Which routes in the UK are considered Trunk Routes.

[Kris]

In the publication describing the alterations to HS2 there are rail lines described as being "Truck Routes". Is there a list or a map of these? It was also stated that by completing the proposed electrification that over 75% of these routes would be electrified. I am guessing that most of the mileage on the non electrified is in the West Country, however if the routes go deep into Scotland I may be wrong.

[Phatbob]

My suggestion would be that the lines on an old BR Inter-City map would those that are "Trunk Routes"?  I'm not aware of any definitive map of rail trunk routes, unlike roads, where any road atlas will reveal the status of the road from the colour coding.

 

[Jeremy Cumberland]

Now that's a good question. It isn't defined in the document, nor does it feature in the glossary. This, of course, is very useful from a government perspective, since it means they can say the goal has been achieved regardless of what electrification was actually carried out.

 

However, I found it interesting doing a web search for the term, with lots of hits linking to a British Railways report of 1964, The Development Of The Major Railway Trunk Routes, available here:

https://www.railwaysarchive.co.uk/docsummary.php?docID=14

 

There is a very interesting map on page 74:Routes Selected for Development.pdf

 

The current criteria probably don't include Woodhead. Or Newcastle to Carlisle.  Or Bradford.

Edited November 19, 2021 by Jeremy C

[Trog]

Presumably the West London Line was a trunk route. As am sure I was told that there used to be loading dock called the elephant dock as it was used to load/unload circus elephants at the south end of Kensington Olympia station. 

[Nearholmer]

5 hours ago, Kris said:

was also stated that by completing the proposed electrification that over 75% of these routes would be electrified.

The logic would probably involve labelling all the electrified lines as “trunk”, then calculating the route mileage equal to 1/3 of the electrified route miles and finding the busiest non-electrified mileage summing to that figure and calling that “trunk” too. 
 

Voila! 75% of trunk mileage (including the Tattenham Corner Branch) is electrified. 
 

Easy really.

[The Stationmaster]

I too thought the 75% figure to be rather nebulous as it doesn't indicate what it is really a percentage of.  And it could be defined in various different ways - e.g. as shown on past BR maps of its network, or routes used by Inter City trains. (which would rule out much of the former SR of course.  My own reading of the proposals caused me to 'cancel'  (using current social terminology ) the 75% quote as utterly meaningless and very easy to disprove should one so wish.

 

But, as 'Nearholmer' has so excellently explained above. it also also perfectly feasible to prove that the 75% figure is absolutely right (even if it isn't).

[Kris]

So, it's all rather unclear isn't it. I did wonder if this would be the case. To try and take this forward a little further I have just asked the question to my local MP. I wonder if I will get an answer and what it will be. 

[Mol_PMB]

When we were in the EU, there was a clear definition agreed with Brussels about which were the trunk routes. These were to have been prioritised for the installation of ETCS signalling and other interoperable technologies.

The routes themselves were not necessarily those with the highest traffic, it was more about connectivity. Obviously the busiest main lines were included, but routes such as the North Wales Coast were also on the map owing to their (apparent but not actual) importance for links to Ireland.  I've just been trying and failing to actually find a copy of the map!

Whether that situation remains the same post-Brexit, I'm not sure.

[Mol_PMB]

This might be it:

https://ec.europa.eu/transport/infrastructure/tentec/tentec-portal/site/maps_upload/annexes/annex1/Annex I - VOL 07.pdf

[kevinlms]

53 minutes ago, Kris said:

So, it's all rather unclear isn't it. I did wonder if this would be the case. To try and take this forward a little further I have just asked the question to my local MP. I wonder if I will get an answer and what it will be. 

You stirrer!

[Steamport Southport]

I wouldn't expect anything has changed much since Beeching. Apart from the addition of the Channel Tunnel link.

 

 

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beeching_cuts#The_Development_of_the_Major_Railway_Trunk_Routes_(Beeching_II)

[Nearholmer]

Interesting how Beeching saw the old SER route from Reading via Guildford and Ashford to the Channel Ports as a "trunk", which isn't something it ever really lived up to, and how Manchester-Bradford-Leeds-York, which desperately needs to be treated as a trunk, was one he identified, but nobody seems to have done much about since.

[The Stationmaster]

54 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

Interesting how Beeching saw the old SER route from Reading via Guildford and Ashford to the Channel Ports as a "trunk", which isn't something it ever really lived up to, and how Manchester-Bradford-Leeds-York, which desperately needs to be treated as a trunk, was one he identified, but nobody seems to have done much about since.

Interesting too that Holyhead isn't included but was identified by the EU as a 'core European network' route

[Kris]

20 minutes ago, The Stationmaster said:

Interesting too that Holyhead isn't included but was identified by the EU as a 'core European network' route

I guess the ferry is significantly more important now than 60 years ago. 

[Mol_PMB]

9 minutes ago, Kris said:

I guess the ferry is significantly more important now than 60 years ago. 

 

The ferry may be, but not the rail link to it. No freight goes to Ireland by rail via Holyhead - it's all on the A55. The fast HSS passenger ferry that docked by the railway station doesn't run any more either, and although you can do a 'rail and sail' foot passenger journey on the primarily-freight ferry, it's much less efficient than it used to be. For a bureaucrat in Brussels looking at a rail map of Europe, the North Wales Coast line seems a key artery, but really it's a bit of a backwater with an hourly service of 3 or 4 car DMUs and there are now very few through journeys from major cities such as Manchester (I know, I have to use it!).

 

Brexit has also seen a re-cast of the freight between mainland Europe and Ireland, with a smaller proportion coming by road through the UK, and more going directly from France/Holland/Spain to Irish ports by ship. This may also be partly influenced by the truck driver shortage.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited November 20, 2021 by Mol_PMB
(typo)

[melmerby]

Why not Newcastle - Edinburgh?

[Nearholmer]

59 minutes ago, Mol_PMB said:

The ferry may be, but not the rail link to it.

Totally agree. Even when the HSS was running, the passenger traffic by rail had fallen to very modest numbers. Even we, as a family travelling for free on the train, and me hating long car trips, usually took the car, because it worked out cheaper than hiring one on the other side, which would have been a necessity. On the odd occasions I’ve used the train on my own, I had it mostly to myself beyond Llandudno Junction. Budget travellers use coaches, not the train anyway. Freight by rail? Zero.

 

It needs a tunnel across to turn rail into a way of travelling to Ireland, and although that is probably within the realms of engineering practicality, I’m not sure anyone could afford it, and it would have to be placed where it wouldn’t be very helpful for large parts of the populations of both Britain and Ireland.

[Dungrange]

2 hours ago, The Stationmaster said:

Interesting too that Holyhead isn't included but was identified by the EU as a 'core European network' route

 

I think that's because Beeching and the EU were looking at different things in terms of their perceived importance.  Beeching's view was the importance of the line to the UK rail network (in isolation); where in effect the line to Holyhead is just a branch off the west coast mainline.

 

In drawing up the TEN-T network, the EU focuses on connections between EU countries and the most important cities in each EU member state.  In the case of Ireland, that is a corridor between the three largest cities: Belfast, Dublin and Cork.  There was then a need to connect Ireland to the rest of the EU via the UK for which the corridor between Dublin and Liverpool / Manchester is identified as the primary route between Ireland and the UK.  Therefore the corridor (all modes) becomes part of the core network.  This means that all modes including road, rail and ferries that provide the connectivity between the UK and Ireland are therefore designated as part of the core network.  The frequency of trains on the route doesn't matter in terms of the core definition, but the EU would have liked to have seen improvements in connectivity between countries.

 

Of course following Brexit the TEN-T network has been redrawn, with the UK stripped out and ferry connections between Ireland and France having been added in, so the EU will prioritise funding for these inter-EU connections in the future.

[H2O]

4 hours ago, Steamport Southport said:

I wouldn't expect anything has changed much since Beeching. Apart from the addition of the Channel Tunnel link.

 

 

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beeching_cuts#The_Development_of_the_Major_Railway_Trunk_Routes_(Beeching_II)

From the map it is interesting that the old Midland route north out of Bristol (at approx 1 o'clock angle on the map) was regarded as 'trunk' but closed c1970. Also what do the tan coloured routes indicate? Both the Oakhampton line and old S&DJR main route are shown :-) Decisions on which routes to close was never an exact science, but maps like these seem to show that the reasoning used on which lines to close was based on shifting sands.

 

As for which are trunk routes perhaps the basic railway the Serpal report suggested? It is a more modern view than Beeching, but still 40+ years old.

[Kris]

5 minutes ago, H2O said:

Also what do the tan coloured routes indicate? Both the Oakhampton line and old S&DJR main route are shown :-) 

The tan lines show routes that were proposed for closure. Some happened (SR route via Okehampton and the SDJR) some did not. 

[Jeremy Cumberland]

1 hour ago, Kris said:

The tan lines show routes that were proposed for closure. Some happened (SR route via Okehampton and the SDJR) some did not. 

Not at all. The map is from The Development of the Major Railway Trunk Routes, and I linked to both the report and the map in the third post of this thread. The report was written in 1964 and published in 1965 and its purprose is stated at the beginning:

Quote

It should be recognised that the purpose of this study is to select routes for future intensive use, not to select lines for closure

 

The map is entitled "British Railways 1984" (note: 1984, not 1964). The thick black lines are "Routes Selected for Development". It is based upon a map entitled "British Rail 1964 Through Routes" which is identical apart from the shading, which is why lines like the Somerset and Dorset and the Great Central are included.

 

Mileages are given on both maps. 7,500 overall, and 3,000 selected for development.

[RJS1977]

Is the lack of rail freight to Holyhead (and for that matter, Fishguard and Pembroke Dock) at least in part down to a lack of facilities to enable transhipment of containers at these ports? If only ro-ro ferries are available, then this dictates the use of lorries. Of course, had the Irish built their railways to 4' 8 1/2", train ferries would have been an option. 

 

Incidentally, Google Maps imagary (dated 2021) shows a lot of sidings at Holyhead, for a station which only gets a DMU service and no freight.

[Mol_PMB]

There used to be a Freightliner terminal at Holyhead with container service to Ireland, but it closed many years ago. 

There were also some nearby industries which used rail, now all either closed or using road. 

Holyhead retains a passenger train depot, crews are based there and there is stabling and a fuelling point. 

[Nearholmer]

looking at RTT, there are some nominal freight trains, although I suspect one might be an engineer's train, and the other some sort of light loco Tour de Pays de Galles. Anyone know more?

[melmerby]

54 minutes ago, RJS1977 said:

 

 

Incidentally, Google Maps imagary (dated 2021) shows a lot of sidings at Holyhead, for a station which only gets a DMU service and no freight.

The latest aerial shot is 26/03/21, the last time any freight wagons were in the view was 1/1/2006

 

Correction

Wrong it's Pendo being dragged

Edited November 20, 2021 by melmerby