In the past couople of months, my speaking engagements have taken me to various interesting rail connected places, mostly for the first time. It has been a fascinating experience, highlighting the good, the bad and the possible.
Let’s start with the good. I was invited, thanks to Roger Blake of this parish, to speak at the Appledore Book Festival in September. I confess I had to look up Appledore, as I thought it was up north (that was in fact Appleby) and discovered that it was some ten miles from Barnstaple in north Devon. I was told that it could be reached by a lovely cycle track along an old railway track from Barnstaple and consequently squeezed my fortunately quite light road bike into one of the horrendous compartments which are provided on Great Western’s new Hitachi trains. As an aside, only a country as dismissive of cycling as the UK could possibly have allowed the purchase of trains that require cyclists to hang up the front wheel of a bike onto a hook some six foot high in order to carry them on the journey. Very few women and by no means not every man, especially those with heavy bikes, can possibly fulfil this task and yet it now seems we are stuck with this insane idea until the second half of the century, given the life expectancy of rolling stock.
I digress. The bike ride was indeed fab, but the key point was that the Barnstaple branch line from Exeter is heavily used and clearly a key part of the local infrastructure. On my return journey at 10 am, there were about 70 people waiting for the hourly train arrive so they could board. While Great Western and the local Devon council are both very supportive of the service and would like to provide a half hourly service, this would only be possible with considerable infrastructure investment. But it would be a great boon.
I’m afraid that my attempts to get a train to another remote station, Barton upon Humber, were rather less successful. On the journey there, there was chaos due to an incident on a train, a broken down service and a track circuit failure, which meant I had to phone the host of my meeting to meet me at Scunthorpe, as otherwise I would have been late. And for the return on the following day, a Saturday, all services had been cancelled from Barton because the train was needed elsewhere by the operator, East Midlands Trains and I had to resort to the bus replacement service, which was actually very efficient. Though lucky I did not have my bike with me.
Barton is one of the few places on the rail network that requires three trains to reach it from London, and these are run by three different operators which have made little effort to create efficient connections. This historic anomaly is the result of the fact that the station can only be reached from the East as connection to Scunthorpe proposed in the 19th century was never built. A two hourly service which is frequently cancelled serves little purpose for the 11,000 residents of the town. They can access far better connected parts of the network either by hopping across the Humber bridge which overlooks the town to Hessle or Hull, or by taking a bus or driving to Barnetby, nine miles south. As currently set up, only the hardiest train enthusiast is likely to use the service and even I failed.
Then there is the possible. I was invited to speak at the Campaign for Borders Rail AGM, a very well organised and attended event which also featured David Shirres, the editor of Rail Engineer and long time ralwayman, and Steve Bradley, who is campaigning for reopening lines in the west of Ireland on both sides of the border as well as the new Carlisle MP Julie Minns. The Campaign is, of course, seeking to continue the success of the 2015 reopening of the Borders railway to Tweedbank by completing the line through to Carlisle, an ambitious but feasible task given the poor communications in the area and the need for regeneration.
The key point is that the circumstances of every part of the railway network are different. And that applies to campaigning, too. What works and is appropriate in one place may not be in another. Flexibility and at times compromise are key especially given the difficult situation of this new government. Our first task, perhaps, is persuading ministers that what may seem like a lost cause or a waste of money may, in fact be a very worthwhile project. That, as I have argued in Rail magazine requires a completely new way of assessing transport schemes, moving away from the discredited business cases dependent on spurious benefit cost ratio assessments.