Talk:Manchester–Sheffield–Wath electric railway

Untitled
Some points noted - 'this end of the line' - which is that?

The stories on why the original passenger route was shut (*) and why the freight route shut (falling of in Transpennine coal traffic) differ slightly from yours - do we know which was the real reason? Linuxlad 21:11, 14 December 2005 (UTC) (*the story I'd heard is twas Beeching wot done it! (by insisting some capacity had to go, on the Manchester-Sheffield run and finding the Edale run needed to be left for social reasons))

Response
I'm probably being dim, but I can't see where I've written "this end of the line" in an ambiguous manner.

OK - quite possibly my 'bad' but anyway you've changed it :-) Bob

As for the reasons for closure, the maps in Beeching's first report suggested that the Woodhead route was to remain open as an inter-city route, and that the Hope Valley route would close. I've not seen his second report but I understand that at the time there was much local wrangling about the proposal to close the Hope Valley line due to the large number of local stations on the route, which contributed to that route being eventually favoured. Stephen Batty in his 1983 book on railways in Sheffield cites the reasons I give for why Woodhead being closed to passengers: the expense of building an electrified Victoria-Midland link line after the slated closure of Victoria and an ostensible need for a freight-only Manchester-Sheffield electric route. Indeed he says that this featured in one of the then Labour government's national economic plans as such - thus was the importance of the route at this time.

I've also removed the hyperbole as suggested - thanks.

BaseTurnComplete 19:09, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

I don't think there was a second Beeching report but a ministerial edict that Hope Valley would stay open to some passenger traffic (Beeching had proposed to shut it totally, I think) - originally wasn't it proposed by the minister to split the traffic but BR said sodit it's easier to  close Woodhead. to passengers. Your extra reasons would explain this 'all the way' decision, it appears.

Now the reason for the shutting of Woodhead to freight still seems rather more opaque, and publically seemed only to rely on the fall off in coal traffic. There's something doesn't quite gell in all this, (since the time between clearing out the passenger traffic to build up the freight and finding it had (predicably?) gone seems too short!) but the added cost of the extra electrified link seem to have been crucial in removing passengers as the other source of revenue. Bob aka Linuxlad

Closure of the line
Re: minsterial edict: from memory I think it was Barbara Castle who made that promise, the same transport minister who came in on a ticket of not making any major rail route closures and then promptly shut the S&D (85 miles), Woodhead to passengers (40-odd miles of electric railway hardly 15 years old), Waverley (60-odd miles) etc.

Re: closure to passengers, BR missed out big time on that one as they owned a large amount of land in the triangle between Victoria and the Northern approach to Midland which were two former Goods Depots (one Blast Lane and one whose name escapes me) - these were cleared after 1965 and turned into Park Square and the associated roads. It would have been relatively easy and cheap at that time to build a link from Midland to Victoria in this area instead, but of course the future was cars then wasn't it? It also left them in the silly position of having to reverse Sheffield-Huddersfield trains at Nunnery to head through Victoria up the GC to Penistone, a practice which continued for 13 years until they re-routed these via Barnsley in 1983

Re: closure to freight - my understanding is that the coal traffic didn't really drop off until the 1984-85 miners' strike - it was simply sent on other routes after 1981. Certainly Wath Yard was still pretty busy for three-odd years after 1981, albeit minus the electrics. It was the 1980 steel strike that really killed Woodhead as before then a lot of the traffic on the Sheffield line was loaded steel wagons - that traffic dropped off completely during the strike; with the massive steel industry restructuring that was proposed, BR thought that the traffic would never return and so used the traffic levels during the strike as a justification to close the line. This was more than a little underhand as the steel industry measured by tonnage output didn't shrink as much as they thought - it just a shed a lot of jobs and closed deeply unprofitable plants.

All a shame really - especially since no doubt had the electrification survived out of the early '80s gloom to the end of the decade and beyond, with the upswing in rail travel and money being made available for passenger transport projects it would have been upgraded to 25kV AC and the Victoria-Midland link put in somehow - maybe through Bridgehouses tunnel with a large loop to the north of Victoria connecting to Midland.

BaseTurnComplete 17:50, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

Re-write
To anyone watching this page, I'm heading for a major re-write providing in some more detail, but I need to find my books on this subject first.

BaseTurnComplete 19:28, 29 December 2005 (UTC)