New Rail Connections: New Journey Opportunities

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Project Status

This is a personal web site outlining an idea. Research into reopening these two lines will not have considered the benefits from considering them as one project - built by mutually hostile companies, they have never been linked in any way.

Perhaps it's time to do so. You can help:

• Create links to this web site - this will improve its visibility in the better search engines
• Talk with friends, family, contacts about this.
• Contact individuals, support pressure groups and authorities who are in a position to act. In Scotland, public demand has led to government grants to fund the study and legislation necessary to start to put a rail link on one third of the 'Waverley Route'. In the UK as a whole, public transport has a rather higher profile in local authority planning than it does nationally. Public pressure does assist in changing perceptions at national level.
• Closed rail routes are orphans. When organisations with the power, interest and authority to raise the capital becomes interested in their potential, a mechanism to reopen them is established.

  Though its building would invoke substantial cost, the 'Shadow Crosscountry' network is not a large project in terms of the total transport budget for the UK over the eight or so years it would take to plan and construct. If it were made a priority, funding would be found, and the northern part could be brought into use within four years. There are now mechanisms for channelling investment into individual rail projects to benefit the network for passenger and freight traffic.

Current Developments

Curiously, the two lines, separately, are under active scrutiny by separate parts of the rail industry. However, considering the two together, strengthens the case for both.

Derbyshire County Council has contributed half the cost of an £800,000 study into the practicality of reopening the Midland line through the peak, the study is finally underway in 2003.

Chiltern Railways, as part of their franchise renewal agreement, has various expansion plans, known as 'Project Evergreen' - one component is a study of the potential to reinstate the southern Great Central to service a link between an M1/M6 parkway station and London - this study reports in 2003.

There will be network benefits to be gained from considering both reopenings together.

Previously Railtrack's 'Network Management Statements' have included references to line reopenings, but its experience with the West Coast Main Line renewal has meant that the organisation has been replaced by the maintenance only Network Rail. It is worth bearing in mind that at the time of the previous West Coast Main Line renewal, extensive use was made of both the Great Central and the Midland line to Manchester - they served as diversionary routes. The present rail system can be said to be struggling, with too few diversionary routes: its health may depend on reinstating these.

The government has commissioned a series of multimodal transport studies, timetabled to conclude between 2001 and 2003. They focus on discrete areas and may not trap the benefits gained by restoring and working as one system, two railways in different study areas.

• West Midlands Multimodal Study
• West Midlands to East Midlands Multimodal Study
• South East Manchester Multimodal Study
• London to South Midlands Multimodal Study
• East Midlands Multimodal Study

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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 ...