2750Papyrus

Another vote for the GN/LNER Northern Heights. I may have previously posted my recollections of lying awake as a small child listening to (goods?) trains struggling up the gradient from Stroud Green to Crouch End. Later, an essay option in my GCE English paper was "Problems of Transport in My District". The 14 year old me solved these by re-opening and electrifying the Northern Heights branches, gaining a grade 1 pass (the only one in my year)! Unfortunately, the BRB did not then have sight of my reasoning, so I will attempt a modern justification. I believe that routeing HS1 to St Pancras has subsequently resulted in a shortage of paths for trains to traditional Midland Railway destinations, contributing to the need for HS2. In the 60's, there was apparently a proposal to link the Midland main line to the GN Mill Hill branch, presumably near the Hale, and divert Midland trains into KX so that St Pancras could be closed. Fortunately this did not happen but if the link had been constructed and the branch retained, a useful diversionary route would have been established. The recent transfer of much GN short distance traffic away from KX surface station to Thameslink, and the current re-opening of bores 5 & 6 of the tunnels from KX, would then present the opportunity to run trains to Midland destinations via Finsbury Park and Mill Hill from the old KX suburban platforms. (I wonder what could have been done with some of former goods facilities in the KX and SP areas to improve passenger terminal capacity.) And of course, retention of the branches would have enabled running the preserved N2 and quad-arts to Ally Pally for model railway exhibitions!

I voted Bangor - Afon Wen in a previous poll but would agree with Carmarthen to Aberystwyth this time.

London area?

I use both and will shortly build the castle I received for Christmas. I think Metcalfe probably have the better design models but the lack of variation in the colour of brickwork, particularly of the industrial buildings, lets them down. They also tend to be of modern appearance - shopfronts and, particularly, the white of the windows. I also use Scalescenes though find these more time-consuming. To be honest, my favourite is the old Builder Plus range, which featured a good range of buildings and excellent printed brickwork.

Has to be Oxford - Woburn Sands (!), for all the reasons earlier discussed.

Or along the coast - Littlehampton and Bognor!

Or along the coast - Littlehampton and Bognor!

Asses' milk or Benny Hill's "pasteurised or up to your chin"?

Much more choice in Devon. Some of my favourite walks are along the River Avon alongside remains of the Brent - Kingsbridge branch (the erstwhile Primrose Line). I believe that a group of local councils had been persuaded to fund continued operation of the branch but BR had sold the track as scrap very quickly after closure so this initiative was stillborn. (I must remember not to suspect malice when stupidity forms a perfectly adequate explanation). There are other worthy candidate branch lines such as Newton Abbot - Bovey Tracey - Moretonhampstead, and Torrington but I think the biggest mistake must be the Exeter - Okehampton - Bere Alston main line closure.

I think the reference was to the North and West of the East - West reinstatement (Oxford - Cambridge).

I agree with Manna. Bedford - Hitchin would help with commuter traffic and provide a useful diversionary route for the Midland and ECML (it was the Midland's original route to London using Hitchin - Kings Cross running powers). Plans for the Henlow airfield development envisage up to 2800 houses, whilst the old Cardington site has already seen much development. However, at the time of closure the line saw little traffic so closure was probably inevitable. It is probably best known to most people through its use in the filming of "Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines". Oxford - Cambridge was different and was viewed as a strategic route bypassing London. At one time it was scheduled for development by Beeching, though apparently loss-making. Ever since its closure there has been a fight to re-open it as a through route, which is at last happening but at a tremendous cost in time and money. I believe that this was another route which should have been retained, even if services were suspended over less well used sections. So it has my vote.

But he transferred his shares to his wife's name, so there was clearly no conflict of interest..... I believe Dibber 25 in his younger days argued that no development should be allowed on track beds for a finite number of years, in case circumstances changed. Personally, I believe that reinstatement should not baulk at the cost of demolition if the alternative requires significant use of green field sites. If you choose to build on a railway line some silly devil chose to close, you should realise that some future silly devil may wish to reopen it!

Putting the two together has given me a distinct conflict of interest. The GC main line, Erewash valley and Nottingham suburban all merit consideration. i hope that there will be a further opportunity for the GC main line, so I will chooses the East Lincs line, a most strange selection for closure.

I think the P1 is unlikely as it was a freight loco and largely forgotten. I can't immediately think of a LNE group loco but the Turbomotive and The Great Bear could be candidates.

Excellent pictures of some superb models. Were the P1s (or would they have been) RA9?

The original closure plan involving Caernarfon was for the whole stretch from Bangor to Afon Wen. I found an interesting Parliamentary Q & A on the closure: https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1964/jun/02/railways-bangor-afon-wen-line. The Minister's decision on this occasion was the compromise closure of Caernarfon - Afon Wen but the section to Bangor did not last much longer. My scout group travelled from Euston to Pen-y-Groes on The Welshman in 1963 and 1964 for summer camps and it was a very useful service. Maybe the passenger numbers could have supported a railcar/basic railway approach, but it was then a different age and political climate and the outcome for both sections was inevitable. Times change, however, and I think the argument for re-opening of the line from Bangor to Caernarfon is a strong one and is boosted by the re-opening of the Welsh Highland, a pipe dream in the 1960's. I'm not totally convinced that the original closure decisions were wrong, but for the puposes of the poll, my vote goes to Bangor - Afon Wen.

Being a GN/GC supporter, I rather reluctantly have to agree Ambergate - Chinley. I travelled this route several times in my teens and made numerous visits to the area by road. Whilst I respect the views of those who have argued the case for HS2 on capacity grounds, I do wonder if it would be necessary had the routes of lines like this been retained, even if traffic at the time did not justify train services.

From a personal point of view, I would enjoy a trip along the coast line from Scarborough to Whitby. However, participation in the poll sometimes makes me undertake some basic research and the Leeds Northern line does seem to have a strong case. I suppose what we should do is to examine details of passenger bookings and goods traffic - would railwaymen such as Fiennes and Hardy have supported closure or would they have considered traffic adequate to support a rationalised basic railway? But for today, the Leeds Northern has my vote.

Sidney Weighell, General Secretary of the NUR from 1975 to 1982 and previously a footplateman in the Northallerton area, included a chapter on the Wensleydale Branch in his 1984 book A Hundred Years of Railway Weighells. (His brother was also a driver, his father a signalman and his grand father a guard.) One of his more amusing anecdotes concerns an occasion during the war when his 16 year old fireman neglected to fill the tank of their G5 at Northallerton. Arriving at Ainderby, Weighell checked the tank to find it was nearly empty. He chose to drive on to Leeming Bar and persuaded the driver of the D20 on a train in the other direction to swap locomotives. The shed master was left nonplussed as to how he had a tender engine at Leyburn where he should have had a tank engine, and vice versa! I have a great liking for the North York Moors and coast and it is a shame the lines in this area were closed. However, Weighell was an advocate of reintroducing a tourist service on the Wensleydale line, which had lost its passenger service prior to Beeching. His intimate knowledge, combined with the successful re-opening of the lower part of the line to passenger traffic, the continuing (military) freight traffic to Redmire, and the reinvigoration of the Settle and Carlisle, lead me to the conclusion that closure of the Wensleydale branch was the biggest mistake in this area of the country.

I first read that as just keep soldering on. But I guess that's TW.....

I will vote for the Woodhead route as well. If we accept the argument that there was insufficient traffic to justify multiple routes between Manchester and Sheffield, I still do not understand the justification for closing the electrified route. (It used to be said that we were the only country in Europe to close an electrified main line between two major cities.) I find the argument regarding the age of the1500v DC equipment hard to swallow. Replacement equipment to this standard could have been built, and there was precedent with the Shenfield electrification for upgrading to high voltage AC, possibly adopting the lower 6.25 kV level. I believe that there are now capacity issues with the Hope Valley route. Was there a good reason for choosing Woodhead for closure, or was the decision made by those with loyalties to the old MR/LMS?

Golly, I must have heard most of those trains from my school desk!

Most impressive, I look forward to receiving my rake of GN six wheelers. Maybe Hattons could think about an optional shortened coupling arrangement for vehicles permanently coupled together?

School dinners' custard from the days when additives were a good thing.....

Probably the most under-represented group of locos yet, I guess because the majority were broken up quickly at main works instead of being sold to places such as Barry. Out of 168 non-streamlined Pacifics, only 2 were preserved (and 1 new build), with 1 out of 184 V2s. Comparing them with the numbers of preserved Black 5s, Castles and Bulleid Pacifics, there could be an argument for adding to a class already preserved. However, rules is rules. My next favourite locos are:- i) the B17, a good honest looking loco without the taper boiler favoured by some designers ii) the V4, a pretty but powerful loco iii) the P1, the heavy goods equivalent of the Pacifics, but ahead of their time. Was it Bulleid who described them as the best looking of Gresley's designs? I'm afraid Mr Thompson didn't do a lot for my favourites, particularly as he rebuilt and renamed Manchester City! Both the B17 and V4 are the subject of new build programmes so maybe I should exclude those from my choices. However, if we were to address new builds as a topic, I would nominate the W1 in original (compound with water tube boiler) condition, as I believe that a team like the A1 Trust could resolve the problems of the original. So , by a process of elimination, my nomination has to be the P1.