mushroomchow
Member
Leicester - Burton should be a no-brainer, but it's held back by the County Council refusing to help pay their share for it. It's also criminal how the trackbed has been allowed to rot by NR and the formation has been exposed to subsidence over the years purely because nobody has been willing to pull their finger out and maintain it properly - which has only raised the potential reopening costs and given the County more ammo with which to dismiss the demands. In spite of all that, the line is still traversable and is used as a cut-through for some stock diagrams and charter trains.
What annoys me most is that all the official reports (which, for what it's worth, were deliberately fiddled to make the BCR as low as possible) only compare journey times to car journeys, instead of the appalling public transport currently available to denizens of Ashby and Coalville. Yes, a 30 minute train trip from Coalville to Leicester isn't quite as fast as the 20 minutes in a car, but it's a damn sight faster than the hour plus it takes to get there by bus!
Anyway, rant over. In theory, it'd be easy to reopen, but all it takes is to have somebody with the power to make it happen close their wallet and the dream dies.
What annoys me most is that all the official reports (which, for what it's worth, were deliberately fiddled to make the BCR as low as possible) only compare journey times to car journeys, instead of the appalling public transport currently available to denizens of Ashby and Coalville. Yes, a 30 minute train trip from Coalville to Leicester isn't quite as fast as the 20 minutes in a car, but it's a damn sight faster than the hour plus it takes to get there by bus!
Anyway, rant over. In theory, it'd be easy to reopen, but all it takes is to have somebody with the power to make it happen close their wallet and the dream dies.
