New Ashington and Blyth to Newcastle rail line set to start running in 2024

Foggysfplandiet3 said:
If it was profitable! Or at least covered it’s costs.

There has to be the political will as well of course. The restoration of the Waverley Route between Edinburgh and Carlisle as far as Tweedbank was incredibly expensive but had a major hand in sweeping the SNP, who promised it, to power. They really need to extend it at least to Hawick, a Borders town which makes Redcar look like Bel Air, but which would really prosper with the restoration of the line to Edinburgh. A friend of mine has bought property in Hawick in anticipation of the boom there when the route is restored.
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This business about it having to be profitable is typically short sighted and is why the country’s infrastructure is now so far behind other European countries. The wider and long term benefits are never considered by our obsession with making a quick buck.
 
HolgateCorner said:
This business about it having to be profitable is typically short sighted and is why the country’s infrastructure is now so far behind other European countries. The wider and long term benefits are never considered by our obsession with making a quick buck.
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:mad::mad:(y)
 
HolgateCorner said:
This business about it having to be profitable is typically short sighted and is why the country’s infrastructure is now so far behind other European countries. The wider and long term benefits are never considered by our obsession with making a quick buck.
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This is true of almost all politics these days, nobody ever talks about the non-financial benefits to projects. Everything comes down to a cost or profitability and then if it is profitable we would just sell it to the private sector at under market value then subsidise their profits with taxpayers money. It is criminal we allow them to get away with it time and time again.
 
Yarm has direct trains to London and its generally quite cheap (£200k for decent 3 bed). Its too far to commute daily but say once a week journey its possible, I would have thought its 2 hours 40 minutes each way?

Or Guisborough £160k with pretty drive to Northallerton (30 minutes?) and regular trains 2 hours 22 minutes?
 
JonnyHistory said:
This is true of almost all politics these days, nobody ever talks about the non-financial benefits to projects. Everything comes down to a cost or profitability and then if it is profitable we would just sell it to the private sector at under market value then subsidise their profits with taxpayers money. It is criminal we allow them to get away with it time and time again.
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It is an ideological argument that the Tories have won, that the country cannot afford taxpayer funded public services and that you should only pay as an individual for things you use. The wider benefits are not even in the equation because they don’t believe in providing the wider benefits.

The NHS is under the same attack but everybody needs the NHS at some point so the political argument is harder to make.

I don’t for a minute think that Boris Johnson support for northern infrastructure like this Blyth passenger link is shared by many in the Tory Party, it’s just something they might have to do to win an election.
 
Foggysfplandiet3 said:
If it was profitable! Or at least covered it’s costs.
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Colin Warnek said:
Beeching and Marples did more damage to the infrastructure of this country than Adolf.
Short sighted doesn't cut it. Along with many 60s reforms, a disgraceful waste.
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Beeching was short sighted and Marples was self serving at best, corrupt at worst.

But in truth Labour were no better: In the autumn 1964 general election campaign Harold Wilson faithfully promised the electorate that, if he won the election, he would stop any further Beeching closures; he lied. As soon as they took power in ‘64 they reneged on that promise and carried on implementing the Beeching cuts, in fact between 1964 when they took power and 1970 when they were voted out, Wilson’s Labour government closed about 2600 miles of railway, almost TWICE as many as the approx. 1400 miles, that MacMillan’s Tory government had in 1963-64.

It was the Wilson Labour government with Barbara Castle as Minister of Transport, pulling the strings, who implemented the most controversial of the Beeching cuts, including the York to Pickering and Grosmont Line which is now the North Yorkshire Moors Railway of course, the much lamented Scarborough to Whitby coastal line which many on here have said should have been saved, the Middleton in Teesdale branch, the main line from Harrogate through Ripon to Northallerton, and worst of all the 98 mile long Waverley Route main line from Edinburgh to Carlisle which deprived four substantial Borders towns - Galashiels, Melrose, St. Boswell’s and Hawick - of any rail connection and, by this, significantly contributed to the economic collapse of three of them, not that Castle and Wilson gave a damn because the Scottish Borders always returned Liberal MPs, notably David Steel.

The one line that Labour reprieved was a Welsh Valley Line which ran through six marginal Labour constituencies at a time when the Labour majority in the Commons was just 13.

Decisions like this shouldn’t be taken on pure cost or pure party political grounds, what about communities?

I’m not defending the Tories or Marples, they were short sighted and totally bent respectively, but Labour were as bad.
 
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Foggysfplandiet3 said:
Beeching was short sighted and Marples was self serving at best, corrupt at worst.

But in truth Labour were no better: In the autumn 1964 general election campaign Harold Wilson faithfully promised the electorate that, if he won the election, he would stop any further Beeching closures; he lied. As soon as they took power in ‘64 they reneged on that promise and carried on implementing the Beeching cuts, in fact between 1964 when they took power and 1970 when they were voted out, Wilson’s Labour government closed about 2600 miles of railway, almost TWICE as many as the approx. 1400 miles, that MacMillan’s Tory government had in 1963-64.

It was the Wilson Labour government with Barbara Castle as Minister of Transport, pulling the strings, who implemented the most controversial of the Beeching cuts, including the York to Pickering and Grosmont Line which is now the North Yorkshire Moors Railway of course, the much lamented Scarborough to Whitby coastal line which many on here have said should have been saved, the Middleton in Teesdale branch, the main line from Harrogate through Ripon to Northallerton, and worst of all the 98 mile long Waverley Route main line from Edinburgh to Carlisle which deprived four substantial Borders towns - Galashiels, Melrose, St. Boswell’s and Hawick - of any rail connection and, by this, significantly contributed to the economic collapse of three of them, not that Castle and Wilson gave a damn because the Scottish Borders always returned Liberal MPs, notably David Steel.

The one line that Labour reprieved was a Welsh Valley Line which ran through six marginal Labour constituencies at a time when the Labour majority in the Commons was just 13.

I’m not defending the Tories or Marples, they were short sighted and totally bent respectively, but Labour were as bad.
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A thoroughly valuable post and spot on. The Wilson administration were just as bad if not worse.
 
Foggysfplandiet3 said:
Beeching was short sighted and Marples was self serving at best, corrupt at worst.

But in truth Labour were no better: In the autumn 1964 general election campaign Harold Wilson faithfully promised the electorate that, if he won the election, he would stop any further Beeching closures; he lied. As soon as they took power in ‘64 they reneged on that promise and carried on implementing the Beeching cuts, in fact between 1964 when they took power and 1970 when they were voted out, Wilson’s Labour government closed about 2600 miles of railway, almost TWICE as many as the approx. 1400 miles, that MacMillan’s Tory government had in 1963-64.

It was the Wilson Labour government with Barbara Castle as Minister of Transport, pulling the strings, who implemented the most controversial of the Beeching cuts, including the York to Pickering and Grosmont Line which is now the North Yorkshire Moors Railway of course, the much lamented Scarborough to Whitby coastal line which many on here have said should have been saved, the Middleton in Teesdale branch, the main line from Harrogate through Ripon to Northallerton, and worst of all the 98 mile long Waverley Route main line from Edinburgh to Carlisle which deprived four substantial Borders towns - Galashiels, Melrose, St. Boswell’s and Hawick - of any rail connection and, by this, significantly contributed to the economic collapse of three of them, not that Castle and Wilson gave a damn because the Scottish Borders always returned Liberal MPs, notably David Steel.

The one line that Labour reprieved was a Welsh Valley Line which ran through six marginal Labour constituencies at a time when the Labour majority in the Commons was just 13.

Decisions like this shouldn’t be taken on pure cost or pure party political grounds, what about communities?

I’m not defending the Tories or Marples, they were short sighted and totally bent respectively, but Labour were as bad.
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First time I’ve ever read Wilson being blamed for the Beeching cuts but Brown was blamed for the global financial crash so nothing should surprise I suppose.

My memory since about 1970 is that the railways have not really been on the political agenda until fairly recently when the roads have become over congested and trains seem to be a good alternative again.
 
Wouldnt it be convenient if we had invested in rail infrastructure like our continental cousins?
Comp Tr.jpg
Ironically, the Eurostar Service only accelerates to 200 mph when it reaches the Channel Tunnel.

Just imagine:
Middlesbrough to London in 1 hr 20 minutes!
 
Norman_Conquest said:
When you go to cities like Sheffield and see their tram system, you cannot help but think that it would be easy replicated. A lot of the old lines are still in places as walk ways and these could be utilised for a tram system. It would cause a few years of disruption, but the benefits would out weigh that.
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The other thing about tram systems and metros is that they enhance the image of a city, it makes them appear well set up and invested in.

The whole of the north east would benefit from a fast metro system linking up the various towns of Teesside including Hartlepool and Darlington to the Tyne and Wear metro rather than the current slow, unreliable and disjointed network.
 
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