Comparative Costs of Reinstating Services

[whole diary]

[Celestial]

I was struck by this item about reinstating passenger services to a short, 9 mile branch line in Germany.  The thing that stood out was the cost, Eur12.9m, including 6 station reopenings. The service closed in 1977, so I would assume that if nothing else the station infrastructure will need a fair amount of work after 40 years.

Now I don't know anything else about the line, but it seems remarkably cheap in comparison with costs to do anything here in the UK^▸ (United Kingdom). I doubt we would get a scheme to shovel ready without incurring that order of spend, let alone completing it (slight exageration, but you get the drift). 

https://www.railwaygazette.com/infrastructure/passenger-service-reintroduction-study/56314.article

GERMANY: Local bus and rail freight operator Regionalverkehr Ruhr-Lippe has commissioned Spiekermann Consulting Engineers to undertake studies for the proposed reintroduction of passenger services on the 14·4 km Röhrtalbahn from Neheim-Hüsten to Sundern in Nordrhein-Westfalen.
This will include assessing the signalling and safety systems which would be needed to reactivate the route, where regular passenger services ended in 1977.
The cost of reviving passenger services on the single-track branch with six stations has been estimated at €12·9m.

_{Clarified that the line is 9 miles long, not 9 metres - Ed}

[grahame]

I was struck by this item about reinstating passenger services to a short, 9 mile branch line in Germany.  The thing that stood out was the cost, Eur12.9m, including 6 station reopenings. The service closed in 1977, so I would assume that if nothing else the station infrastructure will need a fair amount of work after 40 years.

Now I don't know anything else about the line, but it seems remarkably cheap in comparison with costs to do anything here in the UK^▸ (United Kingdom). I doubt we would get a scheme to shovel ready without incurring that order of spend, let alone completing it (slight exageration, but you get the drift). 

That's a very interesting question.
* Has the line been open to freight traffic, or is major re-instatement needed?
* What is the track standard needed?
* Are you looking at a low level / tramway style platforms?
* Do you have planning issue costs?
* Who will be doing the work?

UK comparisons. 

* I was reading that £20 million had been spent on "MetroWest Phase I" so far.  (Have I got that right? - Sounds high - that's Portishead plus what?)

* I was also looking at the costs of heritage lines re-opening - found http://www.bluebell-railway.co.uk/bluebell/extend.html which include:

Nicholas Owen narrates this official Bluebell video, recording the completion of our Northern Extension Project which has taken 39 years and cost about £11 Million, almost all raised by and from the Bluebell's membership and the public.

Neither are close comparisons, I fear ... more discussion starters. 

[4064ReadingAbbey]

I have no direct knowledge of the line, but www.openrailwaymap.org shows it as a branch line, with line reference number 9283 but shown out of use. There is a description on the German Wiki page here <https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bahnstrecke_Neheim-Hüsten–Sundern>.

Briefly, it runs up a valley parallel to the road in the Sauerland from Neheim to Sundern past the Sorpe dam (one of the targets for the Dam Busters raid) which is now an area for outdoor recreation.

It was a private line which was passed to a bus operator in 1966 and by 1977 all passenger trains ceased as the bus and the railway run parallel to each other. There are some 50,000 people living close to the line which was used for freight until DB^» (Deutsche Bahn - German State Railway - about) rationalisation in 2002-4 caused much of it to be lost although much timber was moved in 2007.

The legal framework for branch lines in Germany is different to the framework for main lines and leads to a lower cost base.

Local government has been active since 2010 in trying to get the line reopened.

So it would seem that most, if not all of the infrastructure, still exists and no part of the right of way has been lost. I have no idea if anything needs replacing after so long out of use - but I would be surprised if it didn't!

[grahame]

So it would seem that most, if not all of the infrastructure, still exists and no part of the right of way has been lost. I have no idea if anything needs replacing after so long out of use - but I would be surprised if it didn't!

From the German article:

Due to the dense population of the valley and its numerous industrial companies, the volume of traffic on the Röhrtalbahn always reached a considerable level, so that it could be operated as a profitable private railway for a long time.

On April 20, 1966, a bus company was added to the railway, which gradually took over the entire passenger transport. Only one pair of trains per day has been offered since 1972, rail passenger traffic ended entirely on December 20, 1977.

Several timber trains are run annually in freight transport. In 2007, large amounts of wood, which had been caused by the hurricane Kyrill, were removed.

In addition, the RLG served some companies in general cargo traffic, which declined sharply from 1996 and after the introduction of MORA C 2002-2004. In freight transport, only two companies in Hüsten in the northern part of the route are regularly serviced. Wooden trains have been running irregularly from Sundern since November 2019.

So that looks like irregular freights the whole length of the line