New Lines needed

[deltic08]

All BCRs are calculated in the same way (or should be), I dont recall seeing a BCR for HS2 of 0.4 - it has always been greater than 2 for the whole Y network. The latest Skipton-Colne BCR I saw on the website was 1.5 and the Harrogate Ripon ATOC report quoted previously in this thread was 0.6
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The approach used for HS2 is the same as for all other transport schemes - new values of time that are coming out in April will boost any transport scheme with high numbers of commuters which will tend to benefit urban rail schemes more than other transport projects

I suggest you look at the ATOC Report and not go by what you read on this site as it is not always impartial.

Can't comment further on 1.5 BCR for Skipton-Colne. All I can say is that for such a short section of reinstatement a through route from the Aire Valley to East/West Lancashire and the Fylde Coast is created for passenger use without travel via a congested Leeds station and removing a heavy flow of aggregate from Swinden Quarry into Lancashire that currently travels by road by converting to rail.

I have not seen HS2 BCR above 1.5 yet. it dropped from 0.9 to 0.4 when estimated cost rose from £35 to £50 billion. I have seen £100 billion construction cost in print recently by a Government department so can't believe BCR will be as high as you state.
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And with that statement you've shown you really need to grow up.

I grew up when I did my first post mortem on a toddler who had died of septicaemia. Now retired for almost a decade, the last thing I want to do at my age is grow up but who are you to tell me what to do?

Since becoming a Councillor in May and having had a lot of contact this year with those who make vital final decisions on transport in North Yorkshire, my description of them is very apt.

 

[The Planner]

I grew up when I did my first post mortem on a toddler who had died of septicaemia. Now retired for almost a decade, the last thing I want to do at my age is grow up but who are you to tell me what to do?

Since becoming a Councillor in May and having had a lot of contact this year with those who make vital final decisions on transport in North Yorkshire, my description of them is very apt.

and I bet your dad was bigger than his dad too, loving your work, gets a good 6/10 on the "look at me look at me" scale.

 

[Dr Hoo]

Could Deltic08 say a bit more about the aggregates flow from Swinden to Lancashire? There is already a reasonably straightforward route via Settle Junction and Carnforth then southbound on the WCML with the opportunity to access most areas of
Lancashire. Would a reinstated route via Colne really be that much better?

 

[deltic]

I suggest you look at the ATOC Report and not go by what you read on this site as it is not always impartial.

Can't comment further on 1.5 BCR for Skipton-Colne. All I can say is that for such a short section of reinstatement a through route from the Aire Valley to East/West Lancashire and the Fylde Coast is created for passenger use without travel via a congested Leeds station and removing a heavy flow of aggregate from Swinden Quarry into Lancashire that currently travels by road by converting to rail.

I have not seen HS2 BCR above 1.5 yet. it dropped from 0.9 to 0.4 when estimated cost rose from £35 to £50 billion. I have seen £100 billion construction cost in print recently by a Government department so can't believe BCR will be as high as you state.
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pt.

I have looked at the ATOC report which states the BCR for Ripon as 0.6 - rises to 4.3 if you ignore the capital cost which is only appropriate to do with private sector is going to fund the capital cost.

As previously mentioned the BCR figure for HS2 comes from latest official published business case. The cost for HS2 has increased only because the year base has changed.

 

[deltic08]

and I bet your dad was bigger than his dad too, loving your work, gets a good 6/10 on the "look at me look at me" scale.

Sorry but obviously not on your level.
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Could Deltic08 say a bit more about the aggregates flow from Swinden to Lancashire? There is already a reasonably straightforward route via Settle Junction and Carnforth then southbound on the WCML with the opportunity to access most areas of
Lancashire. Would a reinstated route via Colne really be that much better?

Then ask yourself why this flow is not going by rail now.

 

[3141]

To take the OP's suggestion about new lines and not reworking the same old story about re-opening rural lines in the middle of nowhere I suggest the following:

1 Outer London orbital - roughly following the M25 with interchanges with all lines entering London to reduce the need for cross London journeys and open up new travel opportunities

1) Rail has a very high share of the travel into central London market... The London overground inner orbital service shows there is huge unmet demand for journeys that dont go into central London. The M25 supposedly carries more people a day than the whole national rail network - making journeys that are presently difficult to make by rail. A new outer orbital railway even if took only about 5% of journeys presently on the M25 would be one of the busiest in the country. It would also free up capacity on rail services into central London as those who presently travel into and out of London again would be diverted to it, reducing or delaying the need for very expensive capacity upgrades on these lines.

I thought I’d look at some of the implications of an orbital railway round London, roughly following the route of the M25. I’ll consider the north side because I know that area better.

There are 13 north side radial rail routes that the orbital route would cross:

1. GW Main Line
2. Chiltern via High Wycombe
3 Chiltern + LUL via Amersham
4. West Coast Main Line
5. Midland + Thameslink
6. East Coast Main Line
7. East Coast Hertford Loop
8. West Anglia to Cambridge via Southbury Loop
9. West Anglia to Cambridge via Waltham Cross
10. LUL Central Line to Epping
11. Great Eastern Main Line
12. LT&S direct line
13. LT&S via Tilbury

The only ones with which it would clearly be unnecessary to have interchange with the orbital line are one or other of the West Anglia routes, and the Central Line. You could perhaps do without the Tilbury route as well. That leaves 10 interchanges.

Where would you build the interchanges? From one point of view, you don’t want an additional stop on the radial lines, so you’d build the interchange at an existing station. But some of those existing stations are in built-up areas, where finding a route for the new orbital line would be difficult.

Should the interchange stations provide easy access for passengers coming by car? I think the answer is Yes, so as to encourage people to make use of the new orbital line. So the interchanges need substantial car parks. This makes it very likely that they will have to be built on new sites away from existing built-up areas.

That will have a big impact on the Green Belt. This orbital railway is supposed to be “green”, so we have an interesting conflict. The Green Belt will lose. Once we have an interchange at Denham, a new interchange somewhere north of Rickmansworth, another one just south of Potters Bar, another one near Broxbourne, there will be huge pressure for other residential and industrial developments around these stations, which will have superb public transport links. This will add to the economic “pull” of London and the South East.

So perhaps our first orbital line should be round a different city, like Leeds. That could be very helpful in developing the “Northern Powerhouse” and trying to change the balance between North and South.

But staying with the suggested London orbital railway, there’d also be the expense of the links from the M25 and other main roads to each of the new interchange stations to take into account.

How many passengers might the London orbital railway get? A section of the M25 gets up to 150,000 vehicle movements a day. About 30% of them are goods vehicles, which leaves 105,000. Some of those are coaches, so let’s say they amount to 5,000, which leaves me with a convenient 100,000 cars. The cars have an occupancy of 1.6 people, which amounts to 160,000. I’ll come back to the coaches later.

That 160,000 is the number of people in cars passing a busy point on the western side of the M25 on a typical day. Many of them don’t travel a great distance, and by the time you get to the Dartford Crossing the people there are almost entirely a different set from those who crossed the Thames near Staines. Deltic suggested that 5% of M25 users switching to orbital rail would amount to a useful change. So at any one point there might be 8,000 rail passengers a day. If trains ran for sixteen hours a day that would be 500 passengers an hour on average. With a train every 20 minutes – and I think it should not be less frequent than that – there will be 170 passengers per train.

I doubt if that’s enough to justify the cost of an orbital railway. But it will probably attract some new passengers who can leave their cars at the interchange stations. Also, as
Deltic said, some passengers on the radial routes may switch to the orbital line and travel round London rather than go through it, which in turn will save money on capacity improvements into London on the radial lines. I’m not sure how many, though, because the orbital route will have ten stops in about 60 miles on the north side, and probably a similar number on the south. It won’t be fast. When Anglia Railways ran their service from Colchester and Chelmsford via the North London Line and eventually got to the SW Main Line their patronage was not great because the trip round London was slow and took a long time.

Will coach passengers switch to the orbital rail route? On the whole I think that’s unlikely. Some people are going by coach because it’s cheaper than rail. They’d have no reason to switch. Some are travelling on a hired coach from A to B which gives them convenience and avoids the changes that a public transport journey would require. They won’t switch either. I suspect that the proportion of existing coach passengers who would switch to the orbital rail line is quite small.

Finally, let’s think about the rolling stock. No, not Class 442s….but how about the D Train? Rapid acceleration. No need for a high top speed with a station every six miles or so. Plenty of doors, plenty of space inside – it’s the right train for the right line. David Cameron has announced that 2016 will be a “game-changer”, so I confidently look forward to seeing these trains on the new orbital route by 20XX.

 

[edwin_m]

Not sure why you quoted my post as it wasn't me who challenged the reason for building the line.

Perhaps unheard of on this forum, but I was actually agreeing with you!

 

[yorksrob]

I have looked at the ATOC report which states the BCR for Ripon as 0.6 - rises to 4.3 if you ignore the capital cost which is only appropriate to do with private sector is going to fund the capital cost.

As previously mentioned the BCR figure for HS2 comes from latest official published business case. The cost for HS2 has increased only because the year base has changed.

If the day to day benefit is estimated to be 4.6 BCR, it is frankly laughable that there is no way to provide at least some sort of match funding towards the cost. Especially as we know from experience that the capital cost of reinstatement is likely to increase further out of reach the longer it is left.

We need government to make a contribution, as the Scottish and Welsh Governments do, rather than the Westminster shower.

 

[bluenoxid]

I suggest you look at the ATOC Report and not go by what you read on this site as it is not always impartial.

Can't comment further on 1.5 BCR for Skipton-Colne. All I can say is that for such a short section of reinstatement a through route from the Aire Valley to East/West Lancashire and the Fylde Coast is created for passenger use without travel via a congested Leeds station and removing a heavy flow of aggregate from Swinden Quarry into Lancashire that currently travels by road by converting to rail.

I have not seen HS2 BCR above 1.5 yet. it dropped from 0.9 to 0.4 when estimated cost rose from £35 to £50 billion. I have seen £100 billion construction cost in print recently by a Government department so can't believe BCR will be as high as you state.
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I grew up when I did my first post mortem on a toddler who had died of septicaemia. Now retired for almost a decade, the last thing I want to do at my age is grow up but who are you to tell me what to do?

Since becoming a Councillor in May and having had a lot of contact this year with those who make vital final decisions on transport in North Yorkshire, my description of them is very apt.

Whilst the Skipton to Colne line is not that long it faces three bridges and a major diversion, which will impact any business case. The ATOC report is now 6.5 years old. It's three favoured routes failed to pass GRIP3.

I don't believe that the route offers the connectivity that some supporters believe it will.

 

[deltic08]

I have looked at the ATOC report which states the BCR for Ripon as 0.6 - rises to 4.3 if you ignore the capital cost which is only appropriate to do with private sector is going to fund the capital cost.

This only proves that a service between Ripon and Harrogate would not require a subsidy once the route is operational.

A feasibility study done by ATOC was not as thorough as the one done for my committee. Time and cost tells me that but I do trust the BCR of 1.3 in the feasibility I commissioned from Arup.

BCR for a through route from Harrogate to Northallerton and not a stub as far as Ripon is expected to be 3.5-4.0 in the next feasibility due to freight being able to use it and increased traffic from Harrogate to the North on through trains without the need to travel via York and change of trains there. Also as the only suitable diversion route between Northallerton and York.
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Whilst the Skipton to Colne line is not that long it faces three bridges and a major diversion, which will impact any business case. The ATOC report is now 6.5 years old. It's three favoured routes failed to pass GRIP3.

I don't believe that the route offers the connectivity that some supporters believe it will.

"I don't believe" isn't evidence, just your thoughts. You need to consult the studies already done by SELRAP.

Bridges are no problem especially where abutments are still present. Bridging the old trackbed in Colne may be a problem but not insurmountable.

Where is your major diversion? Do you mean immediately to the north of Earby?

 

[Dr Hoo]

Originally Posted by Dr Hoo
"Could Deltic08 say a bit more about the aggregates flow from Swinden to Lancashire? There is already a reasonably straightforward route via Settle Junction and Carnforth then southbound on the WCML with the opportunity to access most areas of Lancashire. Would a reinstated route via Colne really be that much better?"

Reply from Deltic08
"Then ask yourself why this flow is not going by rail now."

New post below:

I was genuinely hoping for some local insight. There are any number of reasons why the great majority of freight travels by other modes than rail but we are left to guess as to why the Skipton-Colne line is an enabler. Is the destination on the section proposed for re-opening? Plenty of railborne aggregates flows seem to survive with relatively convoluted routeings.

 

[ECJS189]

I am rather sceptical about HS2 being 0.4 and then jumping to 2.2.

I was Chair of the committee that commissioned benefit/cost analysis of the Ripon-Harrogate reinstatement in 2005. The best option was 1.3:1.

Reinstatement of Harrogate-Ripon-Northallerton is better for being a through/available diversion route and early calculations, but not yet verified by consultants until enough funding is found, suggest BCR of 3.5-4.0.

ATOC looked at it in 2009 and calculated 4.6 but I think that is too optimistic.

Minster Line and Skipton-Colne BCRs were on respective websites but from memory were in excess of 2.0.

I was always puzzled why the 2005 feasibility study concluded that it was only viable to build a branch from Harrogate to a new terminus at Ripon and not reinstatement of the entire route to Northallerton. It seemed to be totally focused on bringing a service to Ripon but not looking at the bigger picture of trans-pennine services and increasing capacity by providing an alternate to the ECML between York and Northallerton.
At least this seems to have been addressed in the NYCC transport strategy policy document although as has been stated previously road improvements have been given priority.

 

[Andrewlong]

I thought I’d look at some of the implications of an orbital railway round London, roughly following the route of the M25. I’ll consider the north side because I know that area better.

There are 13 north side radial rail routes that the orbital route would cross:

1. GW Main Line
2. Chiltern via High Wycombe
3 Chiltern + LUL via Amersham
4. West Coast Main Line
5. Midland + Thameslink
6. East Coast Main Line
7. East Coast Hertford Loop
8. West Anglia to Cambridge via Southbury Loop
9. West Anglia to Cambridge via Waltham Cross
10. LUL Central Line to Epping
11. Great Eastern Main Line
12. LT&S direct line
13. LT&S via Tilbury

The only ones with which it would clearly be unnecessary to have interchange with the orbital line are one or other of the West Anglia routes, and the Central Line. You could perhaps do without the Tilbury route as well. That leaves 10 interchanges.

Where would you build the interchanges? From one point of view, you don’t want an additional stop on the radial lines, so you’d build the interchange at an existing station. But some of those existing stations are in built-up areas, where finding a route for the new orbital line would be difficult.

Should the interchange stations provide easy access for passengers coming by car? I think the answer is Yes, so as to encourage people to make use of the new orbital line. So the interchanges need substantial car parks. This makes it very likely that they will have to be built on new sites away from existing built-up areas.

That will have a big impact on the Green Belt. This orbital railway is supposed to be “green”, so we have an interesting conflict. The Green Belt will lose. Once we have an interchange at Denham, a new interchange somewhere north of Rickmansworth, another one just south of Potters Bar, another one near Broxbourne, there will be huge pressure for other residential and industrial developments around these stations, which will have superb public transport links. This will add to the economic “pull” of London and the South East.

So perhaps our first orbital line should be round a different city, like Leeds. That could be very helpful in developing the “Northern Powerhouse” and trying to change the balance between North and South.

But staying with the suggested London orbital railway, there’d also be the expense of the links from the M25 and other main roads to each of the new interchange stations to take into account.

How many passengers might the London orbital railway get? A section of the M25 gets up to 150,000 vehicle movements a day. About 30% of them are goods vehicles, which leaves 105,000. Some of those are coaches, so let’s say they amount to 5,000, which leaves me with a convenient 100,000 cars. The cars have an occupancy of 1.6 people, which amounts to 160,000. I’ll come back to the coaches later.

That 160,000 is the number of people in cars passing a busy point on the western side of the M25 on a typical day. Many of them don’t travel a great distance, and by the time you get to the Dartford Crossing the people there are almost entirely a different set from those who crossed the Thames near Staines. Deltic suggested that 5% of M25 users switching to orbital rail would amount to a useful change. So at any one point there might be 8,000 rail passengers a day. If trains ran for sixteen hours a day that would be 500 passengers an hour on average. With a train every 20 minutes – and I think it should not be less frequent than that – there will be 170 passengers per train.

I doubt if that’s enough to justify the cost of an orbital railway. But it will probably attract some new passengers who can leave their cars at the interchange stations. Also, as
Deltic said, some passengers on the radial routes may switch to the orbital line and travel round London rather than go through it, which in turn will save money on capacity improvements into London on the radial lines. I’m not sure how many, though, because the orbital route will have ten stops in about 60 miles on the north side, and probably a similar number on the south. It won’t be fast. When Anglia Railways ran their service from Colchester and Chelmsford via the North London Line and eventually got to the SW Main Line their patronage was not great because the trip round London was slow and took a long time.

Will coach passengers switch to the orbital rail route? On the whole I think that’s unlikely. Some people are going by coach because it’s cheaper than rail. They’d have no reason to switch. Some are travelling on a hired coach from A to B which gives them convenience and avoids the changes that a public transport journey would require. They won’t switch either. I suspect that the proportion of existing coach passengers who would switch to the orbital rail line is quite small.

Finally, let’s think about the rolling stock. No, not Class 442s….but how about the D Train? Rapid acceleration. No need for a high top speed with a station every six miles or so. Plenty of doors, plenty of space inside – it’s the right train for the right line. David Cameron has announced that 2016 will be a “game-changer”, so I confidently look forward to seeing these trains on the new orbital route by 20XX.

interesting analysis. I don't think anyone says it would be easy to design and build - but the M25 was built and look at the impact that has made. The problem we have is the population of the south East is not going to fallen and traffic on the M25 increase. Will governments widen the M25 to increase capacity or introduce tolls to reduce demand? Probably not. It wouldn't be cheap either but major infrastructure projects aren't.

 

[Dr_Paul]

In and around London there are some short links that might be worth reinstating, and possibly could be done without much bother, or where passenger services could be reinstated.

The Acton Town to South Acton shuttle would, I feel, be useful for people in the Hounslow and South Ealing area who wish to go around the North London Line. There is no direct link between the District/Piccadilly Lines and the NLL (except by a tortuous changing at Turnham Green and Gunnersbury, District Line only). I think that the link could be reinstated without too much bother.

Similarly, I think that a link between the NLL and the Hounslow Loop would be worthwhile reinstating. It's now impossible to reinstate the Gunnersbury to Kew Bridge spur as this was built on with a block of flats 80 years back, but what about having some NLL services go to Kew Bridge from South Acton on what is currently a freight line? The disused platforms on the east curve at Kew Bridge could be rebuilt without bother. Or it could be run as a shuttle between Kew Bridge and South Acton or Acton Central.

There is far more 'around' and 'across' London traffic than there used to be; I suspect that this reflects changes in the location of people's housing and their jobs. The NLL is busy all day, far more than it used to be 30 years back. The East and South London Lines are also busy, linking places that were never easily travelled before -- Hampstead Heath to Peckham with one change at Clapham Junction; West Croydon to Dalston with no change, both unthinkable only a few years back.

In view of that, what about passenger services along the line from Acton Wells to Cricklewood, with stations at sensible places? Perhaps Kew Bridge via South Acton and Acton Central (interchanging with the NLL) to Cricklewood, where there could be an interchange with Thameslink services? (Or, being really adventurous, through the tunnel at Finchley Road and on to the Goblin Line?) There used to be passenger services on that line, and the NLL used to go to Kew Bridge; they ended long ago as they were not used much, but now there is much more travelling around London and much more need for quick, regular transport of that sort.

 

[deltic08]

I was always puzzled why the 2005 feasibility study concluded that it was only viable to build a branch from Harrogate to a new terminus at Ripon and not reinstatement of the entire route to Northallerton. It seemed to be totally focused on bringing a service to Ripon but not looking at the bigger picture of trans-pennine services and increasing capacity by providing an alternate to the ECML between York and Northallerton.
At least this seems to have been addressed in the NYCC transport strategy policy document although as has been stated previously road improvements have been given priority.

The 2005 joint committee was hijacked by NYCC.

The Countryside Agency offered the original Ripon Railway Reinstatement Committee (Leeds Northern Railway Reinstatement Group from 2011 and the White Rabbit Line from 2016 as Lewis Carroll was living in Ripon when he wrote Alice in Wonderland basing characters on wood carvings found in Ripon Cathedral where his father worked as a Canon) match funding for a feasibility study. I persuaded Ripon City Council and NYCC to fund 25% each, RRRA contributed over £2,000 from donations so that the CA would add 50% for a full study costing £30,000. NYCC insisted on running the show if they contributed and that is exactly what they did aided and abetted by Harrogate Council who had two representatives on the joint committee despite no funding.

There was much pressure at the time for a tram-train experiment somewhere and West Yorkshire PTE was pushing for Leeds-Harrogate-York to secure a proposed Leeds tram system. This would have denied access of BR gauge trains to Harrogate and eventually Ripon so my committee was against this but I was outvoted by gullible, uninformed members of the joint committee. by 5-2

Going on a 2004 demand forecast paid for by my RRRA committee , NYCC decided that reinstatement would only go as far as Ripon supported by the majority of poorly informed members of the joint committee. This was a terrible misjudgement as the main reasons for reinstatement were for north/south through trains for Harrogate and Ripon, connection into a large warehousing complex just north of Ripon and as a diversion for York-Northallerton.

However because of the decision to only reinstate Harrogate-Ripon, NYCC investigated extension of trams from Harrogate along the former trackbed as far as Ripon with a tram terminus in Ripon Market Place via street running.

Arup was well into the study when the Government chose Huddersfield-Penistone-Sheffield for the tram train experiment instead of the Harrogate Loop. Arup had gone too far to change to Harrogate-Northallerton heavy rail so just beefed up costings from light rail to heavy rail on Harrogate-Ripon and dc to ac overhead electrification costings. What the Yanks call a cluster****.

I will never forgive NYCC and WTPTE for wasting funding that was only found by hard campaigning over many years by my committee when the whole route might have had a more promising outcome.
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I was genuinely hoping for some local insight. There are any number of reasons why the great majority of freight travels by other modes than rail but we are left to guess as to why the Skipton-Colne line is an enabler. Is the destination on the section proposed for re-opening? Plenty of railborne aggregates flows seem to survive with relatively convoluted routeings.

Apart from speaking at the inaugural meeting of SELRAP, I have had very little to do with that group but I know that one of their arguments for reinstatement is to convert the sizeable flow of stone westwards from Swinden Quarry to rail. It amounts to at least one train a day. Don't ask me where its final destination is as I don't know but will try to find out.

 

[bluenoxid]

"I don't believe" isn't evidence, just your thoughts. You need to consult the studies already done by SELRAP.

Bridges are no problem especially where abutments are still present. Bridging the old trackbed in Colne may be a problem but not insurmountable.

Where is your major diversion? Do you mean immediately to the north of Earby?

I have consulted the available studies. A major part of any business case is the initial cost of construction and that is based on inflationary additions to an optimistic figure created in 2005. I'm not convinced by that case until someone with the right experience and tools for the job looks grimly at the infrastructure in place.

Bridges are a problem particularly on this route. They are located at either end of the route so prevent a partial reopening without substantial cost.

The major diversion would be north of Earby to tackle the A56.

An option I would push is for the line to be open between Skipton and North Earby. The line could include construction of a bypass to mitigate the road between Earby and Thornton in Craven and unlocks an area for redevelopment. If there are enough houses built, this line could be funded.

An alternative in to accept the the M65 will reach Foulridge and piggy back off that project.

A business case cannot be built on a quarry sending wagon loads and a wish to avoid Leeds railway station.

 

[deltic08]

A business case cannot be built on a quarry sending wagon loads and a wish to avoid Leeds railway station.

You are being insulting to Arup who have completed GRIP stages 1 and 2. Nobody is basing reinstatement on that alone but it all helps. Man is lazy by nature and takes the easiest path. It takes less effort to criticise than to promote and most people take the easiest path as you are doing. If we all acted this way nothing would get done. SELRAP is raising funding for GRIP 3 so everything is progressing nicely.

I am a campaigner by nature so I always try for improvement especially reinstated rail routes that should not have been closed in the 1960s/70s under Beeching or post Beeching. Skipton-Colne is one line that should not have closed as hundreds were using it daily in both directions.

I cannot see the benefit of reinstating in two sections as you suggest when it is such a short route. The business case is stronger being a through route with through traffic so spend £50m and reopen in one go. Even reinstate the branch to Barnoldswick and run services westwards from there instead of Colne. Extend electrification and Aire Valley services from Skipton to Earby interchanging here for both routes. It was a three platform station IIRC.

You correctly state that BCR is 1.52 but you fail to mention the possibility of 6.5 if footfall reaches 30% higher than forecast.

 

[ECJS189]

The 2005 joint committee was hijacked by NYCC.

The Countryside Agency offered the original Ripon Railway Reinstatement Committee (Leeds Northern Railway Reinstatement Group from 2011 and the White Rabbit Line from 2016 as Lewis Carroll was living in Ripon when he wrote Alice in Wonderland basing characters on wood carvings found in Ripon Cathedral where his father worked as a Canon) match funding for a feasibility study. I persuaded Ripon City Council and NYCC to fund 25% each, RRRA contributed over £2,000 from donations so that the CA would add 50% for a full study costing £30,000. NYCC insisted on running the show if they contributed and that is exactly what they did aided and abetted by Harrogate Council who had two representatives on the joint committee despite no funding.

There was much pressure at the time for a tram-train experiment somewhere and West Yorkshire PTE was pushing for Leeds-Harrogate-York to secure a proposed Leeds tram system. This would have denied access of BR gauge trains to Harrogate and eventually Ripon so my committee was against this but I was outvoted by gullible, uninformed members of the joint committee. by 5-2

Going on a 2004 demand forecast paid for by my RRRA committee , NYCC decided that reinstatement would only go as far as Ripon supported by the majority of poorly informed members of the joint committee. This was a terrible misjudgement as the main reasons for reinstatement were for north/south through trains for Harrogate and Ripon, connection into a large warehousing complex just north of Ripon and as a diversion for York-Northallerton.

However because of the decision to only reinstate Harrogate-Ripon, NYCC investigated extension of trams from Harrogate along the former trackbed as far as Ripon with a tram terminus in Ripon Market Place via street running.

Arup was well into the study when the Government chose Huddersfield-Penistone-Sheffield for the tram train experiment instead of the Harrogate Loop. Arup had gone too far to change to Harrogate-Northallerton heavy rail so just beefed up costings from light rail to heavy rail on Harrogate-Ripon and dc to ac overhead electrification costings. What the Yanks call a cluster****.

I will never forgive NYCC and WTPTE for wasting funding that was only found by hard campaigning over many years by my committee when the whole route might have had a more promising outcome.

Thanks for the interesting insight into this. So due to meddling by NYCC and WYPTE the whole reinstatement was set back 10 years. Unbelievable.
I am sure the residents of Harrogate and Ripon would be delighted to find out that it was thought they would be better served by a tram-train service to Leeds rather than direct fast express services to places like Manchester and Newcastle!

I have worked in Ripon for over 30 years and had not heard of the Lewis Carroll connection before! Most interesting.

 

[simonw]

Perhaps unheard of on this forum, but I was actually agreeing with you!

My apologies.

 

[47802]

I'm of the view that the existing subsidy is already massive and having suffered years of under investment that the concentration should be mainly on the existing network.

While Ripon is beginning to sound like an alternate route to Dawlish, substitute Okehampton for Ripon, yes the ECML must have a relief route and yes it must go through Ripon to justify a train service to our insignificant little town (sorry City).

If the ECML does need a relief route at some point then lets consider the best option for that rather than what's best for Ripon.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

(About the idea of an orbital London railway)

Where would you build the interchanges? From one point of view, you don’t want an additional stop on the radial lines, so you’d build the interchange at an existing station. But some of those existing stations are in built-up areas, where finding a route for the new orbital line would be difficult.

Interesting thoughts. But if I've understood you correctly, you seem to be basing it on an orbital railway that has mainly out-of-town parkway stations. I would envisage an orbital railway to be more like how I've drawn up in the attached map. This mainly connects with the existing radial lines out of London at existing interchange stations (and uses existing track for quite a bit of its route, including getting into most of the town centres).

With all the usual provisos of this only being a 'crayonista' sketch and it would be very expensive to build, I think it should hopefully be obvious just from looking at the large populations served and new interchange opportunities created that a route something like this would attract huge numbers of passengers - well beyond the numbers who might swap from driving on the M25.

(On the map - black=existing station, red=new station)

 

[backontrack]

OK, here's my new line wishlist, in descending order of importance:

HS3 (aka HS-TP)
Inverkeithing-Perth via Halbeath and Kinross
Thornton to Levenmouth
Poulton-le-Fylde to Fleetwood
Leuchars to St Andrews
York to Beverley
Paisley to Glasgow Airport
Paisley Canal to Kilmacolm
Tweedbank to Hawick (via Melrose)
Bangor to Caernarfon
Penrith to Keswick
Okehampton to Bere Alston
Skipton to Colne

 

[HSTEd]

Not sure where a tunnel portal would surface in Dublin. Both Connolly and Heuston stations are on fairly constrained sites and the latter is not well located so I think you would need a completely new station somewhere.

You would either go Talgo style with gauge changing trains - or you would just fit three rail dual gauge equipment into the platforms at the Irish end.
But really the most likely crossing is in the North Channel between Stranraer and Northern Ireland - and after the debacle that is the Chunnel a surface, or combined tunnel-bridge, is more likely as it would allow for a feasible drive-through connection.

A drive through connection in the North Channel would likely kill all of the ferries on the Irish Sea.

 

[backontrack]

I'm of the view that the existing subsidy is already massive and having suffered years of under investment that the concentration should be mainly on the existing network.

While Ripon is beginning to sound like an alternate route to Dawlish, substitute Okehampton for Ripon, yes the ECML must have a relief route and yes it must go through Ripon to justify a train service to our insignificant little town (sorry City).

If the ECML does need a relief route at some point then lets consider the best option for that rather than what's best for Ripon.

I resent this post. Ripon is not an insignificant little town.

If you just like to anger people then this forum is not the place for you. Maybe you'd like to meet the 16000 'insignificant' people that you have just denigrated. You could share your views.

I wonder where your location is. Is it anywhere near Ripon at all? How can you judge it like that? You've probably never been there.

I know full well that you'll dismiss me as an 'insignificant poster'. Believe me when I say that I'm not the only one who feels this way. And the more and more people agree with me, the more significant we become. I respect your views, but I don't think you should say what you said. And many more will agree with me.

 

[Darandio]

I resent this post. Ripon is not an insignificant little town.

If you just like to anger people then this forum is not the place for you. Maybe you'd like to meet the 16000 'insignificant' people that you have just denigrated. You could share your views.

I wonder where your location is. Is it anywhere near Ripon at all? How can you judge it like that? You've probably never been there.

I know full well that you'll dismiss me as an 'insignificant poster'. Believe me when I say that I'm not the only one who feels this way. And the more and more people agree with me, the more significant we become. I respect your views, but I don't think you should say what you said. And many more will agree with me.

I think you really need to calm yourself down.

 

[47802]

I resent this post. Ripon is not an insignificant little town.

If you just like to anger people then this forum is not the place for you. Maybe you'd like to meet the 16000 'insignificant' people that you have just denigrated. You could share your views.

I wonder where your location is. Is it anywhere near Ripon at all? How can you judge it like that? You've probably never been there.

I know full well that you'll dismiss me as an 'insignificant poster'. Believe me when I say that I'm not the only one who feels this way. And the more and more people agree with me, the more significant we become. I respect your views, but I don't think you should say what you said. And many more will agree with me.

No I'm not out to deliberately anger people, however I do get rather fed up with the view that a lot on here seem to have, that virtually every little town in the country should now have a god given right to a rail service and that we should spend millions/billions of pounds to achieve that.

As it is some of the existing lines in the North have struggled to even justify decent rolling stock, I also dislike this idea well we can justify a service to this town if its also a diversionary route for somewhere else, either the Town or City justifies a train service or it doesn't.

And yes my Location is about 40 miles from Ripon and I was last in Ripon in November so yes a have been there.

 

[HSTEd]

Unfortunately this is not the BR era when you could instate a service using a very long siding and a random first gen DMU.

 

[ECJS189]

No I'm not out to deliberately anger people, however I do get rather fed up with the view that a lot on here seem to have, that virtually every little town in the country should now have a god given right to a rail service and that we should spend millions/billions of pounds to achieve that.

And yes my Location is about 40 miles from Ripon and I was last in Ripon in November so yes a have been there.

Think the point of the NYCC Strategic transport policy is that it has identified the need for redundancy in the network between York and Northallerton. The cheapest way to address this is to utilise much of the formation of the original Leeds Northern route which then gives the opportunity to give Ripon a rail service back. This is planned as a bolt-on the HS2 and to improve West to East links as part of Northern Powerhouse initiative which also includes electrification of Leeds-Harrogate-York and reinstating double track sections between Knaresborough and York.
I have to say that for the first time ever I actually do think Ripon will get rail services back although it might be another 15 - 20 years off.

 

[deltic]

(About the idea of an orbital London railway)


Interesting thoughts. But if I've understood you correctly, you seem to be basing it on an orbital railway that has mainly out-of-town parkway stations. I would envisage an orbital railway to be more like how I've drawn up in the attached map. This mainly connects with the existing radial lines out of London at existing interchange stations (and uses existing track for quite a bit of its route, including getting into most of the town centres).

With all the usual provisos of this only being a 'crayonista' sketch and it would be very expensive to build, I think it should hopefully be obvious just from looking at the large populations served and new interchange opportunities created that a route something like this would attract huge numbers of passengers - well beyond the numbers who might swap from driving on the M25.

(On the map - black=existing station, red=new station)

Thanks DynamicSpirit this is exactly how I would envisage such a line looking like

 

[47802]

I resent this post. Ripon is not an insignificant little town.

If you just like to anger people then this forum is not the place for you. Maybe you'd like to meet the 16000 'insignificant' people that you have just denigrated. You could share your views.

I wonder where your location is. Is it anywhere near Ripon at all? How can you judge it like that? You've probably never been there.

I know full well that you'll dismiss me as an 'insignificant poster'. Believe me when I say that I'm not the only one who feels this way. And the more and more people agree with me, the more significant we become. I respect your views, but I don't think you should say what you said. And many more will agree with me.

Out of interest 'Backontrack' how many of the 16000 want the rail link?

If you asked me about restoring the rail link to my insignificant nearby town I would say a road bypass around the town would be more use.