Economic Case for the Far North Line

[Killingworth]

Mod Note: Posts #1 - #111 originally in this thread.

The Far North line defies all economic logic! The coach is so much quicker for those wanting to reach the south, apart from places like Kildonan with no bus service.

A significant proportion of passengers are tourists travelling purely to experience the journey as far north as they can get by train. Local users certainly won't total XDM's hundreds of thousands, possibly not 100,000 for all stations north of Dingwall combined.

Memory suggests there are few, if any, sections where high speeds are achieved, maybe no more than 50 at best for most of it?

Who knows, one day we might see a heritage HST with sleeper carriages running a weekly Wick to Penzance tourist train. Board anywhere en route for the round trip. Dream on!

If you've never done the trip it's worth doing once to appreciate how different Britain's railways can be. The double deck service bus we took from Thurso along the wind blasted north coast to John o' Groats (only us aboard) was another interesting contrast with public transport in our crowded cities.

 

[najaB]

The Far North line defies all economic logic!

As a pure passenger railway, yes. As a railhead for Dounreay (and now for decommissioning) it justified staying open. With oil creeping back up above $70/bbl it also could come back to life serving the oil and gas industry as the northern fields become profitable again.

 

[Macwomble]

As a railhead for Dounreay (and now for decommissioning) it justified staying open.

Which is why there's been quite a bit of track renewal/upgrade recently.......quite a few stretches of CWR.

 

[HSTEd]

The problem with the Far North Line is it goes in huge loops, and the traffic will never justify the cutoffs necessary to shorten it to actually make journey times somewhat competitive.

Honestly one of those ALstom Citadis Dualis tram trains with the toilet in and a nicer interior would be perfect, they are short units and the ability to use tramway rules for some of the cutoffs could save a huge sum of money.

 

[najaB]

The problem with the Far North Line is it goes in huge loops, and the traffic will never justify the cutoffs necessary to shorten it to actually make journey times somewhat competitive

For passenger service, yes. But that's not the reason it survived the Beeching cuts.

 

[HSTEd]

For passenger service, yes. But that's not the reason it survived the Beeching cuts.

Yes, but it isn't the 60s any more, the railway has to justify itself in today's world.

 

[najaB]

Yes, but it isn't the 60s any more, the railway has to justify itself in today's world.

It justifies its existence 'as is' until at least the early 2030s.

 

[Macwomble]

It justifies its existence 'as is' until at least the early 2030s.

& with some decent promotional work to the tourist trade well beyond that.

 

[HSTEd]

It justifies its existence 'as is' until at least the early 2030s.

So 15 years from now?
Perhaps we should be discussing what comes after that?

 

[najaB]

Perhaps we should be discussing what comes after that?

As @Macwomble says, that's plenty of time to develop the tourism potential of the Far North Line. The Donarch crossing was the last, best (and unfortunately missed) opportunity to make meaningful improvements to journey times unless someone discovers a rather large pot of gold.

 

[HSTEd]

As @Macwomble says, that's plenty of time to develop the tourism potential of the Far North Line. The Donarch crossing was the last, best (and unfortunately missed) opportunity to make meaningful improvements to journey times unless someone discovers a rather large pot of gold.

Well if we were to use tram-train we could have a tramway across the crossing.....

 

[najaB]

Well if we were to use tram-train we could have a tramway across the crossing.....

Could have. The as-built design precludes adding a rail crossing, AFAIK.

 

[XDM]

The coach is so much quicker for those wanting to reach the south, apart from places like Kildonan with no bus service.

Memory suggests there are few, if any, sections where high speeds are achieved, maybe no more than 50 at best for most of it?.

The extraordinary & impressive thing is that there are sections of cwr where the line speed is 75 or 80 mph, & it is achieved.
Someone high up at Network Rail realises the importance of cutting journey time as a way of growing or at least stabilising custom & so keeping this very vulnerable line open in the long term. Full praise to them. Axing this tiny unused station would have hurt nobody & benefited many.

 

[Maxfly]

With the changes coming - crossing upgrade & request stop plunger the time saving would be negligible, it would basically be pi××ing in the wind and the benefits to many would be barely more than bu××er all tbh.

The dingwall derailment wasn't down to speed, distance travelled in the dirt might have been. Points didn't restore correctly and in those days psi's didn't show a flashing red when the points weren't set correctly, so psi was missed in the dark and so the earth fault occurred.
I'm not aware of a derailment where a train travelling at excessive speed over a set of hydropneumatic points was the cause (up to 50mph design speed that has been mentioned at times)

The line speeds north of Inverness might susprise you at times, I would say there are fewer slow sections like round the coast at helmsdale than there are where you are nipping on, the cwr certainly comes as a blessed relief that's for sure.
First services that cross at lairg in the morning do a crew swap, the rest do the full run.

 

[Killingworth]

Examining the current timetable as suggested by Felixthecat I note the 6.18 and 8.02 ex Wick take 3 hours 30 minutes and 3 hours 34 minutes to Alness. The 8.02 is scheduled to make 7 extra request stops otherwise there is no difference.

Whilst it seems a station with such low passenger numbers should not exist I'm at a loss to follow how any significant time could be gained without removing all the request stops - a mere 4 minutes for all 7 of them!

Now I know some track improvements may be possible around these mini stations, and that would improve the performance of all trains, yet the claims of improving journey times significantly by axing a halt where very little ever stops seem over stated.

I'd love to hear from one of these rare passengers from the 8 trains a day that may stop to pick them up. Roughly 2500 trains a year to pick up 76 passengers, who we may assume were not all travelling alone.

It may well be that trains stop at the station less than once a week, and only by request. The revenue from those people will hardly pay the electricity bill for the station lights, printing the station posters and general station maintenance. I'd suspect saving that cost is more important than shaving 2 or 3 minutes from the journey time of 2% of the trains.

 

[HSTEd]

Line needs total reconstruction in order to actually be competitive as a serious method of transport, which it will never receive, even gating all the level crossings would break the bank although it would enable substantial journey time savings.

So we are left with an expensive tourist line.

 

[Highlandspring]

Line needs total reconstruction in order to actually be competitive as a serious method of transport, which it will never receive, even gating all the level crossings would break the bank although it would enable substantial journey time savings.

So we are left with an expensive tourist line.

Arrant nonsense.

 

[HSTEd]

Arrant nonsense.

Arrant nonsense?

The fact is that if you actually want to travel to the highlands for reasons other than the journey itself, you would drive/take a coach because it is much faster.
It's 3 hours instead of 4.

 

[GusB]

Is the Far North line being promoted enough as a tourist line? The West Highland and Kyle lines are sort-of promoted as being the scenic Scottish lines, but the Far North doesn't seem to get as much coverage. I'm ashamed to say that I've never done the line either, despite it being reasonably local.

The problem with the Scottish Scenic Lines is that there's generally bugger all to to when you get to the end, especially on a Sunday. When I was a kid, my dad/uncles were frustrated because the only thing that was there was the pub, and I wasn't old enough to go in. If you're going to have a 3-hour-plus journey on a train to get to somewhere that has bugger-all going for it, at least let's try to make the journey itself memorable. You're not going to do that with a crappy 158.

 

[yorksrob]

The extraordinary & impressive thing is that there are sections of cwr where the line speed is 75 or 80 mph, & it is achieved.
Someone high up at Network Rail realises the importance of cutting journey time as a way of growing or at least stabilising custom & so keeping this very vulnerable line open in the long term. Full praise to them. Axing this tiny unused station would have hurt nobody & benefited many.

As with all the railway, if they were that concerned about growing custom, they could do something about fares without closing stations.

 

[najaB]

Now I know some track improvements may be possible around these mini stations, and that would improve the performance of all trains, yet the claims of improving journey times significantly by axing a halt where very little ever stops seem over stated.

They're request stops so the train has to slow to almost a walking pace regardless of if there's anyone there or not. The time saving comes from not having to slow from 60mph down to 15mph and get back up to speed again.

 

[najaB]

As with all the railway, if they were that concerned about growing custom, they could do something about fares without closing stations.

Highland residents already get significantly discounted fares - Wick to Inverness for a family of four would be £109.80 using Anytime returns, with a Highland Railcard it comes down to £40.60.

 

[yorksrob]

Highland residents already get significantly discounted fares - Wick to Inverness is £36.60 for an Anytime return, with a Highland Railcard it comes down to £18.30.

That's all fine and dandy, however as a non-highland resident with no railcard eligibility, there's little price incentive to use the train to get there, should I decide to visit the area.

 

[Killingworth]

They're request stops so the train has to slow to almost a walking pace regardless of if there's anyone there or not. The time saving comes from not having to slow from 60mph down to 15mph and get back up to speed again.

In that case there's something very simple that can be done. All stops must be booked in advance, how long in advance the detail that needs local agreement. 24 hours, an hour?

In any case, missing out all 7 request stops only saves 4 minutes.

 

[Killingworth]

That's all fine and dandy, however as a non-highland resident with no railcard eligibility, there's little price incentive to use the train to get there, should I decide to visit the area.

And there are a lot more potential tourists than local residents, most of whom prefer to use their cars for convenience, or the quicker bus.

 

[yorksrob]

And there are a lot more potential tourists than local residents, most of whom prefer to use their cars for convenience, or the quicker bus.

I certainly wouldn't mind visiting the area - however this would depend on getting to Inverness first.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

My point? The timetable up there is pants. Closing Kildonan will do barely anything. There are real things which can be done (increase speed limits, build new passing loops, possibly building the Dornoch rail link) that will make a much bigger impact that will be good for everyone. Such a marginal improvement at the cost of people's journeys (however few those journeys may be) is undesirable.

While I don't doubt the points you make about time savings from closing the station being marginal, the counter-argument is that very often, substantial journey time savings come from adding up lots of marginal savings. 4 minutes may not be much on its own. 2 minutes (if more pessimistic estimates about savings are right) is even less. But an improvement that saves 2 minutes here, another improvement that saves 2 minutes there, and so on, hopefully combined with some bigger improvements where possible, is ultimately what is going to make the Far North line quick enough to tempt more people out of cars. In that context, closing a station that basically nobody uses to save those few minutes is a very sensible thing to do.

Also, remember that not everyone is going to be doing the whole length of the route. 4 minutes out of a 4-and-a-half hour journey seems insignificant. But for people travelling between intermediate stops, that might be 4 minutes saved out of half an hour, or 4 minutes out of an hour. That's relatively a lot more significant.

 

[najaB]

And there are a lot more potential tourists than local residents, most of whom prefer to use their cars for convenience, or the quicker bus.

Given that they are likely to need a car to do any exploring at all I suspect that the price-suppressed demand for tourist rail between Fearn and Wick/Thurso is minimal.

 

[jayah]

There has to be some mechanism by which an almost unused station, line or service can be axed. It is irresponsible to preserve the past in some sort of expensive deep freeze at the taxpayers expenses. Given there is likely to be 100% car use somewhere that remote the hardship would be almost zero.

 

[yorksrob]

There has to be some mechanism by which an almost unused station, line or service can be axed. It is irresponsible to preserve the past in some sort of expensive deep freeze at the taxpayers expenses. Given there is likely to be 100% car use somewhere that remote the hardship would be almost zero.

We already have one. The "parliamentary" service enables a service to be mothballed without opening the floodgates.