Yes, severe damage caused to a bridge and BR decided not to approve repairs
It was a very late line, designed to relieve severe congestion through Stockport, although a small oversight was that an act of parliament from 1840 required that all trains continue serve Stockport given the disrupton caused there during the construction of the viaduct, so it was mainly used by freight and there wasn't much traffic on it until housing built up around the stations on it and their electric passenger service, but it only became extremely busy following the opening of the airport rail link in 1993. Ordnance Survey maps at maps.nls.uk show it as "Railway in course of construction"
This would have the same problem, that trains are not allowed to omit Stockport, although I have been through it illegally without stopping on a Sunday diversion.
That is an interesting line and I can't understand how it has survived seeing as it is almost totally redundant, or how it will survive post-HS2 when the slightly faster conventional route to Manchester is no longer required. 2 Pendolinos an hour seem to be the only traffic on it.
The so called Act that requires all services to call at Stockport has never been found.
Now that would make an interesting new thread -- constantly reoccurring 'railway myths'.
That was the one which immediately sprung to mind, especially when you look at its passenger numbers
There are existing threads on that topic.
It is a tight curve through the station, just over 300m radius. Slow for any non-stops and using maximum cant for the highest possible through speed would make the stepping distance to the platform edge difficult for stoppers.
Well why do all trains serve Stockport? Piccadilly - Stockport has one of the highest frequency services in the country because all trains call there. Most could easily omit it without causing any issue, but don’t.
Wouldn’t it
Is that the only train that goes by such an illogical route?
That makes perfect sense to me, but I don’t see why that would make any difference to an axe wielding theoretical physicist who created many sub-optimal gaps in the network. Looking at the platform spacing at Weston-super-Mare, were there originally through lines which could have been retained with maximum cant or was it built to broad gauge?
They don't.
[Crewe Independent Lines]
There was a single through siding in the middle between the platforms. It had ground disc signals at each end so wasn't signalled for through running. I expect it was mostly used for run-rounds and short-term parking of detached vehicles.
I expect the signalling on the Independents is not suitable for passenger use in normal operation. I'd consider factors such as Permissive Freight working between AB signal boxes, lack of facing point locks, incomplete trapping of sidings against running lines, and insufficient overlap provision. All these can be overcome by temporary special working arrangements if desired, but that would likely require armies of operations staff on overtime stationed around the layout for point clipping and padlocking etc. Hence such arrangements might be sustained for a few weeks of diversions during a remodelling scheme but would not be practical long term, nor would they be considered sufficiently safe as a permanent arrangement. Modern practice is to signal freight running lines to full passenger standards, so diversions are much easier to arrange safely.
Curiously Frome is twice the population of Westbury. Both lines when built by the GWR in the 1930s were referred to as "avoiding lines".
Weston originally had a dead end branch from the mainline that diverged at a different junction, between the current two, and served a small terminus station a little closer to the mud, sorry beach. The line is present but shown already disused on an 1885 OS map, completely superseded by the new loop alignment and through station.
I think that was freight only wasn't it. Exeter also had a bypass so freight heading between the west and Riverside Yard could avoid the station.
There are plenty of trains that take obscure routes in order for crews to retain knowledge of diversionary routes - I imagine this is one?
...and Lewisham was only connected to the new main line by the SR in c1929 as part of the new route via Nunhead (keeping cross-London freight away from Metropolitan Junction-Borough Market Junction).
Are the independent lines going to be used for passenger trains?
Yes, I should have mentioned I was writing about current lines, shouldn't I (seeing as I walked underneath this very one each day from the town to the station for years
). There was talk a couple of years ago of putting a platform on them as part of the changes resulting from HS2, but I think that has now been dropped. Whether it's still planned to use them for passenger trains, I don't know, but others will.
