Anyone fancy joining a putative line revival project?

I'm sorry BB but you are talking out of your hat ever more in this thread now. Have you ever actually ever been to the Scottish Borders or are you merely pontificating from a safe distance of several hundred miles away, a map seen through rose-tinted glasses on and no actual knowledge of the area?

Thought so.

"The potential for tourism" in the are of the Borders that you are so confidently predicting would be "enormous" is, in fact, pretty much zero. I lived there for several years and, compared to the Highlands, virtually nobody goes there. The all scoot round each side on the A1 and A74 (M) and head for the lumpy bits.

The Alnwick-Cornhill line would be a vast undertaking going from somewhere to nowhere, through nowhere and is paralleled throughout its length by the A697, which is a far quicker way to get to the (very few) tourist attractions. The Tweedmouth-St Boswells line would be an even bigger undertaking and goes from almost nowhere to almost nowhere through nowhere and there's even less touristy along there. I could have used the train from Norham to Tweedmouth when I was a season ticket holder at Berwick Rangers but... that's about it!

Alnmouth to (near) Alnwick is at least on a major tourist route for passing trade and there is a huge tourist attraction in the form of Alnwick Castle. There is the potential there for people to travel by the ECML to Alnmouth, steam train to Lionheart then a vintage bus or something to the town centre. Dreaming of reopening the other lines you mention is not just impractical, impossible and implausible, it's utterly ridiculous.

This thread seems to have degenerated from you asking if anyone was interested in helping with a fantasy reopening plan (which they weren't) into a mere list of your dreams.

You strike me very much as one of those "If it's a railway it automatically MUST be a good thing" types. Having lived in Scotlandshire for quite a number of years since I bailed from the south-east, to be honest I am of the view that there are many issues in this country that could well have been better served by having the £zillions chucked at them than those that have been expended on a glorified siding from Millerhill to a couple of small towns.

I realise that view makes me about as popular as a fart in a space suit on forums such as this, and I do hope it succeeds, but in my view there are other issues that should have been tackled as a higher priority.

 

Interesting pastime here. Seven pages but page one decided it was a 'non event'. Ah! well, we all have our dreams.

 

DisusedBranch, I have friends in that part of the world, and my father was born and grew up in Scotland (albeit much further north than the Borders). Just because a road parallels a railway doesn't mean reopening the railway wouldn't be a good idea, and quite often a heritage railway can prove to be the major draw in an area hitherto lacking in tourism, and may even lead to further attractions being developed. It's also worth pointing out that the closure of lines such as these often caused immense damage to small, isolated rural communities, where the young and the old are especially deprived of opportunities and basic amenities - so some form of community-rail reopening would serve to tackle that problem. I'm not familiar with the detailed socio-economics of that part of the world, but I am of the view that reopening railways is generally a good way of alleviating poverty in rural areas.

Granted, the thread has rather rambled from its original topic, mainly because the latter has been comprehensively exhausted.

 

I have listened, and taken on board what has been said - the proposed project has been effectively moribund for some time and is likely to remain so. As for always having an answer - I rather thought the purpose of this forum was healthy debate. Yes, the thread has drifted tangentially, but is that necessarily such a big problem?

 

Given the enormous cost of reopening railways, I am of the view that, in many cases, those many millions of pounds would be much more effectively spent in directly improving those opportunities and basic amenities of which you speak, rathe than just providing another way to get to and from them.

After all, the 'young and the old' still have to get to the railway station, which from many 'small, isolated rural communities' - such as those in the Borders more than a few minutes walk from Tweedbank, Galashiels, Stow and Gorebridge - is still a car journey away. And if these 'young and old' people don't or can't drive, what then?

Which kind of brings us to the point of why so many railways were closed in the first place. Why drive to the station when you can go door to door?

I'm not saying it's right, it's just how it is. I think some railway reopenings are certainly worth doing, but just because it is a railway doesn't mean that it should be reopened. That's the land of railway enthusiast fantasies, characterised by highly selective reasoning.

Which is where this thread started, isn't it?

PS I do admire your idealism, though. Jeremy Corbyn would be proud ;-)

 

A really good question, but which misses the point where those who can't drive are concerned.

For better or worse, human society has typically flourished most where there are concentrations of people, and these concentrations have drawn people in. This creates the need for travel - whether to the cities, or to smaller locations for them to do business with the cities. If the travel links are poor, this can lock in problems outside the cities - something that appears to have happened since the decline of the textiles industry in the Borders. Developing the facilities where people are may be a good idea, but it also creates issues. For example, I visited a youth scheme in South Molton a few months ago. The need was definitely there, but resources were a major issue. Not least, the leader was having to weekly commute from mid Cornwall to be able to work there. At some point, it will not be money but the availability of skilled people that will be the limiting factor.

That means transport is key. Reverting to the Borders, there are some particular issues reinforcing the isolation of the area. Some are due to the congestion in Edinburgh, some are due to the topography - look at how far someone using the Selkirk branch had to go to get to Galashiels, compared with the road. This in turn creates the opportunity for the railway to thrive if it is easier to make journeys by changing mode rather than going door to door. With the railway acting as a fast artery, it can be fed by a mixture of bus links (do I recall that the railway station in Galashiels was built next to the bus station?) and park & ride (hence Tweedbank rather than Galashiels as the terminus). One can debate whether enough of the railway has been reinstated, or whether the reinstatement should have been to a different spec, but the early evidence suggests that it is already relieving pent up demand.

What suits the Borders, however, may well not suit other places.

 

The whole "door to door" argument is somewhat irrelevant... because we could ultimately reduce that to the point that we've turned all our railways into new motorways, ECML and WCML included. Hey, don't Plymouth and Cornwall want the M5 extended down to them? Simple, build it on the GWML. The point is, even for relatively short local journeys, railways can play a valuable part in the transportation network. I also think that, ultimately, with full privatisation, the present half-arsed mess and full nationalisation having been tried and found wanting in various ways, we're going to have to look to "the third sector" to run the rail network, as part of a wider agenda of increased localism... and who better in that "third sector" to do so than the heritage railway industry? Take their expertise, apply a few billion quid from the Treasury, give 'em compulsory purchase powers, and tell 'em to get on with it. Can you imagine what the Great Central guys would do with a tenth of the HS2 budget?!

 

Probable waste it on broken Turntables, Strange coaches and dubious color schemes

Cheers
Colin

 

There are some journeys where door-to-door isn't much fun in a car. I have a choice of two railway stations both approximately eight miles from my house, Stonegate and Buxted. My work occasionally takes me to London and I'm very thankful that I can drive to these quiet stations and then go by train the rest of the way. However, you do have a point. Especially for people who do not live near to a station, there other journeys which would be a nightmare using public transport. Last Saturday, for instance, I went to a wedding which was held about 8 miles from the nearest station. It would have taken twice as long to have used public transport for the bulk of the journey than it did to drive. What applies to me in Sussex would also apply to people using either the reopened Waverley line or a hypothetical reopened line from Guildford to Cranleigh. If you're visiting the Capital City (Edinburgh or London respectively), then driving a few miles to a station and then catching a train, especially if that station is situated in a resonably quiet location, would be a very welcome proposition. However, a cheaper option for Surrey village commuters not wanting to face driving into Guildford would be to electrify from Shalford Junction to Shalford and run some Guildford-terminating services through to there.

 

Except there is little parking available in Shalford.

As to the argument that people will, once in their cars, not bother to take the train, the growth in car parks at many stations would argue against this.

In an earlier version of this argument I made reference to a book called last trains by Charles Loft. One of the anecdotes he quotes is of someone who was born in Cirencester long after the railway closed. When told that there was once a railway to the town replied, why it is no distance to drive to Kemble and pick up the train there. Attitudes change over time.

 

The parking in the Shalford area is the Artington park & ride, right next to Peasmarsh Junction. The obvious thing is to build a station there, serving the P&R, the big offices and industrial facilities adjacent, initially just with trains to Guildford and points north and Godalming and points south, but also making provision for reinstatement of the Cranleigh line in some shape or form.

 

Except that wasn't John P's suggestion in relation to Shalford. Arrington being on a different line to Shalford, as I'm sure you are aware.

Most of the offices seem vacant last time I was there.

 

Artington is on the Portsmouth main line, I know. It's still close to Shalford Junction, and to Shalford village. It would still serve the village. Perhaps the offices have lost occupants lately, but when I visited them a few years ago they were well occupied.

 

Except the Park and Ride is already fairly full during the week with commuters travelling by the bus into Guildford.

People that might use a railway facility there probably already drive to Farncombe and fill up the residential roads around there.

David R

 

Alnwick-Cornhill would be my dream what-if (I've said that on here before). But harsh facts get in the way like the line being so uneconomic that when the bridge at Ilderton was damaged in the late 40s they didn't fix it but ran the line instead as 2 branch lines that didn't meet in the middle until eventual closure... In addition, my list of dream what-ifs would involve the line getting into the queue along with the fully functional 1:1 recreation of HMS HOOD, The Great Bear (surely just a matter of time before Didcot cracks and just does it anyway), and the Wyre Forest branch.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, I'd prefer to see 82045 finished, Princes Risborough finally reached from Chinnor, and a nice secure future for the Talyllyn.

 

Hmm, you're not the first person who's mentioned a replica Hood to me - encountered a guy in a Vulcan XH558 FB group with the same dream. As for the Great Bear, you'd need to fix so much stuff on it that you'd just end up with the Hawksworth 80xx Cathedral class... is Talyllyn not secure after 60-odd years?

David, it's not THAT full, and a lot of the people use the bus to get to Guildford station to get the train from there anyway!

 

Yes, that is how Mablethorpe is reopening!

 

Now that's a whole different quantum level of 'impossible dream'. You could probably reinstate several dozen closed lines for what that would cost (at least, if it's anything like at full scale).

Noel

 

Noel, I agree, but the chap seems to think he has the capability to do it, so fair play to him... I won't be donating, though!