The origin of 'parkway' railway stations

[Adam]

Some fascinating insights in this thread. Being a historian in the day job, I saw @Stationmaster's comment and his first hand memories and immediately thought to take a look at the catalogue of The National Archives to see what the contemporary official records might say. The official board type documents can often be quite revealing (they were for the sale of the West Somerset Railway trackbed which I had to check or work purposes relatively recently) and they are indeed at Kew:

 

https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C11185333

 

https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C10929474

 

https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C10958959

 

If you can wait a few weeks, @Captain Kernow I can call them up when I'm next there in the New Year and take some pictures. There are other files looking at the application of the model to other locations which might be of interest. I would not be at all surprised if BR had a very clear idea off what it thought was and was not a parkway model at the higher echelons and I wonder how that developed?

 

Adam

[Oldddudders]

16 hours ago, wombatofludham said:

 

Well I could never diss Dudley if my family history research is to be believed and I am the 15x great grandson of the first Earl of Dudley and my 14x great grandmother was born in the Castle.
 

In that case, M'lord Mark, I doff my cap. My father adopted - through due legal process - the surname Dudley circa 1938. I have no idea why, and we didn't discover this until we went to register his death in 1982. Since he had walked out on his Geordie family circa 1930, and my mother had pre-deceased him by a decade, there was no-one to ask!

[colin penfold]

In terms of your local authority question Tim it makes absolute sense that a city or large town with issues of congestion would wish to promote or encourage parkway stations as it would out of town retail shopping units. As a planning authority you would want to keep unnecessary traffic out of the centre. To find out specifics to any case you would need to review the original planning application, minutes of planning committee meetings and the local plan documents to find out the degree of LA involvement. For example if a parcel of land had been put aside designated for transport use prior to any application being received it would suggest that the LA was actively pushing the idea rather than passively supporting it. HTH.

[Edwin_m]

2 hours ago, colin penfold said:

In terms of your local authority question Tim it makes absolute sense that a city or large town with issues of congestion would wish to promote or encourage parkway stations as it would out of town retail shopping units. As a planning authority you would want to keep unnecessary traffic out of the centre. To find out specifics to any case you would need to review the original planning application, minutes of planning committee meetings and the local plan documents to find out the degree of LA involvement. For example if a parcel of land had been put aside designated for transport use prior to any application being received it would suggest that the LA was actively pushing the idea rather than passively supporting it. HTH.

Bristol has the complication that the Parkway and most of the northern suburbs are in a different authority (South Gloucestershire) and when I was involved in tram proposals 20 years ago there was definitely tension between the two about whether it should serve the out-of-town centre at Cribbs Causeway (in SG).  Local authorities may not favour out-of-town shopping if they think it will hurt their town centres.  

[wombatofludham]

3 hours ago, Edwin_m said:

Bristol has the complication that the Parkway and most of the northern suburbs are in a different authority (South Gloucestershire) and when I was involved in tram proposals 20 years ago there was definitely tension between the two about whether it should serve the out-of-town centre at Cribbs Causeway (in SG).  Local authorities may not favour out-of-town shopping if they think it will hurt their town centres.  

For years the same tension existed about the Merry Hell centre in the Midlands and even Birmingham and Walsall had serious reservations about any Metro extension serving the centre, despite no-one in their right mind driving past Walsall to get to Merry Hill, or deserting Birmingham for the place.  Eventually, after research was done, it was confirmed that the centre was a bigger draw to people in Worcestershire than Staffordshire or Warwickshire, simply because of the awful, slow roads and lack of public transport from the north and east, whereas Walsall was a destination for people in the Chase who would never go to Brierley Hill, and Birmingham was of such size to be a regionally important destination in it's own right, which could fend off a collection of crinkly tin sheds.  As an example, when I lived in Staffordshire it was actually quicker for me to drive to Meadowhall in Sheffield than Merry Hill, if I wanted to have a Mall experience, which wasn't very often.

However, those unfounded concerns from the other Black Country councils effectively added a final nail into the already glacial progress on Metro extensions until recently.

[RailWest]

From time to time in years gone by I had need to visit the 'new' MoD site at Abbey Wood (Filton). By then it had long become the case that its car-parking capacity was woefully inadequate both for staff and visitors. Staff just had to 'lump it'. In the case of visitors, it became the 'stock response' from the security guards that, if the car-park was full when you arrived, you were advised to drive to Bristol Parkway, park there, and get a taxi back! So no benefit to rail traffic then, even more so ridiculous given that AW had its own station  and could have been served by services from BP !

[Downendian]

I've just noticed that on the first day cover image I posted earlier, the class 47 is two tone green with full yellow ends, but with an edited BR arrow applied! Not a  combination ever seen as far as I know. Obviously an attempt to show the "modern" railway of 1972. 

[ianwales]

On ‎24‎/‎12‎/‎2019 at 12:39, Gwiwer said:

As is Port Talbot Parkway in my opinion.  Both are the only station serving their towns and should have the suffix dropped.  

 

 

Have to disagree with you here, PT Parkway has plenty of parking and near the motorway, for those of us living west of Swansea it is quicker to park and catch a train at PT than it is to go into Swansea and catch a connecting service.

 

Ian

Edited December 29, 2019 by ianwales

[MidlandRed]

On 24 December 2019 at 22:57, melmerby said:

That's also a silly one as there is no such place as Sandwell. It's a Local Authority named after a geographical feature.

And *Dudley is some distance away and there are no motorway or even decent roads to connect it to the station. Dudley Port on the same line is nearer to Dudley but has a miniscule car park.

 

*Definitely larger than Mansfield. (Population of the borough is approx 300000, Mansfield is only about 100000)

As you say, Sandwell was a 'concocted' Metropolitan Borough name created in LG reorganisation in 1974, combining  the Boroughs of West Bromwich and Warley. A rather amorphous area combining places as far apart as Smethwick, Old Hill, Blackheath, West Bromwich and Great Bridge (and Dudley Port), such was its desire to create an identity it even entered a team in TV's It's A Knockout and also harangued the DfT to change the name Warley on M5 signs to Sandwell!! Mention of place names in its hallowed halls was anathema at the time, especially Warley!! West Bromwich had suffered the ignomi of losing it's London rail service when the ex GWR main line station closed in the 60s (now a tram stop on the B'ham-Wolverhampton route), the Borough being left with local stations on the Stourbridge-Birmingham and Wolverhampton to Birmingham lines. Dudley similarly lost a lot of stations including it's main town station. The Boroughs and WMPTE combined with BR to redevelop Oldbury station (actually only 1.5 km from West Bromwich, less than 1 km from Oldbury) as a mainline parkway - these Boroughs were devastated by early 80s manufacturing industry collapse so no doubt received development funding. A feature was to be a massive car park on the north side of the line, to the east of the A4034 past the site. I recall layouts for this were developed by Sandwell MBC. So it was never a surprise when the most ludicrously inappropriate name, geographically, was applied!! Interesting that the word Sandwell was (pre Borough days) as associated with the bordering area of Birmingham (Handsworth) as it was with the north east part of West Bromwich. Id love to have heard the chenannigans which occurred agreeing that station name with BR!! 

 

Tame Bridge Parkway is at the south-east end of Bescot yard on the Walsall/ Birmingham line - accessed from the A4031 (Walsall/West Bromwich) road, it can surely only be intended as a park and ride for linking Birmingham and Walsall/Wolverhampton whereas S and D was intended as a London link from the Boroughs. 

 

WMPTE had a history of facilitating/developing  bus/rail and in some cases p and R interchange such as Cradley Heath, Knowle and Dorridge, Solihull, Marston Green. There was a major bus route corridor past S and D Parkway. 

 

Interestingly, Bescot station was rather half-heartedly pushed in the 60s post electrification era as a P and R without actually calling it that. Those of us who visited Bescot in that era would possibly also have thought leaving your car for the day unattended in such a location would be a bit worrying, surrounded only by sewage works, waste land, industrial buildings and the railway - footfall from rail enthusiasts was probably the largest flow (not that they would nick cars - however for those who might it would have been a quiet location to do so). It was not a success!! 

Edited December 29, 2019 by MidlandRed
Added detail

[wombatofludham]

12 minutes ago, MidlandRed said:

Tame Bridge Parkway is at the south-east end of Bescot yard on the Walsall/Birmingham line - it can surely only be intended as a park and ride for linking Birmingham whereas S and D was intended as a London link. Interestingly, Bescot station was rather half-heartedly pushed in the 60s post electrification as a P and R without actually calling it that. Those of us who visited Bescot in that era would possibly also have thought leaving your car for the day in such a location would be a bit worrying, surrounded only by sewage works, waste land, industrial buildings and the railway - it was not a great success!! 

Correct, when planned it was purely as a park and ride station for south and east Walsall and north and east West Bromwich which at the time still didn't have a Metro service, primarily to serve Birmingham.  It was in part a recognition of the inadequacy of Bescot, where the car park was the wrong side of the river and was inadequate for the mobility impaired, whereas the new station was fully step free and had plenty of land for a secure, level car park.  Unfortunately it is not a convenient route from the motorway to Tame Bridge despite it being within sight and sound of the station.  I suspect the "Parkway" nomenclature was a marketing ploy to advertise the new park and ride site which was constructed a while after the main station facilities due to land acquisition issues.

Of course, it did become a "stop of desperation" by Wrexham and Shropshire who thanks to moderation of competition rules were prevented from picking up at Wolverhampton, so became the only Black Country stop for them, it is now served by the round the houses LNWR service to London via Northampton, and I wouldn't be surprised if the new "Avanti" Walsall-London service calls there when it starts in the next twelve months or so,

[MidlandRed]

Of course, in those early days of Birmingham to Euston electrification, the 'round the houses' ride on an AM10 was cheaper for teenage railway enthusiasts, and also had the added advantage of being able to spot on the way - one stood little chance from the inter-city, such was it's then, unprecedented and continuous high speed.  

 

Apologies - off topic! 

[melmerby]

19 minutes ago, MidlandRed said:

Of course, in those early days of Birmingham to Euston electrification, the 'round the houses' ride on an AM10 was cheaper for teenage railway enthusiasts, and also had the added advantage of being able to spot on the way - one stood little chance from the inter-city, such was it's then, unprecedented and continuous high speed.  

 

Apologies - off topic! 

Indeed and not much slower (87mins inc 2 stops) Birmingham to Euston than the much vaunted 125mph Pendolino. (typ 81 mins & two stops)

(However the 1R14 at 0730 does it in 73 mins with no stops.)

 

EDIT. First ones I rode on were AM4 (class 304)

Edited December 29, 2019 by melmerby

[TonyMay]

On 24/12/2019 at 16:44, Dava said:

 

East Midlands Parkway is a very useful station serving the Trent Valley area, adjacent to M1, A453 and airport. The user base appreciates that it is less congested and you can always park there, at lower cost than Loughborough or other stations. As HS2b fades into improbability, its future seems quite good.

 

Dava

 

Apart from the fact that its existence has never been justified due to low passenger numbers - it seems people with cars prefer to drive to the ECML or WCML as they are significantly quicker than the ponderously slow MML.

[rodent279]

On 23/12/2019 at 20:34, 009 micro modeller said:

I’m not absolutely sure how much you can generalise but aren’t a lot of them for areas or towns that don’t have a very local station so are designed to serve people driving in from a larger area? This is interesting: 

‘When the station reopened on 7 May 1973, it was given the name Alfreton and Mansfield Parkway, as the nearby town of Mansfield in Nottinghamshire did not have a railway station of its own, making it at the time the largest town in Britain without one.’

 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfreton_railway_station

 

Somewhat similar to old station names with ‘road’ in them, which are near to but not in the named town.

 

 I think somebody on one of the Beeching/BR modernisation documentaries that’s been on in the past few years mentioned the idea that people with cars would drive to their local intercity station and then simply get on a fast train, rather than getting a local train and then changing, and that closure and withdrawal of minor stations and local stopping trains encouraged this. A more recent example that springs to mind is Aylesbury Vale Parkway, serving a relatively large, rural area which doesn’t have many rail stations but with the parkway station itself located on the end of a commuter route. So I wonder if the idea of parkway stations originally came about when it was realised that some areas would need to have particular stations with lots of parking, for those who own a car yet still do most of their journey by rail, but don’t have a local station within walking distance.

The problem with the idea that people will drive to a station and then use a train has always been that once in a car, people prefer to stay in them until they get to where they are going.

[rodent279]

On 24/12/2019 at 05:33, Downendian said:

The captain and myself have been in correspondence over these photos, they've appeared (or will appear) in one of Tim's books. These were taken in 1972 just after opening, note the BR flag at half mast, presumably coinciding with the death of the Duke of Windsor in May that year.

I did believe there was much hype at the time about Bristol Parkway being the first of this type of station. I have a first day cover somewhere, must dig it out. The BR strategy of course was to compete with the recently opened M4.

its my local station, very much changed from the early 1970s when I was there spotting, complete with wonderful hydraulics thundering through routinely. I recall meeting one of my friends dad there, who'd travelled back from London on the South Wales Pullman with reverse blue grey livery. Many happy memories of the old rudimentary station building, the station now is one of the 1970s railway success stories, along with the HSTs . It is now heavily used, and is complete with a multi storey car park that roughly occupies the site where all these lovely period  cars are parked. Note the empty car parking on the site of the lifted Stoke Gifford yard. The scene is very different today, even the wonderful Brunellian brick overbridge in the distance has been demolished and replaced with a concrete eyesore as part of the GWML electrification scheme. I know I'm a bit of a dinosaur, but I really can't get used to all the OHLE that dominates the local rail sites I grew up with back in the day.

Pedant that I am, I can't help pointing out that nothing in any of those photos is Brunellian, as the great man had been pushing up daisies for nearly half a century before the Badminton route was built .

[MidlandRed]

3 hours ago, TonyMay said:

 

Apart from the fact that its existence has never been justified due to low passenger numbers - it seems people with cars prefer to drive to the ECML or WCML as they are significantly quicker than the ponderously slow MML.

 

The MML doesn't do too badly, average speed over 90 mph, certainly south of Leicester. Whilst not at the same level as some WCML trains, the tine taken to drive across to them (say at Rugby or Tamworth on WCML) would negate much of the saving. 

 

21 minutes ago, rodent279 said:

The problem with the idea that people will drive to a station and then use a train has always been that once in a car, people prefer to stay in them until they get to where they are going.

 

It depends on the location but (although not called parkway) Ebbsfleet International, near Gravesend and easily accessible from the A2, with its voluminous car parks, seems to do extremely well with London commuters, many of whom park and cram on to the already quite full South Eastern high speed for the just under 20 min dash to St Pancras (or Stratford in some cases). Another one is Arlseley on the ECML, served by Thameslink. 

Edited December 31, 2019 by MidlandRed

[Edwin_m]

29 minutes ago, MidlandRed said:

 

The MML doesn't do too badly, average speed over 90 mph, certainly south of Leicester. Whilst not at the same level as some WCML trains, the tine taken to drive across to them (say at Rugby or Tamworth on WCML) would negate much of the saving. 

 

That may be true if you live on the doorstep of East Midlands Parkway, which not many do as the area is quite rural.  But the nearest major population centre is Nottingham, where from the southern suburbs it takes about 20min to drive to the Parkway but Grantham is only a few minutes further and generally quicker overall once the faster train journey is factored in.  I'm less familiar with Derby but it's possible people in the outer suburbs there will choose to drive to WCML stations for similar reasons.  On a map the Parkway is quite close to built-up areas in Beeston and Long Eaton, whose London services are slow, but lack of crossings of the Trent mean the Parkway is relatively inaccessible from these areas.  

[wombatofludham]

On 29/12/2019 at 17:56, melmerby said:

EDIT. First ones I rode on were AM4 (class 304)

 

You didn't so much ride in an AM4 as get tossed around and endure whiplash in an AM4...

[Gwiwer]

EMP seems to have been a good idea without accounting for all options.  You can probably never account for all options.  It does offer a handy interchange when things go wrong but as a Parkway station is isn't the best used.  Near neighbour Alfreton is a different situation as described above and lost some traffic when a nearby line reopened.  

 

What of EMP?  Perhaps fewer long-distance trains need to stop.  Perhaps it serves better as a local station within the East Midlands and for those travelling into Derby and Nottingham rather than out towards the south.  Accelerate some London trains a bit more whilst retaining reasonable business-time services at EMP and a local all-day service.

[Edwin_m]

1 minute ago, Gwiwer said:

EMP seems to have been a good idea without accounting for all options.  You can probably never account for all options.  It does offer a handy interchange when things go wrong but as a Parkway station is isn't the best used.  Near neighbour Alfreton is a different situation as described above and lost some traffic when a nearby line reopened.  

 

What of EMP?  Perhaps fewer long-distance trains need to stop.  Perhaps it serves better as a local station within the East Midlands and for those travelling into Derby and Nottingham rather than out towards the south.  Accelerate some London trains a bit more whilst retaining reasonable business-time services at EMP and a local all-day service.

It's too far out and with too infrequent a service to be a Parkway for Derby and Nottingham.  Nobody is going to risk having to wait half an hour for their train back when the journey time is only 10min or so.  There are already two P&R sites on the A453 into Nottingham, the tram one at the edge of the city and a bus-based one further in.  

 

The one realistic prospect in my opinion is the adjacent power station site, which being coal-fired is likely to close within a few years and opens up a redevelopment opportunity. 

[MidlandRed]

4 hours ago, wombatofludham said:

 

You didn't so much ride in an AM4 as get tossed around and endure whiplash in an AM4...

 

Indeed - so appalling were they that we lamented them replacing Park Royal and GRCW diesel units on B'ham to Walsall. Not only the bounciness (including the seats) they had an odd arrangement in one of the intermediate cars where each seating bay was its own compartment - later removed. They also made a dreadful loud ticking/ clanking sound from under the unit at station stops - presumably some mechanical/ electrical component refreshing itself. 

 

In comparison, the AM10s were light years ahead in all respects and were actually a comfortable unit to travel in - thankfully pairs of these were the main allocation on the stopping B'ham to Euston via Northampton services from 1967. They also had windows behind the cabs, although only part way to the waist rail so you had to stand up to look through them! 

 

The AM4s were, as suggested, quite awful - certainly initially. 

Edited December 31, 2019 by MidlandRed

[Peter Kazmierczak]

I remember standing on the seats of the AM10s to see the view ahead. The bit between Rugby and Northampton always seemed to drag. Did anyone ever use Long Buckby station?

 

As for the AM4s, I recall one trip where I wasn't sure we'd complete the journey in one piece (or still on the rails).......  Happy days!

[Edwin_m]

1 hour ago, Peter Kazmierczak said:

Did anyone ever use Long Buckby station?

I used Long Buckby circa 1988 to meet some friends on a narrowboat at Blisworth, a couple of miles walk.  Perhaps (desperate attempt to get back on topic alert) it should be "Blisworth Parkway"...