Oswestry Branch Railway Restoration - The Truth

[stevieinselby]

As you'll know, the crossing point is not much over 200m from a roundabout, and as such I would ask whether the (perhaps scaremongering?) use of the phrase "high speed" really is appropriate. To me "high speed" for a road suggests 60mph or above. If drivers are doing this speed northbound (towards the roundabout) at the crossing point then one might question whether they are leaving their braking too late, and if doing this speed southbound then they must be accelerating pretty briskly.

It's perfectly possible to brake comfortably and safely for a roundabout from 60mph in under 200m.
Another concern would be the potential for traffic to be stacked back either from the roundabout over the level crossing, or stacked back from the level crossing and blocking the roundabout, neither of which would be a good outcome. Given the nature of the location, it would have to be a full-barrier crossing, so you're looking at a closure cycle of up to 3 minutes, which would definitely make that risk.

 

[Vespa]

For the railway to have some measure of success, it would need to go from somewhere to somewhere, Oswestry and Gobowen line linked up is the best solution.

 

[Bald Rick]

Given the nature of the location, it would have to be a full-barrier crossing, so you're looking at a closure cycle of up to 3 minutes, which would definitely make that risk.

And with 4 or more 3 minute closures each hour, the total delay caused to road users (and the fuel wasted) would be far, far more than any time savings / carbon savings to ‘rail’ passengers.

This is such a simple one - put on a dedicated electric bus ….

 

[CambrianView]

I've completed reading the Oswestry Appendix of the Shropshire Cycling and Walking Plan commissioned by Shropshire Council from City Science as published on 20th January 2023 (8 months before the Stantec Oswestry - Gobowen SOBC was published on behalf of Cambrian Heritage Railways), and I'd like to include a couple of brief observations from my reading of the Plan:

The Local Cycling & Infrasctructure Plan identifies existing cycling infrastructure in Oswestry as "not comprehensive", "disjointed" and "not LTN 1/20 compliant".

Gobowen is identified as having the nearest railway station and is a 20 minute cycle ride from Oswestry.

It identifies an "alternative route" from Gobowen to Oswestry to sit alongside a "restored" railway line designed "in consultation" with CHR.

On page 41 under the heading "5.1 Top Performing Schemes" it states "...On the whole Oswestry scored higher than other towns, particularly due to potential mode shift and growth. This is a result of not having an active railway station, therefore many of the schemes are aiming to link the town centre with the Orthopaedic Hospital and Gobowen Station, as well as including an industrial estate. A scheme was proposed here, to extend the current cycle path along the existing railway corridor to Gobowen, however, we were informed that this did not align with plans to run a shuttle rail service. Otherwise, it is our view that such a scheme would have scored very well".

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 4 Sep 2024 ==

I approached City Science recently to ask them did they propose (or was it an existing but already rejected proposal) the scheme to develop a path alongside the shuttle rail service between Gobowen and Oswestry, and who informed them that the proposal did not align with plans to run said shuttle service (Shropshire Council, CHR or some other stakeholder)?

They replied by saying the "scheme is still highly recommended, but it was pushed to long-term, hence did not appear in the top 10 schemes".

The text that I quoted from the Oswestry Appendix in bold, above, means (according to City Science) that it would have been on the priority list, if/when the rail line were to come forward.

...which really doesn't answer my question, but does point toward the restoration of the railway taking priority over any active transport scheme.

 

[zwk500]

At this point @CambrianView, I think the only way you're really going to get anywhere near the answers you seek is to really hammer your local councillors.

 

[Bald Rick]

… or accept it‘s not going to happen because no one is going to pay for it - and get on with the rest of your life!

 

[Shrop]

And with 4 or more 3 minute closures each hour, the total delay caused to road users (and the fuel wasted) would be far, far more than any time savings / carbon savings to ‘rail’ passengers.

This is such a simple one - put on a dedicated electric bus ….

I don’t think for a moment that any business case for this rail link would stack up, but some of the arguments against it really are questionable. I have a free bit of time this evening, so here goes …

Firstly, this has been called a “High speed road” by the ORR in a letter to the DfT. The crossing point isn’t much over 200m from a roundabout, so what would be wrong with putting in a 40mph speed limit between the roundabout and a short distance beyond the crossing point?

Secondly, and following on from this, there is a well tried practice of reducing traffic speeds on busy roads as a means of keeping the flows going, by avoiding what is known as the concertina effect (ie traffic bunching and coming to a halt far more often than it otherwise needs to). So perhaps it would even be an advantage to have a lower speed limit for a short section, and it certainly shouldn’t do any harm. The cost to journey time even at quiet times would be perhaps 5 seconds at most, and at busy times (ie most of every day), nothing at all.

Thirdly, there are double standards on this route. Just a few miles along this road at Wrexham, there is a 50mph limit on a dual carriageway section of it. Not because of any urban characteristics, but as displayed on the road signing it’s “to improve air quality”. So why any great need to keep 60mph for a short stretch of this single carriageway "high speed" road?

Fourth, the short temporary road closures will do little to lengthen journey times. Traffic held for 3 minutes will then travel more quickly for a couple of miles, and by 3 or 4 miles along the road it will have caught up the queue that was in front of it before the crossing. And thanks to the road being “High volume”, then this does indeed constitute most of the traffic at this point. So yes of course there would be a few delays, but it isn’t really reasonable to make much of an alarm out of this.

Fifth, a few miles along the road in the opposite direction to Wrexham is Shrewsbury where the roundabout at the A49 junction (just north of Bayston Hill) very regularly causes long delays, both to the A49 and the A5. When this junction was being planned in the late 1980s, many people locally pleaded for this to built as grade-separated but the DfT refused. Let’s disregard the horrendous accident record of this junction after it was built, and focus on the “fuel wasted”. This A5/A49 junction has caused countless thousands of vehicles on the (very straight) A5 dual carriageway, every day for decades to either reduce speeds to 20mph or so if their traffic lights happen to be on green, or to stop completely, all from 60-70mph. This then means they all need to use extra fuel to build back up to speed again. Yes grade-separation for the junction wouldn’t be cheap, but the extra fuel consumed by so many vehicles every day doesn’t really feature in any considerations here.

So to conclude, yes it’s not a great scheme, but neither the traffic speeds, the traffic volumes, the traffic delays nor even the fuel wastage present a particularly strong case for refusing to build it. There simply isn’t a great case for it, we don’t need exaggerated claims of problems to our precious road traffic to stop it from going ahead.

 

[Bald Rick]

Fourth, the short temporary road closures will do little to lengthen journey times. Traffic held for 3 minutes will then travel more quickly for a couple of miles, and by 3 or 4 miles along the road it will have caught up the queue that was in front of it before the crossing.

You need to check your maths there.

 

[Shrop]

You need to check your maths there.

I've travelled this route many times when the traffic has been stop-start due to the volume of it. 3 minutes at an average of, say 15mph means the back of the queue gets 3/4 of a mile along the road. After 4 minutes it will be a mile away, but at 60mph this only takes one minute to catch up, ie the 3 minute delay plus the 1 minute to catch up. After all, the ORR called it a "high speed road", and others on here have pointed out just how quickly cars can reach this speed. Indeed a great many exceed 60mph on a clear road thanks to the relative impunity of driving over the speed limit (which train drivers can lost their jobs for of course).

On this basis traffic could catch up in one mile, but I actually stated 3 or 4 miles. Which bit of my maths don't you like?

 

[nwales58]

At this point @CambrianView, I think the only way you're really going to get anywhere near the answers you seek is to really hammer your local councillors.

and your county councillor will be overloaded with getting answers about potholes not being mended and the like and know they have no money (Shropshire has not been able to afford evening and weekend bus services for years) short of central government gimmick funds.

On which, why not concentrate on the most valuable thing identified: highway maintenance at level crossings on heritage railways. This is a genuine problem that I was not aware of and needs solving. Though be careful what you wish for, the solution may be that no heritage railway is able to open a level crossing ever again of course.

Largely agree with, but one minor point:

... double standards on this route. Just a few miles along this road at Wrexham, there is a 50mph limit on a dual carriageway section of it. Not because of any urban characteristics, but as displayed on the road signing it’s “to improve air quality”.

At Chirk you enter the land of the (friendly) dragon. Transport objectives change considerably, general wellness of those living in an area has more weight than journey times of those passing through. In England it's the other way round.

Retired now, I was in and out of infrastructure project evaluation over 40 years. No matter the faults in the various desk studies, nor the questions of scheme/objective prioritisation in the local transport plan, my view is the only things that could realistically happen in the next 5-10 years would be small safety improvements, traffic calming etc. Those are up against similar problems elsewhere in the county for prioritisation.

We don't yet know how small scheme funding will work with the new government (I hope random PR captioned competitive bids and 'deals' are behind us, the old way was submitting your scheme when you were ready and waiting for it to bubble up the priority list) but the total amount of money for this is unlikely to change dramatically.

 

[Western Lord]

I thought that the objection to level crossings was not that they hold up road traffic, but that they are potentially dangerous.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I thought that the objection to level crossings was not that they hold up road traffic, but that they are potentially dangerous.

On something like the A5 it's both, but realistically bridging the A5 over a single-track unelectrified branch line would hardly be difficult in the scheme of railway projects.

 

[nwales58]

I thought that the objection to level crossings was not that they hold up road traffic, but that they are potentially dangerous.

By level crossings I meant the concerns over maintenance of the existing foot and access crossings in Oswestry where it turns out that there is no reponsible person, not the A5.

 

[The Planner]

On something like the A5 it's both, but realistically bridging the A5 over a single-track unelectrified branch line would hardly be difficult in the scheme of railway projects.

You are looking at around 5m above rail height for the bridge, 300m from the roundabout, so 1 in 60 gradient at its smoothest. I'd expect you would have to reduce the speed limit as it wouldn't be pretty if the traffic stacked back up towards the bridge with someone pelting over with reduced sight lines.

 

[nwales58]

Of course in Wales we might replace the roundabout with signals which solves several problems (CO2 embedded in construction means a bridge would probably be a non-starter), in particular slow modes crossing the junction.

For England I don't know the current DfT warrants for signals on high speed roads but they may be frowned on. It used to be a matter of taller poles for longer distance sighting. England does not include construction CO2 in evaluation. Yet.

 

[Shrop]

You are looking at around 5m above rail height for the bridge, 300m from the roundabout, so 1 in 60 gradient at its smoothest. I'd expect you would have to reduce the speed limit as it wouldn't be pretty if the traffic stacked back up towards the bridge with someone pelting over with reduced sight lines.

If you're going to go to the trouble of building a bridge to carry trunk road traffic, then all of the construction doesn't need to be for the road itself, it ought to be possible to also provide some lowering of the railway - especially if it's only for such a limited and probably lightweight service. It would be different if the plans to introduce freight traffic further down the line were added into the equation, and that would of course provide additional funding, but that seems little more than a pipedream.

 

[zwk500]

You are looking at around 5m above rail height for the bridge, 300m from the roundabout, so 1 in 60 gradient at its smoothest. I'd expect you would have to reduce the speed limit as it wouldn't be pretty if the traffic stacked back up towards the bridge with someone pelting over with reduced sight lines.

As I think I mentioned above, the distances involved are greater than the bridge constructed in Bicester to replace a previous Level Crossing for East-West Rail, which has a roundabout at one end and a T junction at the other.

 

[Bald Rick]

On this basis traffic could catch up in one mile, but I actually stated 3 or 4 miles. Which bit of my maths don't you like?

You are assuming there is always queueing traffic after the crossing. There isn‘t. There isn’t now, and there hasn’t been all day when I’ve looked. Therefore the majority of traffic that is held at the Level Crossing will not catch up the queue in front - it will lose 3-4 minutes. And there’s a lot of 3-4 minutes that will add up for each vehicle.

 

[Shrop]

You are assuming there is always queueing traffic after the crossing. There isn‘t. There isn’t now, and there hasn’t been all day when I’ve looked. Therefore the majority of traffic that is held at the Level Crossing will not catch up the queue in front - it will lose 3-4 minutes. And there’s a lot of 3-4 minutes that will add up for each vehicle.

We must meet on site and compare knowledge of maths and traffic!

 

[John Luxton]

I travel along the A5 at Oswestry quite a bit ever since it opened.

The main problem really is the road not the railway.

When the by-pass was built it should have been built as a dual carriageway given the volume of traffic using it Sometimes it is a breeze other times a nightmare and I can see why operating the crossing would cause problems.

I seem to recall when it was originally decided to built the bypass as a single carriageway road it was originally going to have been built with the so called "coroners corridors". There would be three lanes with a shared centre lane for overtaking.

However by the mid 1980s when the road was completed these had been considered to be unsafe and it just ended up with two wide lanes one in each direction thus congestion builds. The other problem is there are too many roundabouts where grade separated junctions would have been a better solution.

As much as I would like to see Gobowen - to Oswestry reopen it is the road that needs sorting out first.

Perhaps the road which as the A483 goes from dual to single carriageway at Ruabon before it joins the A5 at the Halton Roundabout (another notorious bottle neck at busy times) through to the Shrewsbury Road junction at Oswestry should be reconstructed as a dual carriageway?

Always struck me as strange that it is dual carriageway almost from Chester to Ruabon and then goes to single. carriageway.

As part of the rebuild the crossing could be replaced with the road on an embankment and both the railway and daily traffic problems in the area could be resolved.

Of course it would cost many millions but it would improve connectivity in the area.

 

[Meerkat]

Has anyone made a convincing case for what this short branch would be for, before getting into the tricky stuff like the how?
Oswestry is a small town - the catchment area who cant just as easily get to Gobowen is minimal. And where do the good people of Oswestry want to go, and are those places actually near a railway station?

 

[Shrop]

Perhaps the road which as the A483 goes from dual to single carriageway at Ruabon before it joins the A5 at the Halton Roundabout (another notorious bottle neck at busy times) through to the Shrewsbury Road junction at Oswestry should be reconstructed as a dual carriageway?

Any dualling of this route would attract traffic from the M6/M56 route between Birmingham and North Wales. So a dual carriageway here would of course help, but it would inevitably add huge pressure on to the DfT to dual the remaining section between Oswestry and the Shrewsbury by-pass (which is then dual carriageway until it reaches the M54 towards Birmingham).

Not only would there then be pressure to dual this additional section, there would then also be pressure to provide grade separation at all of the six roundabouts along the Shrewsbury by-pass, several of which already experience significant delays at peak times. I can't see the DfT wanting any of this, because the M6/M56 route carries a lot of latent demand for this whole A5/A483 corridor, with all manner of unwanted implications.

 

[nwales58]

A5 and A483 in England are strategic road network so National Highways (needs to revert to Highways England name to be clear what it does) is responsible. Major schemes are planned in 5 year periods, similar to rail CPs. RIS3 covering 2025-30 is not yet final and has been buffeted around but will be keeping the ship afloat and building some deferred existing schemes rather than much new.

Junction safety or capacity improvements (e.g. signalised roundabouts, channelised turns) might get funded but anything expensive such as grade separation and more dualling along the A5 is over the horizon.

Yes, network effects matter. Reassigned traffic, once you model a wide enough area, can often scupper the benefits you hoped for leading to a cycle of redesign or the bin.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 6 Sep 2024 ==

On Oswestry-Gobowen, personally I would love to see a network of surfaced fast inter-town bike routes, as both Flanders and Wallonie have. Rail conversions and new alignments alongside railways are ideal for easy gradients and avoiding giving way to side entrances every few yards which make a typical British track much slower and less comfortable than using the road.

We have a small number, Felinheli-Caernarfon-Bryncir for instance, but in Belgium, Germany, Denmark and others the networks are massive.

The places to start are sizeable towns and employment or leisure sites 3-5-10 miles apart, which this is not!

 

[John Luxton]

Any dualling of this route would attract traffic from the M6/M56 route between Birmingham and North Wales. So a dual carriageway here would of course help, but it would inevitably add huge pressure on to the DfT to dual the remaining section between Oswestry and the Shrewsbury by-pass (which is then dual carriageway until it reaches the M54 towards Birmingham).

Not only would there then be pressure to dual this additional section, there would then also be pressure to provide grade separation at all of the six roundabouts along the Shrewsbury by-pass, several of which already experience significant delays at peak times. I can't see the DfT wanting any of this, because the M6/M56 route carries a lot of latent demand for this whole A5/A483 corridor, with all manner of unwanted implications.

It already attracts traffic away from the M6. I have used A49/A5/A483 as a preferred method of travel to and from the West Country since I started to drive 42 years ago as it avoids Birmingham. Ony time I will use M6/5 to get to Avonmouth is if I am travelling very early in the morning. The odd thing is the lack of capacity on the A483/A5 between Ruabon and Oswestry must have been realised when the much more recently bult Nesscliff By Pass was completed as a dual carriageway as though the planning on Oswestry was seen to be flawed.

The A5 is a strategic route as it is and has been ever since Thomas Telford built it. Not everyone goes the long way round via Chester and the A55 yo get to Holyhead. Anyone with a bit of sense just looks at a map and realises cutting across towards Shrewsbury and across Wales is a much more direct route even if road speeds are lower.

From my observations the only problem roundabout on the Shrewsbury by pass seems to be "Dobbies Roundabout" never really had the problems as the others as I have at Oswestry so perhaps that is the only one that could do with grade separation.

 

[Shrop]

The A5 is a strategic route as it is and has been ever since Thomas Telford built it. Not everyone goes the long way round via Chester and the A55 yo get to Holyhead. Anyone with a bit of sense just looks at a map and realises cutting across towards Shrewsbury and across Wales is a much more direct route even if road speeds are lower.

Road speeds aren't just a bit lower on the A5 west of Ruabon, it's pretty tedious all the way from there to Bangor, with few overtaking opportunities, and plenty of lorries, caravans and agricultural traffic. And of course some 20mph stretches. Many drivers will just focus on whatever route provides the most motorways and dual carriageways, none of which existed in Thomas Telford's day.

From my observations the only problem roundabout on the Shrewsbury by pass seems to be "Dobbies Roundabout" never really had the problems as the others as I have at Oswestry so perhaps that is the only one that could do with grade separation.

Yes, the Dobbies roundabout is probably the worst, and yet it really doesn't need to be. The traffic signals there are appalling, often holding traffic at the signal before the exit from the island, in a manner which blocks the flow of the A5 traffic. Other towns have enforcement cameras for junction blocking, but for some reason they won't entertain this idea anywhere near Shrewsbury. The yellow boxes which used to protect junctions in and around the town centre have all disappeared too, so junction blocking is rife and drivers often just sit there holding up other traffic without a care in the world.

Even better might be to remove the signals at Dobbies island altogether, so that at least traffic within the junction can always exit without being held in manner that blocks it. But Preston and Emstrey islands often experience considerable delays too, and I don't think they were any worse before they were signalised. A major re-think would help, but I'd be pretty sure DfT thinking would be that if improvements were to be made in the Oswestry area, this would generate extra traffic in the Shrewsbury area, and they just don't want that.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 6 Sep 2024 ==

And with 4 or more 3 minute closures each hour, the total delay caused to road users (and the fuel wasted) would be far, far more than any time savings / carbon savings to ‘rail’ passengers.

Just picking up on this point, you seem concerned about wasted time and fuel by car drivers being delayed for a couple of minutes. Does this not apply to trains, for which modern thinking is all about making them stop a lot more frequently than they ever used to?

 

[zwk500]

Just picking up on this point, you seem concerned about wasted time and fuel by car drivers being delayed for a couple of minutes. Does this not apply to trains, for which modern thinking is all about making them stop a lot more frequently than they ever used to?

When trains stop at a station, it is both a disbenefit (to anybody not getting off) and a benefit (to passengers getting on and off who would not have been able to do so before). The balance of this is an important part of any revision to service stops, and some trains can be very sensitive to even 2 or 3 minutes, as the benefits or disbenefits multiply across each passenger. That is why trains heading to big cities or on longer-distance journeys tend to make fewer stops than those primarily between local towns.

When a car is held up at the level crossing, there is no benefit, only disbenefits. Similar problems occur with trains when they are held at junctions or in loops.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Road speeds aren't just a bit lower on the A5 west of Ruabon, it's pretty tedious all the way from there to Bangor, with few overtaking opportunities, and plenty of lorries, caravans and agricultural traffic. And of course some 20mph stretches. Many drivers will just focus on whatever route provides the most motorways and dual carriageways, none of which existed in Thomas Telford's day.

One of the most scenic stretches of road in the UK, though. And takes about the same amount of time as via the A55 if going to the West Midlands/South East from Snowdonia.

I personally love it - take it slow and enjoy the view and the fuel saving!

 

[Shrop]

When trains stop at a station, it is both a disbenefit (to anybody not getting off) and a benefit (to passengers getting on and off who would not have been able to do so before). The balance of this is an important part of any revision to service stops, and some trains can be very sensitive to even 2 or 3 minutes, as the benefits or disbenefits multiply across each passenger. That is why trains heading to big cities or on longer-distance journeys tend to make fewer stops than those primarily between local towns.

When a car is held up at the level crossing, there is no benefit, only disbenefits. Similar problems occur with trains when they are held at junctions or in loops.

Cars on short journeys may suffer some disbenefit, but on longer journeys (which are many since it's a trunk road), much less so, as they eventually catch up with the queue they have left. (How long this takes is debatable as upthread, but the net disbenefit really isn't that great, it's more of a perception issue).

One could also argue that stopping a car doesn't cost much fuel. In practice it does, but it isn't taken seriously by either drivers or Government, because tailgating is so commonplace, which causes huge amounts of additional braking and re-accelerating. (Of course the Police and Government say this practice is discouraged, but in practice you're far more likely to be prosecuted for doing a few mph over a speed limit, even though marginal speeding is arguably less dangerous than is tailgating). It wouldn't take many miles of this additional braking etc to match that incurred by stopping for a couple of minutes at a level crossing, especially if the traffic is already fairly slow moving. Meanwhile stopping and re-accelerating a few hundred tons of train from 100mph really does take quite a bit of fuel. Just saying!

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 6 Sep 2024 ==

One of the most scenic stretches of road in the UK, though. And takes about the same amount of time as via the A55 if going to the West Midlands/South East from Snowdonia.

I personally love it - take it slow and enjoy the view and the fuel saving!

We agree on something . I also enjoy the views and the fuel savings along this route, and climbing a mountain in Snowdonia en route to Anglesey can be a real treat!

 

[Meole]

Shrewsbury is busy building estates of housing next to the A5, sold as ideal for commute to Telford and Brum, congestion on the outdated by pass will only get worse at peak times, there is no realistic access to the alternative railway of course.

 

[Shrop]

Shrewsbury is busy building estates of housing next to the A5, sold as ideal for commute to Telford and Brum, congestion on the outdated by pass will only get worse at peak times, there is no realistic access to the alternative railway of course.

At risk of digressing from the Gobowen to Oswestry proposal, there was a proposal in the 1980s to provide better rail access around Shrewsbury. It involved building a Park and Rail station at Preston island, and building the retail park there instead of at Meole Brace, along with the football ground too. Meole Brace won the day, which led to the disastrous and wholly unnecessary signalisation of Meole island, at exactly the same time that the new A5 by-pass was opened, even though the new by-pass removed much of the traffic from Meole island so that it could have functioned perfectly as a roundabout.

This would have provided great access to the alternative retail park from all directions by both road and rail, and an excellent facility to park and take the train into the West Midlands, instead of having to go into the town centre, park by the old prison and walk 5 minutes to the station via the long and dingy bridge under the railway at the mercy of all of its associated pigeons and enclosed traffic fumes.