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Rillington to Pickering re-opening


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So, we have the local council in Whitby going through the motions of wanting to re-open the Rillington to Pickering line and connect up with the NYMR.

 

http://www.whitbygaz...-link-1-5085423

 

http://epetitions.di...petitions/40539

 

Some of the facts in the article are awry as the Whitby Gazette isn't exactly well known locally for factual reporting!

 

But you can get from Whitby to York in about 3 hours changing once at Middlesborough. If the rail link was put back in at Pickering it would most likely take a lot longer (off the top of my head I reckon about 3 1/2 hours), and cost more. Not to mention the amount of the trackbed that has already been built on at Pickering!

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I think that's why they want the direct link to York, so the residents can escape!!!

 

Someone has added another comment to that article, a chap called Bill Harrison, he seems to just about have hit the nail on the head - aside from the comments about enthusiasts, which I think might be a bit below the belt!

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As an enthusiast there is something very appealing about being able to travel steam hauled down to Rillington and onto Malton and York or Scarborough, but I'm guessing the logistics don't go in it's favour.

Traffic tends to back up considerably through Pickering, one can only imagine what trouble it would cause if the level crossing was reinstated!

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As an enthusiast there is something very appealing about being able to travel steam hauled down to Rillington and onto Malton and York or Scarborough, but I'm guessing the logistics don't go in it's favour.

Traffic tends to back up considerably through Pickering, one can only imagine what trouble it would cause if the level crossing was reinstated!

 

There were several crossings in Pickering:

 

Black Bull

Mill Lane

Hungate

Bridge Street

High Mill

New Bridge

 

Hungate crosses the Helmsley road, a car park at best in the summer and Black Bull crosses the main road to Malton, again a very busy one, so I would think that this has the potential to cause traffic bedlam. Not to mention that the extension to Park Street along the route of the railway line was put in to avoid the bottleneck that is Pickering market place

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Guest stuartp

How about a bit of heavy rail on-street running along The Ropery ? If it's good enough for those posh southerners with their fancy Weymouth harbour branch ....

 

(Yes I know it's closed now).

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There were several crossings in Pickering:

 

Black Bull

Mill Lane

Hungate

Bridge Street

High Mill

New Bridge

 

Hungate crosses the Helmsley road, a car park at best in the summer and Black Bull crosses the main road to Malton, again a very busy one, so I would think that this has the potential to cause traffic bedlam. Not to mention that the extension to Park Street along the route of the railway line was put in to avoid the bottleneck that is Pickering market place

 

Wow, that is a lot of crossings. Hard to imagine how that work today!

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It used to cause havoc when the goods yard was shunted as the gates had to be closed on either Hungate or Bridge Street or both. There is some excellent footage of this on Marsdens Brakevan to Whitby.

 

I have that DVD (actually have most of the Marsden Rails that are connected to the Eastern and North Eastern Regions) so will have another watch of it to see the shunting from the goods yard.

 

What is the likely hood of any of this happening do you think?

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This scheme seems to rear it's ugly head every so often. The realistic idea would be to build a by-pass to eliminate a lot of the traffic through the centre of Pickering

 

The idea mooted was for a mainline operator to run York to Pickering and NYMR to do the stretch north. With winter months possibly having through trains from Yk - Whitby.

 

One suggestion had been to re double some of the NYMR to increase the capacity for crossing trains. BUT any scheme would cost a lot of money.

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I may run contrary to popular opinion; but I actually think may of these schemes stand a fair chance in the next couple of decades. You only have to look at the stance of the Conservatives in the early nineties compared to now (a mere 20 years) on issues such as HS2 and Crossrail etc... I can remember the very real attempt only 30 years ago by them to implement another 'Beeching style' closure program with a review (Settle and Carlisle closure proposal too at this time!).

 

It's hard to believe sometimes how much attitudes have changed in such a short period of time - who remembers the ambitious (destructive?) several billion road building program in the nineties brought to an abrupt end by Swampy and pals? Or the serious proposal of the eighties to turn Marylebone in a coach station with the 'Chiltern' route a road way? Ideas that are already unthinkable now - now project that momentum forward a further 20-30 years - it's all possible....

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The bigest problem with any potential reopening is level crossings. The ORR, Trade Unions, Network Rail, local councillors, etc all have a policy of "no new level crossings" (and new includes reinstated ones). For example a recent report comissioned into the feasability of reinstating stratford-upon-avon - Honeybourne mentions that a underpass will have to be constructed at Evesham Road to replace a former level crossing if it has any chance of being aproved. The cost of doing this in Pickering is simply so hight that it would imediatley kill any serious proposall.

 

Of course one option would be to build a new station on Hungate (the other end of the Ropery from the NYMR station) which would remove having to deal with two of the former crossings. Unfortunatley this would also mean no direct connection with the NYMR (the "tramway" setup installed at Sheringham is considerably shorter than what would be needed here - and the ORR wern't exactly happy about that setup either).

 

In reality though, is it really needed. If people in Pickering want better connections to York then a high quality express bus link between Malton & Pickering (connecting with every train) would come in at a fraction of the price of reinstating the railway.

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I may run contrary to popular opinion; but I actually think may of these schemes stand a fair chance in the next couple of decades. You only have to look at the stance of the Conservatives in the early nineties compared to now (a mere 20 years) on issues such as HS2 and Crossrail etc... I can remember the very real attempt only 30 years ago by them to implement another 'Beeching style' closure program with a review (Settle and Carlisle closure proposal too at this time!).

I guess it will be like the Railway manias of the 19th Century - for every sensible well costed scheme like HS2 there will be several badly thought out pipe-dreams that make lots of noise but go nowhere. As ever the biggest challenge is going to be raising the money.

 

At least the Victorians didn't have to put up with ePetitions. This one has 42 signatures now, 10 more than the one for preserving a Pacer.

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