Trivia: Reopenings that have been "Proposed" the longest.

[A0wen]

They have a lovely new bridge next to Watford General, and an entire train!

What has puzzled me about that is how Herts CC, who had a lot of experience building road projects - they had just finished the Baldock bypass - managed to get the civils side so drastically wrong, from memory it went from £28m to £110m.

The rail side is equally puzzling as the costs went to something like £120m for the track, junctions at each end and signalling modifications. Which for a mile of double track seems a bit steep

I'm not sure I'd take TFL's claim it was all HCC's fault at face value, given TFL's current financial position....

Is this physically possible?

According to ERTA it is. But then again if you believe in Santa, fairies at the bottom of the garden and the Easter Bunny, I guess anything is possible.

The reality, as ever, is yes in theory - in practicality, no, not least because the costs of construction would never be recovered in a thousand years.

 

[stuu]

I'm not sure I'd take TFL's claim it was all HCC's fault at face value, given TFL's current financial position....

No, nothing to do with TfL. TfL only took it over on the insistence of the mayor of London, after Herts had admitted the costs were massively out.

 

[willgreen]

- rebuilding the Brackmills branch to Northampton station to allegedly provide improved transport links onto Brackmills Industrial estate

Is there anything actually wrong with this?

 

[A0wen]

Is there anything actually wrong with this?

Apart from the fact it doesn't actually serve a useful purpose ?

Brackmills, if you don't know it, is a large industrial estate - the largest employer by far on there is Barclaycard, the rest is a mix of office and warehousing.

I suspect the *vast* majority of people who work on Brackmills, particularly in the warehousing jobs, are locals - putting in a rail link to Northampton station would be about as much use to them as chocolate fireguard. If you live in most areas of Northampton, the journey to the station would actually be further than going direct to Brackmills. So the number of takers for such a service would be in penny figures. There are fairly regular buses around there but they're not that heavily used.

It's about 4 miles from Northampton station, so the rebuild cost would likely be in the region of £ 200m and the old route also had a level crossing on one of the main roads into / out of Northampton, so that'll be a total no-no. I've attached a picture of the crossing from 2009 - it's long gone now and putting a bridge in won't be easy or cheap.

If you just run it as a shuttle between Northampton and Brackmills it's not really going to do much - if you wanted to run further afield then paths would be needed (which are at a premium already as that's the reason the EWR service from Oxford will terminate at MK and not run further) and if you wanted to head towards MK you'd need to reverse at Northampton - if you head north then you're looking at Rugby and Coventry and I'm not sure Brackmills has the 'pull' of loads of people wanting to travel to it from those places.

Frankly improving services at Northampton station would be better a better use of that money - or even putting another station in between Northampton and Wolverton

 

[zwk500]

Is there anything actually wrong with this?

Apart from the cost, the lack of capacity at the south end of Northampton station and the lack of demand?

 

[tavistock]

Not any time soon, not sure what Helsby to Mouldsworth is going to allow if open either.

Probably nothing but it would make a great cycleway if all the foliage could be cut back. Best to do it before Highways England fill it all in.

 

[willgreen]

Apart from the cost, the lack of capacity at the south end of Northampton station and the lack of demand?

I was just asking!

 

[A0wen]

I was just asking!

I don't think there was anything particularly wrong or harsh with @zwk500's answer.

Same basic issues I'd highlighted just put in a slightly more concise fashion.

 

[willgreen]

I don't think there was anything particularly wrong or harsh with @zwk500's answer.

Same basic issues I'd highlighted just put in a slightly more concise fashion.

No, that's fair enough - I was genuinely interested and your response was very informative, cheers

 

[zwk500]

No, that's fair enough - I was genuinely interested and your response was very informative, cheers

Apologies if the answer came across rather sharply! I couldn't give the detail A0wen did as I don't know the local area well enough.

 

[willgreen]

Apologies if the answer came across rather sharply! I couldn't give the detail A0wen did as I don't know the local area well enough.

No worries, it's hard to transmit tone over t'internet! : )

 

[DJ_K666]

The Woodhead case has also been massively improved by the availability of Class 442s to operate it...

*ducks*

I read somewhere (might have been here actually) that the 1950s tunnel wouldn't be up to par and would need reboring. Otherwise we'd be stuck with the snail paced No Hope Valley line

You could run 73/9s with the 442s

 

[zwk500]

I read somewhere (might have been here actually) that the 1950s tunnel wouldn't be up to par and would need reboring. Otherwise we'd be stuck with the snail paced No Hope Valley line

At the moment the 1950s tunnel has the National Grid cables in, so even if it could be refurbed rather than reconstructed, you'd certainly need to reconstruct at least one of the victorian tunnels to take the cables.

 

[DJ_K666]

At the moment the 1950s tunnel has the National Grid cables in, so even if it could be refurbed rather than reconstructed, you'd certainly need to reconstruct at least one of the victorian tunnels to take the cables.

Yes I've been following that particular debacle. There was a narrow gauge railway through one of the bores to transport power company workers to work sites. The classic use of industrial NG

I know there's a very wet environment in the old tunnels as well so I can see why relocating the cables was desirable

 

[Mcr Warrior]

I know there's a very wet environment in the old tunnels as well so I can see why relocating the cables was desirable

Weren't the Victorian era tunnels at Woodhead life-expired to the point of frequent collapse at various locations?

 

[DJ_K666]

Weren't the Victorian era tunnels at Woodhead life-expired to the point of frequent collapse at various locations?

More than likely. I'd hate to be above them when that day comes.

 

[Kingston Dan]

The Edinburgh Sub was being repeatedly championed when I was at university there in the 1970s!

Circular services seem to have a bizarre fascination for transport amateurs, despite them having a string of practical downsides. The geography of the line also militates against it, it is well removed from being an actual circle, it forms more a very flattened oval where trains from the champions' principal south-side points have to make a long run out east or west and back again to get to the centre. I reckon I could (well, at least, back in those days) run faster from Newington to Waverley than the train would take.

Given that the Edinburgh has always (then and now) had one of the most frequent, dense and comprehensible bus networks anywhere, with outside Newington or Morningside stations always seeming to have a bus for Princes Street in sight, it was no wonder the former rail service died a death.

I did travel on it one weekend out to Slateford when Haymarket Junction was being rebuilt and the Shotts line was operating out of the east end of Waverley. Someone took lineside photos of the dmu passing and got the Evening News to print an accompanying story that BR were running test trains for a resumption!

I reckon there would be a case for a Morningside - Waverley via Haymarket service - it would be about 12 mins by train, but it would need to have a metro style frequency of 3/4 trains per hour to make the journey competitive with bus once waiting times were taken into account. There isn't the capacity on the western approaches to Haymarket/Waverley for anything like that. I suspect there never was - even in the railway's heyday it was never more than hourly (unlike the Leith service from the Caley which ran at that sort of frequency in peak times).

 

[Journeyman]

I reckon there would be a case for a Morningside - Waverley via Haymarket service - it would be about 12 mins by train, but it would need to have a metro style frequency of 3/4 trains per hour to make the journey competitive with bus once waiting times were taken into account.

Exactly. You'll never compete on price either.

There isn't the capacity on the western approaches to Haymarket/Waverley for anything like that. I suspect there never was - even in the railway's heyday it was never more than hourly (unlike the Leith service from the Caley which ran at that sort of frequency in peak times).

Yeah. I can't see how you'd provide that capacity, either.

 

[WesternBiker]

I see there's an attempt to reopen the Sharpness Branch by the local authority as part of a housing development (effectively a third proposal, after a failed attempt to reopen it as a heritage line, and a local volunteer group still trying to do the same).

 

[D6975]

What happened to March - Spalding? Has Werrington provided the final nail in the coffin for that one?

 

[Baxenden Bank]

Late to the party.

The line from Stoke-on-Trent to Leekbrook, then to Leek itself in one direction and Alton (for Alton Towers) in the other.

Glacial progress on sections of the route by the Churnet Valley Railway (or linked organisations).

It has been talked about for as long as I can remember, certainly since regular freight trains ceased in the late 1980's.

 

[johnnychips]

If this is also the thread for which no proposals have been made for reopening, how about Claytonwest to the Huddersfield-Penistone line? I apologise if it has been raised previously in this thread.

 

[1018509]

5 pages and no one has mentioned Weymouth. Despite the tracks being recently pulled up.

 

[philthetube]

That's spot on: if one looks at some of the more successful re-openings of recent times (to Aberdare, Maesteg and Ebbw Vale in the Welsh Valleys), they are exactly about connecting small to mid-sized communities to larger centres of employment within a reasonably commutable distance.

The most spectacular success in this category to my mind is Edinburgh to Glasgow via Bathgate - both Bathgate and Livingstone now generate well over 1m passenger journeys a year - on a line which is double tracked and electrified. I'm not sure how many others might really be in this category, though. It'll be interesting to see whether East-West Rail is anything like as successful.

But the crown of re-openings must surely go to the Snow Hill tunnels, to create Thameslink. Hard to imagine now that it didn't exist until 1990...

True, and probably second place goes to Willesden Junction, Clapham junction

 

[stuu]

But the crown of re-openings must surely go to the Snow Hill tunnels, to create Thameslink. Hard to imagine now that it didn't exist until 1990...

[pedant]
1988
[/pedant]

 

[Ken H]

Has Crossrail 2 and its previous versions such as the Chelsea Hackney line been on the drawing board for nearly 40 years. Not a re-opening though.

Think chelsea-hackney or something similar was being considered in the early 1950's. But as a tube.

 

[WesternBiker]

[pedant]
1988
[/pedant]

As Bald Rick has already pointed out! (My confusion arose because I recalled visiting an operational Holborn Viaduct late in 1989, which closed on the opening of City Thameslink in 1990).

 

[Mcr Warrior]

Just to clarify, was the arrangement shortly before closure in early 1990 that some workings (from the South?) terminated at Holborn Viaduct and others were through Thameslink workings?

And did the through Thameslink workings in the late 1980s run through / above / below / parallel to the about to be permanently closed Holborn Viaduct station?



Old map of Holborn Viaduct Station and surrounding area. Presumably pre-dates closure of nearby Ludgate Hill station in 1929, noting also that Aldersgate station was only so-named between 1910 and 1924. Source: Disused stations website.

 

[WesternBiker]

I'm sure others can provide chapter and verse on the sequence of construction - but the current route dives below Ludgate Hill to reach the City Thameslink station.

There's a good photograph in early 1990 on the same website here taken from the cab (of presumably a 319), which shows the new Thameslink tracks in place and the approaches to Holborn Viaduct - by then down to 2 platforms - to the right. And there's a video taken from a Holborn Viaduct to Orpington train here (from 2:58 onwards), passing a 319 descending to the reopened tunnel. Though I'd forgotten the two services running side by side, I do recall Holborn Viaduct being something of a building site.

 

[Mcr Warrior]

Thanks @WesternBiker. Most helpful. Can't imagine that there's now any need for a "new" Holborn Viaduct station to ever re-open?