So you think you could plan a railway?

We are in the final stages of waiting for a decision on HS2, although all the leakages suggest that it will be approved in principle. Well, I believe the idea is right, in principle – it’s just some of the details which appear far from sensible or satisfactory. One hopes, if it is approved, that in the long years ahead, until eventual completion, opportunities will occur to improve on some of the obvious deficits and absurdities – like having the Birmingham terminus at Curzon Street rather than within walking distance of connecting trains at New Street, and of having the East Midlands hub too far north relative to Nottingham and Derby; it should be at East Midlands Parkway, not Toton. I hope that some sense will be seen before it’s too late.

When Boris was returned to power in December 2019, with a massively increased majority, I wrote to his Transport Secretary, Grant Shapps, with some thoughts on HS2, but so far I’ve received not so much as an acknowledgement, which is disappointing.

Never mind. Whatever happens with HS2 it is obvious that improvements to the railway network in many parts of the country are desperately needed immediately, as part of an overall environmentally friendly and socially supportive transport policy that includes regional airports – not just those around London. Among the issues that need to be fixed urgently are:

(a) inadequate capacity for commuters on certain routes in and out of several of our major cities, including London, Manchester, Leeds and Birmingham;

(b) capacity on the East Coast main line restricted by the Welwyn viaduct, which needs in some way to be doubled;

(c) the need for faster services linking Manchester with South and West Yorkshire, possibly involving reinstating the Woodhead Tunnel or a new TransPennine line entirely;

(d) the congestion centred on the Manchester Piccadilly – Oxford Road axis;

(e) the strategically important provision of an alternative route between Exeter and Plymouth, given the vulnerability of the sea wall at Dawlish.

And others, best summed up as a need for more trains, more staff, better customer service – a network to be proud of rather than embarrassed and made angry by. One obvious – probably too obvious - idea for pinpointing locations for improvement is to ask frequent travellers living in major rail centres around the country, where it is that they habitually experience problems or unnecessary delays, and what imaginative but probably small scale changes they believe could be made that would make all the difference to their journeys.

Well, here goes. I’ve asked myself!  Writing from the perspective of Nottingham, very central and once very well connected, but less so post-Beeching, I suggest the following three improvements for starters. None of them are original, and some are already under active consideration, but all would be relatively easy and inexpensive (in the scheme of things) to undertake. They just need to be got on with, pronto:

(1) Reinstating the Dore south curve, which would permit trains from Nottingham to reach Manchester without the detour into Sheffield and back, probably shaving 30 minutes off the journey time. In my experience, over many years, Sheffield is a repeated cause of delays. Nottingham to Manchester in not much more than 1 hour 15 minutes should be feasible.  As far as I can tell, all that is needed is relaying a short length of double track. Passengers going from Nottingham to Sheffield would use Leeds trains; passengers from Chesterfield wishing to go to Sheffield could also use mainline trains on the southwest-northeast route. This is a both-and, win-win  proposal.

(2) Using the existing freight line from Long Eaton through Castle Donington.to Willington, to provide non-stop through passenger services from Nottingham to Crewe and Birmingham. The track exists, although presumably it will also be used by the freight companies serving the new distribution depots near East Midlands Airport. Local stopping services could still run via Derby, but surely a non-stop Nottingham to Birmingham time of well under an hour is possible. Another both-and, win-win.  A grade separated junction at Willington would be even better (but expensive).

The Derby-Crewe line needs upgrading to take proper trains, not the poxy one or two car sets currently in use.  Keep the stopping trains for all the little stations but upgrade to a cross-country trunk route, allowing direct onward services through Crewe to Chester and North Wales, Manchester Airport, and to Liverpool Airport and Liverpool Lime Street.

(3) It is difficult to travel from Nottingham or Leicester to Coventry or Birmingham Airport by train – so much for “Midlands Connect”.

To start with, the Nuneaton fly-under scheme needs to be achieved (cost estimates are less than £120 million) to allow through trains to run easily between Nottingham, Leicester, and Coventry. Having reached Coventry, using the West Coast Main Line, access is possible to Northampton and Milton Keynes, and also to Birmingham International. Also from Coventry, via the link to Leamington Spa, direct access is feasible to Banbury, Oxford and Reading, and points beyond. None of these places are currently easily accessible by train from the East Midlands.

If a short chord could be built west of Coventry station it would be possible to run trains from Nottingham and Leicester directly to Birmingham Airport and the NEC. Nottingham to BHX in under an hour, bliss ! Without the torture of New Street, its crowds, fumes, narrow passageways and stupid unnecessary ticket gates, when in a hurry with heavy luggage.

Oh, and one other thing: if a rail spur is too expensive, a proper, integrated free shuttle bus service between East Midlands Parkway and East Midlands Airport would be most welcome.

We now have a Prime Minister who demonstrates a sense of drive and energy and a desire to get things done. I hope that, whatever his ultimate  decision on HS2, the powers that be will get their collective fingers out and rather than projecting vague and waffly visions into the next decade or two, just get on with it. Preferably starting with the above: options (1) and (2) could be completed in months. When oh when are we going to get our act together in this country !

One final thought. “Nottingham in Ninety”. It’s do-able now, with existing trains and track. HS2 won’t bring London any closer than that.

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.

HS2 and the Great Central : same vision, same mistake

This weekend the BBC News website for Nottingham has a story about a “secret” railway tunnel under the city. This tunnel used to convey the tracks of the Great Central south from Nottingham Victoria, beneath Thurland Street and the Lace Market area, to Weekday Cross and beyond. The only reason the tunnel is “secret” is that it has been disused and blocked off since the late 1960s, when the magnificent  Victoria station was replaced by an inglorious shopping centre of the same name. The photograph below, taken when the station was in its dying days, does not do it justice.

The Great Central was built to high engineering standards and with gentle curves and gradients in the last decade of the nineteenth century. It connected London Marylebone with Aylesbury, Rugby, Leicester, Nottingham, Sheffield and – via the Woodhead Tunnel – Manchester. Its stations were generally closer to city centres than those of its principal competitor, the Midland Railway, and many of the services it provided were excellent. The entrepreneurial vision of Sir Edward Watkins was that one day it might continue through a Channel Tunnel to Paris.

Construction came after the main boom of railway building, and while splendid in itself, and grandiose in its ultimate ambitions, the line had limited connectivity with the rest of the rail network. That – along with duplication of other routes - was among the reasons for its downfall post-Beeching, and in the late 1960s, it closed. Arguably, had its right of way been preserved rather than being encroached upon and much of its crucial infrastructure dismantled, it could have formed the backbone for HS2. For a long way north of London towards the Midlands the two routes are similar, teasing us with one of those great transport “what ifs”. Thus, half a century ago, a high speed line could have been brought into being without the massive building cost and the environmental blight – including ancient woodlands and residential areas - that the current scheme inflicts. However, it would have suffered from exactly the same problem as does today’s HS2 scheme, namely that it doesn’t connect well with the rest of the system, and much of it is in the wrong place.

To all but the most biased, the drawbacks of HS2 are glaring. Among the deficits, as proposed, are that it terminates at Curzon Street, well away from Birmingham’s cross-country hub at New Street, that its access to Sheffield is poor, to Heathrow it is awkward, and to Leicester non-existent, and above all, that the siting of its East Midlands hub at Toton is inappropriate. The projected line passes directly beneath East Midlands Airport, denying the airport rail access still, and it runs close to a large new commercial development and the major highway intersection near East Midlands Parkway - the obvious and sensible site for the local hub. As I’ve argued before, Toton is the wrong choice because, quite simply, it is in the wrong place, too far north to be of much use to passengers from Derby and Nottingham who want to travel to or from the capital faster and more easily than they can at present. As a rail transport hub for the East Midlands, Toton is a nonsense; it could only appeal to those with vested interests, or oblivious to the facts of geography, or devoid of experience of train travel.

Exactly like the Great Central, HS2 is a grandiose vision that is exciting in principle,  good in parts, and just not good enough in others.  The parallels – more than a century apart - are close.

But to return to the “secret” tunnel. Other former Great Central tunnels, still in existence but similarly “secret”, connect residential areas in the north of Nottingham (Bestwood, Basford, Carrington), with the basement of the Victoria Centre, where they link up with the tunnel that featured in the BBC report. This tunnel continues, as noted above, south to Weekday Cross and almost to Broad Marsh, which is another retail centre that is currently undergoing belated redevelopment. Also, very close by is the NET tram line, which leads to districts south and west of the city. A tram stop for Broad Marsh close to, or even in, the shopping centre, would be attractive. Besides serving the existing tram routes there could be an interchange here with an imaginative utilisation of the old Great Central tunnels. In other words, another cross-city tram route.

 
So many opportunities have been missed over the years, but here is still a chance for some daring connectivity to be exploited. Perhaps the planners from NET should be taken on a tour of the old tunnels.

TOTON is NOT ON

In my blog item “Toton – an HS2 folly”, posted on 11 December last year, I outlined the argument as to why Toton is inappropriate as the location for the East Midlands hub of the proposed extended High Speed 2 rail line, and why a location further south is preferable. The “business case” argument ignores the “practical considerations for the travelling public” argument, and is incompatible with it.

In the April edition of “Modern Railways” this year the impression was given that Toton is pretty much a foregone conclusion. If that is so, it is a shame. Toton is in the wrong place. With plenty to occupy the minds of our politicians, among them the desire to be elected on 8th June, rail proposals are not likely to be their chief concerns at present, but it is they who, ultimately, will decide the fate of HS2, and be responsible for the consequences. So here, I will restate why Toton is not a sensible location for the East Midlands hub.

Toton hub, with dotted lines showing connecting transport to Derby and Nottingham

The crucial drawback to Toton is the unavoidable truth of geography – it is simply in the wrong place, i.e. north of the point (Trent junction) at which the routes to Nottingham, Derby and Sheffield diverge. Attempts to pretend that this isn’t a problem are ridiculous. One of the ‘Modern Railways’ articles includes a table of journey times (presumably by tram) from Nottingham station, citing Toton as 33 minutes away and Derby 61 minutes  – as though this is some wonderful advance. It isn’t; it’s retrograde and crazy and very slow.

Someone travelling to Nottingham from London on HS2, having shaved several minutes off traditional journey times to the latitude of the East Midlands, will arrive at Toton, have to transfer (perhaps with luggage and small children) to a tram, and then have to endure more than 15 intermediate stops to reach central Nottingham. Or change onto a conventional train, back in the reverse direction, round via Attenborough. Similarly to Derby, either having to backtrack on a conventional train to Trent junction and through Long Eaton, or via an as yet unplanned but almost certainly tortuous tram route. Why would anyone want to do that? Where is the advantage?

I don’t have a problem with regenerating Toton or with extending tram routes anywhere that can be justified, but for HS2 not to be negative progress – and perceived as such - there must be through trains from its London terminus to Nottingham and Derby, convenient and comfortable end to end, with significantly shorter overall journey times city to city than are available today, or will be possible following Midland Main Line electrification. No change of vehicle at Toton or anywhere else, just a brief stop at East Midlands Parkway for those who want to leave or join there. Otherwise, why bother?

East Midlands Parkway hub, with through HS2 trains to Derby and Nottingham

East Midlands Parkway, or a site close to it, is the preferred alternative, for reasons of connectivity and access, proximity to East Midlands Airport, and most of all because it is on the “London side” of the Nottingham-Derby conurbation. 

Toton, locationally, geographically, is a nonsense. Forget the “business case” – Toton is simply wrong.  It’s in the wrong place. TOTON is NOT ON.

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