On Thursday 30th November “The Journal” published a big article titled “Back on Track” suggesting the re-opening of the Ashington Blyth & Tyne line can now move forward, following the previous day’s government announcement. The re-introduction of passenger services to Ashington is indeed progressing, but whether the latest announcement from DfT will help or hinder things remains to be seen. Here’s a transcript of my letter to “The Journal” explaining why I’m not so sure (and if any of you Journal readers notice it gets published – please let me know).
Dear Sir or Madam:
It’s pleasing to see the Government Paper “Connecting People: A Strategic Vision for Rail” mentions the re-opening of the Ashington Blyth & Tyne Line, as reported in last Thursday’s “Journal” (30th Nov 2017), although slightly less encouraging that the accompanying DfT Press Release places Ashington in County Durham!
However, whether this latest government policy announcement is itself responsible for putting this re-opening “Back on Track” as your headline suggests, is more dubious.
SENRUG has been campaigning to get passenger trains running to Ashington since 2005. During this time, we have won support from all the 3 main political parties, each of whom prioritised and progressed the scheme whilst leading the administration at Northumberland County Council, and as a result we are now working through Network Rail’s tortuous and highly expensive re-opening process.
So far, we’ve reached stage 2, but must get to stage 4 before Network Rail can give the County Council a definitive price against which they and other stakeholders can finally sign on the dotted line to get work started and trains running. Nevertheless, I’m hopeful we can reach that stage within the next year or so and see trains running by 2021. This is the easiest rail re-opening in the country to achieve as it is a fully working freight line capable of carrying passenger trains today. It just needs the stations to be re-built, a bit of double-tracking near Newsham, and some signalling upgrades – this last being something Network Rail will need to do anyway.
The government paper talks about merging responsibilities for trains and tracks as each franchise is renewed, in order to make enhancements such as this cheaper and easier to achieve. We certainly welcome a simplification of the current process which we believe to be far too costly and too time consuming. But Northern’s franchise does not expire until 2025. We most certainly expect and demand to see passenger trains running to Ashington by then. We need to be careful that these new simpler arrangements don’t result in holding things up if work under the old process is halted and then needed to start all over again under the new.
Dennis Fancett, Chair of SENRUG.
