New North-South Wales Proposal

[br2975]

1 hour ago, woodenhead said:

Just a damn pity about that 20mph speed limit, but it's been recognised.

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The 20 m.p.h. speed limit formed part of the  Welsh Labour manifesto in advance of the 2019 Senedd Election.

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Labour were returned (yet again) in that election, with an increased majority.

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Having been elected with an increased majority, the Labour  administration in Cardiff Bay (oops, sorry Bae Caerdydd) set about 'keeping their word' and introduced the promised 20 m.p.h. speed limits.

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Cue complaints of deafening magnitude, by many, many voters who hadn't read their preferred party's manifesto.

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Edited June 25 by br2975

[woodenhead]

5 minutes ago, Ian Hargrave said:

I wonder if you have attempted a drive through the Rhondda recently when you and many others obsess about that speed limit ?  It’s indeed a good conversational issue. The main roads through the valley and other valleys in South Wales are stuffed with cars….the vast majority of them parked vehicles such as SUV or  4X4 and negotiating a way through that is akin to taking an obstacle course which means that your average speed is likely to be below the magic 20 bit. Those former miners dwellings are now the home of two or three car families.They were built before Henry Ford started it all so hence nowhere to park your shiny Audi or Toyota..apart of course from the stretch of road outside your front door. In short the roads of Wales were not built for speed or HGV supplying your local Asda.And in all of this we have kids walking to school along these crazily overstuffed roads .So maybe the WAG  had a reason for the new limit ?  Oh hang on though,it’s going to be “optional “

 

 

I don't think they did it because of parked cars.

 

Nothing wrong in residential side roads and narrow lanes being 20mph, I don't get beyond a crawl in my own road in Manchester.  But main roads through villages where there are proper lanes then 30 should be fine.

 

And I have driven roads when they were 30 and now when they are 20 and there are scant few houses in sight but it's a crawl.

[br2975]

10 minutes ago, Ian Hargrave said:

I wonder if you have attempted a drive through the Rhondda recently when you and many others obsess about that speed limit ?  It’s indeed a good conversational issue. The main roads through the valley and other valleys in South Wales are stuffed with cars….the vast majority of them parked vehicles such as SUV or  4X4 and negotiating a way through that is akin to taking an obstacle course which means that your average speed is likely to be below the magic 20 bit. Those former miners dwellings are now the home of two or three car families.They were built before Henry Ford started it all so hence nowhere to park your shiny Audi or Toyota..apart of course from the stretch of road outside your front door. In short the roads of Wales were not built for speed or HGV supplying your local Asda.And in all of this we have kids walking to school along these crazily overstuffed roads .So maybe the WAG  had a reason for the new limit ?  Oh hang on though,it’s going to be “optional “

 

 

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I live in the western suburbs of Cardiff - step into the road outside my garden gate, and you'll wake up in the mortuary - even after the imposition of the 20 mph limit.

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[APOLLO]

We English cannot afford to pay for and subsidise a line from nowhere to nowhere via nowhere in mid Wales. 

Sorry - Nice to have but unaffordable in todays economic climate.

 

We need to spend money on our rapidly failing but ever more busy networks here in England, and up north especially. 

 

Daughters train, 1727 Manchester Oxford Road to Southport (always full) - Cancelled AGAIN tonight. (well it was actually cancelled late last night).

 

Baaaa !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Brit15

 

 

Edited June 25 by APOLLO
typo

[ruggedpeak]

https://www.gov.wales/introducing-default-20mph-speed-limits

 

Basically local authorities left to sort it out, as if they didn't have enough on their plates already.....

 

Edited June 25 by ruggedpeak

[The Stationmaster]

17 hours ago, woodenhead said:

I don't think they did it because of parked cars.

 

Nothing wrong in residential side roads and narrow lanes being 20mph, I don't get beyond a crawl in my own road in Manchester.  But main roads through villages where there are proper lanes then 30 should be fine.

 

And I have driven roads when they were 30 and now when they are 20 and there are scant few houses in sight but it's a crawl.

Going slightly OT (sorry).  You're lucky.  Oxfordshire CC has well and truly  become infected by the 20mph speed limit virus.  The most shining example of their innate stupidity has been the conversion of a stretch of country road - nil accident rate  as far back as I can remember (which is a long time) - from 60mph to 20 mph.  Only a few miles south on the same road there is a dangerous cross roads where collisions occur almost as frequently as Bank Holidays (no connection between the two) and the limit remains 30 mph on the road where the siting distance from the other is inadequate at that speed -  so you look as far as you can see, cross your fingers and pull out.

 

Now back to Wales, sorry for the diversion.

[The Stationmaster]

17 hours ago, woodenhead said:

In Wales BR were quick to remove passenger services around Newport because they could not support the time it took to turn around a service, so the Eastern Valleys all lost their passenger trains, luckily coal and steel kept the lines open long enough to later reinstate services.

 

Tondu/Maesteg lasted a little longer before succumbing and again the coal money maker kept the lines in existence albeit truncated so a passenger service could be reinstated.

 

North of those lines where once there was the Vale of Neath to Pontypool or the LNWR to Abergavenny but both served as routes to England, and all gone and no-one is going to build a new Crumlin viaduct.

 

The only true Wales route I can see is the Brecon & Merthyr Railway and Mid Wales Railway, both long long gone as well.

There were some quite serious allegations made at the time when the Western Valleys passenger services were withdrawn that it was all being done because the opening of Llanwern steelworks meant increased freight traffic through Newport High St and there wasn't room for it and those passenger trains.  Whether there was any truth in that story I've never been able to find out but the Western (and Eastern) Valleys passenger services were reputedly heavy loss makers and their removal facilitated a considerable reduction in operating costs for the freight operations on both sets of Valleys.

 

Similarly the iron ore trains from the docks plus the various coal and coke flows to Llanwern definitely chewed up a lot of line capacity through the centre of Newport.  And the rearrangement of the quadruple track pairing through High St and east from there as far as the new Bishton flyover definitely made a big difference to the handling of traffic to from Llanwern while minimising delay to passenger services between the Severn Tunnel Jcn area and Cardiff.   The removal of western Valleys trains definitely made the working in High St station far more efficient.

 

The same really goes for the other routes, such as Tondu - Maesteg and Abercynon - Aberdare, where removal of passenger services cosiderably reduced the operational costs of the continuing, mainly coal, freight movements. 

 

And yes - the only true cross Wales (internal) routes were probably the B&M and its onward link to the Mid Wales although the Midland Railway route from Brecon to Swansea via the N&B also came in to that category although - as with the Vale of Neath and the LNWR route - was basically a route into/out of England.  However both the LNWR and Midland provide routes from Swansea, and in the case of the LNWR west thereof, into Mid Wales.   But, once again, the LNWR, like the GWR, could only ever get you from South Wales to North Wales via England.   And, by an odd quirk of fate,  the former LNWR Central Wales Line is now the only rail route from South Wales which gets you to anywhere in what is nowadays regarded as Mid Wales (while on its way to England).

[APOLLO]

Wales, like NI, Scotland and indeed England all deserve their fair share of government transport expenditure, but it must be on a needs basis rather than a nice to have / political vote spinner.

 

In the current (and no doubt long term) financial crisis new build railways to / between purely rural communities simply are not the way to go. New stations / services etc on existing lines yes, a no brainer in most cases.

 

However as we go forward to net zero, no new diesel / petrol cars by 2030/35, the disaster and unaffordability (by most) of electric cars (nuff said), our abysmal bus and train services, it seems that we will not need transport of any kind as we will all (bar the elite) be herded up in our 15 minute cities (Oxford !!), eating insects, owning nothing, and, apparently, according to the World Economic Forum, enjoying it (WHOOPEE !!!!).

 

Brit15

[Mol_PMB]

Even from the environmental point of view, building new railways also has its challenges, which are analogous to the financial ones. There's a lot of carbon embodied in the new infrastructure (concrete, steel, energy used by construction machinery etc.) and while the railway may enable more carbon-neutral transport in operation, there's a carbon 'debt' to pay from construction which will have a payback period. For an intensively-used main line that payback period might be acceptable, but for a lightly-used rural line it might never pay back (or at least not in a timescale relevant for climate change.

Having said that, there's more to public transport than just money and carbon. Increasingly the social benefits are being considered and accounted for. Improving efficiency in some sectors by centralisation of facilities (hospitals were mentioned earlier and are a good example) only works if there is effective transportation to/from the centralised facilities.

But back on topic, I don't think South-Mid-North Wales rail links would be a priority in this scenario. Given the population density and traffic demand, an enhancement of the existing bus services would be much more appropriate and likely to serve a wider proportion of the communities for a fraction of the money and carbon invested.

[woodenhead]

1 hour ago, The Stationmaster said:

There were some quite serious allegations made at the time when the Western Valleys passenger services were withdrawn that it was all being done because the opening of Llanwern steelworks meant increased freight traffic through Newport High St and there wasn't room for it and those passenger trains.  Whether there was any truth in that story I've never been able to find out but the Western (and Eastern) Valleys passenger services were reputedly heavy loss makers and their removal facilitated a considerable reduction in operating costs for the freight operations on both sets of Valleys.

 

Similarly the iron ore trains from the docks plus the various coal and coke flows to Llanwern definitely chewed up a lot of line capacity through the centre of Newport.  And the rearrangement of the quadruple track pairing through High St and east from there as far as the new Bishton flyover definitely made a big difference to the handling of traffic to from Llanwern while minimising delay to passenger services between the Severn Tunnel Jcn area and Cardiff.   The removal of western Valleys trains definitely made the working in High St station far more efficient.

 

The same really goes for the other routes, such as Tondu - Maesteg and Abercynon - Aberdare, where removal of passenger services cosiderably reduced the operational costs of the continuing, mainly coal, freight movements. 

 

 

Yep, the early withdrawal of passenger services from the valleys into Newport probably was going to happen anyway around 1970 when the same happened on the lines from Bridgend.  It's interesting to see how the NCB and BR were both looking for economies at the same time which actually went against each other like the NCB moving more washeries destined coal underground and BR reacting by charging more for the finished coal movements as it had been subsidised by the washeries traffic beforehand. 

[JohnR]

I really cant see a line that avoids some major population centres (Aberystwyth, Lampeter) (ok, "major" is stretching it) in favour of tiny hamlets in the middle of Wales is going to work. 

[woodenhead]

Just now, JohnR said:

I really cant see a line that avoids some major population centres (Aberystwyth, Lampeter) (ok, "major" is stretching it) in favour of tiny hamlets in the middle of Wales is going to work. 

Just like any country major centres of population are based on industry, otherwise they are near the sea (which is brought very much in focus if you look at Australia or North America).

 

So for Wales you've got near the sea (North, West and South) and Industry (South) - the middle bit is agriculture with large populations being to the East in England based on industry.  Hence no railways through the middle of Wales now and no obvious places to run trains through that would benefit, so it comes down to how many people want to go betweenLlandudno, Bangor, Holyhead and suchlike to Cardiff, Newport and Swansea on a regular basis.  I can only think of matters of government being what might drive regular travel, rather like Eurotunnel connecting London to Paris and Brussels.

[Ian Hargrave]

27 minutes ago, woodenhead said:

Just like any country major centres of population are based on industry, otherwise they are near the sea (which is brought very much in focus if you look at Australia or North America).

 

So for Wales you've got near the sea (North, West and South) and Industry (South) - the middle bit is agriculture with large populations being to the East in England based on industry.  Hence no railways through the middle of Wales now and no obvious places to run trains through that would benefit, so it comes down to how many people want to go betweenLlandudno, Bangor, Holyhead and suchlike to Cardiff, Newport and Swansea on a regular basis.  I can only think of matters of government being what might drive regular travel, rather like Eurotunnel connecting London to Paris and Brussels.

The Holyhead-Cardiff service was a political decision by the WAG.  But the reason for the present situation has its origins in the development of railways simultaneously of the South Wales coalfield and heavy industry in the 19th c.

Mass migration there occcured not only from the rest of the UK but also ….often forgotten…from all other parts of Wales…the rural farming communities. The development of Barry Docks was completed by coal owner David Davies,himself a carpenter by trade originally..from Llandinam in Mid Wales .Hence Wales might be described as being bottom heavy.,even to this day. Though Tata Steel seems to be leaving it as an industrial wasteland.

 

 

 

Edited June 26 by Ian Hargrave
Adding text

[Enterprisingwestern]

 

Bear in mind that none of the passenger lines in Wales were closed by Beeching, they had their own man, Dai the Death!!

 

Mike.

[br2975]

23 hours ago, APOLLO said:

We English cannot afford to pay for and subsidise a line from nowhere to nowhere via nowhere in mid Wales. 

Sorry - Nice to have but unaffordable in todays economic climate.

 

We need to spend money on our rapidly failing but ever more busy networks here in England, and up north especially. 

 

Daughters train, 1727 Manchester Oxford Road to Southport (always full) - Cancelled AGAIN tonight. (well it was actually cancelled late last night).

 

Baaaa !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Brit15

 

 

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Whichever route was adopted, a North - South rail link wholly within Wales is a nationalist pipe dream, and would prove no more than a financial millstone.

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Poor return on financial outlay is something the Welsh tax payer has become accustomed over the last 25 years.

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You do yourself a disservice with your puerile inclusion of "Baaaaa............"

 

You may wish to consider that  "you English" were perfectly willing to have the Welsh subsidise HS2 ( to the financial detriment of our  domestic transport network * )  - a vanity project which the Conservative Government  behind that scheme told us would benefit Wales, ....................... even though HS2 ends in Birmingham, more than 80 miles from the Welsh border, and then a bus or taxi ride from New Street.

 

* - was the money saved by stopping the SWML electrification at Cardiff, instead of Swansea diverted to HS2 instead ? and now, money can allegedly be found to electrify the North Wales Coast Line to Holyhead (ye Gods), and not Cardiff - Swansea.

.

 

 

Edited June 26 by br2975

[br2975]

May I draw attention to Railway Bylines, Volume 22: Issue 3 February 2017, pps 104 -113

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"Carmarthen to Aberystwyth 1963" by Micahel L. Roach.

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The 2011 census gave the following populations for towns along the Carmarthen - Aberystwyth route, where the population exceeded 1,000 pax.

Llanilar - 1,085

Tregaron - 1,173

Llanybyther - 1,423

Lampeter - 2,970

Aberystwyth - 16,000 ( the largest town in the county, and the second largest is Cardigan, population 4,200 )

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The author of the article rode the 06:10 Carmarthen - Aberystwyth on 22nd. July, 1963.

The train could be (with some imagination) be considered a 'commuter' train to Aberystwyth.

The train, hauled by 7810 'Draycott Manor' was composed of 4 coaches.

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Having left Carmarthen, there were no passengers at any station until Perncader (14 miles) whwre 3 boarded

Bryn Teify - 1 passenger boarded

Maesycrugiau and Llanybyther produced no passengers.

Lampeter - one passenger alighted, 3 boarded

Derry Ormond - 2 passengers boarded

The train had travelled 30 miles before the passenger numbers reached double figures.

Llangybi - two PW men alighted from the train.

Pont Llanio - 2 passengers boarded

Tregaron - 1 passenger alighted, 7 boarded.

Allt Ddu - 1 passenger boarded

Strata Florida - 13 passengers boarded.

Caradog Falls - 2 passengers boarded

Trawscoed - 1 passenger alighted

Felindyffrin - 1 passenger boarded

Llanilar - 1 passenger alighted.

Llanrhystyd Road - 1 passenger boarded

Aberystwyth (arr. 08:43) - 34 passengers alighted.

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I cannot see passenger levels being any greater now, than 60 years ago in 1963 - but would love to be proved wrong, but wouldn't love to fund the project.

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It has been mooted in the past, that reinstating this route could be done by utilising 'light rail' construction, stock  and operation.

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This would then prevent the reinstated route from being used as a diversionary route.

 

Having made the outlay to reinstate Carmarthen - Aberystwyth, the level of subsidy required would be enormous.

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Reinstating the 'Mid-Wales' route would probably serve an even sparser populated area, and whilst costing less, would still require exhorbitant subsidies.

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The irony is that the current TfW Metro works in South East Wales were heavily funded by the E.U. - and yet the Welsh electorate voted for Brexit in 2016 ; therefore, such funding is no longer available.

.

 

 

Edited June 26 by br2975

[woodenhead]

If you tilted Wales so it was the same alignment to England as Scotland, you’d see a similar pattern of mainlines to each side to principal cities and not a lot in between.

 

However Scotland had the benefit of there needing to be lots of travel between Glasgow and Edinburgh plus a large industrial element in between, which has left Scotland with a very solid rail network.

Wales on the other hand had most of its industrial development in the south,  exports were to England or the empire so no need to build robust mainlines north within Wales, it was all to England or the ports after processing. 
 

One has to wonder what might have happened had Llanwern not been built as that’s where all the coal went once household and steam coal was no longer needed from the 1960s.  Without that steel industry all the mines and the valley lines would have gone quickly and likely now it would be just the GWML through Newport, Cardiff to Swansea that remained.

[Steamport Southport]

1 hour ago, woodenhead said:

If you tilted Wales so it was the same alignment to England as Scotland, you’d see a similar pattern of mainlines to each side to principal cities and not a lot in between.

 

However Scotland had the benefit of there needing to be lots of travel between Glasgow and Edinburgh plus a large industrial element in between, which has left Scotland with a very solid rail network.

Wales on the other hand had most of its industrial development in the south,  exports were to England or the empire so no need to build robust mainlines north within Wales, it was all to England or the ports after processing. 
 

One has to wonder what might have happened had Llanwern not been built as that’s where all the coal went once household and steam coal was no longer needed from the 1960s.  Without that steel industry all the mines and the valley lines would have gone quickly and likely now it would be just the GWML through Newport, Cardiff to Swansea that remained.

 

I beg to differ.

 

The North East was and still is massively industrialised and don't forget the amount of slate and other minerals that was coming from the TLC.

 

I'm afraid people are failing for the myth of South Wales being some kind of industrial powerhouse and the rest being farmland or countryside. 

 

You can mention Llanwern, but what about Brymbo and Shotton? Hardly insignificant. So important even the predecessors of the LNER wanted a piece of the traffic.

 

I would have thought some one from the North West would know a bit more about the place on our doorstep!

 

 

 

Jason

Edited June 26 by Steamport Southport

[woodenhead]

3 minutes ago, Steamport Southport said:

 

I beg to differ.

 

The North East was and still is massively industrialised and don't forget the amount of slate and other minerals that was coming from the TLC.

 

I'm afraid people are failing for the myth of South Wales being some kind of industrial powerhouse and the rest being farmland or countryside. 

 

You can mention Llanwern, but what about Brymbo and Shotton? Hardly insignificant. So important even the predecessors of the LNER wanted a piece of the traffic.

 

I would have thought some one from the North West would know a bit more about the place on our doorstep!

 

 

 

Jason

And all right next door to North West England - quarrying slate being the odd outlier a bit deeper in.

 

But Llanwern was important at the time, the mines in South Wales were losing all their other business, no steam coal from Aberdare & Tondu, household coal was being replaced even smokeless fuels was not enough to stave off closure.  The decision to only move coal short distances meant that Llanwern was the destination, no Llanwern for example perhaps Scunthorpe or Teessidde instead and the mines of Yorkshire or the North east would have have supplying them not Wales.

 

I'm not doing down North Wales just raising the point that for Wales North to South railways were not the priority except in the south to the ports, everything else went east.

[Northmoor]

6 hours ago, br2975 said:

The 2011 census gave the following populations for towns along the Carmarthen - Aberystwyth route, where the population exceeded 1,000 pax.

Llanilar - 1,085

Tregaron - 1,173

Llanybyther - 1,423

Lampeter - 2,970

Aberystwyth - 16,000 ( the largest town in the county, and the second largest is Cardigan, population 4,200 )

 

I live in a 1970s estate in Camberley in Surrey, not even an especially big town.  I think the population of our estate alone, is greater than the population of Lampeter.

 

I grew up in rural Wales, to the West of the Carmarthen-Aber route.  It is RURAL.  Comparisons with the Borders Railway don't wash; the towns that serves are an order of magnitude bigger and the destination at the end (Edinburgh) is a large city, world-famous for tourism. Sorry but Swansea, isn't.

 

The new proposal is probably a much better solution to the problem they want to solve, making use of more of the existing network.  But it's still a staggeringly expensive solution to that tiny problem: the people who want to travel between North and South Wales without having to acknowledge that England exists.  Most of the population of Wales would probably find it no more than mildly eyebrow-raising to be told that during their journey they'd entered England then left again a couple of times, but they didn't notice as they were looking at their phones at the time.

[DenysW]

On 23/06/2024 at 08:58, Kris said:

I wonder where they are hoping the money will come from to build a new railway and a new road. 

From the same magic money tree that will re-instate the 'Ivanhoe Line' from Burton to Leicester. And that one (whose cage gets rattled every year or two) has a £450M price-tag just to re-instate the chord into the northbound mainlines.

 

Political fantasies at election time.

[APOLLO]

Why not rebuild Offah's dyke ?

 

A twin win, trains on top of the dyke and an energy efficient (green) canal in the dyke.

 

No need for any entry into "That foreign land" to the east. !!

 

 

 

Brit15

Edited June 27 by APOLLO

[whart57]

On 24/06/2024 at 07:43, black and decker boy said:

new railway lines in rural parts (with consequential new road bypasses) to run an hourly 153 (as can’t see any greater demand than that) just won’t add up 

 

Ah, now there's the problem. Rigid return on investment demands are what is killing infrastructure projects. Either through making sure they don't get off the drawing board or, as with HS2, the business case becomes so fragmented the overall purpose is lost.

[Enterprisingwestern]

 

Of course, in the good old days of nationalised industries when everybody was p!ssing into the same pot and stand alone performance didn't really come into the equation, this sort of discussion would have a totally different outcome, and, yes have my deeply rose tinted glasses on and assume an integrated, common sense approach to public transport!

 

Mike.

[woodenhead]

11 hours ago, Northmoor said:

Most of the population of Wales would probably find it no more than mildly eyebrow-raising to be told that during their journey they'd entered England then left again a couple of times, but they didn't notice as they were looking at their phones at the time.

Prynhawn da foneddigion a boneddigesau, yr ydym yn awr yn myned i mewn i Loegr. Sicrhewch fod eich pasbortau yn barod. O na, rydym yn ôl yng Nghymru eto.*

 

*With the help of Google.....

Edited June 27 by woodenhead
I do not speak Welsh, for not Welsh am I.