What if Great Central had remained open?

[Jorge Da Silva]

What if BR had not closed Great Central and had kept Great Central (and instead modernised). Who would have operated it (assumably Chiltern) what if East West Rail Link reopened and Great Central also existed? Would it have been electrified? Stopping patterns?? I also assume some stations may have still closed. Nottingham Arkwright Street would have provided some link to the existing Nottingham station I assume.

 

[AM9]

BR wuldn't have had the money to 'modernise' it as there wasn't the patronage to justify that. It's all very well posing these 'what if' questions about things not happening when traffic volumes were on freefall, but nobody would have kept a lame railway nearly 200 miles long open on the off chance that business might pick up some time in the future.
Hindsight might say that there coul;dmhave been a finite benefit but nobody could get that back in the '60s.

 

[Bald Rick]

If it had remained open, it is very likely that the MML would have closed instead.

 

[Bevan Price]

Patronage was poor because in the final few years, the service was lousy. Just 3 fast trains per day each way between Marylebone & Nottingham Victoria, plus the Bournemouth to York/Newcastle service (and one or two extra on summer saturdays.) And plus some Nottingham / Rugby locals with (apart from Loughborough & Leicester), the intermediate stations serving mostly small populations.

The Sheffield / Nottingham section could still have provided a useful service for commuting into those cities, as it served several "medium size" or "largish" towns - but that had already ceased, probably due to a combination of poor services, and slow journey times due to widespread mining subsidence - and possibly that was the main section that ought to have been saved.

Hindsight is easy, but it might have been sensible to retain the LMSR line between Leicester & Rugby, and close the GCR London extension south of Nottingham.

 

[hexagon789]

Just 3 fast trains per day each way between Marylebone & Nottingham Victoria

IIRC they were actually effectively stopping trains run as Class 1 trains but calling at all the stations which remained open.

 

[tbtc]

In the 1980s, the frequency (on the MML) from London to Leicester was only every forty five minutes (every ninety to Nottingham, every ninety to Sheffield via Derby).

The idea of splitting this demand between *two* double tracked main lines would have meant they were both basket cases (thus putting the future of the MML into doubt too).

Would the GCR have been electrified in such circumstances? If, after a generation of rising passenger numbers and increasing monies being thrown at the rail industry, neither the MML (north of Bedford) not the Chiltern line are electrified, I don't think it'd have been realistic to expect the GCR to be wired.

It's common on speculative threads like this to suggest that a certain link/service would have been "useful", but "usefulness" comes at a price. It'd be useful for me to have a couple of spare rooms in my house (for rare occasions where every relative comes to stay) but that's a luxury in the grand scheme of things. Keeping Woodhead open would be "useful" nowadays but not worth the actual costs associated with keeping it open. These things aren't free. For example, any Nottingham - Marylebone service would come at the cost of existing services into Marylebone. Not convinced.

 

[Fireless]

At the time the channel tunnel became a serious project, the GCML would have turned into a quite valuable asset due to Watkin's foresight.
It would have been a very logical part of a UIC loading gauge corridor between the North and the continent.

 

[Pigeon]

...in that with it being minimally used it wouldn't cause unmanageable disruption to shut it down to rebuild all the structures?

 

[edwin_m]

Patronage was poor because in the final few years, the service was lousy. Just 3 fast trains per day each way between Marylebone & Nottingham Victoria, plus the Bournemouth to York/Newcastle service (and one or two extra on summer saturdays.) And plus some Nottingham / Rugby locals with (apart from Loughborough & Leicester), the intermediate stations serving mostly small populations.

It was famously said of the GC London Extension that the largest place it served that didn't already have a railway service was Lutterworth.

Had the GC remained open the Midland would also have had to remain open to serve the much more significant towns along its route as well as Derby. I agree it's a shame the Midland route to Rugby wasn't revived at the time of GC closure to fill the only significant gap it left in the rail network.

 

[B&I]

Whatever the rights and wrongs of closing lines at the time, selling off trackbeds left right and centre.was a horrendous blunder. Was it really so vital to BR's financial health that entire routes were irredeemably lost so handfuls of houses could be built here and there ? The land should have been retained in BR ownership and used for temporary, reversible purposes

 

[Journeyman]

Patronage was poor because in the final few years, the service was lousy.

The service was lousy because in the final few years, patronage was poor.

That's a much more accurate reflection.

 

[Journeyman]

At the time the channel tunnel became a serious project, the GCML would have turned into a quite valuable asset due to Watkin's foresight.
It would have been a very logical part of a UIC loading gauge corridor between the North and the continent.

The GC being built to continental loading gauge is a myth. It was slightly generous by UK standards, but there was a bridge on the route that was infamous for sustaining damage whenever loco tenders were slightly overloaded.

The UIC loading gauge specifications weren't even finalised until fifteen years after the GC London Extension opened, and back then many main lines in continental Europe weren't compliant with it anyway.

In any case, how would you get continental gauge stock from the tunnel to the GC?

 

[Western Lord]

Not this old chestnut again. Not only was the GC London extension not built to UIC loading gauge, it didn't even reach London but used the Metropolitan Railway from Quainton Road to Harrow on the Hill. I can't see fast expresses mixing with Metropolitan Line trains between Harrow and Amersham.

 

[Journeyman]

Not this old chestnut again. Not only was the GC London extension not built to UIC loading gauge, it didn't even reach London but used the Metropolitan Railway from Quainton Road to Harrow on the Hill. I can't see fast expresses mixing with Metropolitan Line trains between Harrow and Amersham.

That's the thing - the GC's entries into London, both the one via the Met and the one via the GC/GW joint - were far from satisfactory, clogged up with other traffic and not built to the same engineering standards, and that's one of the reasons why it eventually closed.

The Metropolitan Line is FAR busier than it was back in the days when the GC main line was open, both with more frequent LU and Chiltern services, and attempting to weave in expresses to any worthwhile frequency would be nigh-on impossible.

 

[PeterC]

That's the thing - the GC's entries into London, both the one via the Met and the one via the GC/GW joint - were far from satisfactory, clogged up with other traffic and not built to the same engineering standards, and that's one of the reasons why it eventually closed.

The Metropolitan Line is FAR busier than it was back in the days when the GC main line was open, both with more frequent LU and Chiltern services, and attempting to weave in expresses to any worthwhile frequency would be nigh-on impossible.

In 1968 only 1 Aylesbury an 1 Amersham per hour.