stating the obvious!

A Telegraph article stating the obvious but welcomed all the same. Clearly we're still not getting our message over strongly enough because the S&D isn't one of the five lines mentioned! We'd still love to have someone within the organisation whose sole responsibility will be publicity/lobbying for the S&D. If interested please email me at leysiner@aol.com

The most extraordinary thing that comes out of this article is that some councils are STILL promoting road schemes over rail reinstatement. What planet are they living on? I thought government had abandoned all road development in any case ...

Miles of rail line could be re-opened

Miles of railway line shut under the Beeching Axe could be reopened under an overhaul of the rail industry.

Work is already under way on reopening a rail line between Bicester in Oxfordshire and Bletchley in Buckinghamshire Photo: PA

By David Millward, Transport Editor

11:00AM GMT 09 Mar 2012

It has been more than 50 years since Dr Richard Beeching recommended the closure of hundreds of branch lines in his report The Reshaping of British Railways.

More than 4,000 miles of railway and 3,000 stations were closed in the decade following the report.

But now disused stations and lines could be brought back into life as the network adapts to shifts in the population over the last 50 years.

The move comes against a backdrop demand for rail travel, which has seen more people using the trains than at any time since the late 1920s.

Currently there are 1.35 billion journeys a year, nearly 500 million more than a decade ago on a network which has barely grown after the wholesale line closures of the early 1960s.

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The change reflects both economic growth since the 1990s and a rise in the number of people wiling to commute by train rather than drive.

“It is clear that some lines were shut in the 1960s which should not have been shut,” Norman Baker, the local rail minister, told the Daily Telegraph. “There is a consistent drumbeat about lines which should be open.

“Re-opening lines helps local communities, gets people back onto trains which has economic and social benefits.”

Work is already under way on reopening a rail line between Bicester in Oxfordshire and Bletchley in Buckinghamshire.

Eventually, it is hoped, this could restore the “Varsity Line”, linking Oxford and Cambridge.

Other potential candidates include:

– The Lewes-Uckfield route in East Sussex, providing an alternative to the Brighton mainline.

– The line between Bourne End and High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire which would link the Great Western and Chiltern lines.

– The Okehampton-Bere Alstom link, which would provide a second route between Exeter and Plymouth

– The line between Stansted and Braintree in Essex.

Ministers hope that the Government's plans to cut industry’s running costs will make reopening lines more affordable.

Also plans to devolve control of local rail services to councils will enable them to identify candidates. especially with the Government planning to give them a greater say under how cash is spent.

Under the proposals published earlier this week, local authorities would be expected to fund the schemes for at least three years to prove they are viable, after which the Department for Transport would take over responsibility – subject to cash being available.

The Government’s proposals were welcomed by Stephen Joseph, executive director of the Campaign for Better Transport.

”I think it is now generally accepted that the Beeching report went too far. There are a number of sizeable places that aren't on the rail network where reopening lines and stations would make good economic sense, and there are also 'missing links' between key towns.

“Many of these places suffer from traffic congestion and people really want a choice in how they get around, rather than being forced to use cars.

“We hope the Government will find ways of helping local communities develop reopening schemes, as a first step we'd like to see possible reopening routes safeguarded in the planning system so they don't get built on."

Ralph Smyth, of the Campaign to Protect Rural England, described the announcement as a “definite move forward”

But, he added, “The funding isn’t there and many areas are prioritising road schemes.

“The Government needs to tell councils to come up with rail schemes and change the funding rules to make it possible.”

even the daily mail is joining the 21st century!

Peter Hitchens - spot on!

Can Beeching be undone?
Under headlines suggesting that the famous Beeching Cuts of Britain's railways may be reversed, we learn that the 'Association of Train Operating Companies' wants to reopen a few closed lines and stations. It isn't sadly, the extensive reversal of vandalism that we need.

This is partly because so many of the lines were destroyed or built over very rapidly after they were closed. Some believed at the time that this was done to make the destruction irreversible. It often looks like it. But this is the kind of suspicion it is impossible to prove.

Even so, isn't it odd how much harder it seems to be these days to get finance or land for new railway construction, while new roads seem to be built , and land found for them, without major difficulty? In my new book, The Broken Compass, I devote a chapter to the curious prejudice of political Conservatives in favour of cars and against trains.

This leads them to a bizarre belief that the enormous subsidies provided for the building of (state-owned) roads, and the tax-breaks given to airlines, are in some way all right whereas it is a crime against Adam Smith to spend money on railways.

I rode my bicycle along most of the length of the destroyed Oxford to Cambridge line last autumn. It has always been a mystery to me as to why this line was ever closed. I remember when it still functioned, an endearing museum piece with gaslamps on station platforms, used until his death in 1963 by C.S.Lewis ( he called it 'the Cantab Crawler' on account of its meandering slowness) to travel between his Oxford home and his Cambridge college.

There is no good direct road on this route, or any viable rail alternative. Even Lord Beeching did not want to shut it, and it was one of the very few East-West tracks in the country, connecting the Paddington, St Pancras, King's Cross and Liverpool Street main lines about 50 miles north of London. Some parts of it seem lost forever. Others could easily be reinstated.

Under BR, though closed, much of the line still functioned for goods, and occasional passenger trains still ran between Oxford and Milton Keynes, a link that would be extremely useful when the Oxford to Birmingham lines are disrupted. Since privatisation - and perhaps because of it - much of it seems to have deteriorated quite badly and so would be very costly to recreate.

But I think the time is coming when this task will have to be addressed. Mass car ownership was never right for this crowded island, and it has just about run its course. The railway, the most advanced and efficient form of ground transport ever devised, is likely to come back into its own.

When that happens, we should consider just how we came to make the huge mistake that was the Beeching report, and teach it to children as an example of how wrong an entire generation can be about the future?Go to the original article for some REALLY silly 20th century dinosaur comments, and also some good ones re heritage railways and the future. I remember when I used to be cutting edge - now I'm mainstream!

return to Evercreech Junction

My last trip to Evercreech Junction was in 1980.

It was good to see that the main station building is still standing, ready for purchase by the New S&D in the future.

This iconic location - and not just from an S&D perspective - is a sad sight today. It should be bustling with life with trains coming every half hour or so. There should be shops and restaurants serving the thousands of visitors coming by train. There should be trains running 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. It underlines the utter desolation of certain places when they lose their trains and how desperately they need them back.

In fact the whole journey today from Bristol to the Gartell Railway underlined this economic apartheid. Binegar, Shepton Mallet, Evercreech Junction - all seemed dull and lifeless with few if any amenities. Conversely the two places we did pass through that are still served by trains - Castle Cary and Templecombe - seemed lively and alive. The car park at Castle Cary was packed on a Sunday.

This contrast will become sharper and sharper as the Energy Crunch bites harder. Those people clever (or lucky) enough to live on a railway will be able to continue to go about their daily lives. Their property prices will rise (or fall less) than those who suddenly find themselves out in the sticks, with just crumbling roads and hideously expensive cars and buses to rely on. There will be a shift away from these blighted areas to those that will have a bright future. Even today properties close to railways (or more precisely stations) are worth a good deal more than those that are bereft of modern transport.

This perception will ensure that as time goes by more and more people in these areas (which, currently, sadly includes most of the S&D route) will absolutely insist that their railways are returned. But they can't all be returned at once, there will be a distinct pecking order. We have every intention that the S&D will be up there with the usual suspects - Exeter-Okehampton-Plymouth, Oxford-Cambridge, Waverley route, Great Central, Skipton-Colne, Lewes-Uckfield etc etc.

not in my back yard!

(Thanks to Mick Knox for this and picture).

An example of when the state run railway wants to reopen a line. Miles of palisade fencing that the average trespasser would take seconds to get over so is a complete waste of time & money. This is in Bletchley on the route to Oxford. This is not what the people of Somerset or Dorset would want on their re-opened line!

It is essential that as the S&D gets rebuilt it is seen as PART of the landscape, not a blot on it. Network Rail lives in a dystopian past. The fencing probably exists because there's money in it for someone. Most continental and US railways don't use fencing at all. Why should they? Our roads aren't fenced and are infinitely more dangerous as it's impossible to forecast where a vehicle may go. A kid from Hartcliffe was killed a week or so ago when a car, driven by another kid, mounted the pavement and hit him. No fences there. Yet the roads have a constant procession of vehicles, driven by amateurs, with barely a break in between. Even the busiest railways rarely have more than one train every two minutes.

This is the future. The image of railways in their prime is an image of the railway of the future. We need to fight to ensure that our railways are human scale, that they serve local needs first, that stations are manned and a delight to wait in, that refreshments are available everywhere and the whole atmosphere is one where people want to be, not flee.

The New S&D is all about this, just as the old S&D was!

PS Thanks for all the pledges and cash that came in to the Midford Appeal after Jeff Harris's very odd message board post!

more oxford to cambridge

Some more very recent shots from Mick Knox of the Oxford to Cambridge line around Winslow before the engineers moved in.

Mick added when sending these 'When I was out here, rushing about before going to work, I thought how the line blends in with the countryside, especially the blue engineering brick built bridges, and now our motorways are a blot on the landscape. '

Of course when railways were first built there were a lot of objections from country people that the lines would blot the landscape. For a few years no doubt they did, especially when accompanied by hundreds of navvies! But it's true, the railways (like the canals before) quickly 'bedded in' and in some cases even enhanced the landscape (think some of the S&D viaducts). I doubt even the most rabid petrolhead would claim that roads (apart from the little country lanes) have ever achieved this.

It helps that trains only run at intervals, even on the busiest routes. A busy road is an endless procession of cars and lorries, a total intrusion in lives rather than an occasional reminder of civilization.

the winslow boy

Some shots just in from Mick Knox.

A sign of the times is that we now have to rush off at short notice to take photos of closed lines, not before they are redeveloped but before they are reopened! I'm not going to complain.

Mick's brief was to record this bit of the Bletchley-Claydon line before Network Rail moved in and cleared it prior to the engineering assessment. Luckily he also got in before the snow! These shots aree around Winslow.

it begins

(photos Mick Knox - S&D 6.3.2006)

I had a frantic email from Mick Knox today. He was off - immediately - to photograph the Bletchley-Claydon line. The engineers were out clearing the route ready for an engineering assessment prior to reopening. This is part of the Oxford-Cambridge line, closed - incredibly - in the 60s. He had hoped to get shots of the route before any disturbance.

Also I've just read that the Waverley route rebuilding will start a year earlier than planned, in 2010. This was another double track main line closed (in 1969), against the wishes of just about everybody. The new section will be the 35 miles from Edinburgh to Tweedbank, the cost of restoration is only £250 million. Compare this with the money wasted on road building! It will still leave Hawick rail-less, though this shouldn't be for much longer, the locals are already clamouring for its reconnection. Hawick is far too large a town to lack any form of modern transport. No doubt Peebles and Biggar will also want reconnecting to the 21st century once the rails start reappearing in the Scottish Borders.

This is good news for the S&D. Where Scotland leads England will no doubt follow. It is ridiculous that large towns (and a city!) like Midsomer Norton, Radstock, Shepton Mallet, Wincanton, Wells, Glastonbury and - incredibly - Blandford still lack any sort of sustainable transport as we approach the second decade of the twenty first century.

Our task becomes easier as each day passes.