From destruction to dithering – a half century of strategic visions for rail in the North and East Midlands

 While waiting the other afternoon for my train at Stoke-on-Trent – a station that might have been designed for Hampton Court and then re-purposed to Staffordshire – I was astonished when a Virgin train (ex Manchester Piccadilly) came rumbling in, next stop Euston in a mere 1 hour 28 minutes. Non-stop from the Potteries to the capital, wow, I never expected that ! However, predictably enough, though sadly enough, it was followed not long afterwards by my train (perhaps it should be renamed a “train-lite”), a tinny little East Midlands Trains one-car diesel that came limping in on its snailpaced cross-country route from Crewe to Derby, packed and cramped, knees not so much under chin as sideways across aisle. “The North Staffordshire Line”, as it’s marketed and glamourised (“Where Stations are part of the Community”).

Railway-wise, this is not the most well-endowed part of the world and, as the thermometer nudges 30, now is the summer of our Midlands Disconnect. Later on there was a delayed connection at Derby attributed firstly to there being another train in front (not a man with a red flag, then?), and secondly to a points failure. Who knows? Who cares? Come back Reggie Perrin, all is forgiven. Average speed, Stoke to Nottingham, 25 mph.

As regards improvements to our railways, points failure isn’t usually a problem; many good and valid points are made by many people on many occasions in many parts of the country. There’s no failure of points, no shortage of them. The difficulty is getting anyone to act upon them.

In the 60s the infamous Dr Beeching’s main legacy to the north and east Midlands was the destruction of the Great Central (splendidly engineered : Marylebone – Rugby – Leicester – Nottingham – Sheffield – Manchester, in fact HS2 by any other name). The subsequent losses of the Nottingham to Melton Mowbray route, and of the northern chord through Chaddesden, east of Derby (both routes now built upon) were also critically unhelpful. Much of the damage, though, could still be rectified with a little gumption and imagination, and not all that much money.

Today, there are many pressure groups and societies eager to reverse the mistakes of the Beeching era, yet nothing much ever seems to happen, at least in these polar wildernesses way beyond the arctic far side of the political event-horizon called the M25. Witterings extend for decades and then die. Shortage of money is the usual excuse; there’s no shortage of money, it’s merely in the wrong place (London). And as with points, there’s no shortage of ideas. 

Several proposals - including some of those listed below – are generally deemed to be plausible, yet are at best scheduled to take decades to implement – in other words, no one wants to take responsibility for them. Kicking the can down the track, as this dismal May-era terminology has it. Among ideas (mostly well-known ones, plus my own observations) for the north and east Midlands, which would involve relatively little infrastructure work, and could theoretically be completed very quickly, would seem to be the following:

1) The freight line between Trent Junction and Willington could be opened for passenger traffic, for selected trains not calling (and having to reverse) at Derby, thus speeding journey times between Nottingham and Birmingham.

2) HS2 – good idea in principle, lousy in specifics, obscene in terms of cost – if built at all should call at East Midlands Parkway, allowing trains from London (having shaved a couple of minutes or so off current Midland main line times) to proceed directly to Nottingham or Derby, without all the faff and time-wasting of having to connect to another mode of transport at Toton (tram with 15 intermediate stops to Nottingham, or slow train going back in the reverse direction). Toton HS2 hub is a thoroughly daft idea - as anyone who isn’t a craven politician or someone with a vested interest can spot immediately by looking at a map. It’s in the wrong place, and too far north. Or why not an HS2 station beneath East Midlands Airport? Is it because there's no joined up transport policy trying to integrate air and rail travel, a vision able to glimpse beyond environmentally catastrophic proposals to cover most of what used to be Middlesex with extensions to Heathrow?

3) There are proposals to re-connect the Derwent Valley line from Matlock, through Bakewell, towards Manchester. This proposal conflicts with walkers and cyclists who use the magnificent Monsal Trail, with its viaducts and tunnels. With respect, there are many places where one can walk or cycle; this well-engineered line is simply too valuable to be used in this way. The rail proposals should proceed. A direct line from Derby and points south and east to Manchester and the north-west.

4) The spur through the south tunnel at Dore should be reinstated, allowing trains from the major East Midlands cities (Nottingham, Derby, Leicester) to reach Manchester and Liverpool directly, along the Hope Valley line, without the tedious detour and reverse at Sheffield. That’s presumably why the spur was built in the first place.

5) The Derby-Crewe line should be served by proper long distance trains (preferably ones with knee space) which could connect, at the eastern end, to Nottingham (and hence Newark and Lincoln, Grantham and Skegness) and at the western end, to Liverpool and Liverpool Airport, Manchester and Manchester Airport, Chester and North Wales. Much like things used to be.

6) Midland Line electrification should continue northwards, beyond the present ludicrous intention to stop at Market Harborough. “Just say no” to bimodal nonsense and The Fat Controller. He of the domed and shiny cranium; hopefully he’ll soon be history.

7) Proper trains should run between Leicester, Nuneaton and Coventry. In the north, routes could extend to Nottingham, Derby, Sheffield and beyond, and in the south, to Leamington Spa, Banbury, Oxford, Reading and points south and west. This would relieve pressure on Birmingham New Street and provide easier access from the East Midlands to Birmingham Airport. A “Midlands Connect” that can’t provide decent connections to the region’s major airport and to one of its largest cities is a joke.

Enough. I believe there is much that could be implemented in a short time with minimal cost. Nothing very new is being suggested here, merely the undoing of the short-sightedness of an earlier generation of politicians. Now, of course, our accountants – sorry, our politicians, not junior smartarses who talk about “train stations”, no, nothing like that at all - are not only visionary, but are able to inspire us with impressive logos, like the Northern Powerhouse and Midlands Connect. Entirely free of charge (and without the need to spend millions on feasibility studies, working parties or focus groups) I would like to offer them – and The Fat Controller in particular - another logo: JFDI.

Zappa on a pole

If you wanted a wonderfully freaky name for a musical genius you could hardly do better than the one bestowed by Francis and Rosie Zappa upon their son, born four days before Christmas 1940, in Baltimore, Maryland. And if you were a proud and freedom loving people eager to shake off decades of political oppression, and wanting to symbolise imagination, creativity and – indeed – freedom, one unlikely yet accurate choice you might make for that representation, would be the very same - Frank Vincent Zappa.

 

In 1990, Frank Zappa, soon to be diagnosed with prostate cancer, was in Hungary at the invitation of the mayor of Budapest, Gabor Demszky, celebrating the demise of communism in Eastern Europe. On 29th June, Frank, his wife Gail, Demszky, and Arunas Toras, were enjoying a cruise on the Danube. Toras was the mayor of Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania. I’m not sure what the specific personal connection was, but evidently Zappa’s music was popular in Lithuania, a country which did not achieve independence from Soviet domination until January 1991. Four years after that (and two years after Zappa’s death on 6th December 1993), a small memorial to the musician was erected in a slightly scruffy square on the west side of the Vilnius city centre. Designed by Konstantinas Bogdanas, who had made something of a career out of creating busts of Lenin, it isn’t an obvious likeness of Zappa, but all the same I was pleased to see it on my visit there last week, tangible evidence as it is of a mildly wacky and anarchic streak in Lithuanian life. Given the constant threat from the east, long may that streak continue and evolve.

Brexit - the marmalade factor

Seville’s oranges are notoriously unappetising if eaten as oranges; processed into marmalade they provide a crucial commercial and culinary link between that delightful Andalucian city and the United Kingdom.

In Seville is the magnificent Museo de Bellas Artes, which specialises in Spanish art, much of it religious in nature, and featuring significant collections by the likes of Murillo and Zurbarán. Entrance to the museum is free to citizens of the European Union. The day of our recent visit happened to coincide with the European elections. We declared our nationality to the lady at the ticket window, and expressions of doubt as to our future membership of the EU passed between us. Doubt and regret.

 
I felt a strong and immediate pang of something like loss. How could we be stupid enough, how could we be small-minded enough, how could we be self-destructive enough, to have reacted to the inadequacies of politicians in Westminster and Brussels, by wanting to deny ourselves all this? To reject hundreds of years of European civilisation, not just the great works of art and the mindset of which they speak, but marmalade too? 

Suddenly I came over all Paddington Bear. Surely marmalade, euro-marmalade, could still stick us together? None of our political dimwits have thought of this, have they?

What shall we be?

On Saturday, a wild and wet day, I thoroughly enjoyed the unexpected experience (unexpected, because I didn’t know it was possible until I arrived there) of taking the high level walkway, 160 feet up, on the transporter bridge across the River Tees, in Middlesbrough. 

Built in 1911, at a time when we had imagination and purpose, when we had individual, local and national pride, lots of money and first rate engineering ability, the Tees Transporter Bridge is one of only two of its kind surviving in the UK. The other is across the Usk at Newport, Gwent. I dimly remember a third, the one that connected Widnes with Runcorn, and which was replaced by a huge arch suspension bridge, painted pale green. Back then, in 1960, the future was exciting, so very foolishly I took photos of the new bridge, while neglecting the old one, which was demolished soon after.

From the Middlesbrough transporter bridge views extend to the North Yorks Moors, and right across Teesside and into County Durham. On Saturday, the cloudbase was very low and the visibility poor. Even so, sadly, from this altitude, the loss of heavy industry on Teesside was all too apparent, and the rectilinear street pattern of the city, very American in appearance, revealed a great many oblongs of emptiness or dereliction. The waterfront at Middlesbrough – currently a small poxy “viewing area” surrounded by rubbish - could be the location for something truly exciting. But what? If you Google “Middlesbrough” the first results you see refer to football, not to a city of more than 138,000 inhabitants where, in another age, from half a world away, Sydney Harbour Bridge was constructed. Football, of course, is for some folk far more important than mere matters of life or death or engineering.

 

The question of purpose was reinforced when I descended again via the glass lift to ground level, and noticed the municipal logo, “Erimus”, on one of the bridge piers. It translates as “We shall be”. Indeed, hopefully we shall, but what? Not just in Middlesbrough, but each one of us. What shall we be, individually, locally, and nationally? What, in this post-industrial, purposeless, fractured, shabby, morally bankrupt, impoverished, broken down, Britain’s Got Talent, twitchy little nation of ours? What will become of us? What shall we be?