Parliamentary Services & Eurostar Waterloo

[fairysdad]

This is something I've been wondering for a while.

Something that we here are aware of is the infamous 'Parliamentary Services', that is a service over a piece of track or to a station that is so infrequent as to be pretty pointless, all in the name of saving having to close a certain piece of track or whatever. It's taken to be a certain quirk of the railways in the UK, just something amusing that happens and for track-bashers to have a bit of a day out experiencing some rare mileage.

However - my question here involves the flyover west/south of Vauxhall where the Eurostar used to come off the Southeastern lines from the south east coast to the South Western lines to arrive at Waterloo. Some years back there were some Southeastern services that used the line so they could use Waterloo when there was some engineering works going on, but the vast majority 99% of the time, that flyover and junction aren't used.

Now, I'm sure there is a perfectly good and reasonable and logical explanation for this. But why is it in a railway world where Parliamentary services exist to use certain spurs or other bits of track (I was reminded to ask this question after seeing the recent post about the Atlantic Lines that the Overground uses to go into Battersea rather than Clapham Junction), there is no token service that uses this particular stretch of line? I am aware that logistically, fitting in a token Southeastern service into Waterloo would be a nightmare to do, but my question is more along the lines of why this particular spur seems to have an exemption from the requirement of having a Parliamentary service run over it rather than how it would work if it did.

 

[Backroom_boy]

This is something I've been wondering for a while.

Something that we here are aware of is the infamous 'Parliamentary Services', that is a service over a piece of track or to a station that is so infrequent as to be pretty pointless, all in the name of saving having to close a certain piece of track or whatever. It's taken to be a certain quirk of the railways in the UK, just something amusing that happens and for track-bashers to have a bit of a day out experiencing some rare mileage.

However - my question here involves the flyover west/south of Vauxhall where the Eurostar used to come off the Southeastern lines from the south east coast to the South Western lines to arrive at Waterloo. Some years back there were some Southeastern services that used the line so they could use Waterloo when there was some engineering works going on, but the vast majority 99% of the time, that flyover and junction aren't used.

Now, I'm sure there is a perfectly good and reasonable and logical explanation for this. But why is it in a railway world where Parliamentary services exist to use certain spurs or other bits of track (I was reminded to ask this question after seeing the recent post about the Atlantic Lines that the Overground uses to go into Battersea rather than Clapham Junction), there is no token service that uses this particular stretch of line? I am aware that logistically, fitting in a token Southeastern service into Waterloo would be a nightmare to do, but my question is more along the lines of why this particular spur seems to have an exemption from the requirement of having a Parliamentary service run over it rather than how it would work if it did.

I'm guessing that the parliamentary approval for the route to St Pancras included a clause to discontinue the waterloo service; there wouldn't have been any change in service at any other station apart from Waterloo so in theory straight forward but there was definitely objections to it.

As there was a bill going through it would be relatively easy to address the closure at the same time. Other Parliamentaries are run as it isn't worth the trouble of separate bill to close them.

 

[JamesT]

This is something I've been wondering for a while.

Something that we here are aware of is the infamous 'Parliamentary Services', that is a service over a piece of track or to a station that is so infrequent as to be pretty pointless, all in the name of saving having to close a certain piece of track or whatever. It's taken to be a certain quirk of the railways in the UK, just something amusing that happens and for track-bashers to have a bit of a day out experiencing some rare mileage.

However - my question here involves the flyover west/south of Vauxhall where the Eurostar used to come off the Southeastern lines from the south east coast to the South Western lines to arrive at Waterloo. Some years back there were some Southeastern services that used the line so they could use Waterloo when there was some engineering works going on, but the vast majority 99% of the time, that flyover and junction aren't used.

Now, I'm sure there is a perfectly good and reasonable and logical explanation for this. But why is it in a railway world where Parliamentary services exist to use certain spurs or other bits of track (I was reminded to ask this question after seeing the recent post about the Atlantic Lines that the Overground uses to go into Battersea rather than Clapham Junction), there is no token service that uses this particular stretch of line? I am aware that logistically, fitting in a token Southeastern service into Waterloo would be a nightmare to do, but my question is more along the lines of why this particular spur seems to have an exemption from the requirement of having a Parliamentary service run over it rather than how it would work if it did.

Surely parliamentary services are there for serving stations rather than making sure bits of track are used?
As the objection to closing tends to be that a particular town/village/area is no longer getting any trains. That isn’t really the case with the change of Eurostar terminus so there’s no need for any parliamentary services.

 

[DelW]

Surely parliamentary services are there for serving stations rather than making sure bits of track are used?
As the objection to closing tends to be that a particular town/village/area is no longer getting any trains. That isn’t really the case with the change of Eurostar terminus so there’s no need for any parliamentary services.

That can't be right, or there'd have been no need for the (in)famous RRB that ran between Ealing and Battersea. Neither of those locations lack train services, but the bus was to "replace" long distance trains which had previously traversed a short stretch of track between the two.

However - my question here involves the flyover west/south of Vauxhall where the Eurostar used to come off the Southeastern lines from the south east coast to the South Western lines to arrive at Waterloo.

That's not the only stretch of track which became disused when Eurostar moved to St Pancras, there's also the link between Fawkham Junction and Southfleet Junction in Kent.

Possibly as suggested above, removal of services from both that and the flyover were covered by the enabling legislation for the northern Channel Tunnel Rail Link (the St Pancras high speed line).

 

[etr221]

My take on this is that withdrawal of the Eurostar service to Waterloo was authorised by the legislation around HS1, and there was no other service to be withdrawn: if SE service was only for engineering diversions, I don't believe it would have counted as 'a service' to be continued.

 

[waverley47]

Surely parliamentary services are there for serving stations rather than making sure bits of track are used?
As the objection to closing tends to be that a particular town/village/area is no longer getting any trains. That isn’t really the case with the change of Eurostar terminus so there’s no need for any parliamentary services.

I'm principal yes, in practice it's more about certain station 'links' such as the Morecambe north curve example mentioned earlier.

The statute only defines 'services' and therefore it is easier to just assume it covers pairs of stations as well as individual stations. For that reason, certain curves get a parliamentary service, so that the service over the curve between certain station pairs still exists. In the Morecambe example, that parliamentary service isn't serving the north curve, it is instead maintained to service the station pair of Bare Lane and Carnforth.

Here, the station pair would be Vauxhall and Wandsworth Road, but of course, there have never been direct trains between these particular stations. The only services were the Eurostar and certain diversions.

As diversions don't trigger a full parliamentary process by virtue of being temporary, and the Eurostar services were dealt with in the omnibus HS1 bill, there has never been a service around the curve that would subsequently require a parliamentary service to continue running.

In short, no parliamentary service was required because the track didn't 'close' to regular, non-eurostar services. It was never open with regular, non-eurostar services in the first place.

 

[The exile]

Certainly under the then applicable legislation, closure procedures (and thus parliamentary services) applied to track, whether or not it severed the link between stations previously served, so in that context, closure proceedings would normally have been required. An alternative theory as to why they weren’t - Eurostar services and its associated track were not covered by the 1968 Transport Act as they were not part of the nationalised railway- any more than heritage railways (including those predating 1968 like the Talyllyn or Ffestiniog) are. They can withdraw services at will.
Edit for clarification- the act applied to services routed over specific routes - not the track itself. Once there is no service I understand there is nothing to stop a route being lifted and even sold. Contrast with Germany where there is no statutory protection covering the service, but the route / track is protected.

 

[30907]

I am imagining a Parliamentary RRB/Bus de Substitution from Frethun to Waterloo

 

[The exile]

As a comparison - were there closure proceedings for the linkspan at Dover before the Night Ferry was withdrawn in 1980?

 

[waverley47]

Certainly under the then applicable legislation, closure procedures (and thus parliamentary services) applied to track, whether or not it severed the link between stations previously served, so in that context, closure proceedings would normally have been required. An alternative theory as to why they weren’t - Eurostar services and its associated track were not covered by the 1968 Transport Act as they were not part of the nationalised railway- any more than heritage railways (including those predating 1968 like the Talyllyn or Ffestiniog) are. They can withdraw services at will.
Edit for clarification- the act applied to services routed over specific routes - not the track itself. Once there is no service I understand there is nothing to stop a route being lifted and even sold. Contrast with Germany where there is no statutory protection covering the service, but the route / track is protected.

Surely however, that would mean that the 1968 act would only cover infrastructure that existed at the last time the railway was nationalised, which was April 1994, when BR became Railtrack?

Surely your edit is more accurate, that it is the services over the line that are subject to franchise rules (which Eurostar isn't and specifically never was) that are subject to parliamentary process to remove.

In the end, it was an irrelevance whether or not a parliamentary service was required for that curve, because Eurostar was never subject to normal rules over services. Eurostar services to Waterloo was made by the Channel Tunnel Act 1987 and was unmade by the Channel Tunnel Rail Link Act 1996, meaning there was indeed a parliamentary act to remove services over that section, just not a normal one.