Would it be better to declare Beeching closures 'Damnatio memoriae'

[yorksrob]

Even to the extent of maintaining services which hardly anyone uses and only survived because the area happened to have an influential MP in the 1960s instead of introducing or improving more useful ones?

Where are these services of which you speak ?

In my experience, those threatened servces that were reprieved tend to be some of the most well used.

 

[Dai Corner]

Where are these services of which you speak ?

In my experience, those threatened servces that were reprieved tend to be some of the most well used.

Several have been mentioned upthread, such as

The Central Wales was a fortunate survivor (discussed before) , as described by Ian Marchant (author of "Parallel Lines" and who studied at Lampeter) , much of mid Wales was a green desert - depopulated from the 1930's onwards as farming could not sustain the population in all sorts of ways from imported raw materials as in timber , a flat meat market and so on. It would have been much worse had the Cambrian gone..........

Why does Llandrindod Wells deserve a subsidised railway service but not a town which has grown considerably in the last 60 years but lacks one.

 

[yorksrob]

Several have been mentioned upthread, such as



Why does Llandrindod Wells deserve a subsidised railway service but not a town which has grown considerably in the last 60 years but lacks one.

Admittedly, my knowledge of the central Wales line is limited, however Covid aside, I've never seen anything to suggest that its trains usually run around empty. Infact I've heard it said that It's quite useful to the community.

 

[Dai Corner]

Admittedly, my knowledge of the central Wales line is limited, however Covid aside, I've never seen anything to suggest that its trains usually run around empty. Infact I've heard it said that It's quite useful to the community.

I'm not suggesting the line isn't 'quite useful to the community'. I'm suggesting that the money could be better spent elsewhere, perhaps on a service that was very useful to a community.

 

[yorksrob]

I'm not suggesting the line isn't 'quite useful to the community'. I'm suggesting that the money could be better spent elsewhere, perhaps on a service that was very useful to a community.

I don't think so. Making sure that communities are served in the first place is far more important than improving services in places that already have a service. That's my core philosophy.

 

[Dai Corner]

I don't think so. Making sure that communities are served in the first place is far more important than improving services in places that already have a service. That's my core philosophy.

So you feel that maintaining a service where there is already one is more important than improving a more useful, better patronised one.

Where does providing new services which would benefit more people than some existing ones come in your order of priorities?

 

[yorksrob]

So you feel that maintaining a service where there is already one is more important than improving a more useful, better patronised one.

Where does providing new services which would benefit more people than some existing ones come in your order of priorities?

In a word, yes.

If it's a community that doesn't already have a railway service, that's probably the next in order of priority. But let's not kid ourselves. If they withdraw secondary train services, they're not going to use the funding to connect new communities to the network with other secondary services. It's a false 'choice'.

 

[tbtc]

Leaving aside the genuine 1 train a day routes (which are comparatively few anyway) any passenger route which forms a regular passenger service that is used by passengers in their day to day lives shouldn't close. Afterall, there are country lanes that carry one tractor and a milk wagon a week, yet we don't seem to have a problem with councils paying for these.

This is a wonderfully flowery way of saying "I don't want any route to ever close" (since any service will be used by some token number of people, even if that number of people would be too few to warrant a council subsidising a minibus service)

It's hard to take suggestions of re-openings seriously when they come from people who cannot ever accept that any existing lines warrant closure.

I'm sure that all of the basket cases Beeching closed over fifty years ago would have met your "regular passenger service that is used by passengers in their day to day lives" definition - just accept that you'll never accept any closure ever.

With the exception of catastrophic failures, councils are still expected to repair potholes, maintain signage and distribute chippings occasionally.

Many roads round here have terrible surfaces - pot holes go months without attention - surfaces are worn away to the point where markings are hard to make out - damage isn't repaired.

Whereas, railways have to be kept regularly repaired/ attended to - maybe Normanton has streets paved with gold but you wouldn't accept the railways being treated as badly as roads are in South Yorkshire!

Frankly we've seen the national network increase in size very little over the last twenty five years, yet the costs of the network have inflated by a much greater degree over that time.

Why should passengers accept their routes being closed when these costs aren't being addressed ?

As I've mentioned before, I think the answer is to address industry wide costs.

Yes, everything has become significantly more expensive, because construction costs have gone up across the board (not just railway costs, look at the cost of any construction project - whether that's converting a lane of hard shoulder to "smart" motorway or a new runway at Heathrow) - safety costs have significantly increased on the railway as the culture has significantly improved (compared to the days when you could stick your head out of open windows, or we had people dying in train crashes most years). Staff costs have gone up above inflation (as have the associated costs - maintaining a final salary pension etc).

You like to use the "increasing costs" as a distraction from the fact that passenger numbers on a number of lines but what kind of costs are you wanting to cut (given that the costs of construction and of health & safety have gone up in similar industries over the past generation)? I'm hoping that it's something more substantial than complaining that privatisation means repainting trains every seven years or focussing on little things like the handful fo people compiling Delay Attribution.

If stations/ services/ lines were still carrying passenger levels that could be accommodated by a minibus (even after the generation of almost year-on-year growth that we had before Covid), they were never going to blossom.

I don't think I would call a route with minimal signalling such as Settle Junction - Carnforth, very expensive to maintain. Particularly compared to a country road.

There are around thirty three thousand journeys at Bentham/ Clapham/ Wennington pa (combined). So that's sixteen thousand return journeys, i.e. under fifty return journeys a day (spread between three stations, spread over several train services in each direction).

When you consider the number of passengers who use the intermediate stations and factor in the cost of the drivers/ guards (not just their direct wages but also the ancillary costs), the fuel costs of DMUs doing a couple of miles to the gallon, the fact that each carriage costs over a million pounds (so even over a forty year life span with no maintenance that's tens of thousands of pounds per carriage per year)... the trains cost quite a bit per passenger before you consider the cost of line maintenance/ signalling etc.

Admittedly, my knowledge of the central Wales line is limited, however Covid aside, I've never seen anything to suggest that its trains usually run around empty. Infact I've heard it said that It's quite useful to the community.

Everything is "useful" (if you don't want to have a look at the actual facts about passenger numbers) - "useful" is a great word that can be used to smooth over any inconvenient numbers - e.g. in four of the past five years for which stats are available on Wiki, Sugar Loaf station has had passenger numbers of fewer than one return journey per day - but you'll excuse that because "useful" can be stretched to excuse anything you want it to. Which must be useful!

 

[HSTEd]

I think the railway can do a great deal to reduce operational losses without cutting huge number of lines, but it will require substantial modernisation, new technology development deployment (with deployment in a timely fashion!), and probably a big fight with the unions.

The wider potential of technologies like this are obvious.

One such initiative is TC-Rail. The project aims to develop and prove a remote driving solution for locomotives that will enable a driver to control and drive a train safely from a remote site.

But really, to stay vaguely on topic - we need a forward looking railway, not a backwards looking one.
Hence the title of this thread!

 

[stuu]

I rather wouldn't mind betting that the cost per mile that most people have for the railways, is some sort of average based on the whole network, rather than looking at lightly used lines with minimal signalling.

Roads in the county where I live cost on average £4500 per km to operate and maintain. I do not believe for a second there is any passenger railway in the country that costs anywhere close to that number. Railways are inherently more complicated than roads and have a much smaller margin of error when it comes to ignoring maintenance issues.

I wouldn't want any of them to close, but claiming they don't cost much more to maintain and operate than a road carrying an equivalent numbers of people is somewhat divorced from reality.

 

[yorksrob]

Roads in the county where I live cost on average £4500 per km to operate and maintain. I do not believe for a second there is any passenger railway in the country that costs anywhere close to that number. Railways are inherently more complicated than roads and have a much smaller margin of error when it comes to ignoring maintenance issues.

I wouldn't want any of them to close, but claiming they don't cost much more to maintain and operate than a road carrying an equivalent numbers of people is somewhat divorced from reality.

You may be correct.

But I feel fairly certain that a section such as Settle Junction - Carnforth, will not cost anything like the average cost of maintaining a railway, which would likely be used to justify closure.

 

[Journeyman]

You may be correct.

But I feel fairly certain that a section such as Settle Junction - Carnforth, will not cost anything like the average cost of maintaining a railway, which would likely be used to justify closure.

"Fairly certain". Here we go again.

Show your working.

 

[yorksrob]

"Fairly certain". Here we go again.

Show your working.

Why don't you show your working ?

Seriously, I've been given some theoretical route just today, reprieved from Beeching and apparently full of empty trains. This turned out to be the Heart of Wales line, which in normal times doesn't carry empty trains at all.

I'm not the one who needs to be justifying things.

 

[Journeyman]

Why don't you show your working ?

You're trying to defend every single railway everywhere based on hunches, feelings and anecdotes, and that any attempt to close anything is some sort of crime. I'm just saying that feelings, hunches and opinions won't cut it. When you find out exactly how much some very lightly used services cost, you might change your tune.

I'm just saying we need to be able to have a discussion around value for money and the suitability of the network for current needs. Example - the bus services that compete with the Far North line are cheaper, faster, more comfortable and more heavily used than the trains and cost much less to operate. I think there's a discussion to be had there, surely.

 

[yorksrob]

You're trying to defend every single railway everywhere based on hunches, feelings and anecdotes, and that any attempt to close anything is some sort of crime. I'm just saying that feelings, hunches and opinions won't cut it. When you find out exactly how much some very lightly used services cost, you might change your tune.

I'm just saying we need to be able to have a discussion around value for money and the suitability of the network for current needs. Example - the bus services that compete with the Far North line are cheaper, faster, more comfortable and more heavily used than the trains and cost much less to operate. I think there's a discussion to be had there, surely.

I'm trying to avoid the situation where we end up nipping away at bits of the network and end up regretting it.

I've enjoyed around thirty years of life of having a stable network, and I see no justification for jeopardising that.

Railway closures are a Pandoras box that I will not agree to reopening.

 

[Dai Corner]

The question isn't whether a rural railway costs more or less to a maintain than a rural road though, is it? It's whether maintaining both a road AND a railway over a particular route is justified.

InterCity railways supposedly make a profit and suburban ones make it possible to accommodate everyone who wants to travel into city centres at the same time; something roads couldn't do on their own. What's the justification for rural towns having a road and a railway?

 

[yorksrob]

The question isn't whether a rural railway costs more or less to a maintain than a rural road though, is it? It's whether maintaining both a road AND a railway over a particular route is justified.

InterCity railways supposedly make a profit and suburban ones make it possible to accommodate everyone who wants to travel into city centres at the same time; something roads couldn't do on their own. What's the justification for rural towns having a road and a railway?

To which I would say that the railway always offers something over and above what road based transport can offer - but I get shouted sdown for it !

 

[Mikey C]

The question isn't whether a rural railway costs more or less to a maintain than a rural road though, is it? It's whether maintaining both a road AND a railway over a particular route is justified.

InterCity railways supposedly make a profit and suburban ones make it possible to accommodate everyone who wants to travel into city centres at the same time; something roads couldn't do on their own. What's the justification for rural towns having a road and a railway?

An odd question.

Unless you're expecting the emergency services to arrive by train!

 

[tbtc]

You may be correct.

But I feel fairly certain that a section such as Settle Junction - Carnforth, will not cost anything like the average cost of maintaining a railway, which would likely be used to justify closure.

You're very good at trying to shift the terms of the argument... nobody is arguing about the cost of maintaining one line over another (e..g a four track 125mph line or a route that sees heavy freight hammering over viaducts will cost more to maintain than a fairly slow bit of line with no major infrastructure)...

...the question is whether the revenue from a line is anywhere near the costs of running the services on it plus the costs of maintaining the infrastructure. Costs and benefits.

In the case of Settle Junction - Carnforth, you've got to spread the costs of running the services and costs of maintaining the infrastructure between fewer than fifty passengers a day (those passengers spread between three stations, spread over several train services in each direction).

That's what matters - not looking at the costs in isolation. For example, both Dawlish and the Conwy Valley lines have had periods of closure in recent years. The Dawlish line caries a lot of long distance passengers as well as a regular local service, so £1m maintenance costs are spread between those journeys - whereas the Conwy Valley line is a fairly lightly loaded branch line, so a £1m maintenance cost is a lot larger per passenger.

The Settle Junction - Carnforth line costs a lot less to maintain compared to those two, but the passenger numbers I've mentioned above (under fifty passengers a day, spread between three stations and six or seven services in each direction?) would be uneconomical for a minibus - yet heavy rail means that we have a driver and a guard and maintenance costs to pay for.

Heavy rail is great at some things. Heavy rail is incredibly expensive/ inflexible in other areas though. If you can't acknowledge that then, fair enough, you've got your rose tinted spectacles and that means never having to worry about inconvenient evidence, but other people can see where things work and where they are failing.

Why don't you show your working ?

Seriously, I've been given some theoretical route just today, reprieved from Beeching and apparently full of empty trains. This turned out to be the Heart of Wales line, which in normal times doesn't carry empty trains at all.

I'm not the one who needs to be justifying things.

Nobody claimed that the Heart of Wales trains were *empty*, but they are lightly loaded - hence the example of Sugar Loaf which I mentioned above (fewer than one return passenger a day in four of the last five years).

I'm sure that you'll tell me that this is "useful" for the one person who does use it though!

 

[Dai Corner]

An odd question.

Unless you're expecting the emergency services to arrive by train!

My point was that everywhere has road access but providing rail access in addition at public expense needs to be justified.

 

[Journeyman]

To which I would say that the railway always offers something over and above what road based transport can offer - but I get shouted sdown for it !

Always? I'd dispute that. I can think of several railways where the speed, comfort, frequency and affordability of competing coach services are better. Said railways are at the extremely expensive end of service provision, and are only busy for part of the year. I love trains as much as the next person, but with limited funds available for public transport, you need better concepts than "some people find it nicer".

My point was that everywhere has road access but providing rail access in addition at public expense needs to be justified.

Exactly, and this was precisely what Beeching argued about a lot of railways. He was right - heavy rail is very good where the loadings and types of traffic justify it, but for some traffic, it's just horrifically expensive, and we really do need to be thinking about more cost-effective provision.

 

[willgreen]

The Settle Junction - Carnforth line costs a lot less to maintain compared to those two, but the passenger numbers I've mentioned above (under fifty passengers a day, spread between three stations and six or seven services in each direction?) would be uneconomical for a minibus - yet heavy rail means that we have a driver and a guard and maintenance costs to pay for.

Whilst I agree with the bulk of your point, there is some through traffic Leeds-Lancaster. Not much, mind, but some - so there are more than 50 passengers a day using the line. Maybe a couple of hundred in non-COVID times?

 

[Iliketrains123]

Here are a few recent examples of station closures.

Newhaven Marine - obsolete
Angel Road - replaced by Meridian Water
Rochester - replaced by new station
Folkestone Harbour - obsolete
IBM - obsolete
Redcar British Steel - obsolete
Abercynon North - replaced by Abercynon

Nowhere does it say "Low passenger numbers"
Network Rail, ORR and the TOCs are not in the business of closing stations or lines for that reason.

 

[daodao]

The problem is a lot of the time it just appears to be mindlessly closing whatever terminus was not built by the Midland, even when the Midland station was demonstrably inferior.

In some places, it was the ex-MR station that closed: examples include Gloucester Eastgate, Manchester Central and Stockport Tiviot Dale, albeit the latter 2 were as much ex-CLC as ex-MR.

 

[yorksrob]

You're very good at trying to shift the terms of the argument... nobody is arguing about the cost of maintaining one line over another (e..g a four track 125mph line or a route that sees heavy freight hammering over viaducts will cost more to maintain than a fairly slow bit of line with no major infrastructure)...

...the question is whether the revenue from a line is anywhere near the costs of running the services on it plus the costs of maintaining the infrastructure. Costs and benefits.

In the case of Settle Junction - Carnforth, you've got to spread the costs of running the services and costs of maintaining the infrastructure between fewer than fifty passengers a day (those passengers spread between three stations, spread over several train services in each direction).

That's what matters - not looking at the costs in isolation. For example, both Dawlish and the Conwy Valley lines have had periods of closure in recent years. The Dawlish line caries a lot of long distance passengers as well as a regular local service, so £1m maintenance costs are spread between those journeys - whereas the Conwy Valley line is a fairly lightly loaded branch line, so a £1m maintenance cost is a lot larger per passenger.

The Settle Junction - Carnforth line costs a lot less to maintain compared to those two, but the passenger numbers I've mentioned above (under fifty passengers a day, spread between three stations and six or seven services in each direction?) would be uneconomical for a minibus - yet heavy rail means that we have a driver and a guard and maintenance costs to pay for.

Heavy rail is great at some things. Heavy rail is incredibly expensive/ inflexible in other areas though. If you can't acknowledge that then, fair enough, you've got your rose tinted spectacles and that means never having to worry about inconvenient evidence, but other people can see where things work and where they are failing.



Nobody claimed that the Heart of Wales trains were *empty*, but they are lightly loaded - hence the example of Sugar Loaf which I mentioned above (fewer than one return passenger a day in four of the last five years).

I'm sure that you'll tell me that this is "useful" for the one person who does use it though!

If you're looking at the costs and benefit of a route, then you have to take into account of much more than just revenue in the "benefits" column. That includes all of those benefits to society that you tend to describe as "woolly".

In the example of the Little North Western, you cite the passenger numbers from three intermediate stations - Wennington, Bentham and Clapham - what's the justification for missing out Giggleswick out of interest ? This clearly ignores the use of the line as a through route. And you can't justify that omission by saying "oh you can use other routes". I travel regularly between Yorkshire and Lancaster and have had cause to use all routes due to Northern's lockdown timetables and strikes etc. The missing through trains via Skipton cause me real issues in getting between the two and theit benefit isn't easily replicated by a long and winding alternative route.

Similarly with Sugar Loaf Mountain. If the only people who use the Heart of Wales line are the one person a day from that stop, then you may have a point, however that's clearly not the case, so I don't see how this amounts to an argument against the route.

This is a wonderfully flowery way of saying "I don't want any route to ever close" (since any service will be used by some token number of people, even if that number of people would be too few to warrant a council subsidising a minibus service)

It's hard to take suggestions of re-openings seriously when they come from people who cannot ever accept that any existing lines warrant closure.

I'm sure that all of the basket cases Beeching closed over fifty years ago would have met your "regular passenger service that is used by passengers in their day to day lives" definition - just accept that you'll never accept any closure ever.



Many roads round here have terrible surfaces - pot holes go months without attention - surfaces are worn away to the point where markings are hard to make out - damage isn't repaired.

Whereas, railways have to be kept regularly repaired/ attended to - maybe Normanton has streets paved with gold but you wouldn't accept the railways being treated as badly as roads are in South Yorkshire!





Yes, everything has become significantly more expensive, because construction costs have gone up across the board (not just railway costs, look at the cost of any construction project - whether that's converting a lane of hard shoulder to "smart" motorway or a new runway at Heathrow) - safety costs have significantly increased on the railway as the culture has significantly improved (compared to the days when you could stick your head out of open windows, or we had people dying in train crashes most years). Staff costs have gone up above inflation (as have the associated costs - maintaining a final salary pension etc).

You like to use the "increasing costs" as a distraction from the fact that passenger numbers on a number of lines but what kind of costs are you wanting to cut (given that the costs of construction and of health & safety have gone up in similar industries over the past generation)? I'm hoping that it's something more substantial than complaining that privatisation means repainting trains every seven years or focussing on little things like the handful fo people compiling Delay Attribution.

If stations/ services/ lines were still carrying passenger levels that could be accommodated by a minibus (even after the generation of almost year-on-year growth that we had before Covid), they were never going to blossom.



There are around thirty three thousand journeys at Bentham/ Clapham/ Wennington pa (combined). So that's sixteen thousand return journeys, i.e. under fifty return journeys a day (spread between three stations, spread over several train services in each direction).

When you consider the number of passengers who use the intermediate stations and factor in the cost of the drivers/ guards (not just their direct wages but also the ancillary costs), the fuel costs of DMUs doing a couple of miles to the gallon, the fact that each carriage costs over a million pounds (so even over a forty year life span with no maintenance that's tens of thousands of pounds per carriage per year)... the trains cost quite a bit per passenger before you consider the cost of line maintenance/ signalling etc.




Everything is "useful" (if you don't want to have a look at the actual facts about passenger numbers) - "useful" is a great word that can be used to smooth over any inconvenient numbers - e.g. in four of the past five years for which stats are available on Wiki, Sugar Loaf station has had passenger numbers of fewer than one return journey per day - but you'll excuse that because "useful" can be stretched to excuse anything you want it to. Which must be useful!

In terms of costs, we have a situation where the railway is lumbered with an ongoing revenue payment for rolling stock whereas previously once the initial cost has been paid off, the railway would have had depeciated rolling stock to use for just the maintenance cost. That is a cost that has been created purely to satisfy the free market idealogy of privatisation and I see no reason whatsoever why this cost should be prioritised over the running of the passenger network. This is an example of a cost issue that should be resolved instead of contemplating passenger closures.

As I've mentioned previously, it's a bit rich for you to accuse me of ignoring inconvenient numbers, whilst at the same time you are completely ignoring through passengers on routes.

 

[zwk500]

Newhaven Marine - obsolete

Also, very importantly:
- adjacent to an existing station
- access through adjacent land prohibited
- converted to freight terminal.

In the example of the Little North Western, you cite the passenger numbers from three intermediate stations - Wennington, Bentham and Clapham - what's the justification for missing out Giggleswick out of interest ? This clearly ignores the use of the line as a through route. And you can't justify that omission by saying "oh you can use other routes". I travel regularly between Yorkshire and Lancaster and have had cause to use all routes due to Northern's lockdown timetables and strikes etc. The missing through trains via Skipton cause me real issues in getting between the two and theit benefit isn't easily replicated by a long and winding alternative route.

As I've mentioned previously, it's a bit rich for you to accuse me of ignoring inconvenient numbers, whilst at the same time you are completely ignoring through passengers on routes.

I've posted the table on page 27 of this document before: https://www.ribblevalley.gov.uk/cor...d_cumbria_Route_Utilisation_Strategy_2008.pdf

[Table showing passenger numbers in 2005-06 on non-WCML lines in Lancs & Cumbria:]


Settle Jn - Carnforth is in 'Branch Lines' along with Lancaster-Morecambe/Heysham and Winderemere. Given the other 2 lines are terminal branches, somebody could probably put the station usage numbers together for each branch to work out the proportion of usage, then extrapolate from passenger growth to get a good guess at today's numbers.
I'll just settle for saying I doubt Settle Jn - Carnforth has equal share of the other 2 route's usage, even by through passengers. It's a reasonable proposition to ask 'is it better to close the Little North Western and subsidise the extension of the Clitheroe terminator to Hellifield?'

FWIW - the Little North Western won't close, because West Coast will object to the network change request on the basis it would make their operations unsustainable. WCRC use it as a test track for locos after overhaul and to position locos at Hellifield to take over charters for the steam section on the S&C.

 

[The Planner]

FWIW - the Little North Western won't close, because West Coast will object to the network change request on the basis it would make their operations unsustainable. WCRC use it as a test track for locos after overhaul and to position locos at Hellifield to take over charters for the steam section on the S&C.

I would be surprised if most of the operators didn't object. No disrespect to West Coast, but they have shouted over Network Changes before and not got far. They would get offered something else in mitigation.

 

[zwk500]

I would be surprised if most of the operators didn't object. No disrespect to West Coast, but they have shouted over Network Changes before and not got far. They would get offered something else in mitigation.

In most places they can be, but the use of the Little NW for steam proving runs means the alternative is either the WCML (good luck finding a path!) or the Cumbrian Coast (not many sensible places to reverse that give a good run in a single shift, and if a loco fails then trains to Sellafield have a potential problem). I agree other operators are likely to carry more weight to keep it open.

 

[yorksrob]

Also, very importantly:
- adjacent to an existing station
- access through adjacent land prohibited
- converted to freight terminal.

I've posted the table on page 27 of this document before: https://www.ribblevalley.gov.uk/cor...d_cumbria_Route_Utilisation_Strategy_2008.pdf

[Table showing passenger numbers in 2005-06 on non-WCML lines in Lancs & Cumbria:]
View attachment 95442

Settle Jn - Carnforth is in 'Branch Lines' along with Lancaster-Morecambe/Heysham and Winderemere. Given the other 2 lines are terminal branches, somebody could probably put the station usage numbers together for each branch to work out the proportion of usage, then extrapolate from passenger growth to get a good guess at today's numbers.
I'll just settle for saying I doubt Settle Jn - Carnforth has equal share of the other 2 route's usage, even by through passengers. It's a reasonable proposition to ask 'is it better to close the Little North Western and subsidise the extension of the Clitheroe terminator to Hellifield?'

FWIW - the Little North Western won't close, because West Coast will object to the network change request on the basis it would make their operations unsustainable. WCRC use it as a test track for locos after overhaul and to position locos at Hellifield to take over charters for the steam section on the S&C.

And although the total journeys on the LNW probably won't be as much as the Windermere branch (that's always busy) it will certainly be rather more than the fifty return journeys a day quoted by TBTC. I suspect that it'll be a bit less than the 2,200 quoted for the Settle & Carlisle, but still not an insignificant number. Let's not forget that in normal times, LNW services will be relieving pressure on the Roses and S&C services, both of which can get quite busy, as well as TP express services around Manchester.

I would certainly hope that the rail industry as a whole would be against closing the route, rather than just West Coast.

 

[Dai Corner]

And although the total journeys on the LNW probably won't be as much as the Windermere branch (that's always busy) it will certainly be rather more than the fifty return journeys a day quoted by TBTC. I suspect that it'll be a bit less than the 2,200 quoted for the Settle & Carlisle, but still not an insignificant number. Let's not forget that in normal times, LNW services will be relieving pressure on the Roses and S&C services, both of which can get quite busy, as well as TP express services around Manchester.

I would certainly hope that the rail industry as a whole would be against closing the route, rather than just West Coast.

Are there any freight, diversions or ECS movements that couldn't use other routes? If not, the railway industry will only want to retain the line as long as the politicians pay for the passenger service over it.