Most feasible new heritage railway

[A S Leib]

Indeed (and being a pedant on my own post, I'm not sure if Loughborough would be a case of that, or if most services would be through trains once the line's rebuilt).

 

[Bevan Price]

Any new heritage line has several big problems.
1. Raising money to open the line.
2. Raising money to obtain locos and coaching stock (and much would probably need to be "new construction")
3. Finding enough volunteers to work "for free" to operate and maintain the railway and rolling stock.
4. Raising enough funds from operating to pay for that maintenance and other costs.

I suspect UK is near the limit of what existing heritage lines need to survive - some may even fail. There might just be a few minor extensions of existing lines to improve connectivity with main line rail, but I don't foresee any major new heritage operations at present.

 

[HSTEd]

I would be interested to find out if narrow gauge still has a substantial construction cost advantage over standard gauge.

I think probably not, but still it would be interesting.

 

[The Pelican]

I would be interested to find out if narrow gauge still has a substantial construction cost advantage over standard gauge.

I think probably not, but still it would be interesting.

Probably depends a lot on new vs existing alignment (narrow gauge can be twistier, and stations etc slightly smaller), new vs existing earthworks, and weight of locos and carriages- a Quarry Hunslet with a basic open sided coach is probably different to holding large locos like a Garatt. On the other hand, I don't think many new railways are narrow gauge except when joining an exisiting network, while at least some probably would be if it was cheaper.

 

[Trainlog]

I agree, metre gauge is mainly because there is, in principle, a reasonable stream of withdrawn stock available, and stock from a lot of places, and because the various proposals over the years that might have produced a British version of a Swiss Metre gauge railway- the Snowdon Mountain railway started off a lot like one for example, and was nearly electrified in the 1930s which might have given it some attractive art deco SLM railcars- haven't taken off. (otherwise, English Electric might have bid for it, and a Blackpool railcoach with a cogwheel might take visitors up the mountain.) Really loco and carriages plus interesting motive power is mostly what I want from them, so I like the Welsh Highland and Ffestinog a lot. (I suppose the railway I'd like to see restored in the area is the Penrhyn railway, which has so many surviving locos, which it would be interesting to see running on their old line- I know there was an effort to restore it ten years ago.)

Narrow gauge has also had the great luck to have several collectors assemble lots of locomotives from around the world, which often share gauges with existing railways, especially 2ft.

Absolutely, the benefit of narrow gauge lines is the fact that they can be set up relatively easily, and some pieces of rolling stock are so widespread they turn up on eBay from time to time.

I do agree with you on that, I rather like the international element of Narrow Gauge. I quite like going to the Bredgar and Wormshill railway to see the vast collection of narrow gauge locomotives that are up and operational, and one day I want to go and see the Statfold Barn Railway aswell for this reason.

I would be interested to find out if narrow gauge still has a construction cost advantage over standard gauge.

I think probably not, but still it would be interesting.

Whilst maybe not as good as we would think, however, it is essential to look at the successes of narrow gauge and 15-inch gauge miniature lines such as the Bala Lake and Bure Valley have made out of using former standard gauge branch lines.

Personally, I don't think its too late for some lines to consider this. The Lavender railway would be a good candidate for converting to narrow gauge, as it's a short-station line that is surrounded by a lot of standard gauge competition. It would help the railway stand out by offering a different heritage railway experience and make the line more interesting as the journey would be slower and would sound better with a small quarry hunslet or Koppel thrashing up to Worth halt.

 

[The Pelican]

Absolutely, the benefit of narrow gauge lines is the fact that they can be set up relatively easily, and some pieces of rolling stock are so widespread they turn up on eBay from time to time.

I do agree with you on that, I rather like the international element of Narrow Gauge. I quite like going to the Bredgar and Wormshill railway to see the vast collection of narrow gauge locomotives that are up and operational, and one day I want to go and see the Statfold Barn Railway aswell for this reason.


Whilst maybe not as good as we would think, however, it is essential to look at the successes of narrow gauge and 15-inch gauge miniature lines such as the Bala Lake and Bure Valley have made out of using former standard gauge branch lines.

Personally, I don't think its too late for some lines to consider this. The Lavender railway would be a good candidate for converting to narrow gauge, as it's a short-station line that is surrounded by a lot of standard gauge competition. It would help the railway stand out by offering a different heritage railway experience and make the line more interesting as the journey would be slower and would sound better with a small quarry hunslet or Koppel thrashing up to Worth halt.

The Lavender line has always proven to me that a reasonably short section of track and a single station can be very interesting if it's well done- in that railway's case, it used to offer brake van platform rides to lots of it's guests, which offered a much better view of the line and the loco than a typical carriage!

 

[duffield]

Indeed (and being a pedant on my own post, I'm not sure if Loughborough would be a case of that, or if most services would be through trains once the line's rebuilt).

I suspect that when the two lines are joined, after an initial flurry, the services on the northern part of the line will be notably more sparse, and in many cases may just be 'feeder' DMU services for the steam services from Loughborough to Leicester North. The reasons I can think of are

• Single line on the northern section from Loughborough immediately reduces capacity relative to the line south from Loughborough
• Lack of historic stations or any significant attractions apart from Ruddington itself with its country park on the northern section
• Awkwardness of accessing Ruddington, requiring top & tailing all the way or a second loco working out of Ruddington bring trains in from the reversal at 50 steps unless a DMU is used
• Generally inferior infrastructure

The various infrastructure issues may eventually be overcome to various degrees and allow a more intensive service - if it's considered worth it and the money can be found - but that's with a very heavy emphasis on "eventually"! I'm sure doing something about Ruddington access would be a fairly high priority.

So i'd say it will be run as somewhere between one railway and two separate ones sharing a common station, varying according to time of year and day of week.

This is not based on any insider knowledge of course, but I'm pretty sure that insiders would agree that the four points above are highly relevant to the type of service!