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Axed rail routes may be reopened under new Department for Transport plans
The announcement will give fresh hope to campaign groups, who are still fighting to restore services cut more than 50 years ago.

The Department for Transport has confirmed it is actively working with a number of groups to explore the possibility of reopening old rail routes, axed under the so-called Beeching cuts of the 1960s.

It follows a call by Transport Secretary Chris Grayling a year ago, encouraging those in the public and private sector to submit proposals for potential projects to regenerate old lines.

The announcement will give fresh hope to dozens of campaign groups across the UK, who are still fighting to restore services cut more than half a century ago.

A spokesman for the Department for Transport told Sky News: "We are continuing to grow the rail network to deliver improvements for passengers, unlock new housing and support the economy, including by exploring opportunities to restore previously lost capacity.

"We have received a wide variety of proposals to enhance the railway from across the public and private sector, and are working with promoters to explore opportunities to re-open routes cut under Beeching.

"This is on top of exploring reopening the Northumberland Line for passenger use, supporting the reinstatement of stations on the Camp Hill Line, developing new rail links to Heathrow and a new station at Cambridge South."

The spokesman said that due to the confidentiality issues around its market-led approach, the department was not yet in a position to release details of the proposed projects, but hoped to be able to provide more information in the year ahead.

Dr Richard Beeching became arguably the most infamous name in the history of Britain's railways after he proposed almost a third of the network should be axed to try to regenerate the country's failing and unprofitable rail system.

Despite countrywide protests, by the 1970s around 6,000 miles of track had been lost and more than 2,300 stations closed.

In the years since, many campaign groups have continued their fight to have services restored and a growing number have been successful, with around 50 axed rail routes reopened.

The most successful example of a Beeching axe reversal is the Borders railway in Scotland, which largely follows the route of the old Waverley line between Edinburgh and Carlisle.

Three years ago, a 35-mile stretch of the track was reopened between Edinburgh and Tweedbank in the central Borders.

The Queen and Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon took a train journey down to the Borders to mark the return of the service.

Campaigners are now fighting to convince the Scottish and UK governments to reopen the rest of the line, through the Borders biggest town Hawick and down to Carlisle.
They point to the enormous success of the Borders railway, which has seen passenger numbers far exceed the levels predicted.

The managing director of Scotrail, which runs services on the line, is very supportive of efforts to expand the route.

Alex Hynes said: "We've demonstrated, when we build it, people will come.

"And more than three years after the opening of the Borders Railway, we have welcomed our fourth million customer onto the route.

"You might expect that three years after opening, that growth would tail off now, it hasn't.

"On the Borders railway that growth is actually accelerating which means we are going to have to operate longer trains on this route and I think there is more growth to come as well."

Mr Hynes said the restoration of the line had already impacted communities along its route in a very positive way.

"Economic studies have already shown a huge boost to tourism in the region and if you look at the amount of house building along the line of the route, the Borders railway is connecting parts of Scotland with some of the lowest economic value per head with the capital, enabling people to access jobs, opportunities, affordable housing," he said.

"It's a great economic success story for Scotland."

The rail chief has regular meetings with campaigners and others, as efforts continue to extend the line south.

"We want to see a bigger and better railway for Scotland, that will include line openings, I hope," he said.

"Ultimately it is a matter for government, depending on where the extension goes to, UK government as well.

"But we are very happy to support continuing work to look at the feasibility of extending the Borders railway further."

For the moment at least, the Borders railway terminates in the small community of Tweedbank, anyone wishing to head further south has to take the bus, car, or other means of transport.

Around 25 miles south of Tweedbank, the town of Hawick has been badly impacted in the more than 50 years since the loss of its rail service.

Before the line reopened to Tweedbank three years ago, Hawick was the furthest centre of population from a rail station on the UK mainland.

The closure of the main line through the town impacted business and saw Hawick's population shrink by more than 2,000.

Marion Short, vice-chair of the Borders Railway Campaign, regularly walks along the old railway line, heading south out of Hawick.

She told us: "The whole Borders was hit by the railway but Hawick particularly, it was a thriving industry town full of mills and the line's closure led to its demise I think.

"That was the end of it and things have gone downhill since then."

However, Ms Short said she was becoming increasingly confident that the rail line could be restored.
"We feel, based on the success we had on the first part south of Edinburgh, it has now given us the impetus to go forward," she said.

"People don't you just want the railway to come to Hawick, we want it extended through to Carlisle."

The relative success of efforts to restore long-closed rail lines comes against a backdrop of growing criticism of the state of large rail infrastructure projects like HS2 and Crossrail, billions of pounds over budget and behind schedule.

Campaigners Sky News spoke to said they felt short changed by the emphasis that is nearly always placed on rail services in the south of the country, at the expense of often vital rail links to more remote communities.

Ms Short said: "Given that everything else is behind schedule and going over budget, we think it's just a little bit of the pot that we need here.

"I think, unless you live in a rural area, people don't actually understand about the social isolation and the fact that there is no connectivity between communities.

"Speaking to ordinary individuals in this town and across the Borders, we feel somewhat cut off."

More than 130,000 people have signed our petition - have you?

Around seven miles south of Hawick, a stretch of the old Waverley line is still running today, thanks to the efforts of a group of railway enthusiasts.

The Waverley Route Heritage Association has restored around a kilometre of track and runs several old engines on the route as a tourist attraction.

One of the heritage association's members, Bill Renwick, said he believed regenerating the old line could be relatively easily achieved.

"It's very doable, there's a tunnel not far from here where there's a small rock fall at the front," he said. "But that tunnel could be opened out, or re-lined.

"There isn't an engineering problem they couldn't get over.

"Hopefully, the Scottish and English governments, with the borderlands initiative, could make a really good case for it and get it straight across the border."

Along much of the old Waverley line, many the bridges, embankments and tunnels are still in place.

The article sounds very similar to something that the government released a year or two back about reversing Beeching and reopening/rebuilding railway lines.
Question is, does this indicate that the policy is moving forward or is it just that they want to reuse a previously successful PR stunt?

You feel for those who fall for this absolute tosh. It’s unhelpful - gives false hope to those dreaming of reopening a whole raft of ludicrous schemes. When will people learn basic economics - just because a 2x2 car DMU is full does not justify £350m capex being spent on it!! 

Portishead........ Nuff said 😀

...just because a 2x2 car DMU is full does not justify £350m capex being spent on it!! 

I'd not heard of Richard Bowker, but having googled him I can see that he has experience in this area... I'm intrigued though; if you can't justify running trains when they're full, how can you ever justify them?

I thought Portishead was reopening next year with platform 2 being renumbered at BTM.

The Portishead rail website shows 2022 with a question mark next to it! How long has this farce been going on despite an overwhelming business case for its reinstatement? Delay after delay.... I wouldn't take the recent article on reopenings with a pinch of salt. More like a gritter lorry full of the stuff!

This is all nonsense. I very much doubt, given their record, if Tory government is never going to implement a programme of re-openings. More likely the story is a cover for impending bad news..

They wont, they will expect local developers / authorities etc to fund it, the best the government will do is ease some rules on what funding can be used on.  Its more likely the cost of potentially reopening a closed railway line will be used to justify the building a new road or converting an existing road to dual carriageway

Governments of either stripe have failed rail consistently through misguided policies and through feast and famine funding. I'm all for placing blame where it's due, so let's not forget that Barbara Castle closed more route mileage than Marples, and Blair's government only reopened 400m (that's metres) of track during their time in office. Thatcher balked at the Serpell report and then asset-stripped BR as traffic grew.

The Heathfield Line in Neutron Abbot could be an interesting study in mixed use 'enthusiast' reopening.

I've always thought it a shame that there isn't some sort of railway order that spanned between light rail and a full safety case.

Having advised politicians as well as having worked on a number of rail business cases in the past, I do find myself concurring with a lot of what Red Squirrel says. Whilst BCR's and the like are an important component of individual schemes, when it comes to broad-brush transport strategy such as whether to take forward high-speed rail, whether to proceed with an electrification program or whether to expand the rail network, it is always the political decision that ultimately takes precedence over the business case.

Take HS2 for example – For years we were told that the figures didn't add up, until one day a political decision was taken, and suddenly they did. The same is true of electrification, out of favour throughout the early years of privatisation because of “lack of flexibility” until one day a political decision was taken, and suddenly it was all the rage again.

That doesn't, of course, answer what I believe were Red Squirrel's two separate main questions though – Namely “How much will expanding the rail network cost?” and “Should we just get on with it or simply give up?”

I've been giving this some thought over the last day or so, and here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to give you a scenario where it is absolutely 100% in the political interests of either the current Conservative Transport Secretary, or a potential incoming Labour Transport Secretary, to embark on the biggest expansion of the non-devolved UK rail network in terms of lines and stations in living memory. Futhermore, in this scenario, just one political decision is required to make it a reality, and no, it isn't scrapping HS2 – We can still have that as well, should we so wish.

First though, we need to decide what our network expansion program will consist of, and (ta-daa!) “How much will it cost?”

In choosing which line reopenings to include, I've gone with the relatively well-respected Campaign for Better Transport's list of “Top 12 Line Reopenings”, with one slight alteration – The list included the line between Stourbridge-Walsall-Lichfield, but since it was published, the section that includes Wednesbury and Dudley has been approved for conversion to light rail, so I've gone with Walsall-Lichfield instead.

In terms of costings, had I given myself weeks perhaps stretching into months to reply to this topic, I would have loved to have based them on following grahame's list to the letter. However, I've only actually given myself a day, so I'm afraid you'll have to excuse me relying on other people's calculations on this occasion. What I've done in each case is to take a rail industry recognised business case figure, and where necessary uprate it for inflation. This is obviously not perfect, as it's effectively my best guess based on the best guesses of those who officially studied the relevant case. As a result, some figures do look rather on the high side (and you can tell that from those cases which I've included that we've discussed at length on the forum), while some others look rather on the optimistic side to say the least:

Ashington-Blyth-Newcastle - £203 million

Portishead/Metrowest Phase 1 - £116 million

Walsall-Brownhills-Lichfield - £157 million

Newcastle-Washington-Durham Parkway-Ferryhill - £111 million

Lewes-Uckfield - £186 million

Skipton-Colne - £103 million

Leicester-Burton - £186 million

Fleetwood-Preston - £21 million

Wisbech-March - £122 million

Totton-Hythe - £15 million

East West Rail Complete Oxford-Cambridge - £1 billion

Bere Alston-Tavistock-Okehampton - £479 million

TOTAL - £2.699 billion

In addition, I will also include an additional £341 million for a massively-enlarged New Stations Fund, so we can get as many of those much-needed schemes opened as possible, rather than languishing on the drawing board indefinitely.

FINAL TOTAL - £3.04 billion

So how are we going to pay for all this, I hear you ask.

The DfT has a Road Investment Strategy which will see £15.2 billion invested over 5 years in over 100 major schemes to enhance, renew and improve the road network, which equates to roughly – you've guessed it - £3.04 billion per year. The period runs from 2015-2020 and is known as RIS 1. In parallel to RIS 1, the Road Investment Strategy for the period post-2020 – known as RIS 2 – is being developed along very similar lines, but crucially for us, hasn't been finalised yet..

What I would propose is that the road schemes that would have been funded in the final year of RIS 1 – 2019-2020 – be deferred for one year and instead become the schemes that are funded in the opening year of RIS 2 – 2020-2021. Although this will undoubtedly inconvenience those road scheme promoters affected, remember we are not talking about cancelling any road schemes that have been approved as part of the RIS, and only delaying a few by just one year. When you consider that every scheme on our rail expansion list has been deferred by a lot longer than a year at some stage, I don't think this is a huge amount to ask.

The £3.04 billion that would have been allocated to RIS 1 in 2019-2020 would instead be allocated to the biggest expansion of the non-devolved UK rail network in terms of lines and stations in living memory, and that's the political decision that would have to be made.

So why would taking this decision be absolutely 100% in the political interests of either the current Conservative Transport Secretary, or a potential incoming Labour Transport Secretary?

If you are the current Conservative Transport Secretary, then you've gone from being the Transport Secretary who really wanted to be Transport Secretary to being the Transport Secretary who it all went wrong for. Whether there's a new train to be introduced, a line to be wired up, the integrity of a franchise system to uphold, a new timetable to smooth the way for, or interminable strikes to avoid, it's pretty much been rail industry failure all the way, and all on your watch. However, if you take this political decision, then although those of us with some rail knowledge might find the link tenuous at best, it's entirely possible that the public might look back and say “Until he came along, I never thought these lines and stations would reopen, but look at the network now!” and judge your overall time accordingly.

If you are an incoming Labour Transport Secretary in a Corbyn-led government, then you have to get straight on with renationalisation. Whatever your views on the merits or otherwise of this, there's no doubt that this will be a rocky process, with heated battles likely with those whose positions depend on the status quo being maintained. When things inevitably don't all go according to plan, there is clearly the potential for your time at the helm to be equally mired in the brown stuff. However, if you take this political decision, then although those of us with some rail knowledge might find the link tenuous at best, it's entirely possible that the public might look back and say “Until renationalisation, I never thought these lines and stations would reopen, but look at the network now!” and judge your overall time accordingly.

In the wider political context, unless the UK really is about to turn backside-over-bosum on its axis and vote to remain in the EU in a second referendum, then either a Conservative or Labour government is going to have to steer us through Brexit at the end of March 2019, and who knows what awaits us then? However, if you take this political decision, then although those of us with some rail knowledge might find the link tenuous at best, it's entirely possible that the public might look back and say “Until Brexit, I never thought these lines and stations would reopen, but look at the network now!” (you get the picture...)

Finally, if you happen (god forbid) to be Network Rail, having really not had the greatest of times recently in terms of figures, planning, delivery and pretty much everything else besides, perhaps this is an opportunity for me to focus on something you really have managed to get right (Savour it folks, it aint gonna happen often...)

Following the collapse of the tender process, Network Rail stepped in to take over the construction of the Borders Railway in November 2012, and agreed to build it by mid-2015. Despite major challenges, and having been praised along the way for deploying ground-breaking techniques to overcome line blockages, they duly did indeed build the Borders Railway by mid-2015. It's entirely possible that if they sign-up for this expansion program in late-2019, and build these lines by mid-2022 the public might look back and say “I thought Network Rail were on their last legs, but they built all these lines and stations, and look at the network now!”

I don't think even those of us with some rail knowledge would deny them the credit for that.

How about Gloucester to Ross-on-wye through to Hereford.

"The initial study has established that it is technically feasible to re-open the route.

"This is the next stage to look at whether the demand for freight is enough to make it viable.

"The value of re-opening the line to passengers is a given but we need to see if enough freight would use it to justify it.

"I am personally committed to re-opening the Colne to Skipton line as an alternative route across the Pennines for freight traffic but that does not mean it will happen. The business case needs to be made.

"If it is the Department for Transport would provide the £400m needed for the scheme which would include improvements to the East Lancashire line from Preston through Accrington and Blackburn, possibly including doubling tracking the section from Burnley to Colne.

"If the case is made, work on re-opening the line would start in the early to mid-2020s"

I'm warming to Grayling...

willing though it may be not very able, to do great things

I'm not. I'm reminded of Pepys' description of Thomas Bloodworth (thanks, T (FFT, N!))!:

Just out of interest, who was the last S of S for Transport that the enthusiast etc community liked?

Chris Grayling is on record as saying that he is the Transport Secretary who wanted to be Transport Secretary, and I know from my own experience that he often takes a personal interest in quite detailed aspects of particular transport cases and issues.

On Portishead, as I said, .... It is a confused mess, ....

The list of ex-ministers should include Sir David Mitchell (1983 - 88, in two roles) at DfT.
He with SoS Nicholas Ridley (Civil Engineer) put through much of the 1980's electrification.

He should have his statue at KX IMHO, Tory or not.

OTC

There is NO confusion at all, the cost is just too much for the LA's involved to bear.

.... because saying you support it and then your department declining to fund it is (to put it charitably) confusing...

Growing up as I did in Portsmouth on the South Coast in the 1980s, Ridley is probably the one that sticks in my mind too.

On the minus side:

Bus deregulation and the privatisation/selling off into many pieces of the National Bus Company was steered through on Ridley's watch. Apart from the obvious overnight change and upheaval I remember at the time, I am always mindful of two longer-term effects this policy has had.

1) Before bus deregulation, it was not made obvious to passengers exactly which bus services or journeys on a particular route were loss-making. Once bus deregulation took place though, timetables suddenly began to show the note "Operated under contract to X County Council", thus making the difference between commercial and subsidised journeys very clear.

This system worked ok in the early days when local authorities had the resources and bus subsidies based on social need were higher up the priority list, and actually worked in a largely positive way when successive Labour governments had ring-fenced transport grants to give out to fund such bus services with.

However, one of the first things that the incoming Conservative-led government did in 2010 was to remove the transport grants, and what funding remained available was no longer ring-fenced and often got diverted to other things that councils saw as a higher priority. This led immediately to a bonfire of evening and Sunday bus services, and as time has gone on has to led to a situation where central government has lit the fuse in the form of ever-reducing council funding, and then thrown the bomb over to passengers, bus companies and local authorities to play bus cuts pass the parcel with. This manifests itself in the kind of battles over disappearing bus services that we often document on this forum, and which central government has contrived to stand as far away as possible from despite creating the conditions for such disputes in the first place.

2) We often discuss on the forum how we can best integrate bus and rail ticketing. However, what people have forgotten over time is that prior to bus deregulation, it was the norm to have integrated bus and rail travelcards, certainly in the towns and cities on the south coast where I grew up. Overnight though, all the new bus companies seemingly brought out their standalone products, with hardly any negotiating the continuation of arrangements with rail. Ironically, a key reason not as much progress has been made as one would have liked in the interim is due to fear of the very competition laws that were allegedly there to improve things for passengers in the first place.

Also, I remember very clearly the closures of Radipole, and that of Eridge-Tunbridge Wells, and it was those examples that first encouraged me to look into the circumstances and reasoning behind rail closures. Both were signed off by Ridley.

On the plus side:

Many see the mid-1980s as the beginning of a period of rail renaissance, and there was definite progress beginning to be made. The Eridge-Tunbridge Wells closure was directly linked to the Tonbridge-Hastings electrification scheme, which was announced just after Ridley became Transport Secretary, completed just before he left, and was (as OTC said earlier) the forerunner of a number of electrification schemes both in the South East and elsewhere.

Network SouthEast was launched towards the end of the Ridley era, and had a huge positive effect, both practically and visually on the rail network in my part of the world, providing the perfect vehicle for a renaissance vision both in terms of refresh/rebrand, and the practical modernisation steps such as the Solent and Weymouth electrification that was to come.

Let's not forget also that Melksham station reopened in 1985 in the Ridley era and sparked what is very likely to be my lifelong interest in the TransWilts, and that it was a forerunner of the slew of such station openings/reopenings through to the early 1990s.

Leaving aside Ridley and looking in overall terms, given my priority in terms of public transport has always been geared more towards the expansion of the rail and bus networks, rail-wise I would probably look more favourably towards the Conservative Transport Secretaries on the list for their role in 80s/early 90s rail network expansion and latterly in the 2010s onwards for finally sorting the TransWilts and overseeing the New Stations Fund, and less favourably on Labour Transport Secretaries for utter inertia on network expansion, their botched creation and handling of the Strategic Rail Authority, and their complete disinterest in the TransWilts. On bus, it would be the other way round, with Conservative Transport Secretaries failing on bus deregulation and enabling latter-day devastating bus network cuts and contraction, while Labour made genuine attempts to provide funding that stabilised and in rural areas often expanded bus network service provision.

It's a very subjective thing though - I completely get that if (for example) your priority for rail is reliability/punctuality over network expansion, or if you have had a career in the rail industry, you may well have a completely different take  ;D

Growing up as I did in Portsmouth on the South Coast in the 1980s, Ridley is probably the one that sticks in my mind too.