New Rail Connections: New Journey Opportunities

Enhancing the Core of the UK's Rail System

Use the railways, and even with journeys they should handle well, you'll often find they can't meet your needs for reliable travel - and often don't provide a service at all. Even if shunned by governments, rebuilding routes is a viable course of action to provide much-needed flexibility - and open up journey opportunities.

As the market for rail travel has grown, so has the justification to expand the network. Here, we'll explore the potential for two rail line reopenings - 63 and 18 miles in length - with the aim to create a better network of rail links between Britain's cities. This is a project which would add substantial capacity to the rail system, and connect cities with each other in new ways. It's achievable at a small fraction of the cost of the the other two major UK rail projects, and will enhance existing services.

This is a realistic goal. The components already figure in the aspirations and plans of various train operating companies. They certainly figure in the aspirations of rail passengers. It's often difficult to get them to the top of the list of priorities for the government - of whatever colour - which talks railways if an election is in the offing, and the rest of the time build roads.

The Southern Great Central Railway: 63 miles of a fast railway trackbed, south of Leicester. Long stretches need minimal attention, and there are also several more major obstacles, but reusing this line sees large savings in cost and disruption compared to a new-build railway - and without the costs incurred by work on a 'live' railway.
The Matlock to Manchester line: Through Leicester and the East Midlands the project would make use of the Midland main line - partly four track, partly double track, and a line which would benefit from remodelled junctions. Beyond Ambergate, the line is singled to Matlock, where an eighteen mile gap in the rails begins. Perversely, the line was severed for through traffic during the railway cutbacks at the end of the nineteen sixties. The two ends have been operated, rather more expensively than necessary, ever since ...

The two lines, operated together, would address the need to improve capacity, flexibility and resilience. It would allow rail to improve the delivery of '24/7' services - particularly to its freight customers.

For passengers, they would join a series of destinations that already have a strong culture of use of rail services, but they would connect those places in new and better ways.

Particularly for the car driver heading for one of a range of cities, the scheme would provide a well positioned park and ride station at the M1/M6 junction.

Outline map reproduced from Ordnance Survey map data by permission of the Ordnance Survey
© Crown copyright 2001.

Today's Cross Country Rail Network

If you're a user of the existing cross country network you'll be aware that its hub is Birmingham. You'll also be aware of the capacity problems brought about by a growing market for rail travel. These are being addressed by work within the present system - improved junctions and faster track. The potential to develop another network offering different connections has not so far found favour - but a second network would reinforce the first by making train travel more attractive.

The hub of the new network would be the cities of the East Midlands, and also a motorway-linked park and ride station at the junctions of the M1 and M6.

What it would mean for you

If you pass the M1/M6 junction heading for Manchester, the cities of the East Midlands, Yorkshire, Oxford, London, and other destinations, you'd have the option to travel onward by rail. The interchange could be marketed as 'Parkway One' - the UK's premiere park and ride station.

The second cross country network would connect cities in different ways from the first, adding destinations and services. Living within its area you'd be able to use more through trains to more destinations - particularly benefiting the East Midlands which will be a hub for these services in the same way as Birmingham is for the existing cross country network.

British Rail had a success story with Intercity Crosscountry. Created on a shoestring and using hand-me-down trains, it's now attracting healthy investment and is metamorphosing into Virgin's 'Voyager' network.
The hub of that network, at Birmingham, will be working at capacity. As that hub is embedded in a modern city, correcting this is expensive.
Opportunities to change between car and train - intermodal changes - are few and far between with the present rail system, its major stations its major stations tend to lie within congested city centres.
The UK's economy is far larger than it was when the midlands experienced the closing of main line railways. Demand for travel by all modes has grown considerably. By chance, these closures have left the components to build a second cross country network, and improve intermodal opportunities - a meeting place for private and public transport. These pages explore the possibilities.

But surely reopening closed lines is unthinkable and very expensive?

No - new lines and services opened in the eighties and early nineties. Passenger numbers on these have been substantially higher than predicted, but privatisation has now disrupted the mechanisms that reopen lines, and with the number of agencies involved the cost of schemes has rocketed.

Nevertheless, the privatised railway has unlocked funds for line capacity improvements away from the core projects. e.g. Railtrack worked with Chiltern Railways to redouble stretches of the London Marylebone - Birmingham line to allow Chiltern Railways to offer a quality alternative to the West Coast Main Line.

Rebuilding rail lines is expensive, though usually less so mile for mile than road construction. The capital costs incurred then give benefits over very many years. This scheme would involve various improvements to the current rail system (eg remodelling of Trent Junctions, and Wigston South, to meet demand for increased capacity) that need to be addressed whether or not the new lines are built.

It is clearly in the interests of passengers that new services and line reopenings aren't blocked by the present day structure of the rail industry. The Strategic Rail Authority has developed financial mechanisms to direct investment into rail projects, and these can include new lines.

| Top | To Railways Index Page |

Mark Annand. Updated January 2003

Rebuilding the West Coast Main Line?
Here are some more ingredients for success:
Matlock to Manchester
Southern Great Central
Aynho - Princes Risborough
Oxford to Bletchley.
One down: three to go ... and the West Coast Main Line is always going to need rebuilding ...