Quoting (above) from the WSR thread ...

Here are two dozen line end towns - 12 of them Network Rail / National Network, 12 of them heritage lines with main line connections (a couple of which stop slightly short of the towns named at present). The numbers are very, very rough population measures in thousands - and I'm aware just how misleading that number can be, and that some lines have intermediate traffic which dwarfs the terminus, other have wide catchments.

Starting at the top of the list ... wouldn't it be good to see most of these with all year, all day services running through onto the national network or at very least connecting at the junction station 363 days a year, and with through ticketing and data available on journey planners?

44 Wallingford
34 Exmouth
26 Newport IOW
23 Seaford
22 Newquay
21 Falmouth
20 Hythe
20 Barnstaple
15 Lymington
13 Bodmin
12 Swanage
12 St Ives
12 Minehead
11 Shepton Mallett
7 Kingswear
7 Cowley
6 Okehampton
6 Looe
6 Chinnor
6 Alresford
4 Buckfastleigh
3 Severn Beach
3 Gunnislake
2 Parkend

I would suspect that your view, Broadgage, is a majority one.   However, the majority of people who are active in supporting rail in areas where there's a heritage operation are keen to protect it, and worried about the changes national network passenger trains sharing will bring ...

It might be ... though I have tried to avoid newly rebuilt lines in my list.  There are two where an extension of the heritage line would be part of the plan - an extra 1km or so from Mendip Vale to (?) the outskirts of Shepton Mallett, and rather longer the extension on the Isle of Wight from Wootton to Newport which I allowed myself as it has an element of DfT^» (Department for Transport - about) support via study funding, and it reaches one of the larger places on the list which is also an area's administration centre.

You could, sort of, add three more to Grahame's list as they are growing towns at the end of existing lines in a mixture of frieght and early heritage/local service status:
Yate to Thornbury
Newton Abbot to Bovey Tracey
Berkeley Road to Sharpness.

Yes, I suppose it's easy to casually drift off into all sorts of candidates, Totnes Buckfastliegh and so on, all the way down to Weymouth -Weymouth Harbour if I was nitpicking.....but I'm well into silly territory now! 🙄

There needs to be a viable business case to make these off the ground.

The revenue to operate and maintain has to be in place; if the business case is based on ticket revenue alone they are likely to fail therefore long term subsidy would need to be in place.

But I hear some shout but heritage railways manage on revenue, this is not strictly true mush of their operating and maintenance costs is gifted time by volunteers and posibly a small team of full / part time staff, which sustains the small operating season most have, also their operating day is quite short.  Heritage railways also have access to charitable trusts and lottery funds where a commercial operation would not have such access.

If a heritage railway has to close its operations for a period of time due to an engineering issue etc, whilst this is disappointing for the customers and frustrating for the volunteers its not critical to the customers so an alternative bus service is not needed.

The current fright only lines maintained in most part by NR^» (Network Rail - home page) could be brought back into operation again the revenue needs to be in place, the cost to NR of maintaining and operating a freight only line is far lower than a passenger line.

Having said all of the above it is an area that needs to be explored but lets ensure its sustainable

Although these things appear 'bleedin obvious' to the enthusiasts there has to be some way of allocating the limited resources (capital and revenue support) to the projects that will derive the greatest community benefit.  BCR does this and the issue is the weighting applied to less tangible benefits such as pollution, community transport, time saving.  Issues around this weighting will continue even if BCR is replaced by another method or ranking a project's benefits.

19th century developers did estimate the costs and income from new tracks.  They frequently got them both wrong and the railway either failed or was subsumed into a large railway with significant losses to the shareholders who had put up the initial capital.  A recent example of that is the Channel Tunnel where costs exceeded estimates and revenue was down; the original shareholders were almost completely wiped out.

Is it correct to say that those reopening of passenger lines in Wales and Scotland that have been accomplished to date have gone on to far exceed their projected passenger numbers and revenue?

If this is correct, then this needs to be factored into decisions as it would appear projected figures for even successful projects are over cautious

In this contect, 'enthusiast' could be taken as pajorative!

Near where I live, there is a town of 25,000 people which is poorly served by road and sits at the end of an active freight line. Twenty years ago a feasibility study confirmed that a half-hourly passenger service was viable. Since then, a variety of professionals have drawn fat fees by confirming this. Funding has been found, lost and found again. And now there is a real danger that funding could be lost for good because we can't be sure of the long-term impact of Covid-19 on people's travel habits. This scheme is a perfect example of what I mean by "bleedin' obvious", and yet it may still fail. And if it does, it really doesn't look good for many of the others.


We may have to agree to differ on this. There may be some truth in what you say in the private sector, but in the public sector everything is political.


There was a debate on this topic here: http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?topic=23778.msg291323#msg291323