Newly Built or Re-instated Railways

[Grumbleweed]

Hello all, 

 

I'm new to this forum, and read with interest the thread about evocative abandoned railway sites.

 

Got me thinking though - what about those places now full of interest and activity, that were once dead or dormant?

 

As an occasional traveller on the former MSJA line out of Manchester, now a tramway to Altrincham, the former Warwick Road station, now called Old Trafford, features a view of a substantial tram depot.

 

Same thing near the Gyle shopping centre in Edinburgh, not to mention the reinstated route to Glasgow via Bathgate, and the Waverley line coming back to life.

 

Where else lifts the heart with newfound life?

[Oakydoke]

The old North Woolwich line, a little used and semi-derelict branch line in its final decades, before final closure and complete dereliction.

 

Now much of its route has been reborn as the vibrant and well used DLR and most of the remainder, including the disused Connaught Tunnel, is currently being rebuilt as part of the Crossrail project. From a little used run down branch, it will soon be brought back to life as part of one of the most intensely used and busy passenger railways in the UK.

[phil-b259]

Interms of reopenings of lines to passengers (and ignoring little spurs) Scotland had by far the best track record with all of the following involving complete reinstatement of long lifted track (not just the reintroduction of passenger services to freight routes

Starting with the most recent we have:
Edinburgh - Tweedbank
Airdrie - Bathgate
Stirling - Allow
Hamilton - Larkhall
Paisley Cananal branch
The Argyle line (under Glasgow central low level)

If we include former freight only lines (which have fundamentally been intact trackwise) then Scotland scores with

Rutherglen - Wiffet line
Glasgow Queen Street services eastwards to Stepps and Westwards to Maryhill
Edinburgh -Bathgate

Wales also has done well with the reintroduction of passenger services to freight lines including

Maestag
Ebow Vale
Vale of Glamorgan
Aberdare

England on the other hand has only seen one reopening outside of the northern TPE areas or London (where the GLA in the 70s and 80s or TfL have been able to influence things) and that is Nottingham to Mansfield and then Worksop.

As with lots of things these days Westminster continues to let the English down while the devolved administrations do well.

[Dava]

Well informed, your quote on 'Paisley Cananal' has it just right.

 

Dava

[wombatofludham]

The joint formation north out of Birmingham Snow Hill which was reopened to heavy rail in 1994 and to Metro in 1999.  The section between St Pauls Metro stop and the Jewellery Quarter is in a deep blue-brick lined cutting which dramatically opens out into the Jewellery Quarter station.  The track here was widened to accommodate Metro which meant unfortunately re-locating some of the graves in Key Hill Cemetery next door, which was until the late 1940s a privately run cemetery which re-used an old quarry, and was created as the first non-conformist cemetery in the country.  Martin Shaw, the actor, recently revealed one of his ancestors had been one of the bodies relocated!  The two lines continue to run in parallel, at Benson Road the Metro rises up on a flyover to make way for a cement works siding (now closed), with the Metro making more stops until the last joint station, The Hawthorns, next to the eponymous football ground, home to West Brom.  Here the heavy rail line turns left to cross the canal next to the elegant Victorian Galton Bridge where the line interchanges at the upper level with the lower level Stour Valley at Smethwick Galton Bridge.  Here the line forms a trailing junction with the link to Birmingham New Street to continue to Stourbridge and Worcester.  Back at the Hawthorns, the Metro continues along the old GWR main line to Wolverhampton and Birkenhead as far as Monmore Green where it branches off, joining the A41 as tramway into Wolverhampton city centre.  It shares the formation with a parallel foot and cyclepath which, thanks to strenuous efforts to minimise the loss of trees and habitat, retains a leafy feel with wildlife seemingly happy to live with frequent tram traffic!  In fact, part of the route has preserved, by chance, some of the last stretches of acid grassland and plants that once covered large areas around Sandwell.  The rest has been built on but the section that recolonized the railway cuttings has remained untouched ever since - and is being managed and preserved as part of the landscaping scheme for Metro to this day.

 

During construction a lot of effort was put into the design to try and assist the regeneration of the area.  The three Jewellery Line stations were architect designed and had artists working alongside the architects and engineers to work on seating, lighting, glasswork and security fencing.  The Jewellery Quarter station features stained glass themed around "time" and "jewellery" by internationally renowned glass artist Alexander Beleschenko, who did similar work for Birmingham's ICC, as well as artist designed platform benches, the Hawthorns car park features striking "Triffid" street lighting by Andrew Darke and Anu Patel who also designed the seating, and Galton Bridge features more coloured glazing, in the style of Smethwick Ruskin Pottery which used to be made nearby, again by Alex Beleschenko, and stainless steel seating by Ron Arad, whose previous customers have included Terence Conran.  Along the lineside Anu and Andrew worked on security fencing which is both robust, safe and decorative - and what is more, worked out cheaper to make using local manufacturers rather than the out-of-a-catalogue palisade fensing which would otherwise have been used.  Similar details are also featured on the Metro where each stop has a custom designed "manhole cover" at the entrance featuring a local connection, the Metro platforms at The Hawthorns have decorative bricks set into the retaining wall featuring leaf designs from trees in the vicinity, and of course the giant stainless steel horse "leaping" over the Metro depot was installed as part of the scheme, celebrating Wodin's mythical eight legged horse, Sleipnir, Wednesbury being of course, Wodin's Borough.

 

The two routes of course re-opened the majority of the GW main line in the Black Country and the link to the "Old Worse and Worse" and as such have regenerated the old GWR system in Birmingham and the Black Country whilst integrating modern transport needs, and traction, with environmental sensitivity.  I think both routes definitely come into the category of once dead and dormant routes now vital and interesting, whatever you may think about the rolling stock.  It's hard to imagine that when I was doing my Town Planning degree at Birmingham Polytechnic, we used to visit West Bromwich and the Jewellery Quarter as places that were in need of regeneration and which were dying.  Today, partly as a result of the rail investment, the Jewellery Quarter is thriving and West Brom is seeing unprecedented regeneration.

[TheSignalEngineer]

The Jewellery Line is one of my favourites. I wrote the Section C notice requests for the closure of the line north from Snow Hill and removal of the signal boxes back in the 1970s. Later I wrote the specification for the design and supply of the equipment for the re-instatement of Moor St to Snow Hill and was part of the team working with the PTE on Snow Hill to Smethwick West. I rode up front on the HMRI Inspection of the line on completion of the signalling and then travelled on the ceremonial re-opening train prior to resumption of the through service to Stourbridge. I took with me the S&T man who made the entries in the train registers on the closure of the line. Finally I was involved in the work for signalling immunisation on the heavy rail when the Metro was being built.

[big jim]

how about olive mount chord in liverpool enabling trains to access the docks from the chat moss end of the line without having to run round in wapping sidings

 

 

the bletchley to oxford line is being relaid as a double track 100mph line

 

and linked to that you have the new chord between the oxford to bletchley line and the chiltern mainline which is slowly getting there (im dropping 15 autoballasters worth of stone down there next week!)

 

also new you have the completly new track alignment between northolt park and south ruislip that does away with the down mainline ducking under the paddington line (although it is still in use as a loop for down trains stopping at south ruislip) by sending it on a new embankment alongside the up line

 

there is also the new(ish) 4 track alignment south of lichfield trent valley towards tamworth, again on a completly new widened embankment arrangment

[phil-b259]

how about olive mount chord in liverpool enabling trains to access the docks from the chat moss end of the line without having to run round in wapping sidings

 

the bletchley to oxford line is being relaid as a double track 100mph line

 

and linked to that you have the new chord between the oxford to bletchley line and the chiltern mainline which is slowly getting there (im dropping 15 autoballasters worth of stone down there next week!)

 

also new you have the completly new track alignment between northolt park and south ruislip that does away with the down mainline ducking under the paddington line (although it is still in use as a loop for down trains stopping at south ruislip) by sending it on a new embankment alongside the up line

 

there is also the new(ish) 4 track alignment south of lichfield trent valley towards tamworth, again on a completly new widened embankment arrangment

 

While the Olive mount chord was indeed a reopening, it wasn't that long (and is freight only) while the realignment in the Northolt area is still similar in magnitude, i.e. not big schemes in distance terms. Four tracking of the Trent valley section of the WCML , while technically involving new track hasn't added any new connectivity like the Scottish or Welsh examples (aside from allowing frequency improvements) as the towns involved were already linked by rail. If you look at things critically, England hasn't done much (outside TPE sponsored areas) for decades and the reopening of the Oxford - Bletchley line is the first substantive reopening for 20 years. Besides, while appreciating the reopening is basically a total rebuild, its still not a patch on Scotlands efforts where the actual where the trackbed had been sold off and required re-purchasing it as they did with the Larkhall branch, the Airdrie - Bathgate and now the former Waverley route to Tweedbank.

[wombatofludham]

Whilst not a resurrected closed or dormant line, as it was a busy route for freight and diversions, the re-opening to passenger services of the Chase Line is worthy of note as it was made in the face of quite a bit of hostility from the Department for (London & South East's) Transport at the time.  A classic "Beeching blunder", closing just as Walsall and Wolverhampton Councils signed huge housing overspill agreements with the then Cannock and Rugeley District councils, moving thousands of people out of the Black Country who would have found a passenger train service useful,  it was always being talked about for re-opening although never got anywhere.  Eventually a tenuous agreement was reached between WMPTE, Staffs County Council (who were not keen on funding rail projects at the time, which is why for some years a lot of Cross City trains terminated at Blake Street as Staffordshire refused to co-fund their extension to Lichfield) and Cannock Chase district, and the line re-opened to Hednesford in 1989, but it took nearly another ten years to reach Rugeley in 1997.  Initially the Hednesford terminus resulted from the need to squeeze the passenger service into the pattern of coal trains serving Rugeley power station, and the available finance, but at least it was a start.  The initial service was an hourly shuttle to Walsall, which was later extended in operating hours and through to Birmingham.

 

The reason why I think it possibly fits into the original idea for this thread is the impact it has had on the Cannock Chase corridor.  As a town planner who used to work for Centro, and who used to live just outside Rugeley, it has been interesting to see how Rugeley has become a more popular place to live and how house prices, which were always substantially lower that neighbouring rail connected locations, have caught up. The line has become popular and reconnected the area with the West Midlands conurbation.  It has largely killed off the express bus services in the corridor although motorway congestion on the M6 also helped kill off some services.  The line has helped regenerate Hednesford and Rugeley where new retail, housing and employment development has taken place, obviously some of which would have happened anyway but some of which would have been helped along by the presence of a regular rail service.  Proposals are in hand to electrify the line, only 50 years after it was first planned in the 1960s, and to improve line speeds from the current sedate 45-50mph to 75mph., until recently there was semaphore signalling along the route but I understand it has now gone along with the signal boxes at Bloxwich and Rugeley.  Suggestions are being made that a Birmingham to Liverpool service would be integrated into the Chase line on electrification giving Walsall a regular through main line service for the first time in some years if it happens.
 

So, another example of a moribund freight only line, albeit vital as a through route fro MGR traffic to Rugeley, being rejuvenated by the re-introduction, cautiously and step by step, of passenger services which in turn has helped in the economic transformation of the towns it serves.

 

[unravelled]

My local example is the section of line between Surrey Quays and Old Kent rd junction (?) in SE London. Out of a maze of tracks around New Cross Gate, that section of trackbed remained clear for the best part of 100 years, allowing recent reinstatement. It now forms part of the London Overground route to Clapham Junction.

 

Another local example happened a long time ago. The branch from Nunhead to Greenwich, closed about 100 years ago, was truncated and redircted near St Johns, to link to Lewisham.

 

Dave

[Rivercider]

The Portishead Branch has been reopened for freight only as far as a connection into Portbury Docks for coal and car traffic.

 

The proposed reopening of the line to passenger services to a new station at Portishead, short of the original terminus, is now getting near the top of the 'to do' list,

 

cheers

[jamie92208]

In West Yorkshire several curves were closed in the 80's and two of them were reopened to allow a Bradford, Halifax Huddersfield service to start.  The section of the Calder Valley main line was only used for occaisional passenger diversions and freights but now carries an hourly service from Leeds to, I think, Hebden Bridge.  This has allowed the re-opening of Brighouse station.  

 

Jamie

[big jim]

While the Olive mount chord was indeed a reopening, it wasn't that long (and is freight only) while the realignment in the Northolt area is still similar in magnitude, i.e. not big schemes in distance terms.

whats the old saying, "its not the length its how you use it"!!

 

agreed olive mount isnt that long but its certainly as significant as some of the bigger schemes mentioned in terms of how much flexability it has produced, how it has reduced train times and to an extent reduced train mileages, it may only save a couple of miles but its also saved a lot of time consuming run rounds and freed up valuable train paths around edge hill and again to an extent between there and weaver jn (at the expense of paths over chat moss!)

 

similarly ruislip to northolt, although less than a mile long when that was built and opened it effectively re-wrote the railway map in that area, in the up direction when heading to marylebone the old alignment required you to take the secondary route (ie flashing yellows and the No1 route indicator) as the 'mainline' continued to greenford and paddington, when the new line was built the mainline became the line to marylebone and the secondary route the one to greenford, speeds also increased from 40mph to 100mph

 

regards reopenings purchasing land, looking at how big the farmhouse just south of lichfield became and how fancy the cars parked outside were after the work was completed i dont think he did too bad out of the 4 tracking

[phil-b259]

whats the old saying, "its not the length its how you use it"!!

 

agreed olive mount isnt that long but its certainly as significant as some of the bigger schemes mentioned in terms of how much flexability it has produced, how it has reduced train times and to an extent reduced train mileages, it may only save a couple of miles but its also saved a lot of time consuming run rounds and freed up valuable train paths around edge hill and again to an extent between there and weaver jn (at the expense of paths over chat moss!)

 

similarly ruislip to northolt, although less than a mile long when that was built and opened it effectively re-wrote the railway map in that area, in the up direction when heading to marylebone the old alignment required you to take the secondary route (ie flashing yellows and the No1 route indicator) as the 'mainline' continued to greenford and paddington, when the new line was built the mainline became the line to marylebone and the secondary route the one to greenford, speeds also increased from 40mph to 100mph

 

regards reopenings purchasing land, looking at how big the farmhouse just south of lichfield became and how fancy the cars parked outside were after the work was completed i dont think he did too bad out of the 4 tracking

I don't dispute that the above schemes were important and did lots to improve railway operating conditions, etc, but I still maintain they are very different from the recent Scotish schemes I have highlighted. If England were as proactive as Scotland we could well have seen Luton - Dunstable reopened as a railway (think Stirling - Alloa) Guildford - Cranleigh (think Hamilton to Larkhall), Clone - Skipton (think Airdrie - Bathgate) and maybe something like Harogate - Ripon or Grimsby - Louth (think Edinburg - Twedbank)

 

(Note theses are just off the top of my head examples but you get the idea)

[wombatofludham]

The Robin Hood line in Nottinghamshire/Derbyshire, opened in stages between 1994 and 1998, is a rare example of a major rail reopening funded by County Councils outside of the major PTE areas.  The line is interesting as it isn't really a re-instatement per se - it provides a service along part of an old Midland Railway route and an old Great Central route to link Retford, Mansfield (famously quoted at the time as the largest town in England without a station), Kirkby in Ashfield and Hucknall.  The service is half hourly as far as Mansfield and hourly to Retford.  The section between Hucknall and Nottingham was later singled to allow parallel running by the Nottinghaam Express Transit tram system.  The line was funded by Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire County Councils with Nottingham City Council and attracted European Union development funding as well as Government funding.  It is a popular route and is now a commercially run service as part of the East Midlands trains franchise with limited Council funding towards a Sunday service.

 

One thing that links the Chase Line and the Robin Hood line is both serve areas that were once dependant on coal mining and had suffered relative economic decline after the pit closures of the 1980s.  As such they qualified for at the time more generous EU funding which matched UK public funding, helping to reduce the overall cost to the UK public funding sources.  EU grant aid has been radically re-organised and assistance is more targeted, but it has to be said that in opening up access to major regional employment centres (Birmingham for the Chase Line, Nottingham for the Robin Hood Line) and reducing the perceived isolation of the coalfield communities, the EU investment was wisely spent.

 

In a way, this is what may have counted against some of the other rail re-instatement aspirations in other parts of the country.  For example, the East-West route from Oxford to East Anglia has been a major aspiration of a consortium of south-east and east Anglian local authorities for over 20 years, but until recently funding decisions for rail reinstatements were closely tied to job creation and economic benefits.  Of course, in relatively affluent areas like Oxford-Cambridge and Uckfield-Lewes, there is little scope for improvement of economic activity as the local jobs and economic prospects are much better than other parts of the country.  Things have changed on the investment process now, but the other problem in non-Metropolitan areas is the County Councils and District Councils often do not see eye-to-eye on reinstating railways, and there tends to be a less unanimous voice on public transport investment in the Shire Counties as a result.  Perhaps some form of devolved regional Government could help in this respect but until, if ever, that happens, getting district and county councils to work together to put forward a business plan for rail re-instatement will be tricky.

[TheSignalEngineer]

Robin Hood Phase 1 was another highlight of my career. Unfortunately I wasn't on Stage 2 beyond the development stage due to pressure of work on Snow Hill ramping up at the same time.

[The Stationmaster]

One of my career highlights was getting quadruple track back in between Wantage Road and Challow on the GWML.  When i was investigating and planning the imported coal scheme for Didcot PS it quickly became apparent that there would be some line capacity problems so I graphed the possibility of reinstating quadruple track over that section and it worked, and was subsequently tested to destruction by the Ops Research folk at Derby to see how flexible it was (I already knew that without wasting money on that stuff - if I could knock up a scheme over a weekend it must be good ).  

 

So anyway in it went and is now part of the everyday scene - nice little feeling of satisfaction every time I go past it and I still have my original graphs 'somewhere'.

[phil-b259]

Colne to Skipton would be a a good one, as would Penistone to somewhere near Manchester......

I did think of the Woodhead route when I wrote my post but even Aidrie - Bathgate has some intermediate traffic generators (and not being in the middle of a national park has the potential for even more if new housing is built along the route) - something the Woodhead route lacks. There is also the issue of connectivity of other services, Airdrie - Bathgate trains serves the key interchange locations of Edinburgh Waverly and Glasgow Queen Street. As has been noted before the fact that trains using the GC route into Sheffield cannot use the Midland station is a significant disadvantage and going via Barnsley to get to Penistone is hardly conducive to decent journey times.

[brianusa]

The rush to rationalise seems to be over along with the spending of millions of pounds to put it all back together again. It was ill thought out at the time without consideration to later railway traffic. Sadly it was accepted for years until it was realise that the railway could be run more efficiently the way it was. Probus and Kemble come to mind; pity about Largin though but Penryn proved a point also.

 

Brian.

[The Stationmaster]

The rush to rationalise seems to be over along with the spending of millions of pounds to put it all back together again. It was ill thought out at the time without consideration to later railway traffic. Sadly it was accepted for years until it was realise that the railway could be run more efficiently the way it was. Probus and Kemble come to mind; pity about Largin though but Penryn proved a point also.

 

Brian.

Rationalisation around major conurbations went out of the window some years back with NR spending serious money on major layout enhancements.  However what can be said about most - if not all of the BR era rationalisations and singlings was that they were conceived and carried out in the circumstances of the time in which they took place and they probably saved the railway far more than they ever lost it until the passenger traffic boom of post privatisation years.   Many resignalling schemes stood no economic chance at all without accompanying rationalisation and some of them, even in the 1960s, were actually quite forward looking and in reality little was lost in modern operational terms as a result.

 

But times have changed and money has been available to cope with growing traffic levels or to improve reliability - a very different situation from the 1960s right through to the late 1980s and into the Railtrack era.

[Suzie]

The change of Stratford from a hard to reach (at least from the country end) mostly derelict urban stop on the Shenfield-Liverpool street stoppers to being a major interchange where virtually all main line trains stop is quite a change. If UK joins Schengen it might even get international trains stopping too.

[Not Captain Kernow]

Kettering to Corby must count as a re-opening as well?

 

[roundhouse]

Kettering to Corby must count as a re-opening as well?

 

It's had two re openings aswell!!!

[Edwin_m]

I was only throwing the "penistone" to somewhere near manchester in to the mix to see if anyone was reading

 

its like one of them chestnuts one jsut has to throw onto the fire

But arguably one of the stronger candidates if a faster route is needed between Manchester and Leeds!  Woodhead itself wouldn't be very fast but could link to HS2 east of Barnsley, and probably quite a bit cheaper than any new route that would involve more tunnelling. 

 

No mention (that I noticed) of airport links to Heathrow, Stansted, Manchester - or the various disused railways that have re-opened as light rail. 

[big jim]

there is talk of chiltern running a service to cowley to a new park and ride station there starting in 2020, obviously running into oxford then onto the newly upgraded line to bicester and onto the chilterns

 

apparently there is a special train running to cowley the week after next for invited guests

 

just need to fill the gap from cowley to risborough and they can run a circular service!