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The Public Transport Thread
If anything the current local government changes make this more “possible”. Oakamoor and Alton contains some well connected, very wealthy, anti railway pensioners. And the trackbed oakamoor to Denstone is owned currently by Staffordshire county council. However if North Staffordshire becomes a new unitary (including the SMDC) this may present new opportunities.
Thankfully CVR own the trackbed to Oakamoor tunnel and could build to the former Oakamoor Sand Sidings (upcoming holiday park) location tomorrow if they wanted to.
Beyond the tunnel into Oakamoor and onto Alton becomes more difficult due to the trackbed now being the only road access to the cricket club which would need be resolved.
The more “recent” news was having spoken to the CVR less than a month ago there may be some upcoming positive news about them gaining access to the line to Stoke from Leekbrook as part of the railway 200 celebrations…so fingers crossed.
It’s mad to think public transport access to the UKs number one theme park has gone backwards from the 50s. When the potential is there. As always if you want it, lobby politicians, councils and support the CVR.
I’m sure it’s linked somewhere but I’ve laid out all the details on this topic in another thread.
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Are we still banging the local train drum?!
Pipe dreams higher than mine.
Capacity issues, getting into the park issues, peak flow issues, other properties on the line, and a great lack of demand...mean this just isn't going to happen.
People go to Alton in cars, because the public transport access is horrendous.
A small local heritage line would do nothing for towers access for 99.9% of punters, ever, due to poor connections and service down the line.
And train haulage, I agree is great in theory, but we moved over to lorries for convenience in the sixties and seventies, because it is generally quicker, cheaper and easier to move stuff that way.
I can't think of any local industry in the area that could use mass bulk train haulage.
Pipe dreams higher than mine.
Capacity issues, getting into the park issues, peak flow issues, other properties on the line, and a great lack of demand...mean this just isn't going to happen.
People go to Alton in cars, because the public transport access is horrendous.
A small local heritage line would do nothing for towers access for 99.9% of punters, ever, due to poor connections and service down the line.
And train haulage, I agree is great in theory, but we moved over to lorries for convenience in the sixties and seventies, because it is generally quicker, cheaper and easier to move stuff that way.
I can't think of any local industry in the area that could use mass bulk train haulage.
Disneyland Paris and Universal both have rail access and do well also Alton is not exactly easy to get to by road the roads are quite treacherous
Tesco sell cheese and do well.
Alton is not Disney or Universal.
It is also completely rural, in a conservation area.
The roads to Alton Towers are safe, much improved and are suitable for coach transport... the logical, inexpensive, easy access option for Alton Towers.
Poor weather and idiot drivers going too fast are the only things that make the roads to the Towers safe.
Alton is not Disney or Universal.
It is also completely rural, in a conservation area.
The roads to Alton Towers are safe, much improved and are suitable for coach transport... the logical, inexpensive, easy access option for Alton Towers.
Poor weather and idiot drivers going too fast are the only things that make the roads to the Towers safe.
Isn't the old Alton railway station someone's house or a B and B or something now as well?
the only "local" need I could see for a rail line would be the quarry near Cotton or persuading JCB to ship things on their own branch line but both would easily be billion-pound white elephants.
BarryZola
TS Member
Yes, the Landmark Trust rent it out.
Saying that though, I've been on the St Ives branch line in Cornwall many hundreds of times in my life and Lelant station is an active station with the old station house converted to someone's actual house so I suppose it's not something without precedent.
Weird station too as you have to stick your arm out to get the train to stop, like waiting for a bus.
Capacity issues? It’s a railway…Ironically one literally designed to deal throngs of tourists in the late 19th century.
And equally you have to cross one road (or not at all if coming from the other side of the bridge) to get to the gatehouse and on to Towers property.
As others have said, some of the world’s most popular theme parks can be accessed via some form of mass transit. Lack of demand, well may be but as you’ve already it can’t deal with high demand so maybe that helps…
There are plenty of sensible reasons it would never happen. As I’ve outlined many times before. However I’d argue none of yours are at all.
It would provide rail access from the largest nearby town. I would argue benefiting a considerable amount of people. With absolute limitations completely; without question.
Caldon quarry remains a future option for haulage as the largest quarry in Europe without rail access, of national importance in time of war. Hence why the stoke the Leekbrook line remains designated to important to build on.
Did Thomas the tank engine really piss on your cornflakes?
Matt N
TS Member
The problem is that recommissioning the Alton Towers railway would cost an awful lot of money for not a lot of likely payoff.
Given the millions that reopening such a line would cost, Alton and Farley are very rural areas that would probably have too few train users to make it feasible. And given that a line like the Alton one would likely be a local line with very limited services on it, I can’t imagine you’d have the sort of flexible services that most people would want from an Alton Towers train link.
Given the millions that reopening such a line would cost, Alton and Farley are very rural areas that would probably have too few train users to make it feasible. And given that a line like the Alton one would likely be a local line with very limited services on it, I can’t imagine you’d have the sort of flexible services that most people would want from an Alton Towers train link.
First of all, no need for rudeness, we are all allowed differences of opinion.
Don't do cornflakes thanks, cheese on toast today...solstice!
Capacity issues on a heritage line...those nineteenth century tourists are all dead now, the consumers of the twentieth and then the twenty first centuries moved on with progress, they all have cars now.
Lines have capacity, but peak flow at entry and exit... that is the issue...not enough trains...the line would simply not cope with ebtry and exit crowds...if it was popular as you suggest.
Gatehouse to Towers entry...when was that last used?
Are we to have a new entrance as well.
And transport uphill for the half mile to the rides?
Perhaps on stagecoaches, again.
Alton Towers really isn't one of the worlds most popular parks...not even in the top ten in Europe...so your comparison is poor, and again, a conservation area... a very rural area.
Little realistic chance of planning changes to the south end of the park...especially to cope with what would be a few hundred punters a day at most.
And finally, how are you to get the material from the quarry to the railway...road haulage of course!
Load lorry, take to station, unload lorry onto train, take train to another station, unload train, load lorry, take to destination.
Or just load the lorry once, take to destination and unload.
Logistics suggest quarry transport on a closed heritage railway is not really an option.
Mr Beeching closed lots of railways as they would never be a cost effective solution for small scale local transport.
Sixty years later...he was probably right.
And the public have given up on trains at every option, they prefer personal transportation over public.
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Living locally this will never ever happen, I walk uk and down this track every single day. There’s no appetite for it to be reopened.
Also the station is an Airbnb owned by the landmark trust as stated before, you’d need purchase land off multiple entities and people.
But say it did ever happen using Alton Station wouldn’t make any sense anyway. It’d be easier to build the station further down the old track where Alton towers fences/land back right onto it, that way you don’t have to traverse a road, could potentially go further down the track than that and you could have it next to the entrance gate that goes into the valley/gardens.
Also the station is an Airbnb owned by the landmark trust as stated before, you’d need purchase land off multiple entities and people.
But say it did ever happen using Alton Station wouldn’t make any sense anyway. It’d be easier to build the station further down the old track where Alton towers fences/land back right onto it, that way you don’t have to traverse a road, could potentially go further down the track than that and you could have it next to the entrance gate that goes into the valley/gardens.
flyingguitar
TS Member
The railway line could be opened, given the expansion of the new holiday village thing was just approved allowing 250 homes in total (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvg957ld8lno) I would expect they would want to expand to oakmore allowing them to benefit from the tourism and alton is just through a tunnel, then a bit of line (which is a walking path currently, and could be expanded similar to how their extension to leak has been done)
There is also a big effort in this reagon from my understanding to boost tourism, so it definatly could happen, although not for a few years at the least as CVR still has to build track at leak, then build track down to oakmore. also it may not cost as much as you think, depending on the council, etc rail lines are not too expensive to lay, tunnels etc are already built and would just need inspecting, commisioning, etc.
Also capacity isn't too big of a concern, the capacity of each train is extremely flexible, with coaches being able to be added if the demand calls for it the trains could pull a large amount of coaches, lets say 12 coaches (that is a lot relative to modern trains, however it was typical back in the day with the engines that would pull it) that could hold about 1000 people, the journey may take around 40-60mins from leak and probably like 10 from Uttoxeter, a token system (common on many heritage railways) or a computer based signalling system could allow for multiple trains running stopping at certain passing loops, they could easily transport thousands of people to the park within a few hours.
They cold also expand the track, it used to be a double track line running at like 70mph, that is a ton of capacity, if there is sufficient demand it could be expanded back to a similar level
There are 4 problems however:
1. Money,
It may not be as much as you think however it is still a lot of money for a charity, so they would require funding (e.g grants) to expand these are not impossible to get, they just expanded to leak however they aren't easy to get either
2. Man power,
Most people will probably be volunteers, they already have a large line all of it requires maintaining, points require maintenances, signals require maintenance weeds, brush, trees etc needs to be cut back, stations need to be manned, trains needs multiple crew to operate, crossings need to be manned not to mention the cost. I would imagine given they already have a very large line and did remove oak more they may be quite stretched either for man power or cost.
3. No mainline connection,
Currently they are extending the line to leak, however leak don't have a train station nor do any of their other stops, there are 3 ways they could connect to the main line:
continue past leak: there is a morrisons where the line used to go, no real way arround
continue past Alton to Uttoxeter: a house sits on the old line, even if you could tear that down there is a lot of build up on the old line, effectivly a whole new line would be needed from Alton to Uttoxeter, not impossible however NEW lines require infrastructure, land, planning etc and so are very expensive and very unlikely
use the stoke branch line: this is the only realistic one, however it is quite a long line and it is owned by network rail, so they would need to invest in the line, there are some other advantages for them (e.g connecting to leak) however the line also would require a train to go from stoke to leak, then turn arround and go to alton
4. Time to reach Alton
as the only realistic way is to go via stoke then leak then Alton from the mainline the stoke line would probably take a while to get to leak, then a while to get to Alton, even being generous and saying 75mins that is in addition to the time required to reach stoke, which in total compared to driving if you went from birmingham, apparently it is 50 mins to stoke, so 125mins total (assuming no interchange time, which could be significant), vs driving which is 80 mins making it much less appealing to driving for time, and probably cost, it probably would be quicker and cheaper to set up a bus service between Uttoxeter and AT.
There is also a big effort in this reagon from my understanding to boost tourism, so it definatly could happen, although not for a few years at the least as CVR still has to build track at leak, then build track down to oakmore. also it may not cost as much as you think, depending on the council, etc rail lines are not too expensive to lay, tunnels etc are already built and would just need inspecting, commisioning, etc.
Also capacity isn't too big of a concern, the capacity of each train is extremely flexible, with coaches being able to be added if the demand calls for it the trains could pull a large amount of coaches, lets say 12 coaches (that is a lot relative to modern trains, however it was typical back in the day with the engines that would pull it) that could hold about 1000 people, the journey may take around 40-60mins from leak and probably like 10 from Uttoxeter, a token system (common on many heritage railways) or a computer based signalling system could allow for multiple trains running stopping at certain passing loops, they could easily transport thousands of people to the park within a few hours.
They cold also expand the track, it used to be a double track line running at like 70mph, that is a ton of capacity, if there is sufficient demand it could be expanded back to a similar level
There are 4 problems however:
1. Money,
It may not be as much as you think however it is still a lot of money for a charity, so they would require funding (e.g grants) to expand these are not impossible to get, they just expanded to leak however they aren't easy to get either
2. Man power,
Most people will probably be volunteers, they already have a large line all of it requires maintaining, points require maintenances, signals require maintenance weeds, brush, trees etc needs to be cut back, stations need to be manned, trains needs multiple crew to operate, crossings need to be manned not to mention the cost. I would imagine given they already have a very large line and did remove oak more they may be quite stretched either for man power or cost.
3. No mainline connection,
Currently they are extending the line to leak, however leak don't have a train station nor do any of their other stops, there are 3 ways they could connect to the main line:
continue past leak: there is a morrisons where the line used to go, no real way arround
continue past Alton to Uttoxeter: a house sits on the old line, even if you could tear that down there is a lot of build up on the old line, effectivly a whole new line would be needed from Alton to Uttoxeter, not impossible however NEW lines require infrastructure, land, planning etc and so are very expensive and very unlikely
use the stoke branch line: this is the only realistic one, however it is quite a long line and it is owned by network rail, so they would need to invest in the line, there are some other advantages for them (e.g connecting to leak) however the line also would require a train to go from stoke to leak, then turn arround and go to alton
4. Time to reach Alton
as the only realistic way is to go via stoke then leak then Alton from the mainline the stoke line would probably take a while to get to leak, then a while to get to Alton, even being generous and saying 75mins that is in addition to the time required to reach stoke, which in total compared to driving if you went from birmingham, apparently it is 50 mins to stoke, so 125mins total (assuming no interchange time, which could be significant), vs driving which is 80 mins making it much less appealing to driving for time, and probably cost, it probably would be quicker and cheaper to set up a bus service between Uttoxeter and AT.
GooseOnTheLoose
TS Member
Once, I could let slide. Twice or thrice, annoying but probably accidental... Nine times in one post? Someone needs to break it to you...
It's Leek, not leak
.
owenstreet7
TS Member
Leek as in the vegetableIt's Leek, not leak
On this thread, very simple solution - copy the Thorpe Park Shuttle Bus and implement it for Towers from Stoke for the west and Derby for the east
This would solve the age long debate about Alton Towers public transport links (which is one of many desires for the park along with more flat rides, a splashdown water ride and SW9)
There used to be a more regular service to the Towers from Stoke years ago didn't there, tied to the train times.
It flopped due to a lack of use.
And flyingguitar, there is a fifth problem to add to your four, as previously stated...
There is no demand for the service, for 99% of punters, a car is quicker and easier.
It flopped due to a lack of use.
And flyingguitar, there is a fifth problem to add to your four, as previously stated...
There is no demand for the service, for 99% of punters, a car is quicker and easier.