Dear Bridget
Note the date, 2003 on the map, below but little, if anything, has changed! Railfuture are the experts on all railway matters outside the industry/professionals but have done nothing to support me over 30 years of trying to restore our railways! They love trams as much as they adore trains. They and the authorities have given trams top priority for railway lines rather than the much cheaper (and obvious!) train reinstatement.
Our 120 Kms Black Country Railway "of national strategic significance"
is actually a SW to NE railway but is one of only two N-S mainline railways between Brum and the Irish Sea. For 60 years, we have seen much extra road and train congestion because of 60 years of quite properly CLOSED railways as big loss makers by Richard Beeching, were then bulldozed away or had roads, buildings and tramways built on them. This, with the full support of public opinion and, in particular, with planning permission being given by councillors over the 60 years and with them giving their approval for their conversion to tramways over the last 40 years. MPs and trade union leaders, especially every railway union, have all fully approved this bizarre, a truly weird and wonderful practice!
5.5 Kms = Dudley Tram between Metro line One at Wednesbury and the former Dudley mainline railway station on the 120 Kms Black Country Railway "of national strategic significance".
20 Kms = Snow Hill station to Wolverhampton St George's Sq Metro tramway on a former mainline railway for 18 Kms. Opened in 1999.
25.7 Kms = present length of tramways from Wolverhampton railway station to Edgbaston Village tram stop. This has only taken 42 years to achieve, would you believe! 18 Kms on a mainline railway (now destroyed) and 7 Kms on roads all served by buses.
120 Kms = Worcester to Derby via Dudley aka Derby, Dudley, Devon or Burton on Trent to Bristol via Brierley Hill, for the sake of alliteration!
56 Kms = the unused but ready built Stourbridge Jct station to Burton on Trent station on the middle section of the Black Country Railway between Worcester and Derby.
FUTURE OPENING:
Wednesbury to Flood Street in Dudley tramway that will be opened in time for Christmas jollities in 2024 - very possibly! It was promised by Dudley Council leader, Cllr Fred Hunt to me in a conversation in the 90s, by the year 2000!
Fraudulent High Scam 2, a N-S railway, is now cancelled north of Brum. But Rishi Sunak is promising to give some of the £36 billion saved to Andy Street for his tram obsession. Andy wants, even more now, his 150 miles, 8 lines and 380 tram stops for tram extensions, now on and under roads for £15 BILLION to 2040 (Jan 2020 figure)
Courtesy of Pam Archer:
"Man has lost the capacity to foresee and to forestall, (so) he will end by destroying the world."
(Albert Schweitzer, 1950s, cited in "Silent Spring" by Rachel Carson, 1962). My view: the world will blissfully go on without its full burden of 7 billion humans - and rising!
THE ESSENCE OF WHY THE BLACK COUNTRY RAILWAY MUST BE FINISHED:
GLORIOUS ENGLISH ECCENTRICITY: the UK's only mothballed, easily reinstated, ready made but they forgot the trains and stations, mainline railway. Nothing to do with the EU. Their mainland railways are better and actually used for TRAINS!
WHICH IS MORE SENSIBLE THINKING?
2 or 3 fast regional trains every hour and nine new stations to complete the 120 Kms between Worcester and Derby; OR: 6 to 10 "bus on rails" trams every hour and 17 tram stops over only 11 Kms to STOP the reinstatement of the railway "of national strategic significance."
SMART POLITICIANS?
£449 m plus cost overruns to build the Black Country Tramline over 6.7 Kms that destroys the Black Country Railway over 56 Kms. All 56 Kms can get commuter/regional trains back for less than £200 m (2015 figure). Or, stupid politicians?
SMART RAILWAYS?
Why CUT a 120 Kms principal, mainline railway through the congested West Midlands with a tramline in two halves, a railway test track and a trail of trees, Japanese knotweed and undergrowth, when absent trains on 56 Kms of track could have their trains and stations back, FOR LESS MONEY than using trams on only 6.7 Kms?
Thanks so much for your interest, Bridget.
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