Local council wants to use East Lancs as a commuter line

[RJS1977]

23 minutes ago, The Stationmaster said:

As  I posted above there are (legal) ways round the 265mph limit but it does depend on the wording of the LRO.  

 

I would have thought that was plenty fast enough already! ;-)

[RJS1977]

I'm not sure every problem is necessarily insurmountable.

 

Many Network Rail stations don't have tactile paving - although there is pressure for more to be installed, and it is installed on all new-build stations, the ELR stations aren't new build.

 

Signalling can be "switched out" (and I presume is when the ELR is operating a one-train service). I would imagine a half-hourly commuter service could be maintained with only a signaller at Bolton Street.

[ikcdab]

23 minutes ago, RJS1977 said:

I'm not sure every problem is necessarily insurmountable.

 

Many Network Rail stations don't have tactile paving - although there is pressure for more to be installed, and it is installed on all new-build stations, the ELR stations aren't new build.

 

Signalling can be "switched out" (and I presume is when the ELR is operating a one-train service). I would imagine a half-hourly commuter service could be maintained with only a signaller at Bolton Street.

Trouble is you're applying common sense! Councils don't work like that and the consultants they would certainly employ would play the h&s card and demand millions are spent.  Unless people are very sensitive to the heritage and act sensibly ,(which is very rare in these circumstances), this proposal would see the effective end of the heritage operation which would be reduced to a weekends only train service along a modernised 21st century commuter line.

[Mallard60022]

13 minutes ago, ikcdab said:

Trouble is you're applying common sense! Councils don't work like that and the consultants they would certainly employ would play the h&s card and demand millions are spent.  Unless people are very sensitive to the heritage and act sensibly ,(which is very rare in these circumstances), this proposal would see the effective end of the heritage operation which would be reduced to a weekends only train service along a modernised 21st century commuter line.

That's a Bit harsh. I worked for Notts County Council and they were instrumental in the reintroduction of the Robin Hood Line between Nottingham and Worksop, filling the gap in the stub lines north and south of Mansfield. Large investmet and huge funding in the late 90s. I know that isn't quite the same, but to damn all Councils as you have done is crass.

You will also find that several Councils have linked with Heritage Lines to run Bog Carts as 'School Specials at School times. However these were before 2012 and I'll say no more than that.

Phil

[phil-b259]

57 minutes ago, RJS1977 said:

I'm not sure every problem is necessarily insurmountable.

 

Many Network Rail stations don't have tactile paving - although there is pressure for more to be installed, and it is installed on all new-build stations, the ELR stations aren't new build.

 

Signalling can be "switched out" (and I presume is when the ELR is operating a one-train service). I would imagine a half-hourly commuter service could be maintained with only a signaller at Bolton Street.

 

Nothing is insurmountable with enough money.... BUT this incentive smacks very much of trying to do things on the cheap just because the railway happens to be there. 

 

As for tactile paving, given a blind person fell off a platform that lacked tactile paving a couple of years ago there has been a big push to fit them throughout the NR network as not to do so could be considered discrimnatorty against persons with sight loss and create barriers to them using a public transport service. 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-56102142 

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/report-012021-person-struck-by-a-train-at-eden-park-station

https://www.rnib.org.uk/news/petition-railway-stations/

 

As for 'new build' the problem here is, that in public transport terms, this IS a NEW build and as such the service offered must comply with all current standards as regards accessibility - many of which will compromise the Heritage feel.

Edited October 11, 2022 by phil-b259

[John Besley]

Have a look at Okehampton how that has been reborn...

[e30ftw]

nice headline, wont happen.

 

From the outside it seems so simple, there is a railway there, so we can just put a moddern comuter train service on. cheep and easy win for the green agender...............

 

The burocracy alone to pay for studies will be mind blowing, before you start ripping up signalling equipment and designing it replacments and contracting people to install it.

 

Absolutley not going to happen

[Mallard60022]

8 minutes ago, e30ftw said:

nice headline, wont happen.

 

From the outside it seems so simple, there is a railway there, so we can just put a moddern comuter train service on. cheep and easy win for the green agender...............

 

The burocracy alone to pay for studies will be mind blowing, before you start ripping up signalling equipment and designing it replacments and contracting people to install it.

 

Absolutley not going to happen

Sorry mate, read the other posts where most of what you say has been dismissed or discussed. Hinl you will find the study has been done and that was mentioned just a few osts back and the Okehampton is just one post ahead of yours.

Very negative.

[phil-b259]

2 hours ago, John Besley said:

Have a look at Okehampton how that has been reborn...

 

Indeed - but the crucial difference is the Oakhampton line was not a thriving fully signalled Heritage railway when the decision was made to restore it as part of the national rail network!

 

Yes there was a heritage operation in place shuttling from the station to the viaduct and yes the station building may have been nicely painted / served good refreshments (as is the case with a number of nicely restored stations that have never stopped being part of the national network) - but it was very much a bare bones operation Heritage trains wise.

 

Finally, you should also take note what happened to said Heritage operation when the line was restored to the national network - IT CLOSED!

Edited October 11, 2022 by phil-b259

[ikcdab]

2 hours ago, e30ftw said:

nice headline, wont happen.

 

From the outside it seems so simple, there is a railway there, so we can just put a moddern comuter train service on. cheep and easy win for the green agender...............

 

The burocracy alone to pay for studies will be mind blowing, before you start ripping up signalling equipment and designing it replacments and contracting people to install it.

 

Absolutley not going to happen

I don't think cost is the issue. Councils seem to have lots of momney to slosh around on alternative transport schemes, and it gets spent. The simple two-platform new Marsh Barton station is costing £16M and taking almost two years tio build....

So if the will is there, then the money can be found to pay for it - and (as i said earlier) it will be expensive as councils are not good at getting value for money.

The issue as far as the East Lancs is concerned is that this will almost certainly destroy the heritage aspects of their line. At the very least, the paid staff that will be required will change the whole feel of an exisiting volunteer run affair. If a service of any use is to be provided, trying to run 25mph heritage trains among faster commuter services is almost impossible, hence my remark that heritage trains would be very much restricted. All of the track would need to  be relaid for faster trains and would, no doubt, be relaid with concrete sleepered, flat bottom rail, bye bye to heritage wooden sleepered jointed track.

I do support both things - heritage rail and rail commuter services, but the two cannot easily be run together without compromising the heritage aspects.

Ian C

[Steamport Southport]

Local council sees a draft paper saying if you reopen old railway lines we'll fund it.

 

*Looks around* , sees a thriving railway and thinks the government is going to give them £100 million for free to prop up their failing council.

 

I would tell them to stick it up their council tax!

 

 

Utterly deluded...

[melmerby]

10 hours ago, roythebus1 said:

Luxembourg City has trams that operate on OHLE and battery power when in the city centre

So does West Midland Metro

It was claimed it was the first use of such technology as previous wire free sections in Europe used super caps.

The tram has just raised the pant for the onward journey towards Wolverhampton, the trip from the library would have been wire free, as is most of the extension to Hagley Road.

 

[melmerby]

The line was originally double track.

How about one for heritage line & one for the commuter line?😆

[The Stationmaster]

3 hours ago, Mallard60022 said:

Sorry mate, read the other posts where most of what you say has been dismissed or discussed. Hinl you will find the study has been done and that was mentioned just a few osts back and the Okehampton is just one post ahead of yours.

Very negative.

Quite agree but the only study which appears to have been done is the one by Systra  which will have been quite a high level thing to get a business case together - unless somebody had a big pot of money to bring the various detail level consultancies for the sort of work I mentioned.   A lot depends on the physical base data and commercial requirement Systra used to create the business case numbers (which might explain why the ELR aren't happy bunnies?).

 

In the past I've worked - as a consultant - on various of these types of schemes so have a bit of knowledge of what fits where in the way things are tackled but in every one of them the key thing is the basic assumptions. Thus, for example,  one I worked on assumed going for a 90mph line speed wherever physically possible in order to create a commercially viable train service by keeping journey times as quick as possible (that was a re-opening of a long closed branch line).  Other schemes have based everything on lower linespeeds becuse journey time is not so critical.  But whatever happens the whole thing has to comply with all sorts of physical and operational parameters.  But noting one comment above the situation regarding 'H&S' in all its various manifestations and ramifications isn't really much different nowadays for a heritage/leisure railway  than it is for much of the activity on the national network.  So if the ELR has been found to be not doing things properly it would no doubt have already been taken to task and pointed in the right direction by the enforcing authority.

[Tom D]

Only time will tell if this scheme will ever come to fruition.

 

However, I have to commend any idea by the local council for utilisation of a Heritage railway, for re-instatement as a main line. Hopefully, ELR can come to some agreement with the council that would be beneficial to ELR, whether that be financial or in other practical terms.

 

From 1948 to 1961, the rail network lost some 3,000 miles, if there is an opportunity to gain some mileage back, then I'm all for it. At the same time, I would hope that the ELR could take advantage of this potential opportunity.

 

Tom D 

 

 

[Enterprisingwestern]

 

I find the discussion over a 25mph line speed somewhat amusing, I'm sure if the commuters in cars, who are allegedly going to benefit from the upgrading, could manage to travel at 25mph all the way into Manchester city centre they'd be deliriously happy.

 

Mike.

[KingEdwardII]

I dont know what the local council has in mind, but they are in a bit of a bind. Trams are great for short distance journeys, but they are pretty slow for longer distances. 

 

Bury's connection with Manchester is entirely tram these days and the journey time to Piccadilly is 38 mins, Victoria 29 mins. A nearby town on the Rochdale - Manchester railway line, Castleton, has a journey time as short as 17 mins to Victoria. For towns north of Bury, the tram does not look a great option, with journey times to Manchester likely nearing 1 hour.

 

So perhaps the more appropriate scheme would be to link Bury back to the rail system by reconnecting the line through Heywood to the Rochdale line, south of Castleton.

 

How to square this with continuing the heritage operations on the ELR is the key question - very difficult to see how to do this without spending a lot of money.

 

Yours, Mike

 

[Wickham Green too]

9 hours ago, melmerby said:

The line was originally double track.

How about one for heritage line & one for the commuter line?😆

.... including through the stations, of course. Might be possible at Bury but Rammy would be problematic.

 

Now an even greener option - at minimal cost to the council - would be to turn the second trackbed over to Sustrans ....... then the commuters could cycle themselves to work ( and the appearance of a heritage RAILWAY would be wrecked - as elsewhere ). 👎

[eldomtom2]

10 hours ago, The Stationmaster said:

But noting one comment above the situation regarding 'H&S' in all its various manifestations and ramifications isn't really much different nowadays for a heritage/leisure railway  than it is for much of the activity on the national network.

My impression from what I've heard is that this is not the case - heritage railways may be required to have the same attitude to safety as the main line, but when it comes to specific regulations there are all sorts of exemptions.

[phil-b259]

9 hours ago, Tom D said:

Only time will tell if this scheme will ever come to fruition.

 

However, I have to commend any idea by the local council for utilisation of a Heritage railway, for re-instatement as a main line. Hopefully, ELR can come to some agreement with the council that would be beneficial to ELR, whether that be financial or in other practical terms.

 

 

Sorry, there is NO WAY the current proposal can be considered beneficial in any way whatsoever to the ELR as a Heritage railway whose prime role (as with ALL Hereitage railways) is a tourist attraction!

 

The same would also apply if you were talking about the Mid Hants for example (Alresford is a pretty big town these days).

 

What would benefit the ELR are off peak direct trains from places other than Manchester (given it already has reasonable connectivity to that city via Metrolink) to facilitate leisure trips / a day out on the Heritage railway (as was the case with the limited SWR service to Corfe Castle on the Swanage Railway).

 

 

9 hours ago, Tom D said:

From 1948 to 1961, the rail network lost some 3,000 miles, if there is an opportunity to gain some mileage back, then I'm all for it. At the same time, I would hope that the ELR could take advantage of this potential opportunity.

 

 

 

While I admire your sentiment you need to wake up to facts - whats done is done.

 

If money is there to spend on railways then there are plenty of other schemes which would deliver huge benefits which don't involve trashing / closing / rendering unviable existing Heritage railway operations.

Edited October 12, 2022 by phil-b259

[phil-b259]

26 minutes ago, eldomtom2 said:

My impression from what I've heard is that this is not the case - heritage railways may be required to have the same attitude to safety as the main line, but when it comes to specific regulations there are all sorts of exemptions.

 

Yes and no.

 

For example there is no requirement to fit train protection systems like TPWS on heritage railways BUT that is conditional on keeping the H&S risks low by not going faster than 25mph for example!

 

And thats the point, the H&S / minimum equipment standards the ELR currently operates is a direct reflection on how it currently operates. Introducing higher speeds, different rolling stock, a different type of service (i.e. a offical public transport one as part of the national rail network) brings with it a whole host of NEW risks which will require NEW risk mitigations to be put in place.

 

The wording within the rOGS legislation (which is what allows the ELR to exist in the first place is that (1) said railway must continually asses (i.e. not do it once then forget about it for 5 years) ALL risks its operation poses, particularly if there has been a change, HOWEVER MINOR and (2) Any changed or increased risk MUST be mitigated against BEFORE the change can be allowed to happen.

 

If these things are not done the ORR will not hesitate to take action and close the operation down!

[woodenhead]

2 hours ago, KingEdwardII said:

I dont know what the local council has in mind, but they are in a bit of a bind. Trams are great for short distance journeys, but they are pretty slow for longer distances. 

 

Bury's connection with Manchester is entirely tram these days and the journey time to Piccadilly is 38 mins, Victoria 29 mins. A nearby town on the Rochdale - Manchester railway line, Castleton, has a journey time as short as 17 mins to Victoria. For towns north of Bury, the tram does not look a great option, with journey times to Manchester likely nearing 1 hour.

 

So perhaps the more appropriate scheme would be to link Bury back to the rail system by reconnecting the line through Heywood to the Rochdale line, south of Castleton.

 

How to square this with continuing the heritage operations on the ELR is the key question - very difficult to see how to do this without spending a lot of money.

 

Yours, Mike

 

You can also get to Rochdale by tram, but having done it once, never again.  You wouldn't commute from Rochdale on the tram, you'd get the train and people over in Bury might wish for a similar option, certainly if coming from higher up the line.  Metrolink is great for short hops, or Oldham to Rochdale and vice versa, but it's a long uncomfortable (and cold) journey compared to a train.

 

The thing to me is, can a commuting only service to Manchester share the same tracks as a heritage railway - given how the world was already changing when Covid hit and accelerated during it, the idea of people working 9-5 M-F in the big city must have irreversibly altered.  And then there are the shop workers and the shoppers themselves - people from north Lancs could drive to Rawtenstall to park and ride to Manchester to shop or simply enojoy a day out in the city.  To me the pressure to operate the service all day and everyday would become overwhelming and what then for the ELR?

 

I look at the KWV&R - they could operate some sort of service that allows people up the line to get to Keighley where they can hop onto mainline services, ditton Severn Valley into Kidderminster - but I would guess that in order to receive the subsidy to run such services they may have to comply with emissions rules that they get away with as a heritage line - i.e. zero carbon.  It's being looked at for heritage railways on the non passenger type engines such as shunters as the attraction of a heritage diesel or a steam engine is the noise and the smell.  But that noise and smell excuse does not work when the purpose of the train is not related to the heritage aspect of the railway.  The ELR is not as blessed as these lines - it doesn't end by a mainline station even, unless a service was sent onto the mainline at Rochdale which might not have the capacity for terminating services from the ELR to allow a switch over for commuters.  Running a service to Manchester from Bury via Castleton may not be as viable as from Rawtenstall or Ramsbottom with the Metrolink so close by and already established.

[e30ftw]

To try and get the idea off the ground, looking at rolling stock rather than the operations, logistics and signalling/track and finance (heading in to a recesion)

 

We would need it to be cheep, and practical. It would need to be a DMU Obviously

 

What if we used a lighter chassis with only an axel at either end? Saves having a bogie and wear and tear on un nessary axels. It would only be going a moderate pace so nothing fancy needed.

 

what if the interior was bus like bench seats so people could easily hop on and off.

 

Infact to save more money we could base the whole body shell on a bus.

 

Why stop there, we could have a engine derived from a bus or truck as well.

 

We could call it a railbus, a cheep solution to rolling stock which could save the small un-ecenomical brach lines.

 

 

Anybody know where they could get some?

 

 

[Stuart A]

16 hours ago, phil-b259 said:

 

While I don't doubt you are correct in your observations on a local level*, this proposal is more about providing a service from the ELR into central Manchester!

 

That is rather different to a 'local line for local people' setup which you are envisaging - for starters the journey time has to be significantly better than can currently be achieved by car.

 

* That said you do seem to be forgetting that the ELR is not subsidised by the taxpayer! Even with the use of volunteer labour its a basic fact that railways are very expensive things to operate - particularly ones using 60 year + old rolling stock and steam locos! £29 might sound expensive to you for a casual trip but when you consider that an average steam loco can get through £5000 in coal a dayfor example its not hard to see how the costs of running the show quickly mount up!

I get that, but if there was a £5 fare, I'd use it multiple times, as I'm sure many other locals, therefore increasing overall revenue from non tourist traffic.  I  realise that the plan is for a Manchester service, my point was that if they are not interested in serving the communities now, there's no chance they'd entertain anything bigger.

[Stuart A]

2 minutes ago, e30ftw said:

To try and get the idea off the ground, looking at rolling stock rather than the operations, logistics and signalling/track and finance (heading in to a recesion)

 

We would need it to be cheep, and practical. It would need to be a DMU Obviously

 

What if we used a lighter chassis with only an axel at either end? Saves having a bogie and wear and tear on un nessary axels. It would only be going a moderate pace so nothing fancy needed.

 

what if the interior was bus like bench seats so people could easily hop on and off.

 

Infact to save more money we could base the whole body shell on a bus.

 

Why stop there, we could have a engine derived from a bus or truck as well.

 

We could call it a railbus, a cheep solution to rolling stock which could save the small un-ecenomical brach lines.

 

 

Anybody know where they could get some?

 

 

 

They've got one!

 

(Although I think it's owned by GM Fire & Rescue)