edwin_m
Veteran Member
If there's ever going to be a "landbridge" for Irish container traffic, then it would be much more likely to happen at Holyhead where there is a reasonably fast double track line right to the gates of the port.
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Is there a case for reopening the the Port Road line?
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Reopen the station at Gatehouse of Fleet? That's going to attract a huge traffic, being that it was 7 miles from the actual "town", which itself had a population of just under 1,000 at the last census. The A75 has a Gatehouse bypass, but the 7 buses a day between Dumfries and Stranraer use the old road right through the middle of Gatehouse.
Not surprisingly there's no bus service near the station site, as it is literally in the middle of nowhere.
Not surprisingly there's no bus service near the station site, as it is literally in the middle of nowhere.
DarloRich
Veteran Member
No chance - sorry. There is no freight, no passengers and no demand. I would focus attentions on keeping Stranraer connected to the existing network.
There is barely a business case for printing up the business case! What do you base your "strong case" upon?
The line wont reopen in your lifetime, my lifetime or the next hundred lifetimes unless they strike oil or diamonds in Newton Stewart
As others have pointed out, neglecting transit times, the same net effect could be achieved by reconnecting Cairnryan to the network at a much, much lower cost. A bit of gauge clearance and some loops through to Ayr and job's done. Probably for 1/10th the cost of reopening the Port Road.
Diamonds would be flown out....
I can't imagine this project being useful even if there were cash splashing around everywhere. Sorry. Nobody lives in these places! What the area could do with on the other hand is several new stations on existing lines, perhaps at Mauchline and Cumnock, which are no-brainers.
How about a properly fully integrated coach link from Lockerbie via Lochbaben to Dumfries and then calling at the communities served by the old "Port Road" to Stranraer and the ports at Cairnryan.
The coach would be treated as a "train" with through timetabling and ticketing - I think this is the best that we can hope for at present.
The coach would be treated as a "train" with through timetabling and ticketing - I think this is the best that we can hope for at present.
duffers2324
Member
thats a very good point and probably would be the best way i have been trying to source a timetable of some sort from before it got shut but not been able to do so yet, I have looked at the X75 bus timetable between Stranraer to Dumfries and it seems as though it has one through journey a day so even the bus is minimal the whole way by the looks of things. A Bustitution idea with 3 or 4 thru journeys a day may be the best option.
DarloRich
Veteran Member
with respect the best option is not to bother and spend the money elsewhere on something that might actually make a return!
Is it still bustitution 30 years after a line closed? Sounds more like a buserection to me! (No giggling down back!)
The X75 is not the main service between Dumfries and Stranraer, that would be the 500A with 7 journeys a day.
Altfish
Member
The area could handle a Heritage Railway, If you started just north of Castle Douglas over the Loch Ken viaduct, via Stroan Loch and finishing at Loch Skerrow. Narrow gauge maybe like the Welsh Highland Railway
Just because somewhere is listed as a strategic freight site doesn't mean that it has track in it, operational or otherwise, nor that anyone actually wants to use it. And 20 years of disuse really should be a bit of a clue for you as to the lack of current demand in Stranraer. In any case, as others have said, the place freight needs to be going now is Cairnryan. And Network Rail does not appear to have any plans to dispose of the land at Stranraer Town or the Stockton Haulage site should someone suddenly want to operate there again.
What 'better growth figures' are you on about? If you mean Maybole and Girvan, I'm afraid I don't count those stations, as there is clearly no chance of closure of that section of the line - unlike south of Girvan, which serves a sparsely populated area and where the connection with the Northern Irish ferries has been broken.
Passenger traffic at Stranraer station in 2010-11 was 57,276. In 2013-14 it was 45,530. As for Barrhill, the only other station open south of Girvan, the 'growth' in 2013-14 is presumably down to some alteration in auditing/ticketing practice, as footfall had been between 4,500 and 5,500 a year for the whole of the previous decade. I know from personal experience that in the past passengers off to Glasgow for the day were being sold a Strathclyde day rover ticket, as that was the cheapest way to get there and back - even if it clearly concealed the true traffic figure at Barrhill. Someone with local knowledge may be able to enlighten us as to what happened in 2013 to produce the 'surge' in custom.
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Altfish
Member
The tourist market is growing in the region and I think the lack of big cities is irrelevant. Glasgow, Edinburgh, Carlisle are all within 2-hours.
Dark skies is an attraction but I wasn't envisaging night trains...although maybe that's not a bad idea - "Astronomy Trains"!!
duffers2324
Member
a very interesting watch
If you're talking about spending in the region of half a billion (conservative estimate of how much this line would cost) you really need to have a major population centre at at least one end of the route in order to generate steady commuter traffic. Carlisle, with a population of 75,000, doesn't really qualify. Tourism is way too seasonal and doesn't generate year-round traffic and, besides, where are all these tourists going to be going to/from?
gazthomas
Established Member
Very clever!
Altfish
Member
This isn't going to happen it is just dreamland
1. A logistics operator was close to using Stranraer again and then NR demolished the facility. Sadly for many years there was no 'champion' for the route. When this changed NR weighed in, but it was too late. Evidence from ORR states that rail access to Stockton Haulage was to be maintained. It wasn't. It is very difficult to undertake a trial if you have no track!
2. The nearest freight facility to Cairnryan is/was at Stranraer. In the real world a hand doesn't come down from the sky and move the freight from Stranraer to Cairnryan. Now the nearest facility is Falkland sidings, over 60 miles away.
3. Even prior to Stena's departure road transport would have been needed to tranship between Stranraer and the terminal.
4. I am not sure what there is in 'Stranraer line' you query. Maybole, Girvan, Barrhill and Stranraer are part of the line/route. Arbitarily removing them because 'they don't count in your view' is a rather fatuous argument.
5. Barrhill has one of the strongest growth figures of all the stations on the line and is largely down to the excellent work done by the local CRP. Growth at Barrhill from ScotRail's own commercial data shows growth of 15%. It has consistently grown since 2009 when the CRP introduced marketing material.
6. ORR data shows that since 2008/9 the Stranraer line has grown by 32.1% and in the last 3 years had higher growth figures (24.8%) than Aberdeen - Inverness (15.9%), WHL (2.4%), Highland Main line (8.5%), Oban line (-31.2%), Far North line (4.3%), Mallaig line (1.3%), Kyle line (-0.3%), Nith Valley line (-0.9%).
7. Clearly in numeric journey stats a rural line like that to Stranraer can't compete with HML, Aberdeen-Inverness or Nith Valley, but it still carries more passengers than all the others except the Far North, which of course had major service enhancements.
8. You offer no positive suggestions whatsoever, but as a local I can assure you that the line's (and Stranraer's) limitations are well known but with major structural issues surrounding two tourist authorities (or even three depending on how one counts it), the most socially deprived rural part of Scotland (source Scottish Agricultural College), a failure to maintain some rail link with Ireland via Stranraer, and one station outside the daytripper zone making fares seem expensive all contribute to the situation at Stranraer. To have recovered the ferry passenger numbers (some 17-18% of tickets sold at Stranraer were to ferry passengers and this excludes Rail and Sail a further 45,000 now down to 37,000 with coach transport, so the numbers you quote are misleading) is a good achievement, but unless these structural issues are addressed nowt will change.
9. Service frequency changes in Dec 2015, with a major upgrade. Whether reliability will go the other way remains to be seen. So far the new ScotRail has been a major disappointment and local communities are not impressed.
10. The readjustment in 2013-14 was due to a reassessment of the SPT ticket aggregation across the whole SPT area. It states this in the ORR data. As a rough guide (local knowledge) SPT tickets account for about 5-6% on top of the ScotRail data bit it varies from station to station. Most people from Barrhill buy daytrippers as predominantly they are going to Glasgow. The real figures for Barrhill are derived from ScotRail data, which for growth purposes is more accurate. Given the relative sizes of the catchment areas that Barrhill carries about a quarter of the passenger journeys of Stranraer is interesting, given that most passengers to/from Barrhill have to travel 20 miles+ to get to the station in the first place from Newton Stewart, Wigtown etc.
1. Well they must be a very secretive logistics operator because I can't find anything anywhere suggesting such a move was on the cards. The Saylsa website item about removal of the track says nothing about it. Perhaps the firm was so secretive that Network Rail knew nothing about it as well. If NR did know, then I would agree, it seems a daft thing to have done.
2/3. Fact remains that all the ferries are now at Cairnryan and won't be going back to Stranraer. Well aware transshipment was a fact of life before and would be again at either location - and the cost of this remains a key obstacle to making rail freight competitive on this route against road hauliers running on wafer-thin margins.
4/5/6 So you're going to tell me that SPTE/Transport Scotland/Scotrail don't view the route in two segments are you? Because a train service that currently offers 15 services a day at Girvan and Maybole and six at Barrhill and Stranraer, rising to 19 and nine respectively in December is quite clearly a line of two halves, whether you like it or not. And your comparisons with other routes rely on the traffic at Girvan and Maybole, where there has indeed been impressive growth since 2002.
Funny how you choose to cite the figures at Barrhill since 2009, because the figures from 2002-3 and 2004-5 show almost as many passengers under the previous system of allocating footfall as in 2012-13, suggesting to me that traffic now has simply climbed back to where it was early in the last decade. This is undoubtedly good news but cannot mask the one route/two halves situation.
8/9/10 I am well aware of the issues thanks, having visited the area a number of times over the years. And these issues have not changed over many years, yet the public bodies involved seem to have done precious little to address any of them, such as the silly ticketing divide at Barrhill because of the Strathclyde boundary. Or react in any way, shape or form to the long-signalled switch to Cairnryan by Stena, such as where is the best site for a Stranraer station if you don't need to connect with the ferries, etc, etc. Even the December 'improvements' involve removing the last direct Glasgow-Paisley-Ayr-Stranraer trains, suggesting they still don't get it. And the Scottish Parliament infrastructure committee's inquiry is focused on freight needs, rather than the possibility of re-establishing a passenger link to the ferries at the same time, which would obviously be a big part of any rail reinstatement to Cairnryan.
Here's a positive suggestion for Barrhill, though it is yet another of the things that should have been tackled long ago. Provide a car park at a station which, as you say, is a useful railhead for a very wide area but is simply not set up properly to perform that role. The old goods yard would seem the obvious place to use but I take it that the equally longstanding but so far not realised notion of reinstating a siding for timber traffic has blocked any progress in this regard. And maybe someone could get Mr Portillo to venture south of Ayr on the rails one of these days, rather than heading north, which he has now done twice...
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Youre on the right lines but behind the game a tad jimm.
1. Barrhill car park is in the pending tray, just needs SPT and the owner to agree....plus a small matter of funding.
2. You are proposing that the line be shut south of Girvan? You single out Stranraer but those locally fought as hard as they could to not prevent Stranraer losing its through 'direct' services via Paisley to Glasgow. TS over-ruled that argument.
3. Stranraer has fared no worse than many other places but the sheer ineptitude in the way the post Stena situation was handled has led to the current position. Every sensible situation is rebuffed. The Waterfront development is a mess.
4. The timber proposals have failed twice. Volumes seemed to be the issue.
Of course the line is in two halves, any local worth his salt can see that, but continued intransigence in resolving the bit south of Girvan leaves the constant impasse.
5. It was only sonce 2009 any local marketing has been done, but the numbers stand up to be better than the majority of other routes. What is unusual about Stranraer is that the last 2/3 carries under 20% traffic and as indicated above and earlier posts (and you realise too, glad to hear) it is a constant battle, promoting the sensible against an immovable force. If only the Climate Change Minister had been given transport!
The growth figures are derived from ScotRail internal data with SPT tickets added. The reason Barrhill jumped was that it had been undervalued. Assuming it is now correct, the best way of comparing the series is by recalibrating it using a factor and back dating the recalibration That has been done but not used here except to explain the Barrhill ORR growth. The actual growth at Barrhill was 15%, still a darn sight better than a lot of other places (and with less trains.)
6. Boundless TV said there were coming to Stranraer, then changed their minds. Quite rude really. Not impressed. Frankly they aren't interested, which sums it all up really.
7. Yes NR admitted it was a cock up. They didn't even know it was their own workforce that had done it! I think they only meant to take out Stranraer Town Yard. In the end they took out the lot - despite objections.
Well at least someone is mildly optimistic.
randyrippley
Established Member
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Total delusion. Most of the Irish freight traffic is unaccompanied trailers. Any saving is to be made in eliminating the drivers from the transit across England by using intermodal techniques. And if you wanted to run intermodal services, a better port is at Heysham with a short distance to holding sidings at Carnforth - and the WCML. Even if it was decided Heysham was too busy to take the intermodal freight, it would be cheaper to reopen the line to Fleetwood and run more ferries from there (extra linkspans would probably also be required).
Please see the new thread here for further discussion.
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