Why should it still be open?
I am sure it would be a useful diversionary route and a pleasant rural line but it serves nowhere. Trust me i lived in Northallerton for years. I cant believe there was any long term economic case for maintaining that line.
Ripon is a lovely little market town with a superb cathedral and a great racecourse but only 16/17000 people live there. Northallerton is a similar size and i think is only still on the railway network by virtue of being a junction on the East Coast Main line. OK with a railway Ripon may be a slightly bigger town and be more attractive to the Leeds commuter but there is little else to serve.
Do you have a couple of hours?
Beeching only noted passenger takings at Ripon booking office yet there was a freight yard at Ripon, ordnance factory nearby and large amounts of army vehicles and troop trains from Ripon Garrison not paid through Ripon station farebox.
The evil side of Beeching was in the fact that the operating costs of these trains and even those through passenger and freight trains not stopping
between Harrogate and Northallerton were added to the debit column making the line look on paper as if it was running at a loss of £5,000 annually when in fact it was making a profit of £3,000 annually.
Operating costs of these trains was not saved by closing the line as they were diverted via York. In fact operating costs were greater as the route via York is 15 miles longer. This was not considered in the profit and loss columns.
There were many pigeon specials each year using the freight yard for release of the pigeons. Not one was credited to revenue of the line.
Many race specials were operated from the West Riding to Ripon Races. Again, these specials were not credited to Ripon farebox but were added to the operating side of the line in the debit column. When the line closed all this revenue was lost to BR as the business went by road coach.
As for to-day, a demand forecast was done in 2004. It was estimated that due to the large amount of daily commuting to Harrogate and Leeds, 0.73 million would use a reopened station at Ripon annually. Very similar to the actual footfall for Skipton in the same year. There has been 64% growth in rail footfall in the Leeds City Region since 2004.
ATOC in its "Connecting Communities" Report in 2009 suggested a BCR for reinstating Harrogate-Ripon as high as 4.3. Ripon is planned to expand from 17,000 to 25,000 by 2025 in the Local Development Framework.
1.2 million visitors visited the five Ripon attractions in 2013. A proportion of these would arrive by rail if the facility was there adding about 90,000 to the annual footfall figure mostly in the Northern franchise area farebox.
The ECML between York and Northallerton closes totally in an emergency for more than two hours on average six times annually. Using Ripon as a diversion route would save Network Rail between £3 and £4m annually. This is important with Port of Tyne importing so much biomass for Aire Valley power stations on the just-in-time principle where a delay of two hors or more is critical and carries penalties.
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What a daft post.
A town of 15,000 plus should have a railway station; in fact any sizeable community should.
I would imagine may Ripon people work in Leeds and would commute by train if the rail link were still there. The line would also be a very useful as a diversionary route.
As to the title of the thread, apart from old industrial lines to collieries and the like, no railway line should be closed.
Thank you for your support.
