The Bristol Railway Archive

madhattie wrote:

Robin Summerhill wrote: Well off topic but worth a look. The railway related clues start at 1m 45secs in, and the action at 2 minutes

Quite possibly -the- most off topic post for many, many months!

Yes, but there were two railway related links (although of course nothing to do with Bristol!)

1. The railroad through the street as per Jules' post

2. The song itself was used as background music in the John Betjamin film/ documentary "Metroland" from the 1970s, which looked at some of the history and geography of the Metropolitan Railway

A long time since i have contributed but i have had other things on my mind for the last 40 weeks

What would make the reopening of any railway costly is the things like the bridges culverts etc.
Any bridge that has not been maintained properly is probably going to need rebuilding, remember most preserved railways are operating as light railways and in a lot of cases they came in to private ownership not to long after they were in BR ownership. A bridge that has been out of use for as it would be now about 50 years is going to have huge problems. The bridge deck drainage will be next to useless and would need refurbishing, this in turn will mean that the bridge structure itself will have been damaged by the water ingress over the years of neglect. Therefore every bridge will need an awful lot of work doing it to it. Bridge construction costs when i was last building them was around ú1000 per square metre of bridge. Then there is culvert crossings, again all need to be refurbished. if the railway re opens the railway operator then becomes responsible for the affects of every culvert under the railway which means if a railway culvert has been causing flooding for the last 50 years suddenly the new operator/ owner has to sort it out. Now to drainage of the railway itself, in the last 50 years the rules have changed. there would now have to be anti pollution measure in place to stop local water courses becoming contaminated from split fuel and so on.

Now just thinking about that little lot has made me think that reopening railways as much as i would love to see it is just not that easy,

I could go on about the other problems i can see such as embankment stabilisation, track bed refurbishment, environmental impact assessments and so on.

I would suggest that Canadian costs for the basic materials probably are not far of the mark, but in this country and in the environment that most disused railways are in i can see the the costs being 3 to 4 times that cost. Remember a railway on an embankment has a huge footprint. At the moment it is disused and no account is taken of it. Open it and every drop of water that drains off of it then becomes the railway operators responsibility

Now to the Parry People mover. Poor old parry has been trying to find an outlet for his idea for years, he tried flogging it to the Bristol development Corporation back in the 90's
A good idea but in my view a rail system that would cost more to install than a conventional system. The cars need electrical recharge stations at intervals along the track to recharge the drive system.

Remember a railway on an embankment has a huge footprint. At the moment it is disused and no account is taken of it. Open it and every drop of water that drains off of it then becomes the railway operators responsibility

So does a road - and we don't seem to have many problems building those! They also leak effluents far, far more than any railway would.

I usually agree with all your postings ( ) but in this case, I feel I have to point out that building a road costs more than building a railway - and the DoT seem to have fewer problems financing road building than rail building. The problem with building a railway is having built it, there is a commitment to operate it. A road, you just let people drive on ....

I get thoroughly tired of waiting for lines like Portishead to be re-opened. The politicians don't have the will or, to give them their due, the resources. It is the system that is broken. My personal feeling is that, the only way Portishead will *EVER* be re-opened will be through true private enterprise, ignoring the political system, along the lines of the American short line railroads. And interestingly, they are starting to arrive here - in the guise of British American Railroads that have just re-introduced daily passenger services to both Weardale and Okehampton.

Bristol Port Company would be an obvious operator, or facilitator for TM-Portishead, if only they were willing to branch out and expand a little. With a CBR (cost-benefit ratio) of just under 1, based on 2001 figures, it really is a no brainer!

If it were claimed by a heritage organisation such as the West Somerset, it would have been open and making profits many years ago and providing a valuable public service. Even as a preservationist (of hydraulic diesels!) I wouldn't promote that a heritage organisation should go anywhere near TM to Portishead *except* as a purely commercial proposition and as a professional rail operator (for that is what we are).

But if we are going to wait for the DfT/FGW/NR franchising option, without the support of positive local government such as in Wales or Scotland, then mark my words, we are going to wait for ever. And if that be the case, if we want a repoened Portishead line, we'd better start looking at the private alternatives such as short line / heritage / Bristol Port Co. or form a bloody company and raise share capital to re-open it just like the Victorians used to do. Too many people just expect things to be "done for them" in the UK nowadays ...

Not knocking Network Rail, they'd move on it if they had a viable partner for sure. But their hands are tied by the politicians ...

jules wrote:

hobbler wrote:Remember a railway on an embankment has a huge footprint. At the moment it is disused and no account is taken of it. Open it and every drop of water that drains off of it then becomes the railway operators responsibility

So does a road - and we don't seem to have many problems building those! They also leak effluents far, far more than any railway would.

The difference, of course, is the funding for both construction and maintenance.

Whilst land developers are often called upon to contribute to the provision of a new road, funding ultimately comes from government. Funding for repair of the road after it has been built comes from taxation, either nationally or through your Council Tax.

We mentioned bridges. It is eye-wateringly cheaper to build a new bridge than it is to restore an old one, especially if it has managed to get listed status since a train last ran over it.

The costs of providing a railway infrastructure and repairing it once it is in place will lie with the provider. Whilst some government money might go into major projects such as HS2, there is not a cat in hell's chance of government or local funding being made available for local projects.

Just think about it for a moment, using Norton Radstock as an example. As I have said in an earlier post, the costs of reinstating a railway line, including the repurchase of sections of trackbed sold off (presumably it would need an Act of Parliament to force the landowners to sell, because a railway promoter would not have powers of compulsory purchase) would be astronomic. There is no way that the revenue return (ie fare paying passengers) would ever cover the cost of the investment, so it won't happen for that reason.

Or Portishead. Whilst most of the line is still usable, the final (and perhaps the most important) section from Portbury to Portishead is in a mess. It hasn't seen a train in years. There are trees growing in the four foot (you might take solace in the fact that the Watford High Street to Watford West line looks the same!) Fences have been erected across it (perhaps someone knows why) and the Portishead station site has been redeveloped, so a new one would be required. In truth, the whole line from Portbury to Portishead is a basket case and needs ripping up and completely replacing, and the sums involved will not be covered by the local WI running a few raffles

Lets say, just for sake of argument, that one of the local councils had a couple of bob going spare (a couple of bob which, lets say, amounts to half a million). Could the railway reopen with an investment of ú0.5m? No. Would it be any more than a drop in the ocean? No

Perhaps more pertinently, how many otherwise uneconomic buses could it subsidise? Quite a lot

Finally, remember that, no matter how pro-rail you might be, a new road will improve communications for many more people than a new railway ever would.

Jules i am sure you dont want to argue road building costs with me but if you do please feel free, For the last 30 years of my working life i was building roads and bridges all over the world. i can give you road building costs from China from India from Central America and of Course from the Uk. And effluent run off from all new roads is now strictly controlled, that is why it is better to up grade an existing road the new rules do not apply. The last job i was involved in was 45km of Motorway in Ireland, a new build which worked out at ú10.5 million per Km. To me as i say the problem is that the old railways in many cases went out of BR ownership, bringing them back into BR ownership means the new rules apply. Interceptors on all outlets into watercourses. Affects on ground water to be investigated and so on, remember when they were built this was never investigated. Just to give you a small example the Stonehenge tunnel for the A303 will never ever be built, why, the main reason is because of the implications that the tunnel has on the water table. The problem now a days is all the new environmental rules that would make the reopening of any railway a problem. Just think about how much it cost to build highspeed one. Let me give you one example and one that i encountered whilst road building in ireland. Bats, yes we had buildings with bats in them. Each building had to be left until it was the right time for the bats to be moved, They then had to be provided with a new home, it costs tens of thousands just for a few bats, then add in newts, frogs, protected birds in the undergrowth and so on. remember before you can put one spade in the ground the whole line will have to be surveyed every tree measured and listed, every rare plant listed and noted, every bird nest listed and noted yep it a nightmare, and if you find one red crested newt rather than a normal one it would be easier to move the line rather than the newt!!

The Portishead line did not have this problem, it was technically still a operating line. Whereas to reopen say the mangotsfield line all the environmental aspects would have to be observed as it is closed and defunct as a railway line.