What a fascinating insight - except the fact that it's piffle. We're not having this discussion because the routes in question have started declining. We're having it because passenger traffic across the whole network was supressed by the Government and now it wants to cut its costs. And surprise surprise, the routes that have seen a decline arent the ones the cutters want to cut
The routes I'm trying to discuss here are ones that have declined because heavy rail is no longer competitive
Barton upon Humber was "useful" when people needed a ferry to get from Lincolnshire to East Yorkshire (e.g. Grimsby/ Scunthorpe - Hull). Then we built a road bridge and scrapped the ferry and were left with a branch line that is only of use for the small town of Barton upon Humber rather than journeys to the city of Hull. The branch declined because the market moved elsewhere - anyone from Grimsby/ Scunthorpe heading to Hull isn't going to base their travel plans around a bi-hourly train from Grimsby to Barton, they are going to either drive or take the regular buses from Grimsby/ Scunthorpe to Hull. The rail line has outlived its use
Kyle of Lochalsh was "useful" when people needed a ferry to get from the mainland to Skye (e.g. Inverness - Portree). Then we built a road bridge and scrapped the ferry and were left with a branch line that only serves the small town of Kyle. he branch declined because the market moved elsewhere - anyone from Inverness heading to Portree isn't going to base their travel plans around a handful of trains a day to Kyle, they are going to either drive or take the direct buses (which are faster from Inverness to Kyle than the railway). The rail line has outlived its use
Stranraer was "useful" when people took a ferry to get from Scotland to Northern Ireland. Then the boat market was decimated by cheap flights that took people directly from Edinburgh/ Glasgow to Belfast/ Dublin. Then the ferries competed by moving operations to Carinryan, to give a faster journey. So we are left with a railway line that serves the old ferry port at Stranraer rather than the town itself, but the ferries are long gone. The rail line has outlived its use
I know that you want us to validate your conspiracy theory that the Government has used Covid to abolish branch lines, but the three I've mentioned were struggling
way before Covid.
The problem is that you have this absolutist view of the network and cannot accept any change (even though BR managed to trim it each year, closing a minor amount of stations/lines without causing the "Serpell" that you keep trying to panic people about), even when the circumstances have changed and heavy rail is no longer going to be able to compete
As anyone who uses the Whitby branch knows, it's trains are busy enough to justify its existance anyway. The only people asking such a question are Beeching throwbacks. You are the perfect illustration of the problem. "Ooh, it's only the Barton branch", or "it's only the little bit of the line to Stranrear", but as soon as the Whitby line gets mentioned, with its full and standing four carriage trains, the lies behind the assurances of people proposing closures are revealed
Ah, the amazing Whitby branch with it's "full and standing four carriage trains"
That's the Whitby in North Yorkshire, the one with around 130,000 passengers per annum, so 65,000 departing passengers pa, so 180 departing passengers a day... whereas a "full and standing four carriage train" is going to be in the region of three hundred passengers...
...now we know that the line was retained because of the school journeys, so we know that those services must have a regular flow of passengers twice a day during term time... but if there are lots of these "full and standing four carriage trains" as well (with around three hundred passengers on board) then that must mean that pretty much every Whitby service that isn't either (a) convenient for school passengers or (b) has
@yorksrob on board must be completely empty, for those numbers to work?
Give the enemy an inch and they will take several miles
Except that BR managed to close stations each year without it leading to the complete abandonment of provincial railways... how come BR were able to close the Sinfin line without its closure leading to a thousand other stations being closed in the next couple of years?
Or Attercliffe Road or Culross or various other stations that BR closed without it leading to the entire collapse of the network? Woodhead? Corby closed, the sky didn't fall in, and it was re-opened years later.
Maybe because you are sounding a smidge OTT?
But what about people going to Swansea/Shrewsbury/Manchester/Liverpool etc ?
What about the people of Llandridnod Wells going to Manchester and Liverpool?
How many people take journeys from Llandridnon Wells to Manchester and Liverpool each year? A million? A thousand? A dozen? Is that really enough to warrant keeping the line? If that's the kind of market that you want to base things around then ... wow
If you think that there's one group of people who are nasty Beeching apologists who dislike trains and just want to annoy the honest travelling enthusiast then sure.
In reality I tend to think most of us are advocates of public transport, and we use it wherever we can, or, indeed, have devoted our careers to trying to make it better.
There are times when, because we understand that there's a serious consideration to be made for value for money, that railways might currently be in place where they're a poor transport solution. There are few of them, but they do exist. In addition, the reverse situation exists, where a line is disused despite it having all of the right conditions for a successful local rail service, such as the Northumberland line. Happily in that specific case this is being remedied.
Do you not think that might be more likely than that we're all "the enemy" and "Beeching throwbacks"?
Good points - I hope that Rob can understand that people on here care about the railway and want the railway to work, but that getting it into shape for the twenty first century means focussing on the areas where it is most competitive and expanding those areas, rather than continuing to throw money at failing branch lines
This obsessions with portraying everyone who disagrees with you as an "enemy" isn't healthy
And I go back to my other point, if we're worried about subsidy, why are we still paying several times over BR era rolling stock ? Why is it always route cuts people are interested in making.
There are lots of openings that people are interested in making too. One HS2 train will take as many passengers as a week's worth of passengers on a branch line. There are routes out there that could be opened (not just from the Bumper Book Of 1960s Closures, but looking at new alignments too, assessing travel patterns in the twenty first century rather than being fixated on routes that Beeching closed). It's not just cuts. It's just that you are so obsessed with preserving every inch of the old network that you can't see the opportunities out there in new routes.
There would be a bigger saving through a coherent rolling stock strategy, but that’s another subject.
The wasteful procurement by BR must put the ROSCO charges into perspective - all of the tiny classes and short lived locomotives... such a waste
