Restoring your Railways: Winning schemes announced

[Killingworth]

Perish the thought, but would it not be more useful to spend the available cash on things like redoubling congested single tracks, improving junctions, lengthening platforms and signalling updates?

Proposals to reopen most of the long closed lines diverts resources from more mundane measures that would probably benefit the active railway network a lot more. But nominations for an "improving your railway" scheme wouldn't have the same emotive impact.

 

[Doctor Fegg]

This makes the point that no one at the DfT is proactively planning any rail reopening schemes as part of a national plan unlike what is happening in Scotland. Local areas in England don't have to bid for funding for business cases for road schemes.

Yes they do. Look at the Levelling Up Fund which is the Local Pinchpoint Fund rebranded. Look at the Active Travel Fund. Look at the current bus fund whose name I’ve forgotten. It’s how this government works - local authorities are starved of cash and invited to bid for funds from specific pots. It absolutely isn’t specific to the railways at all.

 

[61653 HTAFC]

That is exactly what it is. A link between East Lancs and West Yorkshire, the former with high unemployment and the latter with jobs to fill. The line is also proposed to take freight flows, to Drax I believe, away from the congested routes through Manchester.

Removing freight from congested lines in Manchester... by sending them through congested junctions in Leeds instead. Great idea

 

[unlevel42]

What is the English word for giraffe? Answer. see below.

Girafe(French), jirafa(Spanish) and giraffa(Italian)derive from Arabic.
'Giraffe' appeared in English in the 17th century.

How do we explain the unusual spelling 'ff' spelling in the English versions?
It is quite normal to find words with Mediterranean rooted words in Welsh.
The double f sound(ff) in Welsh is the (f) sound in English(the (f) in Welsh is (v)in English).
So it is possible that English took the 'easy' Welsh word to replace their mouthful- camel leopard.


Homework:
What is the English word for telephone?

 

[Bald Rick]

Homework:
What is the English word for telephone?

Blower

 

[yorkie]

Perish the thought, but would it not be more useful to spend the available cash on things like redoubling congested single tracks, improving junctions, lengthening platforms and signalling updates?

Proposals to reopen most of the long closed lines diverts resources from more mundane measures that would probably benefit the active railway network a lot more. But nominations for an "improving your railway" scheme wouldn't have the same emotive impact.

Feel free to create a thread in the relevant forum section and edit your post above to link to it

 

[snowball]

Homework:
What is the English word for telephone?

"The problem with the French is that they don't have a word for entrepreneur" - George W. Bush.

 

[Irascible]

Perish the thought, but would it not be more useful to spend the available cash on things like redoubling congested single tracks, improving junctions, lengthening platforms and signalling updates?

Proposals to reopen most of the long closed lines diverts resources from more mundane measures that would probably benefit the active railway network a lot more. But nominations for an "improving your railway" scheme wouldn't have the same emotive impact.

"Rebuilding your railway" might. I'm in full agreement too. Well, nearly - some places really do deserve a railway again.

 

[Ianno87]

Perish the thought, but would it not be more useful to spend the available cash on things like redoubling congested single tracks, improving junctions, lengthening platforms and signalling updates?

Proposals to reopen most of the long closed lines diverts resources from more mundane measures that would probably benefit the active railway network a lot more. But nominations for an "improving your railway" scheme wouldn't have the same emotive impact.

It doesn't have to be either / or. We can have some of one, some of the other.

 

[Dr Day]

May be counter to a lot of views on here, but as a taxpayer I'm hoping one of the first things GBR does is take a good hard look at where it spends its costs relative to its revenues and doesn't automatically preserve everything that is there today. One of the side benefits of 'nationalisation' should be a shift towards seeing the role of the railway within a wider transport strategy rather than individual businesses (including NR) trying to maximise their bottom line. Significant subsidy will still be needed for transport, particularly in more rural areas, but I'm of the view if it could be re-distributed between rail and other public transport modes with a long term commitment it could do more to address climate change and other objectives. Rail is well suited for certain trips, but not others.

Ireland, the 'basket-case' Western Rail Corridor aside, has generally been able to close significantly loss-making rural lines through the provision of committed alternatives and yet still invest elsewhere including some lines eg Navan which so happen to be partial re-openings, and upgrades on the existing network. This hasn't been possible given the way transport in GB has been structured, but maybe the establishment of GBR and Sub-national transport bodies can address this.

Veering slight back on topic, maybe it is more 're-purposing your railway' that we should be encouraging? Or 'restoring your bus service' given cutbacks over the years. But that wouldn't necessarily get headlines or votes.... Or simply 'restoring the December 2019 railway' on certain routes where post-Covid demand justifies it ?

 

[furnessvale]

Ashton to stockport line, how is that going to work when Ikea and housing are built on most of the track.

Run round at Stalybridge or tram train from the A6140 meeting point? IKEA is built on one leg of a former, but essential, triangle. The rest of the route is still used by freight and most of that by one passenger train a week.

 

[tbtc]

The problem with that approach is that it assumes UK railway provision is somehow logical and rational, that there's some underlying decision process for which cities, towns and villages get rail services and which don't and how good those services and connections are. But when you look at the UK rail network as it stands today, there's very little logic or reason to it's design, it's a patchwork quilt of different historical lines and stations and whether a town or village has a station, or the quality of its connections is determined more by shear luck about what was happening in the 1960s when the network was rationalised.

The Beeching Report was released in the early 1960s, that's 60 years ago, many towns and cities have changed dramatically, some are entirely new, others have grown massively, some have grown little or even shrunk. Freight flows have changed, commuting flows have changed. You can find towns and cities of comparable size, some with lots of connections, others with next to none.

So it ends up with the situations where access to a good rail services depends more on grand-father rights, of having inherited one from the 1960s, than it being justified today by a logical decision process.

It's not just Beeching though - a lot of the railway depends on what we inherited from the Victorian speculators who bet big sums of money on trying to make a profit from the routes that they were building - the railway has always been like this

Roads too - there's motorway from Swansea towards Pembrokeshire but Sheffield to Manchester relies on single carriageway A-roads that are often closed in winter - some smaller places have ring roads whilst larger places don't have them

What's the alternative though? We carefully allocate a train station to each ten thousand people? Or maybe ten train stations per parliamentary constituency? That'd never work

Just accept that things will never fit "logical and rational" pigeonholes - some small places have direct London links or are on main lines whilst larger places lack such things (and sometimes lack stations)

I'm fine with suggestions of re-openings if they are good enough, but a lot of the time the arguments on here are purely emotive or clutching at straws (e.g. "it'd remove one freight train a day from another route, plus it might be handy a couple of weekends a year when a parallel line is shut for engineering works")

Perish the thought, but would it not be more useful to spend the available cash on things like redoubling congested single tracks, improving junctions, lengthening platforms and signalling updates?

Proposals to reopen most of the long closed lines diverts resources from more mundane measures that would probably benefit the active railway network a lot more. But nominations for an "improving your railway" scheme wouldn't have the same emotive impact.

True - there's a logical approach and then there's an emotional approach (that probably plays more to the Nostalgic Pensioners Who Want To Recreate The Good Old Days then it actually helps today's commuters) - the railway is being run for the emotional benefit of people who don't use it rather than the practical benefit of those who do

Yes they do. Look at the Levelling Up Fund which is the Local Pinchpoint Fund rebranded. Look at the Active Travel Fund. Look at the current bus fund whose name I’ve forgotten. It’s how this government works - local authorities are starved of cash and invited to bid for funds from specific pots. It absolutely isn’t specific to the railways at all.

Agreed - and it must work because they keep on doing it - forcing regions to fight for a share of a "pot" rather than agreeing a sensible allocation (see also GBR HQ)

 

[A0]

Perish the thought, but would it not be more useful to spend the available cash on things like redoubling congested single tracks, improving junctions, lengthening platforms and signalling updates?

Proposals to reopen most of the long closed lines diverts resources from more mundane measures that would probably benefit the active railway network a lot more. But nominations for an "improving your railway" scheme wouldn't have the same emotive impact.

Some of the RYR bids are capacity things like that, such as the passing loop on the St Albans Abbey line.

 

[A0]

Yes they do. Look at the Levelling Up Fund which is the Local Pinchpoint Fund rebranded. Look at the Active Travel Fund. Look at the current bus fund whose name I’ve forgotten. It’s how this government works - local authorities are starved of cash and invited to bid for funds from specific pots. It absolutely isn’t specific to the railways at all.

Bit in bold - it's been the case for many years, not just the last 10 or so, that local authorities / areas have been asked to bid for money and the best / most viable proposals get funded. In many ways it's the logical development of the regional development policies of the 50s and 60s except the local areas come up with the proposals rather than them being centrally directed, which given some of the central decisions such as inducing / forcing Rootes Group to build their factory in Linwood were fairly disasterous, is perhaps understandable.

 

[stuu]

Agreed - and it must work because they keep on doing it - forcing regions to fight for a share of a "pot" rather than agreeing a sensible allocation (see also GBR HQ)

ok, ow would that work? An amount per capita every 5 years or something else? And then how do you distribute it between projects? What if an area has a really good project which is expensive and exceeds the allocation?

At some level a business case has to be drawn up and there has to be a mechanism for distributing that money. If we were coldly rational and only gave the best performing bids money, it would all go to the big cities as that is (generally) where the best returns are. Likewise small projects in deprived areas would have no chance. Some of the decisions clearly have too much politics involved, even £50k is money wasted on some of the more ludicrous schemes, but there does seem to be an attempt to spread the funding out across the country

 

[tbtc]

ok, ow would that work? An amount per capita every 5 years or something else? And then how do you distribute it between projects? What if an area has a really good project which is expensive and exceeds the allocation?

At some level a business case has to be drawn up and there has to be a mechanism for distributing that money. If we were coldly rational and only gave the best performing bids money, it would all go to the big cities as that is (generally) where the best returns are. Likewise small projects in deprived areas would have no chance. Some of the decisions clearly have too much politics involved, even £50k is money wasted on some of the more ludicrous schemes, but there does seem to be an attempt to spread the funding out across the country

What's wrong with projects that favour places where the best returns are?

Or should be we be forced to spend a certain amount of the infrastructure budget on no hoper projects?

Heavy Rail = Mass Transportation = Works Better In Certain Markets Like Big Cities

Some projects obviously need to be decided on a national level, given the way that they don't fit neatly into just one region, some projects are going to be so expensive that they'd need to be funded from some strategic national fund, but is there not something to be said for giving each "region" a fund it can plan around over the years (e.g. does the South West spend money on various incremental improvements each year or does it leave everything untouched and bet everything on something like Okehampton - Tavistock?)

Maybe it could even be an infrastructure budget for regions to allocate to all transport infrastructure projects - a railway redoubling or a road bypass? New platforms or removing roundabouts? That way we'd avoid the kind of bitter "why does Region X get everything" debates - at least some of the decisions would be taken "locally"

 

[Irascible]

What's wrong with projects that favour places where the best returns are?

Define "return" though. Immediate financial return? broader tax returns? social value?

 

[stuu]

What's wrong with projects that favour places where the best returns are?

Or should be we be forced to spend a certain amount of the infrastructure budget on no hoper projects?

Heavy Rail = Mass Transportation = Works Better In Certain Markets Like Big Cities

Some projects obviously need to be decided on a national level, given the way that they don't fit neatly into just one region, some projects are going to be so expensive that they'd need to be funded from some strategic national fund, but is there not something to be said for giving each "region" a fund it can plan around over the years (e.g. does the South West spend money on various incremental improvements each year or does it leave everything untouched and bet everything on something like Okehampton - Tavistock?)

Maybe it could even be an infrastructure budget for regions to allocate to all transport infrastructure projects - a railway redoubling or a road bypass? New platforms or removing roundabouts? That way we'd avoid the kind of bitter "why does Region X get everything" debates - at least some of the decisions would be taken "locally"

If we were truly rational then we would develop the biggest cities and bulldoze places like [insert post-industrial wasteland] into the sea... but we don't, and once you have accepted that it's not politically possible to make those decisions, then the process is already not truly rational and warped according to (small p and big p) political realities.

The same thing applies to regions, some regions because of their geography/demographics/industrial base etc. are going to produce lower returns. How do you sensibly decide what that region gets?

I do agree that making the final decisions at a local or regional level would be a good thing, but then you get into the need for regional democratic representation, which is a whole other wormhole to go down

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Define "return" though. Immediate financial return? broader tax returns? social value?

That's obviously a part-value-judgement-based political decision, which you'd hope would include an element of financial return and an element of social value. Once you've agreed on a way to measure return, then there shouldn't be any problems with spending money on those areas that give the best 'return' according to your definition.

 

[BayPaul]

Define "return" though. Immediate financial return? broader tax returns? social value?

As I understand it BCR already takes account of broader tax returns and many other factors beyond the immediate financial return.

Many people seem to assume that projects with poor financial returns must have a better social and/or environmental value. I'd argue that normally the opposite is true. With a limited pot of money, schemes need to be prioritised, and those with the best BCR almost inevitably get used by the largest number of people and/or cost the least, so allowing other schemes as well and/or allow regeneration of a deprived area, so maximising social impact. They also tend to switch the most people from car to rail, giving the best environmental impact.

So the Hythe scheme scores well on BCR, but also would be used by a very large number of people, and be relatively cheap, so allow money to also be used on other schemes. Environmentally, it removes large numbers of cars from a national park and a congested city.

Compare this to a rural scheme like monsal, that is likely to be used by a lot fewer people, and is much more expensive. Yes, it's delivering a social and environmental benefit, but probably a much smaller one, and certainly a lot less benefit per £ spent.

That's why I support schemes like the former, and am very excited to see it progress, but I feel that schemes like the latter don't make sense

 

[The Ham]

The problem with spending X/given population is that it would require broadly the same level of spending in Farnborough, Aldershot & nearby (within a 2 miles) or Milton Keynes as Plymouth, whilst there's probably more need for better services in Plymouth as the other two already have half decent rail services.

Also, given that the Milton Keynes area is gaining East West Rail, does that count against it in funding for new projects going forwards, if so for how long and how much of the budget?

Whilst imperfect, the current situation does appear to work reasonably well.

 

[swt_passenger]

The problem with spending X/given population is that it would require broadly the same level of spending in Farnborough, Aldershot & nearby (within a 2 miles) or Milton Keynes as Plymouth, whilst there's probably more need for better services in Plymouth as the other two already have half decent rail services.

Also, given that the Milton Keynes area is gaining East West Rail, does that count against it in funding for new projects going forwards, if so for how long and how much of the budget?

Whilst imperfect, the current situation does appear to work reasonably well.

There seems to be this odd view appearing here now and again that (for example) you cannot have Fawley because a big place 75 miles away already had Crossrail or Thameslink. I don’t remember RYR having particular geographic restrictions?

 

[krus_aragon]

Hopefully the Amlwch/Llangefni work won't re-tread all the same ground as the Welsh Government-commissioned survey back in 2010.

One surprising detail is that since applying to this Restoring Railways fund, the Amlwch branch has been leased to the local preservation society for 100 years. On that basis, I'm not sure what this fund could hope to achieve.

If you were to have a North Wales stopper which terminated at a reopened line somewhere beyond Bangor, then Caernarfon is the obvious choice. But that's another thread.

Looking at the list of applicants Bangor - Caernarfon - Afon Wen was the only other applicant from Wales, but the bods opted for the Anglesey branch instead.

 

[tbtc]

Define "return" though. Immediate financial return? broader tax returns? social value?

As we do with BCRs at the moment - we compare the "one off" cost of something against the benefits that it would generate over a twenty five/ fifty year period (as well as any subsidies required to maintain a certain expected level of service - e.g. a loss making line like the Tweedbank route)

That means comparing the impact of generating jobs and businesses/ boosting land and property values/ removing cars from the roads/ removing buses from the roads (and also the costs to existing train passengers - whether that's slowing down an InterCity service to stop at Reston or the lost revenue as some existing passengers migrate to a new station and therefore buy cheaper tickets for shorter journeys, e.g. we might sell slightly fewer Berwick to Edinburgh tickets as some of those passengers buy Reston to Edinburgh tickets instead)

Special attention can be paid to certain things that are "solved" (e.g. a train from Tweedbank into Edinburgh might remove a certain number of cars from the congested Sherrifhall roundabout on the Edinburgh bypass, so that might count higher than just removing a "typical" car KM

"Social value"? Sure, but I'm a bit wary of unquantifiable concepts since a lot of the time on here people use things like "social value" to cover over schemes with horrendous business cases, the kind of "yes, the average train would have fewer than a dozen passengers on board but there's this other benefit that magically makes the scheme worthwhile"

If we were truly rational then we would develop the biggest cities and bulldoze places like [insert post-industrial wasteland] into the sea... but we don't, and once you have accepted that it's not politically possible to make those decisions, then the process is already not truly rational and warped according to (small p and big p) political realities.

The same thing applies to regions, some regions because of their geography/demographics/industrial base etc. are going to produce lower returns. How do you sensibly decide what that region gets?

I do agree that making the final decisions at a local or regional level would be a good thing, but then you get into the need for regional democratic representation, which is a whole other wormhole to go down

I don't think it'd be "rational" to bulldoze existing places into the sea (albeit I say this living in a post-industrial wasteland myself, so maybe I would say that!)

However, there's an argument to be made against building (more) unsustainable housing, the kind that will cost a disproportionate amount of money to serve (public services etc) - in the way that I don't think we should be building more retail parks far from public transport etc

Some regions are bound to produce lower returns, which is why mass transportation is more suited to focussing on linking larger/ nearby urban areas than to provide the kind of rural links between smaller places some distance apart that members of the Crayonista community seem so fixated with (Tavistock to Okehampton, Matlock to Buxton etc) - one Crossrail journey would carry more passengers than a day of services between Aberystwyth and Carmarthen or between Dumfries and Stranraer etc

We don't have regional parliaments for everywhere but we do have Regional Development Funds etc which might be a good place for such things to be decided (until the UK embraces more devolution)

 

[Pinza-C55]

I don't understand the Weardale one. Are they proposing taking over the existing heritage railway ?

 

[6Gman]

That is exactly what it is. A link between East Lancs and West Yorkshire, the former with high unemployment and the latter with jobs to fill. The line is also proposed to take freight flows, to Drax I believe, away from the congested routes through Manchester.

By the time it got built I would hope we would have moved on from shipping American wood chippings to burn for our electricity . . .

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 31 Oct 2021 ==

"The problem with the French is that they don't have a word for entrepreneur" - George W. Bush.

Far be it from me to come to the defence of Bush II but he was actually correct. The word entrepreneur has different meanings in French and English - in French it just means proprietor rather than the English go-getting risk taker.

I'm told.

 

[vic-rijrode]

I'm still bitterly disappointed that the Stratford-upon-Avon and Midland Junction Railway was not included in any reopening bid. Shame on Northamptonshire, Warwickshire (and even Oxfordshire) County Councils for not supporting this fine cross-country route useful for ironstone and diversionary trains (admittedly not closed by Beeching though).

 

[Chester1]

Re. the Rawtenstall line, the fact that marginal local Tory MP Jake Berry (until not long ago Northern Powerhouse Minister) has consistently made a lot of noise about it will have had some bearing on that one's relative success.

The business case done I think around ten years ago had a BCR below 1. The success of the ELR as a tourist attraction bringing money into local economy stands against a NR reopening. The section South / East of Bury is expendable though and would make a good addition to NR or Metrolink networks. I sure having multiple local Tory MPs will help any project.

 

[Railwaysceptic]

I'm still bitterly disappointed that the Stratford-upon-Avon and Midland Junction Railway was not included in any reopening bid. Shame on Northamptonshire, Warwickshire (and even Oxfordshire) County Councils for not supporting this fine cross-country route useful for ironstone and diversionary trains (admittedly not closed by Beeching though).

I didn't notice your smiley until after I had looked the route up in the Pre-grouping Atlas. I was going to ask who would use the route!

 

[rf_ioliver]

Gaerwen to Amlwch? What's the Welsh for "you're having a giraffe"?

Ti'n cael giraff?