A new Ferryhill Station?

[DarloRich]

A new Ferryhill station has been mentioned by the local Tory MP at PMQ today. Is this a realistic possibility or is it yet more pie in the sky?

 

[geordieblue]

It's a reasonably large place, but there aren't really any local stoppers on that section of the ECML; it'd probably be served by TPE, who aren't going to stop many services there. Chester-le-Street gets roughly 1tp2h and I can't see Ferryhill getting more than that unless a new service is introduced, which requires more units and paths and therefore vastly increases the cost of the project.

 

[gordonthemoron]

howabout a shuttle service between Ferryhill and Middlesborough? It wouldn't hinder any current services on the ECML

 

[bluenoxid]

I understood that there was a desire to route a Newcastle-Teesside service via Durham because it was faster than the coastal route. I don’t know if it has gained much traction with the rail operators compared to a more frequent coastal service.

 

[30907]

I understood that there was a desire to route a Newcastle-Teesside service via Durham because it was faster than the coastal route. I don’t know if it has gained much traction with the rail operators compared to a more frequent coastal service.

Abandoned owing to lack of paths IIRC and diverted via the coast (there are 2tpd extra in the summer timetable)

 

[Darandio]

howabout a shuttle service between Ferryhill and Middlesborough? It wouldn't hinder any current services on the ECML

There is next to no demand for a service between these locations. I spent the first 25 years of my life in Ferryhill and the last 14 in Redcar, it would be pointless other than for me to visit my dad.

 

[DH1Commuter]

If Ferryill has a market (which I think it does, particularly as a railhead for Spennymoor, Sedgefield and the surrounding villages (some of them quite affluent)), then it is not so much for Teesside as for Durham and Newcastle northwards, and Darlington and York southwards; any Newcastle-Durham-Ferryhill-Stillington-Tees plan would be a bonus, not a rationale. If it did not hinder timings, then making it a TPE stop like Northallerton and Thirsk would seem the best option for a place of its size.

 

[dan4291]

Made me think of the Leamside line, as that comes out at Ferryhill. Been talk of reopening some or all of this line for years.

 

[themiller]

A local service through Ferryhill could make a useful extension to an electric service from North of Newcastle.

 

[gimmea50anyday]

Spennymoor? Affluent??? You seen the town centre lately?

on its arse, especially with the loss of black & decker, thorns etc, becoming a dormitory town now although the infrastructure cannot support the housing. Durham Gate, Whitworth and the current builds up Middlestone Moor will simply overwhelm the already oversubscribed schools, hence why my kids go to Browney and Durham Johnston and not to any of the spennymoor schools.

Anyway, off topic. Ferryhills potential as a rail head cannot go unnoticed, with its location at the junction with the stillington and leamside routes with the ECML and I do believe Tyne and Wear metro has considered running as far south as Ferryhill via leamside with stops including Washington, Fencehouses, Belmont (Durham P&R) with other stop locations potentially Bowburn/shincliffe and Sherburn. Heavy rail has also considered Ferryhill along with the leamside and stillington routes to provide a Tyne tees link avoiding Durham (Belmont instead) and the ECML. This seems to come up regularly every time some politician or other senior DCC bod wants to justify their job but it only seems to be talk and no action. ferryhil however requires the leamside to be reinstated to stand any chance of being built as there is no ECML capacity. No northern stopper operates that route and TPE hasn’t got time to stop at Ferryhill AND Chester Le Street ( an alternating pattern maybe?) without impacting XC or LNER services. The potential is certainly there as part of a much grander scheme and could provide a huge transportation boost to an area that hasn’t recovered from the industrial losses of the last 20 years (Spennymoor’s previously mentioned above along with NEECOL in ferryhill which is now a patch of wasteland adjacent to the ECML) Ferryhill once boasted an extensive junction station with 6 routes branching away, any station built today would be sited on the slows only but pretty much where the old platforms stood under the road bridge, and no doubt utilising the derelict land where NEECOL once stood for station facilities. Freight possibilities cannot be ignored either with the once rail served quarries at west cornforth coxhoe nearby, the Amazon warehouse and new industrial units being built at Bowburn,

 

[FQTV]

Spennymoor? Affluent??? You seen the town centre lately?

on its arse, especially with the loss of black & decker, thorns etc, becoming a dormitory town now although the infrastructure cannot support the housing. Durham Gate, Whitworth and the current builds up Middlestone Moor will simply overwhelm the already oversubscribed schools, hence why my kids go to Browney and Durham Johnston and not to any of the spennymoor schools.

Anyway, off topic. Ferryhills potential as a rail head cannot go unnoticed, with its location at the junction with the stillington and leamside routes with the ECML and I do believe Tyne and Wear metro has considered running as far south as Ferryhill via leamside with stops including Washington, Fencehouses, Belmont (Durham P&R) with other stop locations potentially Bowburn/shincliffe and Sherburn. Heavy rail has also considered Ferryhill along with the leamside and stillington routes to provide a Tyne tees link avoiding Durham (Belmont instead) and the ECML. This seems to come up regularly every time some politician or other senior DCC bod wants to justify their job but it only seems to be talk and no action. ferryhil however requires the leamside to be reinstated to stand any chance of being built as there is no ECML capacity. No northern stopper operates that route and TPE hasn’t got time to stop at Ferryhill AND Chester Le Street ( an alternating pattern maybe?) without impacting XC or LNER services. The potential is certainly there as part of a much grander scheme and could provide a huge transportation boost to an area that hasn’t recovered from the industrial losses of the last 20 years (Spennymoor’s previously mentioned above along with NEECOL in ferryhill which is now a patch of wasteland adjacent to the ECML) Ferryhill once boasted an extensive junction station with 6 routes branching away, any station built today would be sited on the slows only but pretty much where the old platforms stood under the road bridge, and no doubt utilising the derelict land where NEECOL once stood for station facilities. Freight possibilities cannot be ignored either with the once rail served quarries at west cornforth coxhoe nearby, the Amazon warehouse and new industrial units being built at Bowburn,

You’re absolutely right that Ferryhill’s got potential as part of a grander scheme, and I think that there are a lot of potential components of such a scheme, as I mentioned a while ago on another thread:

This sums up pretty accurately 'the trouble with the Leamside', I think.

An overall lack of vision in terms of transport strategy keeps Leamside bubbling away as an 'aspiration', but no-one's quite sure what for. I am reasonably convinced that that's because a lot of folks can't get their heads beyond simple linear routes.

The key to Leamside is reopening Sunderland to Durham, not just the two miles from South Hylton (Metro) to its junction with the Leamside, with an additional East to North chord onto the viaduct.

You could then unlock the benefits of linking Sunderland (pop 277,000) with Washington (pop 67,000) and Durham (pop 52,200) for local flows, as well as providing a much quicker route than the Durham Coast for longer distance trains to and from Sunderland.

Whether longer distance services route via Durham, or Durham 'Parkway' for which passive provision exists at J62 on the A1(M), would obviously be something to model based on how many existing ECML services (freight, ECS, light loco, non-stoppers before you even think about re-routes) through the Durham Viaduct bottleneck you could get on to the Leamside.

If you can then effectively extend the Leamside South from its junction with the ECML at Tursdale, to run parallel through the Mainsforth Cut, Ferryhill Station (pop 10,000) could reopen as a local lines only facility, with the parallel lines avoiding conflicts for Northern Connect services coming up from Middlesbrough (pop 138,400 to 376,000 if Teesside taken into account) via Stillington.

In a £500bn (ie not million) fantasy world, a grade separated junction from the Leamside/Mainsforth/Ferryhill link could then swing West to reconnect Spennymoor (pop 20,000, which I think was 14th in the list of unserved towns in the ATOC Connecting Communities Report) and then to Bishop Auckland (pop 25,000), meaning that the latter is no longer only served from the South. When it gets to £1000bn, a short extension West of Bishop along what's currently the first yards of the Weardale Railway, before diverging North over a new Wear crossing upstream of the Newton Cap viaduct and then re-linking Willington (pop 9,000), Brandon, Meadowfield (pop 10,000) and then back to Durham on the ECML would complete a linked network.

Depending on how much existing traffic had come off the mainline, completion of the loop could be difficult in pathing terms, but for local services, new platforms to the North of Durham Station, where the current lower level car park* and engineering siding is, would at least mean that stoppers were clear of the mainline platforms when calling.

My feeling is, though, that until at least the first few of these other projects are included in a Leamside plan, the effects of just reopening Tursdale to Wardley are indeed difficult to pin-down at a level where the investment will show anything like the benefits that the costs would require.

*Acknowledging that the lower level is currently being double-decked.

Edited to add population figures.

You’re also quite right that the chances of a DCC (Durham County Council) councillor or officer, or Paul Howell MP grasping that level of complexity are vanishingly low. Even if they did, the structure of the industry and the reach of the local government collaborations really don’t provide much support for that kind of developmental approach.

So, we’re probably just left with a soundbite in Westminster to get The Northern Echo in a froth for a couple of days, and to keep the local blue tide social media warriors hailing what great achievements their new MP has made....

 

[gimmea50anyday]

The constant arguments over the Durham gate development, the lack of progress in spennymoor, Bishop Auckland, Stanley, and other town centres, the almost abandonment of rural bus networks, arguements over school capacity (Durham Free School and Roberta BW’s Durham academies plan of which only Johnston was done) says it all really, and yet the money being spent building a new county hall on a flood plain taking up valuable car parking space.....

I’m not holding my breath.....

It’s a real shame as there’s massive county wide benefit, and with Consett looking to revive its rail connection there could be a transport renaissance that would have a wide employment and social impact across the north east that still blames the last Tory administration for destroying the vast industry that employed whole towns. perhaps covid-19 will make us realise we as a globe are far too reliant on the global economy so recently devastated by the lockdown and start promoting in-house productions and services. It’s transport links like this we need in this country, HS2 may well tap in to this by improving ECML capacity that could then provide paths to serve a ferryhill station. Without joined up thinking, who knows...

 

[markindurham]

I've discussed the Leamside elsewhere on here, and Ferryhill was mentioned. I would point out that Ferryhill is definitely regarded as somewhere that is 'on the up', and the plans to include decent transport links are one of the reasons why this is so. Far from being 'pie in the sky', it's already being seriously looked at; unfortunately the present issue with COVID-19 means that delays will almost certainly happen.