Should some longer rural routes be sacrificed and the money spent elsewhere on the network?

[zwk500]

Wouldn’t a smarter approach to be to maintain these very rural lines to a lower cheaper standard.

How much lower standard can you maintain the West Highland Line without kicking the freight off it?

 

[The Ham]

If there are a million passengers a year on the highland railways and they cost £100m a year to run then that would be the better part of £100/trip subsidy which is enormous by any reasonable measure.

The point is that you could reduce that cost per trip by making it free to use.

Let's use your numbers as the basis for what comes next.

If we were to make travel free, then that might mean that means the cost on subsidy increases to £111 million. However if you see a 20% increase in passenger numbers the the cost per passenger falls to £92.5.

A +20% uplift in passengers because it's free isn't necessarily that large (rail growth recently had over 8% in some years).

 

[DynamicSpirit]

The point is that you could reduce that cost per trip by making it free to use.

Let's use your numbers as the basis for what comes next.

If we were to make travel free, then that might mean that means the cost on subsidy increases to £111 million. However if you see a 20% increase in passenger numbers the the cost per passenger falls to £92.5.

A +20% uplift in passengers because it's free isn't necessarily that large (rail growth recently had over 8% in some years).

I'm not convinced that reducing the subsidy per passenger is that much of a benefit if it means the total ongoing subsidy increases. I'd much rather think about what improvements/efficiencies can be made that might attract more people to be willing to pay fares to use the line in order to increase the numbers of passengers while reducing (or at least, not increasing) the required subsidy (even if that means some capital expenditure upfront).

And I really don't like the idea of divorcing passengers from the cost to the extent that passengers don't pay anything and therefore end up with no appreciation of the fact that their journeys do actually cost resources/staff time etc. that someone has to provide for.

 

[MatthewHutton]

How much lower standard can you maintain the West Highland Line without kicking the freight off it?

Whatever standard the lines were maintained to in the 1960s for less than £10m a year in today’s money.

Likely you could limit to 1960s speeds as well.

 

[Dr Hoo]

Only if it's clearly stated in their manifesto, so they are elected on a specific platform of making railway closure easier. Otherwise, it's surely the sort of thing the House of Lords would oppose bitterly and delay significantly.

Slightly worrying that the Labour Manifesto of 1964 committed to “halting major rail closures” in the aftermath of the Beeching ‘Reshaping’ report. It didn’t seem to stop the closures and quite a few more were added to the original list.

How successful were the Lords in holding those up?

 

[HSTEd]

Whatever standard the lines were maintained to in the 1960s for less than £10m a year in today’s money.

Likely you could limit to 1960s speeds as well.

Railway pay was far worse in the 1960s than it is now.

EDIT:

As an example, a driver might expect to earn up to 339 shillings per week in October 1965.
That's £16.95 in decimal currency, or £282.71 per week in 2025. Approximately £14,700 per annum today. And drivers were quite well paid for railway workers.

A porter only got 218 shillings a week, or about £9,450 per annum today.

 

[The Ham]

I'm not convinced that reducing the subsidy per passenger is that much of a benefit if it means the total ongoing subsidy increases. I'd much rather think about what improvements/efficiencies can be made that might attract more people to be willing to pay fares to use the line in order to increase the numbers of passengers while reducing (or at least, not increasing) the required subsidy (even if that means some capital expenditure upfront).

And I really don't like the idea of divorcing passengers from the cost to the extent that passengers don't pay anything and therefore end up with no appreciation of the fact that their journeys do actually cost resources/staff time etc. that someone has to provide for.

Although it may not necessarily increase the total ongoing subsidy.

As whilst you will increase the numbers of passengers using the line in question, those passengers will also need to get to the line.

Yes many will turn up at a station which is free to use and travel to a station which is free to use, however there will be more than zero of the increase who will go by train to/from a paid for station - which would then offset some of the extra costs.

Yes they are taking up resources, but even if we doubled passenger numbers to 2.5 million passengers (however that assumes we also double the number of passengers at Inverness), however (for capacity reasons) we assume they all travel through from a paid for station that's about 700 people a day (which would be 350 in each direction), which wouldn't really be an issue for most lines, as over a 10 services a day in each direction then that's about 1/2 a coach worth of passengers.

However, even if does increase the cost of the subsidy, the amount it does so by is tiny in the grad scheme of things.

Assuming that the railways were being subsided by £5bn a year (so quite a bit less than the current rate), and there were 10 lines which were around the UK which had an income if £10 million which were then changed to being free to travel lines, the cost increase would be 2% (assuming all the costs stay the same - as the savings would likely be limited to things such as not having to provide TVM's at stations).

 

[yorksrob]

Would definitely be a bad headline, but could work if the closures can be redirected into local transport improvements instead of just sucked into general spending. Maybe have a bus service to Wick or Thurso, every hour guaranteed by Parliament. However the line itself should stay since it would be useful as a freight link for timber, nuclear or any other industries that might sprout up in the area. Which limits the savings.

Well quite, if you're maintaining the route for strategic reasons, you may as well run passenger trains on it.

 

[duffield]

Slightly worrying that the Labour Manifesto of 1964 committed to “halting major rail closures” in the aftermath of the Beeching ‘Reshaping’ report. It didn’t seem to stop the closures and quite a few more were added to the original list.

How successful were the Lords in holding those up?

I suppose the question is if the 1964 government needed to change the law in order to continue the closures. If (as I would assume, admittedly without proof) they just carried on using existing powers then the Lords would of course have been powerless to delay them.

So getting back to today, I think my point is that a law change to make railway closures easier is unlikely, since a government determined to make closures would probably find it easier to use existing powers rather get in a fight with the Lords over it for an extended period before still having to go through some sort of revised process if and when they got their way.

 

[35B]

I suppose the question is if the 1964 government needed to change the law in order to continue the closures. If (as I would assume, admittedly without proof) they just carried on using existing powers then the Lords would of course have been powerless to delay them.

So getting back to today, I think my point is that a law change to make railway closures easier is unlikely, since a government determined to make closures would probably find it easier to use existing powers rather get in a fight with the Lords over it for an extended period before still having to go through some sort of revised process if and when they got their way.

You assume that the Lords would dig in that hard to prevent a change of law that would enable closures. If you look at genuinely consequential legislation (the Rwanda legislation), the Lords were deeply opposed on principle but still did not push things so hard that they blocked the Commons.

Enough powers exist that primary legislation is unnecessary, while if a government did want to close one of the truly rural subsidy sinks (let's say Barnetby - Gainsborough, to avoid the complications of devolution), they have plenty of levers to be able to drive that through should they wish.

 

[Tomos y Tanc]

You assume that the Lords would dig in that hard to prevent a change of law that would enable closures. If you look at genuinely consequential legislation (the Rwanda legislation), the Lords were deeply opposed on principle but still did not push things so hard that they blocked the Commons.

The HoL can only delay legislation for two years anyway. After that the HoC can overule them.

It's all a bit academic though. We are far more likely to see more reopenings rather than further closures. The network has been growing rather than contracting for the best part of half a century by now.

 

[MatthewHutton]

Railway pay was far worse in the 1960s than it is now.

EDIT:

As an example, a driver might expect to earn up to 339 shillings per week in October 1965.
That's £16.95 in decimal currency, or £282.71 per week in 2025. Approximately £14,700 per annum today. And drivers were quite well paid for railway workers.

A porter only got 218 shillings a week, or about £9,450 per annum today.

Ok fair enough. Looks like wages on the railway might have increased 4-5x inflation not 2x like everyone else.

Even so if it was maintained to 1960s standards you would be looking at approximately £40m in total costs to run the far north and west highland lines together.

EDIT £4m was just for the far north so £20m each.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

I'm going to hazard a guess that in the 1960s the trains would have been longer trains hauled by heavy diesel locomotives (maybe even steam in the early part of the 60s?) which would have put much greater wear and tear on the track than todays' DMUs would do, so maybe there's a reduction today from that point of view.

On the other hand, I'd bet the maintenance standards are higher today, and that the lines are more intensively used (for example the local services between Inverness and Dingwall/Tain/etc. which would not have existed back then).

 

[yorksrob]

Slightly worrying that the Labour Manifesto of 1964 committed to “halting major rail closures” in the aftermath of the Beeching ‘Reshaping’ report. It didn’t seem to stop the closures and quite a few more were added to the original list.

How successful were the Lords in holding those up?

I suppose the question is if the 1964 government needed to change the law in order to continue the closures. If (as I would assume, admittedly without proof) they just carried on using existing powers then the Lords would of course have been powerless to delay them.

So getting back to today, I think my point is that a law change to make railway closures easier is unlikely, since a government determined to make closures would probably find it easier to use existing powers rather get in a fight with the Lords over it for an extended period before still having to go through some sort of revised process if and when they got their way.

I think the wording in the manifesto was something more mealy mouthed such as "reviewing" any closures.

Nevertheless, it was clear that the public wanted a stop to them, and when Fraser backtracked by saying that he couldn't stop closures that had already commenced under the previous government, a back bencher introduced a private members bill to allow him to. Needless to say, this wasn't supported by the cabinet.

All of this is documented in "Holding the line, how the railway was saved" by Faulkner and Austin (I highly recommend it).

 

[Technologist]

Railway pay was far worse in the 1960s than it is now.

EDIT:

As an example, a driver might expect to earn up to 339 shillings per week in October 1965.
That's £16.95 in decimal currency, or £282.71 per week in 2025. Approximately £14,700 per annum today. And drivers were quite well paid for railway workers.

A porter only got 218 shillings a week, or about £9,450 per annum today.

Suggest you use “measuring worth” to do such calculations. If you use RPI inflation to measure anything more than about ten years ago what you start measuring is how much better we have got at making consumer goods.

If you look at relative incomes 339 shillings a week comes out at about £51,000 today.

The relevance of the manifesto is not whether anyone has read it or how many voted for it, it's entirely about that pretty solid convention that the Lords never seriously attempt to block clear manifesto commitments.

And I think rural railway closures are *exactly* the sort of thing the Lords would go to war on, and cause serious delays to. While the government could of course ultimately override them (if they didn't run out of time before the following election), it would bring the whole issue onto the national agenda, get presented as the start of "Beeching mark II" by its opponents, cause other knock-on legislative congestion and be a PR disaster for the government.

Manifestos commitments are only really about 50 years old as a concept. The Lords doesn’t just randomly block anything that isn’t in the manifesto, the Lords don’t generally play politics they block or amend stuff that they as a not particularly representative body genuinely don’t like or where the government is genuinely doing something pretty stupid

Stopping the government closing railway lines that cost the tax payer about as much per passenger mile as putting people in taxis is not particularly popular nor a good use of political capital.

Stopping the government governing is a very good way of getting the lords reformed.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Manifestos commitments are only really about 50 years old as a concept. The Lords doesn’t just randomly block anything that isn’t in the manifesto,

Minor correction: The idea is a lot older than that. In 1909 the Lords blocked Chancellor David Lloyd George's 'People's Budget' but made it clear they would allow the budget to pass if the Liberals secured a mandate for it at a general election. The Liberals called (and won) an election on the issue, whereupon the Lord voted to let the budget through. Manifestos have been published by the parties, certainly since 1900 (For example, here are the Liberal one and the Conservative one from 1900). I'm not sure if any date from before then though.

 

[Harpo]

Wouldn’t a smarter approach to be to maintain these very rural lines to a lower cheaper standard.

How much slower or less safe would you like them?

And one does have to wonder if guards on the Far North Line pay for themselves via the amount of fare evasion they prevent - I suspect they don't!

Or maybe they pay for themselves by (not exhaustively)
- avoiding the cost of equipping rural lines and/or their rolling stock for DOO operation
- avoiding staffing costs at stations for supporting assisted travel
- avoiding the costs of installing and maintaining power, connectivity and stocking for ticket issuing kit at lots of very rural stations
Etc..

 

[HSTEd]

Or maybe they pay for themselves by (not exhaustively)
- avoiding the cost of equipping rural lines and/or their rolling stock for DOO operation
- avoiding staffing costs at stations for supporting assisted travel
- avoiding the costs of installing and maintaining power, connectivity and stocking for ticket issuing kit at lots of very rural stations
Etc..

The effective cost of providing DOO operated trains with level boarding falls every year as the existing rolling stock draws closer to the scrapheap.

I believe a station on the Far North Line without a power supply would be closed for a significant portion of operational day for a significant portion of the year, as stations without lighting have difficulties with trains stopping after dark (although I may be wrong). Do any of the stations on the FNL lack a power supply for lighting?

Data connections would likely be unnecessary if you used the boarding slip method I proposed up thread, since the ODM suggests the bulk of Far North Line journeys occur to or from a small handful of stations. Given the very low number of passengers the machines would not have to be stocked particularly frequently with new till rolls.

 

[MatthewHutton]

How much slower or less safe would you like them?

British trains are the safest in the world.

They can be less safe on these ultra rural lines with low speeds.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

They can be less safe on these ultra rural lines with low speeds.

You could argue the low speeds are exactly one of the reasons the lines lose so much money. If the speed is lower, you need more trains and more on-train staff to run the same level of service - because of the longer round-trip times which means each train can do fewer round trips per day. AND fewer people use the service because it's less competitive on journey times. From that point of view, a better approach might be to invest to improve line speeds, so you eventually reduce the day-to-day cost of running the line and improve revenue.

 

[MatthewHutton]

You could argue the low speeds are exactly one of the reasons the lines lose so much money. If the speed is lower, you need more trains and more on-train staff to run the same level of service - because of the longer round-trip times which means each train can do fewer round trips per day. AND fewer people use the service because it's less competitive on journey times. From that point of view, a better approach might be to invest to improve line speeds, so you eventually reduce the day-to-day cost of running the line and improve revenue.

Well that is certainly true with the railway in general.

I would have thought that applies to Penzance to Exeter for sure.

 

[Zomboid]

Line speeds on the far north aren't bad in general. 60-70 in a lot of places IIRC.

The Kyle line is pretty slow, but it's so twisty that the only way to improve that would be lots of new tunnels, which nobody is going to pay for.

 

[zwk500]

You could argue the low speeds are exactly one of the reasons the lines lose so much money. If the speed is lower, you need more trains and more on-train staff to run the same level of service - because of the longer round-trip times which means each train can do fewer round trips per day. AND fewer people use the service because it's less competitive on journey times. From that point of view, a better approach might be to invest to improve line speeds, so you eventually reduce the day-to-day cost of running the line and improve revenue.

on single track routes, changing the run times (making it faster OR slower) will result in needing to cross at different places. If you're lucky, there'll be a loop there. If you're not, then any saving/benefit from the speed change is balanced against the costs of changing the loops.

These routes already have a lot of restrictions for non-Sprinter differential trains as well as generally lower linespeeds. Given BR was driving costs down to the absolute minimum I'm not sure there's much left to take. The case to invest in these lines is similarly bare because there's just so few people to benefit, regardless of any comparisons.

 

[Harpo]

BR was driving costs down to the absolute minimum

Very succesfully. Guards do the work of all station staff on rural routes and drivers do a chunk of signaller/crossing keepers’ work.

There’s exceedingly little fat left on the bone without affecting train services.

 

[Indigo Soup]

Line speeds on the far north aren't bad in general. 60-70 in a lot of places IIRC.

Large parts of the northern extremities are 40mph or 50mph, competing with a road that's more direct and which allows 60mph running. IMO the railway (in general) really needs to be targeting 90mph to compete with road traffic, and higher speeds on corridors with high-quality roads.

Some of the other routes discussed in this thread trundle along at 25mph - at which point they're competing with energetic cyclists for journey time, not any kind of motor vehicle!

 

[NCT]

How much slower or less safe would you like them?


Or maybe they pay for themselves by (not exhaustively)
- avoiding the cost of equipping rural lines and/or their rolling stock for DOO operation
- avoiding staffing costs at stations for supporting assisted travel
- avoiding the costs of installing and maintaining power, connectivity and stocking for ticket issuing kit at lots of very rural stations
Etc..

Yeah, for low frequency routes with lots of little stations it's almost certainly cheaper to staff the trains and staff the stations / provide full facilities at stations.

 

[HighlandStorm]

British trains are the safest in the world.

They can be less safe on these ultra rural lines with low speeds.

There seems to be a misconception here that trains just dawdle along the Far North Line - the longer journey time to Thurso is because the railway is much longer than the A9. A railway that doesn’t stop anywhere isn’t very useful!

One of the motivations for the request stop kiosks is that some of these stations are on sections where the line speed is 80-90mph!

Taking out the Lairg Loop removes a railhead for a huge area, thus a Dornoch Firth crossing is only desirable for Caithness, not most of Sutherland.

The comparison via the X99 - is skewed heavily by Wick, because Wick is further South and comes first by road. Journey time to Thurso from Inverness, the difference is 12-14 minutes.

The fastest possible public transport option to Thurso is the X99 to Wick and train from Wick to Thurso!

That‘s the wrong question.

It was great for the people who live close to the line.

Was it a good use of £400m ofScottish taxpayers’ money, compared to other things that could have been done with that (substantial) amount of money? Unquestionably not.

As a Highlander I’ve only had cause to use the Borders Railway a handful of times. Yet I still disagree with your assessment that it was a bad use of taxpayers money. It very much was an investment that I welcomed.

I’d like to see the FNL get the investment to get the inner Moray Firth section up to Border’s Railway frequency.

Another case for the Borders Railway was just how poor a route the northern half of the A7 is.

Which brings me to another point on coach vs train. No matter if the coach is very well equipped, the overall comfort level and practicality of doing anything with that travel time is largely a function of the road being travelled on.

It’s fine saying a coach has better seats and is more comfortable cruising down a motorway. It’s a whole different experience once that coach is north of the Dornoch Bridge, or is anywhere on the A82!

How many folks on here advocating replacing rural rail lines have travelled on a full size citylink coach both ways on Loch Lomondside?

 

[eldomtom2]

- avoiding staffing costs at stations for supporting assisted travel

That can be done by the driver.

- avoiding the costs of installing and maintaining power, connectivity and stocking for ticket issuing kit at lots of very rural stations

You put that ticket issuing kit on the train, as mentioned before.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Taking out the Lairg Loop removes a railhead for a huge area, thus a Dornoch Firth crossing is only desirable for Caithness, not most of Sutherland.

On the other hand, the only two significant stations on this railhead (Lairg and Ardgay) between them contribute barely 10K passengers a year - that's about 15 return journeys a day. Thurso alone has nearly 4 times as many passengers (which, granted, is still not a huge number per day). Taking out the Lairg loop would mean people at those stations would need to travel an extra 15-20 miles to get to a station, which is unfortunate but maybe not that disastrous considering I'd bet many of those people are already driving to Lairg or Ardgay anyway. Set against that, taking out the Lairg loop could probably save about 45 minutes on the journey from Inverness to Wick/Thurso/anywhere North of Golspie - making the train look rather more competitive against driving, as well as giving a service to Dornoch. Looks to me like the advantages of removing the Lairg loop far outweigh the disadvantages, and you'd generate many more new passenger journeys than you'd lose from Lairg/Ardgay.

I’d like to see the FNL get the investment to get the inner Moray Firth section up to Border’s Railway frequency.

Agreed.

 

[stevieinselby]

How many folks on here advocating replacing rural rail lines have travelled on a full size citylink coach both ways on Loch Lomondside?

The X99 doesn't run along the side of Loch Lomond ... the West Highland line is used a lot more intensively than the Far North line and is not a likely candidate for closure.