Do branch lines contribute much financially to the greater network?

[A0]

The difference between the train and cars is that trains (and buses) should run anyway to provide transport to non drivers. If the train is running anyway, your emissions are effectively zero if you choose to ride it.
I have personally used the Far North and Kyle lines to travel to places unreachable by bus.

Sorry - that's a ridiculous argument.

Running a DMU has a fixed level of emissions as does running a family car - the emissions are then allocated to the number of people in the vehicle. So if the DMU has 10 people on board the emissions per passenger mile travelled are likely to be much higher than a newish Ford Focus with one person in it.

If you want zero emission travel then the only option is to walk or cycle.

Running half empty DMUs or diesel buses is far more environmentally damaging than most modern family cars are. Whilst there is a valid point about making social provision for non-drivers that doesn't mean that every non-driver should have access to transport to wherever they want to go - that's not how it works. If you're a non-driver, you have to accept there will inevitably be some limitations to where and when you can travel - you can either stamp your foot and say "it's not fair" or you can do as a good friend of mine (who cannot drive due to epilepsy) does and just shrug your shoulders and get on with it - and it's not particularly limited him in terms of what he's done with his life.

 

[Starmill]

Rail, does not have this problem as it is often faster

I think that you'll find that it most certainly does. It's just that perhaps it's slightly less problematic for development of the market if your output is quality.

Loads of local rail services are utterly crummy. Loads of local bus services are actually quite good. The other way around is more common but people aren't daft and people aren't enthusiasts for railways. If there's a quality bus service and a mediocre train service they'll use the bus.

If this weren't true the X43 between Burnley and Manchester would have shut down years ago when direct trains commenced. It did not. The bus is slightly quicker off peak, three times more frequent and of significantly higher quality onboard.

 

[quantinghome]

Sorry - that's a ridiculous argument.

Running a DMU has a fixed level of emissions as does running a family car - the emissions are then allocated to the number of people in the vehicle. So if the DMU has 10 people on board the emissions per passenger mile travelled are likely to be much higher than a newish Ford Focus with one person in it.

If you want zero emission travel then the only option is to walk or cycle.

Running half empty DMUs or diesel buses is far more environmentally damaging than most modern family cars are. Whilst there is a valid point about making social provision for non-drivers that doesn't mean that every non-driver should have access to transport to wherever they want to go - that's not how it works. If you're a non-driver, you have to accept there will inevitably be some limitations to where and when you can travel - you can either stamp your foot and say "it's not fair" or you can do as a good friend of mine (who cannot drive due to epilepsy) does and just shrug your shoulders and get on with it - and it's not particularly limited him in terms of what he's done with his life.

This thread suggests a DMU does at least 3 mpg: DMU Fuel Economy - Sense Check | RailUK Forums (railforums.co.uk)

Therefore you'd only need about 15 passengers to get equivalent emissions for a newish car carrying one person (assuming 45 mpg for the car). The average occupancy for car journeys is about 1.5 people, so a DMU carrying more than 25 people would beat a typical car journey for fuel efficiency.

 

[XAM2175]

At the other end of the scale would be TOC employed staff driving buses and able to issue rail tickets onboard, with liveried vehicles and full bus stops with signs in the style of railway stations with ticket machines and so on. The buses could be leased or owned outright.

This was the style of things done in New South Wales in the '80s and '90s as the hideously-expensive rural network was pruned, and they've maintained it since then. The coaches are operated by private companies under contract from the railway, but they're in matching livery, timed to connect with trains (and will wait a reasonable amount of time for lateness), available on through tickets, and shown on the route maps. The network has even been expanded over time to include places that never had railways.



And the route map: https://transportnsw.info/document/1447/regional-trains-coaches-network-map.pdf

The railway enthusiast part of me will of course always favour the actual railway, but as a public transport advocate I cannot overlook the ability of a properly-integrated regional coach network to offer similar connectivity at significantly lower overall cost.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Exactly my point, as I often say you could probably seriously overhaul and fully integrate the Snowdon Sherpa operation for a fraction of the cost of the Conwy Valley's periodic rebuild.

 

[A0]

This thread suggests a DMU does at least 3 mpg: DMU Fuel Economy - Sense Check | RailUK Forums (railforums.co.uk)

Therefore you'd only need about 15 passengers to get equivalent emissions for a newish car carrying one person (assuming 45 mpg for the car). The average occupancy for car journeys is about 1.5 people, so a DMU carrying more than 25 people would beat a typical car journey for fuel efficiency.

I think you need to look at Bald Rick's post # 290 upthread which suggests the DMU needs to be rather more full than that - and I suspect he may have seen some figures which substantiate his claim.

 

[MattRat]

Without wishing to usurp Bald Rick, I think the point he was making is *building* a railway is far from carbon-neutral and is probably higher than building a road.

For example 1 tonne of steel production produces about 1.85 tonnes of CO2 emissions (source: Carbonclean)

Whereas 1 tonne of concrete produces about 622kg of CO2 emissions (source: Imperial College London)

I couldn't find figures for asphalt - but it would suggest that building a mile of railway line (and maintaining it) is probably more CO2 hungry than building and maintaining a mile of road - that's before you start running vehicles on it.

Meanwhile, the USA road network is falling apart because of how intensive it is to maintain....

This thread suggests a DMU does at least 3 mpg: DMU Fuel Economy - Sense Check | RailUK Forums (railforums.co.uk)

Therefore you'd only need about 15 passengers to get equivalent emissions for a newish car carrying one person (assuming 45 mpg for the car). The average occupancy for car journeys is about 1.5 people, so a DMU carrying more than 25 people would beat a typical car journey for fuel efficiency.

Now the real 'fun' begins. Could you perhaps do the maths to back up my above point?

 

[Bletchleyite]

Meanwhile, the USA road network is falling apart because of how intensive it is to maintain....

That's moot. The choice is between a road and a railway, or just a road. We are not going to be removing major roads.

 

[Starmill]

We are not going to be removing major roads.

Although arguably removing major roads which are in urban or dense suburban spaces is exactly what should be on the table for public health and land use policy (e.g. housing) reasons as much as for transport reasons. But this is a very conspicuously absent from British policy. Yes, I'm looking at you M8 in central Glasgow.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Although arguably removing major roads which are in urban or dense suburban spaces is exactly what should be on the table for public health and land use policy (e.g. housing) reasons as much as for transport reasons. But this is a very conspicuously absent from British policy. Yes, I'm looking at you M8 in central Glasgow.

For a totally different reason, though (Huntingdon is an example of where an urban major road has been replaced by a bypass, so it does happen, and a flyover was removed in Liverpool too). You might close the railway to Kyle, but you'd not dig up the A87.

 

[Wynd]

Although arguably removing major roads which are in urban or dense suburban spaces is exactly what should be on the table for public health and land use policy (e.g. housing) reasons as much as for transport reasons. But this is a very conspicuously absent from British policy. Yes, I'm looking at you M8 in central Glasgow.

Another excellent point.

 

[Bald Rick]

This thread suggests a DMU does at least 3 mpg: DMU Fuel Economy - Sense Check | RailUK Forums (railforums.co.uk)

It depends very much on the duty cycle, (stopping patterns, linespeed profile, gradient profiles) amount of idling whilst stationary (including between duties), air con, etc etc. And of course type of DMU and number of vehicles in the formation. I’m aware of some DMU cycles that are under 1mpg for a 3 car.

 

[quantinghome]

Without wishing to usurp Bald Rick, I think the point he was making is *building* a railway is far from carbon-neutral and is probably higher than building a road.

For example 1 tonne of steel production produces about 1.85 tonnes of CO2 emissions (source: Carbonclean)

Whereas 1 tonne of concrete produces about 622kg of CO2 emissions (source: Imperial College London)

I couldn't find figures for asphalt - but it would suggest that building a mile of railway line (and maintaining it) is probably more CO2 hungry than building and maintaining a mile of road - that's before you start running vehicles on it.

Any like for like comparison will get very complicated very quickly.


Railways are formed from a relatively small quantity of high-embodied carbon materials (steel and concrete) plus a large amount of low-carbon material (ballast).

UIC60 rail, as the name suggests, is 60 kg/m, so 240kg/m of steel for a twin-track railway, plus the sleepers.

Meanwhile roads require a large quantity of lower carbon material. Asphalt is 65-85 kg CO2e depending on the binder content: Embodied Carbon - The Inventory of Carbon and Energy (ICE) (greenbuildingencyclopaedia.uk)

A two-lane road is 9m wide, about 300mm asphalt thickness, density 2240kg/m3, which gives you about 6000 kg/m length.

Then for both there's the formation, bulk earthworks etc.

You'd then need to consider the carbon emissions for material transportation, which would be worse for the road material given the greater weight involved.


But then what are we actually comparing? An intensively-used twin-track railway can carry 24,000 passengers per hour, equivalent to 9 lanes of traffic with the average no. of 1.5 occupants per vehicle.

Not every railway is Thameslink so we should probably take a more typical twin-track railway to be equivalent to a 2-lane dual carriageway - much wider than a two-track railway so much more excavation, embankment material, road surfacing etc. The structures will be that much bigger as well, and they are a major contributor to carbon emissions.

But then roads can manage steeper gradients and tighter curves so in some situations they can avoid expensive earthworks where a railways may be constrained to run in tunnel.


All in all, a like for like comparison would be quite an involved assessment. Certainly well outside the remit of a forum post. One of more of the UK engineering consultants will have written a report on it, hopefully with some real projects to benchmark against.

 

[lachlan]

Sorry - that's a ridiculous argument.

Running a DMU has a fixed level of emissions as does running a family car - the emissions are then allocated to the number of people in the vehicle. So if the DMU has 10 people on board the emissions per passenger mile travelled are likely to be much higher than a newish Ford Focus with one person in it.

If you want zero emission travel then the only option is to walk or cycle.

Running half empty DMUs or diesel buses is far more environmentally damaging than most modern family cars are. Whilst there is a valid point about making social provision for non-drivers that doesn't mean that every non-driver should have access to transport to wherever they want to go - that's not how it works. If you're a non-driver, you have to accept there will inevitably be some limitations to where and when you can travel - you can either stamp your foot and say "it's not fair" or you can do as a good friend of mine (who cannot drive due to epilepsy) does and just shrug your shoulders and get on with it - and it's not particularly limited him in terms of what he's done with his life.

It's not a ridiculous argument if you care about the mobility of non-drivers, many of whom are disabled. We are talking about lines and buses operating today. Closing lines would limit the mobility of non drivers for minimal environmental impact. If you're concerned about transport emissions, ditch the car and use the existing public transport.

 

[yorksrob]

It's just that your mentality is it must be preserved *at any cost* - which is a massive subsidy to a very small number of people, paid for by others and there is a reasonable question what the alternatives are.

Well, £16.9 billion is a large subsidy in unusual times. But no matter to the Aowen's of this world that the vast majority of this is currently holding up the entire network, including the most intensively used routes in the country. To you it's just an opportunity to peddle the same old tired Aowen ideology of cutting the network, whatever the consequences. ow much of that subsidy do you think is actually spent on a line like Stranrear, for example ?

Well, to you it seems. You always seem to manage to travel on the busiest trains on the obscure routes. The published figures (which are published by the rail industry) tend not to support your claims.

Well, I like to get out and about and actually see for myself the sorts of numbers are travelling on the routes, particularly here in the North of England.

I'm sure if all of the armchair warriors spouting their re-heated 60's era transport philosophy actually travelled on some of these routes that they feel qualified to pontificate on, it would slash the railway subsidy by half !

The thing is the *majority* of journeys are short by nature - which is why a bus is more suitable on many occasions. Many of the rural lines you espouse have stations which are some distance from the village they purport to serve and the railway doesn't necessarily go to the places locals might actually want or need to go to. If you look at somewhere like Kirkby Stephen - the station is a mile outside the village and will take you to Settle or Appleby and Carlisle - but where are the facilities people might want ? A supermarket for example - you're looking at Kendal or Penrith, a hospital again Kendal or Penrith. You can offer them an hourly train, but it wouldn't go where people want or need to go. And then they've got to lug their shopping home, where the bus drops them yards from their door.

The majority of journeys are indeed short journeys, which is why the bus is suited to them. However, to take your example of the Settle and Carlisle line, how many of its passengers do you imagine are doing short hops ? The majority are doing long distance journeys between the countryside and urban areas, and even urban to urban trips. The route doesn't need to service suburban trips around Kirkby Stephen, that's not its role.

The point being made - which again, you chose to ignore, was that if the cost of providing the train is £ 1m a year (for example) but the "benefit" of the tourist revenue in terms of spending at local services and attractions is £ 100k then actually it's still a massive cost to provide that service and the benefits aren't off-setting that.

The number of places where tourists turn up "en masse" by train is not that significant - and it tends not to be the little rural lines you keep espousing. Some of the seaside resorts, yep - Blackpool no doubt, Scarborough, definitely but Stranraer ? Morecambe ? Workington ? Whitehaven ? I very much doubt it.

And the BIB point you were the one who'd called out the spending in local community and when that was questioned then peddled the suggestion about how tourism was also people who didn't spend in the area, rather undermining the point which had been made ? So you need to make your mind up.

Anybody who thinks that every stretch of railway can be strictly allocated to one activity clearly doesn't understand the passenger railway or what its for. Even St Ives and Blackpool will cater for the transport needs of local residents to an extent, even taking into account the tourism raison d'etre of those routes.

Anyone who uses the Cumbrian Coast line will already know that Workington and Whitehaven are primarily used by local people, so it seems strange for you to single those two out in a discussion about tourism.

And yes, I did mention that many people spend their money in tourist destinations, just as many people choose the train to visit the countryside and not spend their money somewhere. I know it doesn't fit into the narrow Aowen view of the world, where everyone who owns a car will use it for every journey, but the two types of leisure aren't mutually exclusive. What's more both use the train ! The fact that you're asking me to "make my mind up" between two types of passenger journey that both clearly exist, suggests that you don't really understand leisure and tourism all that much either.

Any form of support or subsidy should look for the most cost-effective way to provide the service. You can't expect others to fund your wishes and whims. If you want the taxpayer to fund a service, then the taxpayer has a right to expect some value - and if running a coach costs 1/3rd that of a train and addresses 90% of the journey needs then it's quite reasonable that is the direction. And the 10% who *want* a train because *they don't like coaches* can, frankly, go whistle.

On the contrary, the taxpayer is also the rail user. They vote with their feet and whilst coach definitely has its market that it does very well, it is not the answer for the majority of longer distance public transport, otherwise the majority of passengers will already have chosed it, however much you might view it through your half-baked austerity tinged philosophy.

 

[tbtc]

I also suggested Berney Arms but it was pointed out that even if you close the station (which given the near zero maintenance it requires might actually be profitable from enthusiasts going there** if the trains are running anyway)

** I don't know what it's like now, but when you consider that the one-a-week Saturday Stockport-Stalybridge was just stops in an ECS that ran anyway, I would not be entirely surprised if in the days of enthusiasts and drinkers making it quite busy the only marginal cost of running it - the guard and a bit of extra brake wear and diesel for the stops - might actually have been covered by the fares.

That's a fairly restrictive way of evaluating the benefits of tourism. Buy that argument, it would be worth running a luxury tourist service to a casino hub as those tourists spend a lot of money, whereas we should cut a link from an inner-city area to the local beauty spot as the tourists walk up a hill and bring their own sandwiches.

In reality, the gambling hub serves people who are largely already healthy and brings with it various social ills, whereas the local beauty spot provides healthy outdoor recreation to lower income city dwellers, so ought to be prioritised for transport.

So we've gone from...

"these lightly used routes are economically vital for local people to access jobs/services (and, even though public transport is an economic lifeline, the locals are too sniffy to use buses or coaches)...

...to "these lightly used routes are economically vital because tourists bring in huge sums of money"...

...to "these lightly used routes are vital because someone bringing their own sandwiches and walking up a hill is getting more fresh air than they'd get in a den of vice like a casino, and anyway we should keep running these lightly used services because enthusiasts like them"

Essentially you two will come up with any old argument to try to justify lightly used routes, it's some double act you two have!

Tourists are important

But, if your argument is about how important they are to the local economy then the subsidy per passenger needs to be seen in the context of how much they spend

For example, there's a difference between subsidising people to go somewhere that they might be spending a lot of money and subsidising people to climb a hill/ sit on a beach (which is a lovely day out, sure, but not going to contribute a great deal to the local economy)

So if we are talking about coastal Scottish resources, a train to somewhere like St Andrews may bring in a lot of money from the kind of high spending tourists and the large sums that come with the hotels/ golf - whereas there's not a great deal of money to spent at Kyle of Lochalsh, it's a nice day trip from Inverness but how much money do most tourists spend there? There's a Co-op but you'd have to spend a lot there for the supermarket profits to be equivalent to the subsidy (e.g. you might have to spend hundreds of pounds in the Co-op to generate the same profit for them as £20 worth of subsidy costs the taxpayer - I know the sandwiches are expensive, but even still...)

If we are just spending that twenty quid to subsidise a journey so that someone can climb a hill then there's to much in the way of economic benefit

Tourism is an important industry, and good public transport can help it. Unless of course you want everyone to hire a car like in the USA.....

Of course tourism is an important industry to the UK, but the economic benefits of train passengers really varies between places

I've quoted my previous answer to the same point above - some tourist flows will bring in large amounts of revenue to a local area, some really won't.

For example, you can argue that, if the Newquay branch needs subsidising by £10/passenger then you can argue that it's well worth paying because a direct railway to Newquay may be the difference between someone staying for a week and spending hundreds of pounds on accommodation/ meals/ drinks/ surfing etc or staying at home (or having a holiday abroad) - you can sped a lot of money in Newquay

However, if the Kyle branch needs subsidising by £10/passenger (and it sounds like it requires a lot more subsidy than that...) then how much does the average tourist spend in Kyle of Lochalsh? There's not a lot of hotel rooms, there's not even a casino for @yorksrob to stand outside warning people of the "social ills" that lurk inside!

People walking up a hill is tourism and can be good for the well-being of the individual, as I suspect you well know

How quickly you go from "The tourists could be an important part of the local economy" (your words) to "tourists not spending any money is good, actually" -

But the current crisis is the best hope the closure enthusiasts have had in decades

Oh the mental contortions that the pro-closure people put themselves through !

the Beeching brigade

I guess you need to come up with some "bogeyman" to try to rail against, in the way that Covid threads see people talk about "lockdown enthusiasts" (rather than, say, just people who are somewhere slightly different on the "public health" versus "personal freedom" spectrum) - the idea of some sinister conspiracy seems to appeal to you... you struggle to accept that some people can be pro-rail without blindly signing up to defending every basket case line

Actually, I think you'll find that my position throughout this forum has been solidly consistent

Yes, I agree - your position of "we must retain every inch of railway as well as re-opening lots of other lines" is solidly consistent - all that changes is the myriad of excuses you'll come up with to try to back it (e.g. the way that tourists are economically necessary but the fact that they don't spend any money is quickly turned into a positive!)

Your solutions are very consistent - the issue is that, if the tool isn't suitable for one particular problem then you just try to find a different "problem" for it to solve instead (whereas I'd rather we focussed on how to solve a problem rather than trying desperately to find some excuse to use your particular "solution")

the regional railway is important to passengers and local communities and should at least be retained

"Important" is a bit like "useful" - it's a nebulous term that can make things sound a lot more important than they are, but it can't be quantified

Whereas things like "actual passenger numbers" or "actual revenue" or "actual subsidy per passenger miles" or "actual economic benefits" can be quantified, which makes them a bit awkward

 

[MattRat]

I guess you need to come up with some "bogeyman" to try to rail against, in the way that Covid threads see people talk about "lockdown enthusiasts" (rather than, say, just people who are somewhere slightly different on the "public health" versus "personal freedom" spectrum) - the idea of some sinister conspiracy seems to appeal to you... you struggle to accept that some people can be pro-rail without blindly signing up to defending every basket case line

And sometimes those people actually exist, and you need to defend yourself against them. Also, this is the RAIL forum, so you'd expect people to be generally pro rail, with maybe 1 or 2 outsiders as with every forum. The fact it seems to be a large group of people on the side of, shall we say, not-rail, is quite depressing, and is it any wonder when I come to a place expecting it to be what it says on the tin, and it isn't, that I get a little peeved off.

 

[A0]

And sometimes those people actually exist, and you need to defend yourself against them. Also, this is the RAIL forum, so you'd expect people to be generally pro rail, with maybe 1 or 2 outsiders as with every forum. The fact it seems to be a large group of people on the side of, shall we say, not-rail, is quite depressing, and is it any wonder when I come to a place expecting it to be what it says on the tin, and it isn't, that I get a little peeved off.

Ah, the good old stereotype - this is a "rail forum" so everyone should be slavishly, blindly pro rail at any cost.

There are a good number of us who look at these things through a prism of reality and whilst have an interest in rail don't believe it's the solution to every problem. Some posters have actually "put their money where their mouth is" and work in the rail industry e.g. Bald Rick - yet he continually offers explanations which are then decried and derided by armchair "experts".

Rail enthusiasm does seem to attract a body of obsessives who's ability to be realistic is lacking - as can be seen by the myriad of "campaign" groups backing various reopenings which vary between the slightly odd and barking at the moon insanity.

 

[Meerkat]

And sometimes those people actually exist, and you need to defend yourself against them. Also, this is the RAIL forum, so you'd expect people to be generally pro rail, with maybe 1 or 2 outsiders as with every forum. The fact it seems to be a large group of people on the side of, shall we say, not-rail, is quite depressing, and is it any wonder when I come to a place expecting it to be what it says on the tin, and it isn't, that I get a little peeved off.

You realise you can be pro-rail and anti the wasting of taxpayers money on things rail isnt very good at?

 

[MattRat]

You realise you can be pro-rail and anti the wasting of taxpayers money on things rail isnt very good at?

But rail generally is good or can be good at long distance?

 

[Bald Rick]

But rail generally is good or can be good at long distance?

it can, where there is a decent volume of traffic. But there’s not many long distance branch lines that have that. Arguably none.

 

[Bletchleyite]

So we've gone from...

"these lightly used routes are economically vital for local people to access jobs/services (and, even though public transport is an economic lifeline, the locals are too sniffy to use buses or coaches)...

...to "these lightly used routes are economically vital because tourists bring in huge sums of money"...

...to "these lightly used routes are vital because someone bringing their own sandwiches and walking up a hill is getting more fresh air than they'd get in a den of vice like a casino, and anyway we should keep running these lightly used services because enthusiasts like them"

Essentially you two will come up with any old argument to try to justify lightly used routes, it's some double act you two have!

Obviously there are lots of reasons to have a railway. The Stockport-Stalybridge example was because sometimes the marginal cost of operating the service might actually be mostly covered by the fares income if you need other things for other reasons. For instance, the Morecambe/Heysham branch cannot close until the power station has both closed and been fully decommissioned. So if you withdraw the passenger service, you still have to maintain the line. This being the case, the marginal cost of the passenger operation is going to be very low - not as low as a bus, granted, but because the infrastructure has to exist, the saving from withdrawing the passenger service does not include any component of the infrastructure other than station lighting and maintenance (and a pointless booking office at Morecambe, which could be replaced by paying on board).

The Stockport-Stalybridge Saturday lunchtime-ish service (when it ran then) only cost a guard plus a small amount of extra diesel and brake linings to operate over just operating the ECS over the same route as operated every other day of the week. As such, it is very likely that providing that service was profitable, as it tended to draw quite high loadings because of its quirkiness. That was also my point about Berney Arms - if the line is required for capacity anyway (as others have said it is), then it could well be that the stops there either don't happen (if not requested), or are profitable (if requested). The station doesn't get any maintenance per-se and is not lit, so there is no other cost than brake linings and diesel to accelerate back to linespeed - likely only a couple of quid per stop if that, and zero if no stop is requested.

This of course is an extreme one - but my point is that if you can't get rid of the infrastructure, the cost is very low. If you could lift the line and remove the stations (as you could on the Kyle Line, perhaps, or the Conwy Valley, which likely only survived 1980s BR because it was needed for nuclear traffic from Trawsfynydd), the saving is higher.

 

[MattRat]

it can, where there is a decent volume of traffic. But there’s not many long distance branch lines that have that. Arguably none.

But with say, most far north Scottish lines, I wouldn't say they are a problem becuase of them being a long distance branch line, but more with their design, by which I mean, look at how the roads connect the areas, and look at how the railways do it. If the rails mirrored the roads, there'd be a lot more passengers on the lines. Perfect example is the roads connecting Kyle, Fort William, and Inverness together, and them comparing how rail connects them (or pretty much doesn't).

 

[tbtc]

And sometimes those people actually exist, and you need to defend yourself against them. Also, this is the RAIL forum, so you'd expect people to be generally pro rail, with maybe 1 or 2 outsiders as with every forum. The fact it seems to be a large group of people on the side of, shall we say, not-rail, is quite depressing, and is it any wonder when I come to a place expecting it to be what it says on the tin, and it isn't, that I get a little peeved off.

I'm pro rail

That doesn't mean I have to be pro every single existing railway and automatically back any re-opening that gets suggested - it's perfectly possible to want to increase railway's share of traffic whilst also trimming back some of the more wasteful lines

However the mentality of some people on here seems to be that a station with a couple of passengers a day is a vitally important public service but at the same time a new station like White Rose Centre is pointless because the hundred thousand passengers per year expected to use it won't take every single car of the road

But if you dare to question some of the wasteful use of resources (e.g. a DMU doing a couple of miles to the gallon, so lightly loaded that it'd be better for the environment and cheaper for the taxpayer if everyone was in a separate taxi) and you get a peevish reaction along the lines of "why don't you join Car Forums instead" because some people are so insulated to rail enthusiasm that they can't accept that there's an opportunity cost to every pound spent on the railway (e.g. a million pounds a year in subsidising a quiet line could be a million pounds a year spent on new infrastructure/carriages) or could be spent on transport more flexible at targeting some niche markets (buses, light rail)

If that makes me "non-rail" in the eye of some people then fair enough, I'm just just trying to be realistic and see rail in the context of other public spending (e.g. people who want a billion pounds on this re-opening and several hundred million on another re-opening, with no concept of the austerity that's slashed other public spending budgets)

 

[Greybeard33]

Obviously there are lots of reasons to have a railway. The Stockport-Stalybridge example was because sometimes the marginal cost of operating the service might actually be mostly covered by the fares income if you need other things for other reasons. For instance, the Morecambe/Heysham branch cannot close until the power station has both closed and been fully decommissioned. So if you withdraw the passenger service, you still have to maintain the line. This being the case, the marginal cost of the passenger operation is going to be very low - not as low as a bus, granted, but because the infrastructure has to exist, the saving from withdrawing the passenger service does not include any component of the infrastructure other than station lighting and maintenance (and a pointless booking office at Morecambe, which could be replaced by paying on board).

The Stockport-Stalybridge Saturday lunchtime-ish service (when it ran then) only cost a guard plus a small amount of extra diesel and brake linings to operate over just operating the ECS over the same route as operated every other day of the week. As such, it is very likely that providing that service was profitable, as it tended to draw quite high loadings because of its quirkiness. That was also my point about Berney Arms - if the line is required for capacity anyway (as others have said it is), then it could well be that the stops there either don't happen (if not requested), or are profitable (if requested). The station doesn't get any maintenance per-se and is not lit, so there is no other cost than brake linings and diesel to accelerate back to linespeed - likely only a couple of quid per stop if that, and zero if no stop is requested.

This of course is an extreme one - but my point is that if you can't get rid of the infrastructure, the cost is very low. If you could lift the line and remove the stations (as you could on the Kyle Line, perhaps, or the Conwy Valley, which likely only survived 1980s BR because it was needed for nuclear traffic from Trawsfynydd), the saving is higher.

That may be valid for the particular examples you quote, but I think in general there are substantial potential savings in infrastructure costs when scheduled passenger services are withdrawn from a line, but it is kept open just for an occasional freight train. Freight-only lines generally have simpler signalling, with fewer signallers working less hours, and have lower linespeeds and lower track quality standards, resulting in less expenditure on routine maintenance and renewals.

For example, look at the amount of infrastructure work that was needed to bring the Okehampton branch back up to an acceptable standard to introduce a 1tp2h passenger service.

 

[A0]

The Stockport-Stalybridge Saturday lunchtime-ish service (when it ran then) only cost a guard plus a small amount of extra diesel and brake linings to operate over just operating the ECS over the same route as operated every other day of the week. As such, it is very likely that providing that service was profitable, as it tended to draw quite high loadings because of its quirkiness. That was also my point about Berney Arms - if the line is required for capacity anyway (as others have said it is), then it could well be that the stops there either don't happen (if not requested), or are profitable (if requested). The station doesn't get any maintenance per-se and is not lit, so there is no other cost than brake linings and diesel to accelerate back to linespeed - likely only a couple of quid per stop if that, and zero if no stop is requested.

.

The BIB demonstrates *why* citing its current passenger numbers perhaps isn't sensible for a full reopening.

The "parly" services attract the wonks who want to cover off such obscure services. Change than line so it becomes an hourly 7 day a week service and you lose that "quirkiness" and it just becomes a bog standard suburban line in South Manchester. In some ways you can draw parallels with another of your pets - the Marston Vale - most of the time it carts fresh air about (despite having an roughly hourly service) - there was an uptake when the geriatric 1st gen DMUs were subbed with Class 31s and Mk2s which died off when the Sprinters arrived. There was a brief uptake when the 230s arrived (novelty value again) which had dropped off pre Covid. Both of those uptakes were the enthusiast community who travelled once then disappeared.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 15 Jan 2022 ==

You realise you can be pro-rail and anti the wasting of taxpayers money on things rail isnt very good at?

Tsk, tsk - didn't you know where rail is concerned it isn't *waste* it's *investment* - except the bit which ends up as profit with the private TOCs and ROSCOs......

And how do you expect the hamlet of Muddy in the Hole (popn 35 and two cats) to wean its way off car dependency if you don't reopen its local station some 4 miles away and give it an hourly service despite the fact the line closed in 1935 and went North - South where the main towns are all East / West of Muddy?

 

[RT4038]

The "parly" services attract the wonks who want to cover off such obscure services. Change than line so it becomes an hourly 7 day a week service and you lose that "quirkiness" and it just becomes a bog standard suburban line in South Manchester.

Looking good on the enthusiast's railway map, but a financial white elephant like Leamington-Coventry-Nuneaton or Motherwell-Coatbridge-Cumbernauld because they little contribute to transport to the big city and are not long enough to compete with local buses.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 15 Jan 2022 ==

And how do you expect the hamlet of Muddy in the Hole (popn 35 and two cats) to wean its way off car dependency if you don't reopen its local station some 4 miles away and give it an hourly service despite the fact the line closed in 1935 and went North - South where the main towns are all East / West of Muddy?

Not forgetting that the station which you are travelling to is also a good 20min walk from the centre of town!

 

[MattRat]

Tsk, tsk - didn't you know where rail is concerned it isn't *waste* it's *investment* - except the bit which ends up as profit with the private TOCs and ROSCOs......

And how do you expect the hamlet of Muddy in the Hole (popn 35 and two cats) to wean its way off car dependency if you don't reopen its local station some 4 miles away and give it an hourly service despite the fact the line closed in 1935 and went North - South where the main towns are all East / West of Muddy?

Did I say I like TOCs? No, I think a railway run by some form of government is better for a railway. With limited space, it's not a competitive environment, so would be better run as a public service, like the NHS (not as poorly, however).

As for your example, if you need to build new rail, surely it should go where it's needed, and at the very least have a connecting bus to the city centre if building a station in the town centre is too expensive. See, pro rail and logical.

 

[RT4038]

Did I say I like TOCs? No, I think a railway run by some form of government is better for a railway. With limited space, it's not a competitive environment, so would be better run as a public service, like the NHS (not as poorly, however).

As for your example, if you need to build new rail, surely it should go where it's needed, and at the very least have a connecting bus to the city centre if building a station in the town centre is too expensive. See, pro rail and logical.

So you think that somehow the Government could run the railway as a public service in some better way than it could the NHS? How can this be - surely Health is more important than Railways? If we can't get that right, what hope the railways?

I think every main town/city has bus services between the centre and the station. All this changing and walking is just sheer inconvenience and not going to help car dependancy.

 

[MattRat]

So you think that somehow the Government could run the railway as a public service in some better way than it could the NHS? How can this be - surely Health is more important than Railways? If we can't get that right, what hope the railways?

I think every main town/city has bus services between the centre and the station. All this changing and walking is just sheer inconvenience and not going to help car dependancy.

The NHS is run directly, hence the problems. Ideally, the railway would be run indirectly, with the real people in charge understanding railways.

And I said connecting bus only in the circumstance that a station in the town centre is too expensive.