Leicestershire councillor says bid to restore Ivanhoe rail line is 'dead'

[whole diary]

[Chris from Nailsea]

From the BBC^» (British Broadcasting Corporation - home page):

Councillor says bid to restore rail line is 'dead'

[Image from here is not available to guests]
The railway still runs through towns like Coalville, but does not carry passenger trains

A councillor has said a campaign to restore a passenger rail link through the Midlands has no future.

Funding to restore the Ivanhoe line, which connects Leicester and Burton-upon-Trent through North West Leicestershire and South Derbyshire, was withdrawn after the Restoring Your Railway scheme was scrapped following a change in government in 2024.

Reform councillor Adam Tilbury, Leicestershire County Council's cabinet member for highways, transport and waste said despite decades of campaigning, the project is "dead" and unlikely to acquire support from the current Labour government.

Amanda Hack, Labour MP^▸ (Member of Parliament, or Mile Post (a method of measuring the railway in miles and chains from a starting point - usually London), depending on context) for North West Leicestershire, raised the issue in a debate in Westminster last week.

Referring to Hack's comments in parliament, Tilbury told the Local Democracy Reporting Service: "Her concerns have fallen on deaf ears unfortunately. We are massively in debt as a country. There is no appetite for it. I don't think it's going to happen in this government's lifetime - it's dead really."

The Ivanhoe line used to connect Leicester with Burton, but closed down as part of the infamous Beeching cuts in the 1960s.

Tilbury said it was "ridiculous" there were currently no passenger routes to link commuters in these areas. "People with no car could go to high paying jobs and bring money back into the area. It's very frustrating. Leicestershire County Council always seems to be at the back of the queue. We have got all the investment coming in around the area but no transport links. We've been promised a rail link for years. We just want the same transport links everyone else has in the country," he said.

Following the debate in Westminster, Hack said: "We want to keep putting the pressure on to get this line up and running for passenger traffic as soon as possible." She said the line would also be beneficial in terms of providing greener transport options for the area.

"Currently, 99 per cent of visitors to local attractions like Conkers travel by car. A train link would provide a greener alternative to reduce carbon emissions and encourage more sustainable travel. It could even be branded the 'National Forest Line', which has a nice ring to it. There is no doubt in my mind, nor in the minds of local people, that restoring passenger rail is a priority," Hack added.

A Network Rail-backed business case to reinstate the line had been with the former Conservative government with hopes work could start in 2024. However, Chancellor Rachel Reeves said the Treasury needed to find £5.5bn of savings in 2024 and a further £8.1bn in 2025.

I do love these emotive lines from current journalists:

The Ivanhoe line used to connect Leicester with Burton, but closed down as part of the infamous Beeching cuts in the 1960s.

CfN^▸ (Chris from Nailsea, an administrator on this forum). 

[Noggin]

To add context, even though it would appear to be a no-brainer at first glance (existing railway, connecting outlying towns to county town, M1 park & ride potential etc), IIRC^▸ ('if I recall/remember/read correctly') the problem is that there's no northbound access to the MML^» (Midland Main Line. - about).

So as well as the line rebuild, resignalling, stations etc, they'd have to CPO a chunk of industrial estate to build a north-bound chord onto the MML. As if that wasn't enough, I suspect that in order to provide sufficient line capacity, it would be necessary to restore one, if not both of the lines between the junction and Leicester station with a station throat rebuild and all the costs that would entail.

Whilst the line *could perhaps* terminate at Coalville, South Wigston or a new Leicester South station, the reality is that the business case probably doesn't stack up, as the majority of users likely wanting to go to Leicester, with an express bus being faster. Not to mention the negative PR^▸ (Public Relations). 

If I was Leicester City Council I'd be focusing my energies and political capital on getting Wigston Jcn to Syston Jcn wired plus any MML capacity improvements thet can be eked out. Once that's done, a whole bunch of infill electrification gains a much better BCR^▸ (Benefit Cost Ratio), services can be sped up, EMT^» (East Midlands Trains - about) and XC^▸ (Cross Country Trains (franchise)) have a better case for battery-electric units, case for Coventry-Leicester improves etc.

https://www.newcivilengineer.com/latest/extending-the-ivanhoe-line-restoration-to-leicester-could-cost-additional-271m-09-11-2023/

[Mark A]

The text from a recent debate at Westminster.

https://www.theyworkforyou.com/whall/?id=2026-01-28a.450.0

A conversation elsewhere recently raised the potential of a flyover at that missing junction to take trains off the branch & above the industrial units - and the MML^» (Midland Main Line. - about) running lines - dropping down and be plumbed into the slow line(s) for onward travel to Leicester. There's several factors that work in favour of this, even if it's a bit like borrowing 'LSWR^▸ (London South Western Railway) best practice'.

Back-of-the-envelope calculations indicate that in terms of distances and gradients, the space is available, the overhead constraints allow for a flyover**, much of the land is in railway ownership, and this would even improve on the vanished 1960s arrangement which dropped the branch trains into the fast lines of what was a four track railway.

Mark

** On the approach from Leicester, unless I have it completely wrong, a 1:50 gradient from the exit to the tunnel would be needed to give the flyover, at a distance of 0.2Km a 5 metre clearance above the current railway. The western flyover approach, with no existing overbridges, is more straigntforward.

[Edit to add the distance that that 1:50 gradient would need to run.]

[IndustryInsider]

A conversation elsewhere recently raised the potential of a flyover at that…There's several factors that work in favour of this, even if it's a bit like borrowing 'LSWR^▸ (London South Western Railway) best practice'.

Presumably by far the most important factor, cost and its effect on a business case, doesn’t work in favour of it?

[grahame]

From afar,  this is one of those projects that starts and gets squashed every few years - current iteration dead , maybe, but wait for it to rise up again at a later date.  And who knows how it will go at the time.    I do remember a journey to Ashby-de-la-Zouch to give a training course, staying in the town.  Horrid transfer at Burton with the bus going from the other side of the town from the station and felt very slow.  AdlZ quite a big town that could / should perhaps have a station.  At the end of the course, one of my delegates wouldn't hear of me taking the bus and gave me a lift to Derby station.

[Richard Fairhurst]

Although the Leicester end is a problem, Coalville-Ashby-Burton-Derby would stand on its own two feet as a reopening. The roads are appallingly congested around there. (I used to work and live part-time in Burton, and it wasn't uncommon to go out for a bike ride in the evening and end up overtaking the stationary traffic on the A444 or A511.)

It's one of those projects that, if any Government had been serious about growing the railways, would have been done years ago. Sadly it gets more difficult, and more expensive, the longer it's put off - the line has suffered from cable theft recently as well as the ongoing subsidence issues, such that the western half is now formally out of use.