?

The paragraph below also shows their plans lack credibility.

Mr Hora is also researching the possibility of installing a new line through Speen to the south of Station Road, and is considering the possibility of reducing the A34 to a single-lane carriageway to make room for a railway line.


Incidentally, the reporter in his intro talks out "hyper-local" lines.

Que ?

 

[The Ham]

The comparison is made between it and the East West rail project, there are a few key differences:

- The rail line here is not mostly intact
- The new line isn't efectivly lengthening a branch line back to the mainline at the other end
- There are alternitive round London rail routes closer in
- There is an alternitive routes from Oxford to Southampton which takes about an hour and half, which is unlikley to be much quicker by avoiding Reading, espicially if there are serval stops which the trains will make on the new route.

 

[Unclepete]

Due to the amount of built on old track bed, I don't see how this could ever happen.

Personally, as a local, I'd rather see a southern cord built at the junction just south of Reading West, so a Newbury-Basingstoke route could be created.

 

[mr_jrt]

I'd love to see this line revived, but as many have stated, it'd have to be on a new alignment. If GWML traffic picks up to the extent that Reading to Didcot fills up, then it provides somewhere to send EWR services from Oxford to bypass that bottleneck, with passengers for Reading and London interchanging at Didcot. A route all the way to Southampton would be preferable, but I'm open to suggestions

 

[The Ham]

Due to the amount of built on old track bed, I don't see how this could ever happen.

Personally, as a local, I'd rather see a southern cord built at the junction just south of Reading West, so a Newbury-Basingstoke route could be created.

The problem with that is that Basingstoke is a bottleneck, so unless they can be pathed to stay off the junction (i.e. only using platform 5 at Basingstoke) then there could be problems with such a service.

As it also misses both Reading stations it is unlikely to be that well used. It could be better (as a first step) rather than building a costly chord to run a service between Newbury and Basingstoke which was basicly joining up the two services so there was no need to change trains at Reading. Yes it would take about 10 minutes longer than round the chord, but it would benefit form serving Reading so would be of benefit to more people. If it was in addition to the existing services, to run it as an hourly service would require two extra units (assuming some journey time savings from electrification).
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---
looking at: http://www.railmaponline.com

If you want to build a new line to take freight it may be woth considering it to use the old Midland and South Western Junction Railway, as it would bypass a lot of the bottle necks.

First off, it is possible to get to Andover on existing lines (which have or are being clerard for larger freight) by going via Salisbury. A new curve to take the line onto the existing branch to Ludgershall.

Then reopening of the line from there to the Berks and Hants line, where there was an overbridge and junction, reinstating the bridge would mean that there would be no capacity issues on the exitng line.

From there it than contines north to Marlborough (new station?) and then to up to Swindon where again there was an overbridge across the GWML. The route through Swindon would likely have to change, potentially picking up a new station at Wroughton, before then linking through to the existing line to Stroud and enabling trains to come into Birmingham from the SW (rahter than from the SE, including along the WCML).

In terms of new passenger services, it could just be a case of extending the existing Bedwyn services to Swindon, as the route between Andover and Bedwyn appears to have no settlements of note (in terms of significant potential passsenger numbers).

It is hardly going to be cheap to build, but then nor is the suggestion which is the subject of this thread where more of the line has been built on, is about 50% longer and has no settlements of note along its entire length. OK this suggestion doesn't follow existing freight routes once it reaches Didcot, but they are also lines with significant passenger train demands so I would suggest that was no bad thing (i.e. Sallisbury - Southampton and Swindon to Birmingham via Stroud has less traffic than Southampton - Winchester and Didcot - Birmingham via Oxford).

 

[freetoview33]

Could this be a good route for freight? To take traffic away from Reading? And possibly a new service from Oxford - Southampton (Via Newbury) And just be a good diversionary route.

 

[Argosy]

Could this be a good route for freight? To take traffic away from Reading? And possibly a new service from Oxford - Southampton (Via Newbury) And just be a good diversionary route.

Far too much of this route has been built on. Indeed virtually all of it.

I first became interested in it in the early 1970's as I travelled up and down the A34. I remember the bridges at Sutton Scotney coming down and having bought a copy of the superb Wild Swan book many moons ago felt this was the route where it was such a silly decision to close it.

It was however always a backwoods route and then there would be the issue of the tunnel at Winchester Chessil unless one linked into the SW main line on the wartime spur. Given that what you would save is not that much other than a flat junction in the south of Reading and at Basingstoke I am not sure that the £1bn or whatever it would cost to build would be cost effective.

Shame really as it could tick a number of boxes but then create a few other problems at Newbury and of course more worryingly at Didcot, so all in all I don't think it gives you much for the costs involved.

 

[Carlisle]

Could this be a good route for freight? To take traffic away from Reading? And possibly a new service from Oxford - Southampton (Via Newbury) And just be a good diversionary route.

I don't think the costs of reinstatement could be justified for freight alone plus the intermediate stations between Didcot , Newbury and Winchester only served very small communities which haven't grown much since the lines closure in around 1964, so passenger demand would surely still be very low and uneconomic

 

[fgwrich]

I don't think the costs of reinstatement could be justified for freight alone plus the intermediate stations between Didcot , Newbury and Winchester only served very small communities which haven't grown much since the lines closure in around 1964, so passenger demand would surely still be very low and uneconomic

A Large chunk of it is also now the A34 as well. So I can't see a cheap and viable solution - one of the campaign groups did suggest reducing the A34 down to a Normal single carriageway road just to get a higher speed line alongside it!

 

[21C101]

Aside from the A34, the achilles heel would be Didcot where all the GWML lines would need to be crossed on the flat (which would be daft now that a flyover from slow lines to the Basingstoke line has been built at Reading)

With a flyover planned for CP6 at Basingstoke, I cant see any justification for any works north of Worting Junction.

I could see a case for routing the trains from Worting to Hurstbourne via Whitchurch and then reopening the old railway from Hurstbourne via Fullerton and Stocksbridge to Dunbridge as a freight route and running into the western Docks container port via Romsey and Totton. This has several advantages, unlike the Didcot Newbury & Southampton the formation is pretty well intact. Only 14 miles of new railway would be needed, and it could all be electrified at 25kV without the capacity problems and problems re-electrifying the main line via Winchester, and it avoids Southampton and its tunnel.

 

[Domeyhead]

No there is absolutely no way an economic case could be made. The line was single for large sections south of Newbury and is now built over around Winchester and Newbury. However what I think is feasible and would increase freight timings by up to 10 minutes each way is to build a short avoiding loop on the north side of Basingstoke station to enable fast intermodals to overtake passenger trains occupying the platforms. You can often see freights waiting for London bound passenger trains to vacate the station and even more so stuck on the north side for up to 20 minutes before crossing the main line. An avoiding line would require a footbridge or subway + lifts between the car park and the north station entrance and would run adjacent to and north of the current Reading Platform 5 but in the scheme of rail investment would be around £20m which would be good value, especially if used bidirectionally. It would enable southbound freights to hop round XC voyagers and onto Worting jct. Westbound freights via Laverstoke could continue unimpeded. In this age of 75mph long distance non stop freights there needs to be more opportunity for them to pass stopping passenger trains.

 

[HarleyDavidson]

The two problems are the real lack of access to go south out of Southampton towards Romsey (Nursling) from maritime and the dreadfully slow junction at Basingstoke, you get a really long freightliner come from the Reading road, it can take a good 2-3 minutes to across the junction and clear it.

Freightliners also aren't exactly renowned for their punctual running either, they either run late or early and that can have quite damaging consequences for timetabled passenger services.

 

[A0]

Am I the only one who's experiencing deja-vu? I'm sure there was another thread on resurrecting this line not so long ago - and all the issues i.e. trackbed lost etc were covered then.

 

[3141]

Am I the only one who's experiencing deja-vu? I'm sure there was another thread on resurrecting this line not so long ago - and all the issues i.e. trackbed lost etc were covered then.

I recall that too. I doubt that the line will get revived as a result of this one either.

There really are some routes that don't justify reviving. In the case of this one, there was little justification for opening it in the first place.

 

[21C101]

I recall that too. I doubt that the line will get revived as a result of this one either.

There really are some routes that don't justify reviving. In the case of this one, there was little justification for opening it in the first place.

Indeed, the LSW were very cross that it was built south of Whitchurch at all when they had built a double track route from Hurstbourne to Southampton via Dunbridge.

 

[ChiefPlanner]

Am I the only one who's experiencing deja-vu? I'm sure there was another thread on resurrecting this line not so long ago - and all the issues i.e. trackbed lost etc were covered then.

Exactly - the investment has gone into the Bramley route and Reading - though the by-pass loop at Basingstoke is still lurking in the good ideas pile at NR. (and the lengthened loop at Eastleigh helps to recess clear down FLL / DBS trains doing a crew change)

HST 5 to Soton will sort it all out ....

 

[GearJammer]

Did'nt the D,N & S have quite a few steep gradiants? I seem to recall being told that back in its day drivers had to be very carefull with braking freight trains to avoid snatching and snapping couplings.

Theres also something in the back of my mind saying the Mid-Hants Rlys Std 76017 derailed on that route, possibly to do with the gradiants?

I can see no case for rebuilding it.... but then I don't believe it should ever have been closed, I think had it survived, the section from Twyford-Winchester would have been closed at the same time the M3 was ploughed through Twyford cutting ( which should have been a tunnel but that's another subject) with the DN&S route joining the southern mainline at Kings Worthy.
It would have saved the railway having to pay to maintain Hockley viaduct, Chesil tunnel and station. Its quite odd that part of the line was ever built in the first place.

 

[jimm]

Am I the only one who's experiencing deja-vu? I'm sure there was another thread on resurrecting this line not so long ago - and all the issues i.e. trackbed lost etc were covered then.

Back last summer, I think, though there may be another one as well, or at least discussion in another thread. And yes it was a rollercoaster over the Downs between Didcot and Newbury.

Here we go http://www.railforums.co.uk/showthread.php?t=102089