Just in time for when Nissan leave Sunderland, speaking of turkeys as some were.
Fleetwood I see no point, better might be an expansion of the tram network to have a line to Poulton.
It's un-sexy but Castlefield, Ely, finishing GW/MML wiring, Leeds-Manchester routes (and various wires) - those are the projects which matter.
Agreed - we should focus on the unsexy stuff, rather than rambling routes through empty countryside that appeal to a few diehards but don't offer much everyday benefit - there's a long list of cancelled schemes (e.g. MML electrification) and deferred schemes (various bits of PTE) and vaguely promised schemes (Dore re-doubling) and relatively simple/quick schemes (stringing up some knitting for the low speed single track Windermere branch)... before anyone starts worrying about the importance of connecting some villages in rural Devon/ North Yorkshire etc.
Either we have a serious discussion about things that have a practical chance of getting green light in the next few years or we have a Crayonista discussion about fantasy proposals for spending hundreds of millions of pounds reconnecting villages with almost hundreds of residents.
Some people see re-opening a line that previously failed as an end in themselves, some people see re-openings as one potential tool in the toolbox (and there are several other ways of improving the network - electrification, speed improvements to existing lines, new platforms, passing loops, brand new alignments etc. The idea of having a fund specifically to fund re-openings just reinforces the fact that re-openings are generally fairly weak compared to all of the other ways that we could improve things (often "unsexy" things are much better than fanciful projects)
Still it's always interesting to read people say that we should re-open lines closed over fifty years ago, when the same people are often against HS2 because it'd mean cutting down trees and be bad for wildlife...
I don’t really buy the Leamside line as a viable passenger reopening - doesn’t look much if any faster, doesn’t really serve Washington, and misses out Durham.
However I do fancy it as a freight route - a more direct route to Tyne Dock, out the way of passenger trains, a (not state aid honest) incentive for Nissan to stay by connecting to the factory, and maybe a new rail connected distribution park on the old opencast at the top of the A194(M)
My stock response on the Leamside is that it looks nice on paper but it'd have to offer something that the existing line didn't - either a faster route (to take the non stop passenger services away from the Durham kink) or a freight only route (to increase the number of passenger services on the existing line north of Darlington).
For all that it ticks a box by serving the fringes of Washington, you could just build a station on the existing line around Birtley as a "Washington Parkway" (since any Leamside station on the eastern fringes of Washington would be something people would have to drive to, so a lot of money to spend on something to save driving slightly further to the P&R at Heworth. The only real benefit for passenger services would be for the kind of people who think it's worth spending huge sums just to tick the box of having a "Washington" station - it wouldn't serve the centre - it wouldn't really do anything passenger-wise that a Birtley station couldn't do (and a BIrtley station could allow four tracking on the ECML to improve existing services).
Washington remains an enigma - it ought to be the kind of place that had a railway (frequent commercial bus services, large enough population, commuter distance into two nearby cities etc) but the population is spread out over a huge area, the railway didn't go anywhere near the actual centre of the place, it's hard to work out a way of serving it that'd be of practical benefit (instead of just the "putting the town on the map" guff beloved of local councillors).
A bigger benefit of a passenger service on the Leamside is that the existing P&R outside Durham could be a great railhead for taking cars off the A1 - fast EMUs from there to Newcastle and Metro Centre could be brilliant at that .
