Historical context
The decision to rationalise at Dore would have been made about 1982/3 when there was an hourly fast service to Manchester and the stopping services weren't even every 2 hours, and only to New Mills, change to Manchester. I never did. Normal maximum of 3 passenger services an hour through the single line with a few cement trains.
By reducing the number of points, slewing tracks, and introducing more modern signalling MML and Cross Country services could save at least 30 seconds between Bradway Tunnel and Sheffield. As well as singling tracks through the station they were also singled through Dore Tunnel on the chord (not to be redoubled).
After passenger services on the mainline were withdrawn about 1969 the footbridge to Platform 4 at Dore was removed. The substantial wooden, but boarded up, waiting rooms and shop on the island platforms 2 and 3 were subject to an arson attack about 1982 and were removed and replaced by a very small bus shelter. Allegedly the remaining parts of the iron footbridge were in need of expensive major restoration work.
At that time the stopping service into Sheffield was very poor and most commuters used cars (me) or buses. In February 1979 we had bad snow and Sheffield gritters went on strike. Buses were taken off the roads. British Railways used initiative and stopped mainline trains at Dronfield and Dore. They were absolutely rammed full, potential users queueing down the road and packing the platform. Drawback was that missing footbridge to Platform 4 so we couldn't get back! (I walked home a couple of days and then got out the car.) Lesson learned by BR was to reopen Dronfield - and remove Platforms 2, 3 and 4 at Dore!
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When the singling happened in early 1985 only a few Sheffield commuters and occasional travellers noticed - and possibly as many trainspotters! It made little difference to performance. However 1985 was when passenger numbers on British Railways had started to recover. No planner could have accounted for that.
About this time the push back was getting under way, things like the Student Railcard getting the young and potentially well to do onto trains. Pensioners too with Senior Railcards.
The late Peter Fox, founder and owner of Platform 5 publications, successfully lobbied long and hard for improved services along the Hope Valley, and they've been provided. Today there are 6 passenger trains an hour funnelled through the triple bottlenecks of the single line through the station. There's far more stone and cement traffic coming down the Hope Valley using the Dore curve/chord and Totley Tunnel.
Back in 1985 there were probably fewer than 40,000 passengers a year at Dore. By 2010-11, the latest date for calculating passenger needs for the redoubling, numbers had risen to 93,000. In 2019-20 they'd risen to 219,000. It is not public knowledge how traffic between Sheffield and Manchester has grown but anecdotal and visual evidence suggests it might be at a similar rate. That's thanks to the success of the 3 trains an hour along the route offered by TPE, EMR and Northern.
Cement and stone traffic has also grown. (Little weight was put on the stone traffic at the public inqury.) Feeding all this down the Sheaf Valley with increased numbers of Sheffield - St Pancras and Cross Country trains means that the rationale for the Hope Valley Scheme was already out of date by the time the TWAO was granted!
And now it's out of date again due to thed as yet unknown longer term after effects of Covid!!
So when considering whether decisions were, or are, right or wrong with railway development and investment we need to bear in mind the very long timescales involved. Doing nothing must be a very easy option to take, but all the nothings build into massive problems later.
I hear someone shouting that doing the wrong thing can also be disastrous. Who'd be a planner!