• Our booking engine at tickets.railforums.co.uk (powered by TrainSplit) helps support the running of the forum with every ticket purchase! Find out more and ask any questions/give us feedback in this thread!

Which is the best stretch of railway we have lost ?

Status
Not open for further replies.
Sponsor Post - registered members do not see these adverts; click here to register, or click here to log in
R

RailUK Forums

AndrewE

Established Member
Joined
9 Nov 2015
Messages
5,075
Another vote for Callander to Crianlarich. Luckily there is a path over the best bit so I hope to cycle or walk it one day.
I would also like to have been from Ruabon through LLangollen and Dolgellau to the Welsh coast.
 

Con

Member
Joined
14 Aug 2012
Messages
75
Location
Co. Donegal
Portadown - Dungannon - Omagh - Strabane - Londonderry

Portadown - Armagh - Monaghan- Clones - Cavan

Dundalk - Clones - Enniskillen - Bundoran

Strabane - Letterkenny

at the very least. Would fill a massive railway gap in the north west of Ireland.
 

M60lad

Member
Joined
31 May 2011
Messages
853
How about the Micklehurst-Stalybridge line or the Hayfield-New Mills Central line both of which are now public footpaths
 

CaptainHaddock

Established Member
Joined
10 Feb 2011
Messages
2,206
Threads like this always being out the sentimentalist in all of us but let's be honest, if any of these lines had been making a profit they would have stayed open. Private companies aren't interested in pretty scenery, just cold hard cash!

That said, if we are being sentimental I would have loved to have travelled on the Exe Valley line from Exeter to Dulverton or maybe the Atlantic Coast line from Barnstaple to Ilfracombe.
 

4141

Member
Joined
21 Dec 2015
Messages
170
Again, being purely sentimental, Wadebridge to Padstow, and Cheltenham to Kingham over the Cotswolds via Bourton-on-the-Water...
 

HowardGWR

Established Member
Joined
30 Jan 2013
Messages
4,983
The thread on the best stretch of railway had me wondering about the best ones that have been lost

- The line Southern main line route through Devon
- The heads of the Valleys with the spectacular Crumlin Viaduct
- The Waverley route
- The LOR
- The Woodhead route

These are just a few I can think of but I have a feeling there may be more spectacular and scenic lines that have been closed than remain open.
The OP clearly means 'scenic' by his word 'best', judging by his own examples. I would choose an entirely different category, namely 'useful'. To that end I would choose Bristol East Junction to Yate (was Midland Railway). The amount of expense incurred since then, just to try and replace what was, in effect, a grade-separated route from Bristol to Birmingham, is huge. 'Parkway' interchange station could have been at that grade-separated site south of Yate, with multi-level platforms, as at Tamworth or Retford (for example),
 

Mikey C

Established Member
Joined
11 Feb 2013
Messages
6,830
Threads like this always being out the sentimentalist in all of us but let's be honest, if any of these lines had been making a profit they would have stayed open. Private companies aren't interested in pretty scenery, just cold hard cash!

The vast majority of these closed lines were shut when it was a nationalised railway...
 

Mutant Lemming

Established Member
Joined
8 Aug 2011
Messages
3,194
Location
London
Bombed yet rapidly repaired as it provided essential transport for thousands working on the docks. The costly repairing of the corroded iron trestles sounded the death knell of the Overhead railway in 1956.
All that remains is a short stretch of tunnel and the (underground) terminus station at Dingle.

What the Luftwaffe couldn't destroy the bean counters managed at a stroke.

The base of some of the supports are still in situ along the Dock Road and there is the driving motor car in the museum at the Pier Head
http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/mol/visit/galleries/overhead/

I believe there was also a trailer car at the Electric Trains Museum in Coventry but not sure what has happened to that.
 

Tetchytyke

Veteran Member
Joined
12 Sep 2013
Messages
13,305
Location
Isle of Man
Who should have paid for loss making lines to be kept open ?

The problem was more that BR decided in advance what wasn't "profitable" and skewed the traffic surveys to match. Many of the rural branch lines were basket cases, of course, but plenty (Derby-Matlock-Manchester, Waverley Route, Woodhead) really weren't. To think they wanted to single track the Calder Valley beyond Halifax.

As for "best", I wouldn't want to choose the most scenic, possibly Tebay-Barnard Castle. Most useful? Closing the Woodhead was very quickly shown to be downright stupid.
 

trebor79

Established Member
Joined
8 Mar 2018
Messages
4,435
Nottingham Victoria station and it's approaches.

It was clearly the far superior station for the city, looked a lot better, and with appropriate selection of surrounding trackwork, could have provided equivalent connections to the Midland station without substantial additional expense.

(It is one of those things that makes me wonder if there was not really a 'Midland conspiracy' during the Beeching era)

I've often had similar thoughts about Victoria. It was also a bit closer to the city centre.
Not sure there was any conspiracy though. The site was obviously worth a fortune, whereas the Midland station not so much. It's also difficult to see how they'd have link the Old Dalby line to it sensibly (albeit this also later closed). Plus, a long approach tunnel with only 2 tracks would have been restrictive in terms of number of movements, particularly given every service would need to reverse.
 

yorksrob

Veteran Member
Joined
6 Aug 2009
Messages
38,836
Location
Yorks
The OP clearly means 'scenic' by his word 'best', judging by his own examples. I would choose an entirely different category, namely 'useful'. To that end I would choose Bristol East Junction to Yate (was Midland Railway). The amount of expense incurred since then, just to try and replace what was, in effect, a grade-separated route from Bristol to Birmingham, is huge. 'Parkway' interchange station could have been at that grade-separated site south of Yate, with multi-level platforms, as at Tamworth or Retford (for example),

That really would be Christs Hospital to Shoreham.
 

driver_m

Established Member
Joined
8 Nov 2011
Messages
2,248
Latchford to Skelton Jn (Warrington Low Level line) would have been a very very handy route for keeping freight off some very congested North West Routes,(plus some old lost connections at Edge Hill) again lost thanks to some short sighted cost savings in the vein of Woodhead and the Ripping out of one line on the Halton Curve. Now very heavily built up in Warrington around it too on the remaining

Very hard to see past Woodhead being the most damaging of losses though. An act of infrastructural vandalism IMO in its short term thinking.
 

tbtc

Veteran Member
Joined
16 Dec 2008
Messages
17,882
Location
Reston City Centre
Most useful? Closing the Woodhead was very quickly shown to be downright stupid

Really?

It was predominantly a freight line to serve a market that was drying up by the 1980s - it might have been useful today for a handful of weekends a year when the Hope Valley line is closed but it was a line that didn't serve anywhere particularly large en route and didn't serve Sheffield particularly well (given how far out Victoria is).

I can see the appeal to nostalgists (a combination of running through an empty part of the countryside plus some unique trains) but it became a luxury when the freight started dwindling.

Some lines I can see the appeal of re-opening but Woodhead would be very low down the list.
 

52290

Member
Joined
23 Oct 2015
Messages
548
But it would have been a cheaper way of providing the north-south link than the Moorfields-Central tunnel.
I travelled on the Liverpool Overhead Railway in the mid 1950's. Getting on at Pier Head you could do a round tour up to Sandhills back down to the Dingle and then return to Pier Head. It was fascinating to see ocean liners from all over the world in the docks. As for connecting the LOR with Merseyrail, there were Overhead trains that ran through to Southport during peak periods, although I think that BR stock wasn't allowed on the Overhead.
My own fantasy would be the reopening of the Peel and Ramsey lines on the Isle of Man. Impossible you say? Well there was a time when I would have given it more credence than the reconstruction of the Welsh Highland Railway.
 

Bevan Price

Established Member
Joined
22 Apr 2010
Messages
7,320
Bombed yet rapidly repaired as it provided essential transport for thousands working on the docks. The costly repairing of the corroded iron trestles sounded the death knell of the Overhead railway in 1956.
All that remains is a short stretch of tunnel and the (underground) terminus station at Dingle.

And most of the passengers were workers from the many docks that no longer exist...
 

Tetchytyke

Veteran Member
Joined
12 Sep 2013
Messages
13,305
Location
Isle of Man
it might have been useful today for a handful of weekends a year when the Hope Valley line is closed

It would have been useful all the time, especially beyond Penistone, given the chronic overcrowding on the Manchester-Sheffield expresses and the significant capacity constraints along the Hope Valley. Neither of which show any signs of improvement any time soon.
 

delt1c

Established Member
Joined
4 Apr 2008
Messages
2,125
for me , although never traveled by train, but walked and cycled much of it, is the long gone Aberfoyle Branch
 

randyrippley

Established Member
Joined
21 Feb 2016
Messages
5,085
I see no-one has listed the Somerset & Dorset.............

more seriously, the Carlisle - Stranraer route must be one of the greatest losses from a sightseeing point of view and - if planned properly - could have been a key link in shipping containers and road-rail trailers to Ireland........however as we all know, most Irish traffic now goes by conventional trailer
 

Ken H

On Moderation
Joined
11 Nov 2018
Messages
6,272
Location
N Yorks
I would extend the Redditch branch to Alcester. they want to build loads of houses there. But they have built a road on it. Dont see the point of going any further tho.
 

AndrewE

Established Member
Joined
9 Nov 2015
Messages
5,075
I would extend the Redditch branch to Alcester. they want to build loads of houses there. But they have built a road on it. Don't see the point of going any further tho.
If a railway line is going to run that far then it seems a wasted opportunity not to continue a bit further and give Redditch and Alcester people connections to Worcester and Oxford at Evesham. A single line can probably be squeezed in along most new road alignments, but at the cost of new level crossings at junctions.
Look at the pressure to re-connect Colne to Skipton: why build a dead-end now when traffic can develop in both directions? It's called "connectivity."
 

randyrippley

Established Member
Joined
21 Feb 2016
Messages
5,085
Thinking about it, from a purely scenic point of view the Stainmore route must be high up the list. Totally impractical and pointless to reopen though
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Top