Given the Shapps announcement, which lines would you propose for reopening?

[The Planner]

Why would you reverse at Rugby?

You would just have an east-to-north Chord where the WCML crosses the ex GCML.

So you train wouldn't call at Rugby? just pass within ½ mile of it?

 

[HSTEd]

So you train wouldn't call at Rugby? just pass within ½ mile of it?

Well no, because stopping at rugby would require a reversal which would obviously slow things down too much.
You might provide a new station on the line but I doubt it would be economic.

Not all WCML trains stop at Rugby after all.

 

[Kingspanner]

Bishop Auckland to Durham via Spennymoor, with through services to Newcastle.

Wasn't "via Spennymoor" a way to get to Ferryhill Station and thus Hartlepool and Stockton by roundabout routes?
If we are going to to Bishop Auckland to Durham I'd go via Willington.
(Apologies to anyone not interested in this rather obscure point).

 

[RichJF]

Uckfield - Lewes
All of East-West Rail
Okehampton - Plymouth
Guildford - Horsham
Woodhead Route

 

[lachlan]

I would reopen the lines from Dyce to Fraserburgh and Peterhead. Combined population of over 45,000 along that route, an area far from any existing railway and roads are struggling. Considering the Borders Railway came in at £300 million, the routes to Peterhead and Fraserburgh ought to cost less than £750 million at the most, which was the cost of the recently constructed AWPR Aberdeen bypass.

Possibly via a new alignment going directly from Ellon to Peterhead then on to Fraserburgh would be beneficial, as the railway could be operated as one service.

If the Deeside railway were reopened as far as Peterculter, coupled with the reopening of Kittybrewster station this could replace the super slow buses in Aberdeen. This is a good candidate for a tram-train service. Currently the bus from Peterculter takes 38 minutes to the railway station, 50 minutes to Kittybrewster vs 21 and 25 minutes driving.

 

[The Planner]

Well no, because stopping at rugby would require a reversal which would obviously slow things down too much.
You might provide a new station on the line but I doubt it would be economic.

Not all WCML trains stop at Rugby after all.

Seems to be cutting your nose off to spite your face, open a line from Leicester to nearly Rugby, but not call there. Might as well keep going to St Pancras.

 

[HSTEd]

Seems to be cutting your nose off to spite your face, open a line from Leicester to nearly Rugby, but not call there. Might as well keep going to St Pancras.

The problem is the MML has some serious capacity issues, as does St Pancras given how small the MML station is.
Diverting them into Euston largely solves those problems.

 

[CaptainHaddock]

Scarborough to Whitby. There's no business case for it whatsoever, it's just I'd like to see some lovely old trains travelling through such wonderful coastal scenery!

 

[ohgoditsjames]

Skipton to Ilkley wouldn’t be a bad shout either although not sure how possible that would be looking at Ilkley station.

 

[03_179]

Scarborough to Whitby. There's no business case for it whatsoever, it's just I'd like to see some lovely old trains travelling through such wonderful coastal scenery!

Agreed ... would also help the local tourist trade, the clogging up of the streets and ease the Esk Valley Line

 

[Cardiff123]

Penarth to Cadoxton via Sully and Swanbridge. Yes the old trackbed has been built on in parts, but it's a line that is desperately needed to ease traffic congestion through Penarth and to cope with the extra housing developments that the Vale of Glamorgan council have planned for the fields in Sully.

Use CPO's to buy up buildings built on the old trackbed to make it happen.

 

[brad465]

If the Somerset and Dorset railway was reopened a number of remote towns (even city of Wells if that branch was included) that are currently relatively far from a main rail network would be served again. In terms of how easy it is to rebuild I feel like Poole through to Wells or Shepton Mallet shouldn't be too hard, however Bath Green Park and its approach is far too built up to see that bit used again I reckon. The closest it might get to Bath is Midford, if it was feasible to set up a Parkway station in the area to get into Bath from there.

 

[tbtc]

Bishop Auckland to Durham via Spennymoor, with through services to Newcastle.

Oi - Mods - someone's posted something sensible in this thread - this needs moderating urgently

There's so many flawed ideas on this thread that I don't know where to start - e.g. three trains per hour from Okehampton to Exeter - but Bishop Auckland - Spennymoor - Durham gets seven commercial buses per hour, two of which continue to Newcastle - which is a little bit more than you can say for routes like Tavistock - Okehampton - I'm not saying that a line through County Durham would be a top priority but it's a corridor that clearly has a reasonable level of demand on it - you can chuck in some of that "regeneration" stuff about reconnecting Bish/Spennymoor to the relative prosperity of Durham/ Newcastle.

Whilst there's already a station at Bishop Auckland, the attractions of Darlington / Middlesbrough aren't anything like as significant as Durham (booming place where people are being priced out of living in the city itself as Students take over) and Newcastle.

Anyhow, back to suggesting rambling lines through empty countryside to reconnect some obscure villages...

 

[PTR 444]

I would consider reopening the Castleman Corkscrew route between Brockenhurst and Ringwood, although part of it is now a public highway so I don't know how it could be done. The western section between Wimborne and Hamworthy could reopen as a light rail corridor with trams continuing to Poole and Bournemouth via the Hamworthy Branch Line. This could be done as single track with passing places in order to retain the popular cycle path alongside.

 

[The Ham]

Oi - Mods - someone's posted something sensible in this thread - this needs moderating urgently

There's so many flawed ideas on this thread that I don't know where to start - e.g. three trains per hour from Okehampton to Exeter - but Bishop Auckland - Spennymoor - Durham gets seven commercial buses per hour, two of which continue to Newcastle - which is a little bit more than you can say for routes like Tavistock - Okehampton - I'm not saying that a line through County Durham would be a top priority but it's a corridor that clearly has a reasonable level of demand on it - you can chuck in some of that "regeneration" stuff about reconnecting Bish/Spennymoor to the relative prosperity of Durham/ Newcastle.

Whilst there's already a station at Bishop Auckland, the attractions of Darlington / Middlesbrough aren't anything like as significant as Durham (booming place where people are being priced out of living in the city itself as Students take over) and Newcastle.

Anyhow, back to suggesting rambling lines through empty countryside to reconnect some obscure villages...

I would suggest that some ideas which are currently flawed may not be so in 20, 40 or 60 years time.

Especially when you beat in mind that the UK would like to be net carbon neutral by 2050, so chances are that'll mean a LOT more people using public transport, including rail (which is already produces 5 times less CO2 emissions than cars and decreasing all the time).

Since plastics in the oceans was highlight to the majority of people there's been a significant cultural shift towards being much more aware of our impact on the world. Even before that rail growth has been high and use of cars had been falling.

Where the existing network has limited additional capacity you could consider new routes, however these would need to go somewhere useful. This often means that they need to link to services to/from London, if there's very limited capacity on such services then these new lines won't be built (likewise nor will reopenings happen).

As such any extra capacity (regardless of if you like it or not) would likely need to route into future rail schemes. As an example a reopening which tried into capacity improvements created by HS2 could well happen, one that allows some express trains to miss some villages but not actually allow the runnning of more services into major cities (like London or Birmingham) probably won't.

The other thing to bear in mind is what are the services doing. For instance extending an existing service so that it runs through somewhere which could otherwise cause a bottleneck by terminating a service there could be more cost effective than upgrading stations and/or junctions to facilitate additional services.

Then there's the point that the rail network is very busy and so doing something which diverts passengers from an over used line to a line where there's the potential for extra capacity at a relatively small cost is likely to be seen as a good idea.

However you then have to consider what happens when that line then goes to 2tph rather than 1tph. Those who use it as a local line are likely to increase, add in a few longer distance passengers (who no longer need to go the longer way as it's quicker) and it's for the potential to double passenger numbers in a fairly short timespan.

There's often a view that X can't happen as there's not the demand now. As an example in 2009 there were many doubts that the predictions for HS2 would be met. However 9 years in and the growth rate has exceeded that expected for the opening of Phase 1 (8 years early), whilst the growth rate to slightly exceed the predictions for phase 2 (Western Arm) we'd only need to see <1% per year (which to date has been a very rare occurrence).

Let's take Plymouth Exeter, there's currently a lot of 80x' running as 9/10 coach trains with fairly good passenger loading figures. This December will see a near universal 2tph express/semi fast service being provided (either by GWR or XC). If we see a doubling of passenger numbers in the next 20 to 30 years then we'd need to have at least a 3tph service between the two (assuming that 1tph is a half length train from next month).

However it's likely that a fourth service could well be useful/needed soon after. There's little scope for extra service from London or Birmingham heading to the South West using GWR track currently and any such spare capacity would likely be attractive for other GWR routes as well. However there could well be (with Crossrail 2 and some upgrades to the WofE line) scope for services from Waterloo.

Although there's not likely to be many who would head from Waterloo to Exeter or Plymouth there's likely to be several who already use the GWR services who would switch to a SWR service of it could miss our a of the more minor stations West of Salisbury, especially if it continued to Plymouth. That would then free up capacity on the GWR services for more passengers.

If there's a line through Okehampton, justified by serving longer distance passengers (which is something which is unlikely to have been considered as it's 20-30 years away whist the current assessments have been done with current passenger flows and mostly assuming it's just a local, almost branch, line) then it's entirely feasible that it could have other services. Especially given that once the line exists there's likely to be more development at places along the line where there's a train station, or even the potential for a train station (see Newcourt as an example of what could happen, and who would have predicted that 30 years ago?).

The future of travel is much more likely to be people walking, cycling, using buses and trains than it is Hyperloop and driverless cars (although the latter will exist, it's unlikely that in the next 30 years that they'll be a significant modal share, if at all very noticeable in the greater scheme of things). Why? Due to Hyperloop needing a long time to actually build a useful network and the difficulty of that network being anything other than point to point routes. Likewise driverless cars need their routes to be well mapped, meaning that they'll be limited in where they can go for a long time. Both of these will limit their usefulness.

For example if you think that it'll take a bit of time to get driverless cars to be able to do the whole of the area within the North/South Circular of London. However then scale that up to every city and large town (those urban areas of over 75,000) as well as the whole trunk road network. That's not going to be an easy task and even then there's a lot of places which would be off limits. However there's going to be a lot of people who make those sorts of journeys enough to be able to rely on a self driving car. Yet many of those places wouldn't generate enough traffic to justify companies mapping the routes.

That's going to leed to potentially fairly reasonable sized towns where a self drive car may only get you to key points. However with range limits (assuming an electric vehicle) you may find that going by train is much faster.

Maybe in 50 to 100 years they'll be wide spread enough (consider how bad mobile phone signal is in some areas and that's been mainstream for over 20 years) however, by then rail will have had it a lot it's own way and so people are likely to be more used to switching between modes of travel than perhaps people are now.

However with a likely growing population and a limit on road space is likely that rail could well continue to grow. Especially if you can remove a significant amount of long distance travel to the railways, freeing up more roadspace for local travel. As a significant percentage of places which are congested are like that because of people passing through that area rather than those traveling to/from that area.

 

[tbtc]

I would suggest that some ideas which are currently flawed may not be so in 20, 40 or 60 years time.

Especially when you beat in mind that the UK would like to be net carbon neutral by 2050, so chances are that'll mean a LOT more people using public transport, including rail (which is already produces 5 times less CO2 emissions than cars and decreasing all the time).

Since plastics in the oceans was highlight to the majority of people there's been a significant cultural shift towards being much more aware of our impact on the world. Even before that rail growth has been high and use of cars had been falling.

Where the existing network has limited additional capacity you could consider new routes, however these would need to go somewhere useful. This often means that they need to link to services to/from London, if there's very limited capacity on such services then these new lines won't be built (likewise nor will reopenings happen).

As such any extra capacity (regardless of if you like it or not) would likely need to route into future rail schemes. As an example a reopening which tried into capacity improvements created by HS2 could well happen, one that allows some express trains to miss some villages but not actually allow the runnning of more services into major cities (like London or Birmingham) probably won't.

The other thing to bear in mind is what are the services doing. For instance extending an existing service so that it runs through somewhere which could otherwise cause a bottleneck by terminating a service there could be more cost effective than upgrading stations and/or junctions to facilitate additional services.

Then there's the point that the rail network is very busy and so doing something which diverts passengers from an over used line to a line where there's the potential for extra capacity at a relatively small cost is likely to be seen as a good idea.

However you then have to consider what happens when that line then goes to 2tph rather than 1tph. Those who use it as a local line are likely to increase, add in a few longer distance passengers (who no longer need to go the longer way as it's quicker) and it's for the potential to double passenger numbers in a fairly short timespan.

There's often a view that X can't happen as there's not the demand now. As an example in 2009 there were many doubts that the predictions for HS2 would be met. However 9 years in and the growth rate has exceeded that expected for the opening of Phase 1 (8 years early), whilst the growth rate to slightly exceed the predictions for phase 2 (Western Arm) we'd only need to see <1% per year (which to date has been a very rare occurrence).

Let's take Plymouth Exeter, there's currently a lot of 80x' running as 9/10 coach trains with fairly good passenger loading figures. This December will see a near universal 2tph express/semi fast service being provided (either by GWR or XC). If we see a doubling of passenger numbers in the next 20 to 30 years then we'd need to have at least a 3tph service between the two (assuming that 1tph is a half length train from next month).

However it's likely that a fourth service could well be useful/needed soon after. There's little scope for extra service from London or Birmingham heading to the South West using GWR track currently and any such spare capacity would likely be attractive for other GWR routes as well. However there could well be (with Crossrail 2 and some upgrades to the WofE line) scope for services from Waterloo.

Although there's not likely to be many who would head from Waterloo to Exeter or Plymouth there's likely to be several who already use the GWR services who would switch to a SWR service of it could miss our a of the more minor stations West of Salisbury, especially if it continued to Plymouth. That would then free up capacity on the GWR services for more passengers.

If there's a line through Okehampton, justified by serving longer distance passengers (which is something which is unlikely to have been considered as it's 20-30 years away whist the current assessments have been done with current passenger flows and mostly assuming it's just a local, almost branch, line) then it's entirely feasible that it could have other services. Especially given that once the line exists there's likely to be more development at places along the line where there's a train station, or even the potential for a train station (see Newcourt as an example of what could happen, and who would have predicted that 30 years ago?).

The future of travel is much more likely to be people walking, cycling, using buses and trains than it is Hyperloop and driverless cars (although the latter will exist, it's unlikely that in the next 30 years that they'll be a significant modal share, if at all very noticeable in the greater scheme of things). Why? Due to Hyperloop needing a long time to actually build a useful network and the difficulty of that network being anything other than point to point routes. Likewise driverless cars need their routes to be well mapped, meaning that they'll be limited in where they can go for a long time. Both of these will limit their usefulness.

For example if you think that it'll take a bit of time to get driverless cars to be able to do the whole of the area within the North/South Circular of London. However then scale that up to every city and large town (those urban areas of over 75,000) as well as the whole trunk road network. That's not going to be an easy task and even then there's a lot of places which would be off limits. However there's going to be a lot of people who make those sorts of journeys enough to be able to rely on a self driving car. Yet many of those places wouldn't generate enough traffic to justify companies mapping the routes.

That's going to leed to potentially fairly reasonable sized towns where a self drive car may only get you to key points. However with range limits (assuming an electric vehicle) you may find that going by train is much faster.

Maybe in 50 to 100 years they'll be wide spread enough (consider how bad mobile phone signal is in some areas and that's been mainstream for over 20 years) however, by then rail will have had it a lot it's own way and so people are likely to be more used to switching between modes of travel than perhaps people are now.

However with a likely growing population and a limit on road space is likely that rail could well continue to grow. Especially if you can remove a significant amount of long distance travel to the railways, freeing up more roadspace for local travel. As a significant percentage of places which are congested are like that because of people passing through that area rather than those traveling to/from that area.

It's all very well meaning, sure, and I'm all for increased capacity on the kind of markets where heavy rail is most suitable (i.e. simpler bulk flows) but... you're wanting three trains per hour from Okehampton to Exeter and you're wanting to bring back a regular Waterloo service (because, of course it has to be a Waterloo service, because that's what the London & South Western Railway had thousands of years ago) - it's bad enough that the Waterloo throat is at the mercy of single track sections west of Salisbury but to add on all of the single track bits from Exeter to Plymouth too... or is the plan to fully double track this re-opening? It'd still take twice as long from Exeter to Plymouth as the existing service via Dawlish.

Sorry, this is the Speculative Ideas section - I know, I know, I shouldn't take things so seriously!

 

[The Ham]

It's all very well meaning, sure, and I'm all for increased capacity on the kind of markets where heavy rail is most suitable (i.e. simpler bulk flows) but... you're wanting three trains per hour from Okehampton to Exeter and you're wanting to bring back a regular Waterloo service (because, of course it has to be a Waterloo service, because that's what the London & South Western Railway had thousands of years ago) - it's bad enough that the Waterloo throat is at the mercy of single track sections west of Salisbury but to add on all of the single track bits from Exeter to Plymouth too... or is the plan to fully double track this re-opening? It'd still take twice as long from Exeter to Plymouth as the existing service via Dawlish.

Sorry, this is the Speculative Ideas section - I know, I know, I shouldn't take things so seriously!

OK, where could we within projects which are likely to be completed within the 20 to 30 year timeframe could we accommodate more capacity between the South West and useful places which links to London if it doesn't use capacity created by Crossrail 2 at Waterloo?

That's why I'm suggesting Waterloo, not because it happened to be the way it ran in the past. Provide a suitable answer and I'll shut up about Waterloo. The problem is that unless there's a new line built out of London, it is likely that Waterloo is the easiest option.

 

[Gwenllian2001]

Penarth to Cadoxton via Sully and Swanbridge. Yes the old trackbed has been built on in parts, but it's a line that is desperately needed to ease traffic congestion through Penarth and to cope with the extra housing developments that the Vale of Glamorgan council have planned for the fields in Sully.

Use CPO's to buy up buildings built on the old trackbed to make it happen.

Yes, I agree. Most of the route is still clear and is crying out for reinstatement. It's only about five miles to the former Biglis Junction and was one of the most unnecessary closures of its time. It's not as if it was a dead end but part of a through route to Barry and the Vale of Glamorgan.

 

[Cardiff123]

Yes, I agree. Most of the route is still clear and is crying out for reinstatement. It's only about five miles to the former Biglis Junction and was one of the most unnecessary closures of its time. It's not as if it was a dead end but part of a through route to Barry and the Vale of Glamorgan.

Most of the route is still clear with the rail over road bridges still intact. But there are a few houses built on the line halfway between Penarth and Cosmeston, and the trackbed at the Cadoxton end has been obliterated with a housing estate and industrial estates built on it.
So whilst reinstatement of the line is desperately needed, I fear cost of reinstatement along the trackbed of the old route will be too prohibitive and therefore it will be put in the 'too difficult' category.

 

[Iskra]

Woodhead
Buxton-Matlock
Sheffield-Deepcar-Stocksbridge (tram train?)
In total total fantasy land Huddersfield-Leeds via Gildersome and;
Dewsbury-Bradford to allow decent Wakefield-Bradford journeys.

 

[Revaulx]

Woodhead
Buxton-Matlock
Sheffield-Deepcar-Stocksbridge (tram train?)
In total total fantasy land Huddersfield-Leeds via Gildersome and;
Dewsbury-Bradford to allow decent Wakefield-Bradford journeys.

The problem with Woodhead is plugging it into Sheffield Midland. Let's improve Hope Valley first and see how that turns out.

Chinley/Buxton Matlock is absolutely essential if there's ever going to be a decent service between the North West and East Midlands.

Stocksbridge seems an obvious one for tram-train, if this country ever gets the concept to work.

Huddersfield-Leeds via Gildersome (the New Line) was beset with sharp curves. The only reason the expresses used it was to avoid the junctions with the L&Y. The current proposals for Huddersfield to Dewsbury do the job even better, at the small cost of leaving the line double track Dewsbury to Leeds. Just reopening the Viaduct Line would ease the approaches to Leeds.

By Dewsbury-Bradford do you mean the ex-GN through Dudley Hill?

 

[Kimi]

Cleckheaton and Liversedge to Thornhill. This was still running freight until 1980s, a lot of track was in situ in the 90s. Then maybe another 2 miles of longer abandoned p-way through to Low Moor (for onwards to Bradford)

Anyone trying to drive in the area will appreciate any fix for the traffic.. it's bad, very bad, and crazy to have trackbed not used..
Given the Transpennine plans currently, could make this line turn right to Ravensthorpe rather than left to Thornhill/Wakefield giving the main required connectivity for Leeds there.

 

[greatvoyager]

I'd like to see the Teign Valley line reopen from Exeter to Newton Abbot via Heathfield as an alternative to the sea wall route, which would be particularly useful during bad weather.

 

[Iskra]

The problem with Woodhead is plugging it into Sheffield Midland. Let's improve Hope Valley first and see how that turns out.

Chinley/Buxton Matlock is absolutely essential if there's ever going to be a decent service between the North West and East Midlands.

Stocksbridge seems an obvious one for tram-train, if this country ever gets the concept to work.

Huddersfield-Leeds via Gildersome (the New Line) was beset with sharp curves. The only reason the expresses used it was to avoid the junctions with the L&Y. The current proposals for Huddersfield to Dewsbury do the job even better, at the small cost of leaving the line double track Dewsbury to Leeds. Just reopening the Viaduct Line would ease the approaches to Leeds.

By Dewsbury-Bradford do you mean the ex-GN through Dudley Hill?

Reaching Sheffield Midland would be preferable (if troublesome), but it isn't essential. Having a second station again is a perfectly adequate solution and you'd have to have one for the line from Stocksbridge anyway.

I don't envisage the reinstated New Line to be particularly fast, its main aim would be to take cars off the A62.

The ex L&Y as described by Kimi above.

Reinstating the New Line and the Spen Valley Line would have a massive positive effect on traffic congestion in West Yorkshire and provide faster journeys between Wakefield and Bradford.

 

[yorksrob]

OK, where could we within projects which are likely to be completed within the 20 to 30 year timeframe could we accommodate more capacity between the South West and useful places which links to London if it doesn't use capacity created by Crossrail 2 at Waterloo?

That's why I'm suggesting Waterloo, not because it happened to be the way it ran in the past. Provide a suitable answer and I'll shut up about Waterloo. The problem is that unless there's a new line built out of London, it is likely that Waterloo is the easiest option.

You're quite right to suggest Waterloo.

The existing main line already provides good connections from the West country to Taunton and Reading. A rejuvenated main line through to Waterloo could provide a good service between the West country and Yeovil, Salisbury and Basingstoke, amongst others.

 

[Dr Day]

Probably not what the OP is intending, but throwing in North West Cardiff - Creigiau-Plasdwr (as an on-street-compatible low floor light railway, independent of the heavy rail network to keep operational costs down hence improve viability).

Linking up with a re-purposed City Line with re-sited, accessible low-platform stations, continuing around the back of Canton depot, over the Barry line and squeezed across the Taff bridge, around the back of Central and onto Cardiff Bay. Speculative variation on some of the Cardiff Metro proposals.

 

[Gwenllian2001]

Probably not what the OP is intending, but throwing in North West Cardiff - Creigiau-Plasdwr (as an on-street-compatible low floor light railway, independent of the heavy rail network to keep operational costs down hence improve viability).

Linking up with a re-purposed City Line with re-sited, accessible low-platform stations, continuing around the back of Canton depot, over the Barry line and squeezed across the Taff bridge, around the back of Central and onto Cardiff Bay. Speculative variation on some of the Cardiff Metro proposals.

Ideally this line should be extended along the old formation to Talbot Green and possibly Church Village to serve this very congested and growing area.

 

[Gwenllian2001]

Caerphilly to Newport. Not a difficult reinstatement since quite a lot of it still exists. It would enable passengers for London, Bristol, the West Country, Hereford, Shrewsbury and Manchester to avoid the need to travel to Cardiff and double back on themselves. It is also a growing area as Newport expands. An easy gain as the platform already exists at Caerphilly for a shuttle.

 

[JKF]

Goole to Fockerby, serving the growing industrial powerhouse of the Isle of Axholme. Looks like someone has built a farm shed over the trackbed near the end of the line so maybe a parkway station could be built on the outskirts.

Who’s going to help me build the website/Facebook page and come up with some spurious justifications based on potential use of a diversionary route, electrification, direct trains to Manchester Airport etc.?

 

[furnessvale]

I don't envisage the reinstated New Line to be particularly fast, its main aim would be to take cars off the A62.

Speaking personally, any line that is not particularly fast will not be taking cars off any road. Railways need significant advantages over road to attract passengers, one of which is speed.