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Spalding to March - The End - now expanding a little beyond.


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A collection of photos take by my wife's late uncle, who for reasons unknown, saw fit to record the closure and removal of the line between Spalding in Lincolnshire, and March in Cambridgeshire. He didn't seem to have been interested in the trains themselves, we didn't know he had any interest in railways, although he has also recorded some steam preservation images too, who hasn't?

 

Anyway, here is Cowbit, while the track was being lifted, winter of 1986/7 I believe.

 

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No idea of the identity of the class 31s, can anyone add further details?

 

Dave

Edited by Davexoc
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i think this is early days of the lifting when they were at least making an effort to recover reusable materials. The line sat complete for a couple of years be fore any recoveries took place. All the railwaymen involved knew the importance of this stretch of line and it's ability to keep freight off the ECML. It would be a busy line if it was still open today. 

 

Once the Werrington diveunder is complete the planned alternative route will at last be viable.

Edited by LNERGE
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The most short sighted closure in recent decades IMO, but hopefully those who made the decision have lived to regret it.

 

People love saying things like this - but to be honest I'm struggling to see any evidence of the need to keep a lengthy section of freight only railway maintained when you actually look at the number of freights that would actually use it.

 

My understanding (open to correction by locals of course) is that the bulk of freight from the Anglia region is actually container traffic - and most of that is heading towards the West Midlands / WCML corridor where the key intermodal distribution hubs are located, not up the ECML. As such that would have needed to be spent maintaining the March-Spalding line has been more wisely invested in the route via Peterborough where any improvements can be shared with far more users (including passenger traffic). The Werrington diveunder is a perfect example of this as would be the often talked about enhancements at Leicester which have benefits to all railway users.

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Most of these freights could have gone via Whitemoor...

 

http://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/search/advanced/SPA/2017/01/25/0000-2359?stp=WVS&show=all&order=wtt

 

Running them via Peterborough causes pathing and regulating issues with knock on effects to passenger services both existing and any extra proposed.  Linespeed improvements are not really worthwhile or you'll just catch stuff up. The thing about the Joint Line once you put a freight on it you could just about forget about it. There was capacity both in running lines and in loops all the way to Doncaster.

 

Edit to add.. Not to mention the sideways dodges to Toton, Notts, and South Yorkshire coalfields and other cross country routes.

 

Of course if the Joint had stayed the problem would have been between March and Ely unless you put the St Ives loop back. Where do you stop?

Edited by LNERGE
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Are these guys railway employees?

 

By this time probably Derek (Dusty) Miller's firm based at King's Lynn Docks. There was a certain disparity between the speed these guys operated and the railways own guys. This may have led to the situation where desirable redundant assets became isolated and thus unrecoverable.

 

 

 

attachicon.gifCowbit e c87.jpg

 

Both signals are still with us. The nearer one with sighting board now carries a distant arm and it located at Peterborough Nene Valley station. The down starter is still in place but rusting away.

 

 

 

Dave

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People love saying things like this - but to be honest I'm struggling to see any evidence of the need to keep a lengthy section of freight only railway maintained when you actually look at the number of freights that would actually use it.

 

My understanding (open to correction by locals of course) is that the bulk of freight from the Anglia region is actually container traffic - and most of that is heading towards the West Midlands / WCML corridor where the key intermodal distribution hubs are located, not up the ECML. As such that would have needed to be spent maintaining the March-Spalding line has been more wisely invested in the route via Peterborough where any improvements can be shared with far more users (including passenger traffic). The Werrington diveunder is a perfect example of this as would be the often talked about enhancements at Leicester which have benefits to all railway users.

 

 

I don't understand the logic here. I have no idea how much the Werrington constructions are costing, but if all they will do is allow trains heading for Spalding to avoid conflictions on the ECML there must be enough traffic over that route to warrant the expenditure. I am sure that the money spent here would have maintained Spalding-March direct for many years.

 

As for sharing the route costs with passenger traffic, would services such as Norwich to Liverpool, or Stansted to Manchester have suffered too much from avoiding Peterborough, and being routed via Spalding and Nottingham?

 

How can routing container trains from (say) Crewe to Felixstowe via Camden and the GE be any more cost effective than sending them via Nottingham, Sleaford and March? And who can tell which potential services are not running due lack of paths through bottleneck areas.

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Most of these freights could have gone via Whitemoor...

 

http://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/search/advanced/SPA/2017/01/25/0000-2359?stp=WVS&show=all&order=wtt

 

...

In normal passenger traffic hours, say 0500-midnght, that was 14 non-passenger services that actually ran, of which 4 were a Grantham-Grantham thing (route learner? engineers?) which didn't go to E Anglia.

Of the remaining 10, 8 were Felixstowe container traffic, 1 Middleton Towers sand, and 1 was the Biggleswade-Heck Plasmor train.

Whether that level of traffic justifies retaining the Whitemoor route is a hard one to call, but it's only in relatively recent years that ECML has got really busy, and ditto for Felixstowe containers.

 

(For future reference, LNERGE's link, which will expire, showed actual trains running through Spalding on 25/1/17).

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How can routing container trains from (say) Crewe to Felixstowe via Camden and the GE be any more cost effective than sending them via Nottingham, Sleaford and March? And who can tell which potential services are not running due lack of paths through bottleneck areas.

The trouble with routing more trains this way are two potential bottlenecks. The first is and will always be a problem, between March and Ely. The second is Ely to Soham. There are plans to increase capacity around Ely and to double the line to Soham.

 

Between Peterborough and Ely there is only one loop missing. This is an easy reinstatement and has been looked at. Adding any additional loops would be a real nightmare. Engineers today could not employ the same methods of construction employed by the original builders. We'd probably end up with a railway built on piles driven into the fen. The Cambridge misguided busway has blundered into this trap.  

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https://wisbechrail.org.uk/

 

The above link is to the Wisbech-Ely main re-opening campaign (adopted by RailFuture), which has gained significant support in local govt, local MP and in the Anglia franchise agreement as a noted project. It has proven viability in a GRIP 2 study funded by the CC. If it does go ahead (at up to £111m) and leaves passive provision, it gives further re-opening to Spalding improved prospects, but, I would suggest, still very low. Spalding is not mentioned in anything I have read regarding this campaign. (I was partly involved in the very early stages of the volunteer railway group who tried to re-open a section from March, with a view to getting to Wisbech eventually, but I left the area before it had done any more than buy a few carriages. I think it must be dormant now.)

 

It has been suggested on here that the bulk of Felixstowe freight goes to East and West Midlands destinations. I don't know these days what that proportion is, but many/most of those go via the NLL, and await the necessary improvements in capacity at Ely, Syston and Leicester to allow them to be routed away from the Anglia routes south of Ipswich, and the NLL (which desperately needs extra capacity). That will then put pressure on the Peterborough-Leicester section, which will mean more use of the ECML or its diversionary route, by freights which currently go via Stamford, heading further north, which is where the Werrington dive-under is needed, to allow more use of the diversionary route, without disrupting the ECML. But as these different projects are now out of kilter (they were all supposed to have been done by now, or in progress at least, according to plans I was involved in producing back in 1997-8 for the first RUS), then the benefits will only accrue in stages.

 

To re-assure some of you, we did indeed look at re-opening March to Spalding at that time (as had BR in the late 1980's, much of whose info we re-used), as an alternative to some of this work, but it simply did not stack up, partly because key parts of the route are now blocked by development, between Wisbech and Spalding (making it very expensive per mile either on diversion or on land re-purchase and compensation, plus significant road schemes), and partly because it would have solved only one set of problems, and needed most of the other work now planned in any event. Of course, things change over time, so that does not mean it will always be unviable.

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There has been a proposal for a Spalding Rail Freight Interchange for a few years to get more of the agri-food traffic onto rail. A site was identified at Deeping St Nicholas on the Spalding-Peterborough Joint line and included in principle in local plans:

 

http://www.southeastlincslocalplan.org/plan/4-improving-south-east-lincolnshires-employment-land-portfolio/approach-to-the-identification-of-a-broad-location-for-a-spalding-rail-freight-interchange/

 

But there doesn't seem to be a developer, operator or critical mass of potential users. I didn't see it included in the Midlands Connect investment plan which came out a few months ago so it's probably dead.

 

Dava

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As for sharing the route costs with passenger traffic, would services such as Norwich to Liverpool, or Stansted to Manchester have suffered too much from avoiding Peterborough, and being routed via Spalding and Nottingham?

 

How can routing container trains from (say) Crewe to Felixstowe via Camden and the GE be any more cost effective than sending them via Nottingham, Sleaford and March? And who can tell which potential services are not running due lack of paths through bottleneck areas.

 

I can only speak for the Norwich-Liverpool service but a very large proportion of the passengers to or from Norwich join or leave at Peterborough for ECML destinations.

The Stansteads go to Birmingham, back in Central days they eventually went all the way to Liverpool.

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Looking at a map it seems so sensible to have a line from Liverpool to Manchester to Sheffield to Lincoln to Spalding to March to Felixstowe. How much freight would be needed to justify restoring the route throughout including the upgrades to the bottlenecks? There must be some commitment with the building of infrastructure like the Bacon Factory chord in Ipswich which will not see an appreciable amount of traffic without further route improvements.

 

Perhaps the time has come with the network being as busy as it is to have a greater separation of passenger and freight routes. It is probably not beyond the possibility to have the odd hourly stopper mixed in with freights but having a mixed passenger service is inefficient when mixed with freights. Looping a stopping passenger somewhere it is going to stop anyway is nothing, but stopping it to let a freight by that is itself going to be looped later is bad.

 

I was quite surprised after being held up for a considerable time in Spalding while an endless parade of trains went over the level crossings, only to return a few years later to see the line gone. Very sad.

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I don't understand the logic here. I have no idea how much the Werrington constructions are costing, but if all they will do is allow trains heading for Spalding to avoid conflictions on the ECML there must be enough traffic over that route to warrant the expenditure. I am sure that the money spent here would have maintained Spalding-March direct for many years.

 

As for sharing the route costs with passenger traffic, would services such as Norwich to Liverpool, or Stansted to Manchester have suffered too much from avoiding Peterborough, and being routed via Spalding and Nottingham?

 

How can routing container trains from (say) Crewe to Felixstowe via Camden and the GE be any more cost effective than sending them via Nottingham, Sleaford and March? And who can tell which potential services are not running due lack of paths through bottleneck areas.

 

The I understand dive under will also facilitate improvements to the Peterborough - Spalding service which currently has to wave its way across the ECML in the same way as used to be the case at Hitchin or Grantham before the flyover / chords were built.

 

I also understand the March - Spalding line had quite a high number of level crossings and manned signal boxes en-route, both of which a big drains on finance due to the complexity / number of staff required. Granted plain itself is a relatively low cost thing to look after but even that needs replacing eventually if you are not going to have derailments. Resignalling / single lining sections could have improved things but would have required a large chunk of money which would have been better used elsewhere.

 

As for passenger services avoiding Peterborough - that is a non starter really given the way the town was expanded post war and became the hub of the local area.

 

There is a danger of trying to use todays rail traffic levels to try and re-judge past decisions. At the time the March - Spalding line shut, the emphasis by Government was very much on 'managed long term decline' with respect to rail travel and any investment - even for the most high profile commuter and InterCity routes was getting harder and harder to obtain. As such the closure decision was a pragmatic response to the situation at the time.

 

As has been highlighted however, because throughout BR there was no real protection for railway land with the potential for re-use to be safeguarded (indeed there was pressure from the Treasury for BR to sell off as much as possible) we now have the large Whitemoor prison built on the route plus extensive development at Spalding blocking the route. We also have a 'no new level crossing' policy in place with NR so any rebuilt line will require expensive bridging works plus the two two sizeable diversions etc. Again there are much more deserving candidates for that sort of money (e.g. Leicester works).

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Looking at a map it seems so sensible to have a line from Liverpool to Manchester to Sheffield to Lincoln to Spalding to March to Felixstowe. How much freight would be needed to justify restoring the route throughout including the upgrades to the bottlenecks? There must be some commitment with the building of infrastructure like the Bacon Factory chord in Ipswich which will not see an appreciable amount of traffic without further route improvements.

 

Perhaps the time has come with the network being as busy as it is to have a greater separation of passenger and freight routes. It is probably not beyond the possibility to have the odd hourly stopper mixed in with freights but having a mixed passenger service is inefficient when mixed with freights. Looping a stopping passenger somewhere it is going to stop anyway is nothing, but stopping it to let a freight by that is itself going to be looped later is bad.

 

I was quite surprised after being held up for a considerable time in Spalding while an endless parade of trains went over the level crossings, only to return a few years later to see the line gone. Very sad.

 

This is the problem of only building things in dribs and drabs rather than all together - each bit seems a bit of a waste until eventually all the constraints are removed as the immediate benefits are usually fairly limited. The Bacon factory chord only really starts to be productive (if thats the right word) when you add in the currently postponed improvements in the Ely area, and potentially the Werrington dive under to get rid of all the bottlnecks / constraints on route. Works at Leicester are also required to shift traffic away from the NLL

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The I understand dive under will also facilitate improvements to the Peterborough - Spalding service which currently has to wave its way across the ECML in the same way as used to be the case at Hitchin or Grantham before the flyover / chords were built.

 

 

The up slow line between Werrington and Peterborough was made bi-di to stop the need to cross the fasts.

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As for sharing the route costs with passenger traffic, would services such as Norwich to Liverpool, or Stansted to Manchester have suffered too much from avoiding Peterborough, and being routed via Spalding and Nottingham?

It's worth remembering that what little NW-East Anglia services existed in the 1970s were deliberately rerouted away from the joint line to serve Peterborough (not to mention Grantham, Nottingham and Chesterfield). 

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Cowbit, track now lifted, all dated 26th February 1987.

 

attachicon.gifCowbit c 260287.jpg

 

attachicon.gifCowbit d 260287.jpg

 

attachicon.gifCowbit e 260287.jpg

 

attachicon.gifCowbit GS 260287.jpg

 

attachicon.gifCowbit SB 260287.jpg

 

attachicon.gifCowbit sta 260287.jpg

 

Dave

Super photo's. The guys doing these recoveries left so much behind. A lot of it is still out there. I recovered lorry loads of useful stuff simply by writing (lots) to the BR Property Board.

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I don't understand the logic here. I have no idea how much the Werrington constructions are costing, but if all they will do is allow trains heading for Spalding to avoid conflictions on the ECML there must be enough traffic over that route to warrant the expenditure. I am sure that the money spent here would have maintained Spalding-March direct for many years.

 

As for sharing the route costs with passenger traffic, would services such as Norwich to Liverpool, or Stansted to Manchester have suffered too much from avoiding Peterborough, and being routed via Spalding and Nottingham?

 

How can routing container trains from (say) Crewe to Felixstowe via Camden and the GE be any more cost effective than sending them via Nottingham, Sleaford and March? And who can tell which potential services are not running due lack of paths through bottleneck areas.

 

Werrington - the key purpose is to allow more/most freights to use the Joint instead of taking up paths on the ECML.

 

As already stated, Peterborough is key to these services these days.

 

Container trains - it is more cost effective now because it is there, and the March-Spalding line is not, plus the route via Peterborough is near capacity until various other works are completed. It is quite possible to stand near Crescent Bridge at P'boro and see a "queue" of freights waiting to access the ECML (well, you can't actually see the "queue", but at certain times, they arrive one after the other). Not just Felixstowes either, but many works trains from the virtual quarry at Whitemoor. This tends to be early morning, one or two hours during the day and then mid-evening. Too many passenger services at other times. On my 20 min walk to, but usually from, the station each day, until 2012, I would often stand and watch at the London Road bridge, or on a nice summer's evening, from the garden of the adjacent barge pub with a pint of Scruttocks Old Dirigible, or similar......reminisces gently.....now I'm back in the room.

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The 'elephant in the room' in any discussion of using the 'Joint Line' as an ECML relief route (whether via Murrow or Peakirk) must be the absence of the Lincoln avoiding line?

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The 'elephant in the room' in any discussion of using the 'Joint Line' as an ECML relief route (whether via Murrow or Peakirk) must be the absence of the Lincoln avoiding line?

Oh the Lincoln avoider. When I lived in Ruskington and the ECML was closed to work on the Newark flat crossing, the time that the level crossings were shut compared to open was often debated in the local press. That was before the area was resignalled. After the manual boxes closed, the barriers were down even longer and the outcry was even louder. With the manual boxes the signalman kept the crossing open to traffic far longer than when all he could see on his CCTV was the the actual crossing....

 

Dave

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Last from Cowbit, again 26th February 1987, isolated signals with spectacles removed and one missing a section of ladder. I guess being concrete they didn't have much scrap value...

 

post-29514-0-34771400-1485557071_thumb.jpg

 

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post-29514-0-00854500-1485557074_thumb.jpg

 

Dave

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