to Lichfield Rail Promotion Group

Please explain why foremost Railfuture (and your good selves!) are not campaigning vigorously for the UK's very last, principal mainline railway, "of national strategic significance" - the 120 Kms Black Country Railway between Worcester, Dudley, Walsall, LICHFIELD and Derby - MUST NOT to be turned into a cycle-walkway between Walsall and Lichfield.

Tens of millions in price and in weight of deadly greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are being wasted from a ready-built railway, minus the rather vital, intercity, regional, commuter and freight trains.  Now, only for pedestrians and cycles between Walsall and Lichfield!!!

Isn't my Black Country Railway far more important than High Scam 2 fast to be of any help in reducing train overcrowding?!  The Black Country Railway really can increase capacity on our national railway network if only it is USED for what it was built for!

PLEASE REPLY TO   timweller1@gmail.com

Role for private companies but they must speak up

Ask for work to restore our railways for trains and not for trams or as cycle-walkways.

The private sector must end their guilty silence in being complicit in the bizarre policy of only finishing the UK's last and, half-used, 120 Kms railway "of national strategic significance" ​w​ith trams ​instead of commuter, regional and intercity TRAINS and​,​ between Walsall and Lichfield​, with yet more sections, only as a cycle-walkway​.​

Commuter, regional and intercity trains would be more sensible.

to David Dundas

Dear David and wife, whose name I failed to ask for yesterday.  Copied to Maggie Simpson and Jed Marson.

Thank you for making me realise how important hydrogen is for trains and larger HGVs.  Your elucidation was most helpful.  I had, in fact, picked up on hydrogen trains six years ago but I was unsure of my facts when we spoke last night, so remained silent until I could check today.  See my photos and the published letter, below.

Please see the bigger picture and the full length to Worcester and on to Oxford and London, to help Brum by bypassing it to the west - one of only two North-South railways between Brum and the Irish Sea

It is this Railfuture map

 Railfuture's full map.pdf

 that shows the full 120 Kms Black Country Railway

 "of national strategic significance".pdf

from Worcester to Derby via Stourbridge, Dudley, Walsall and Lichfield.  I know you said you want to see it opened one small step at a time.  However, I would plead with you that its national importance is only recognised if it is taken as a whole and opened as a complete line for both freight and passenger use.  It is vital for freight to take the pressure off the Camp Hill line (Kings Norton, Kings Heath, Moseley, Grand Central) once the three stations and half hour diesel service is reinstated in 2025 (?)  However, I never succeeded in getting Maggie Simpson of the Rail Freight Group to take an interest and help me.

Are there any other rail freight organisations I could try, David?

HYDROGEN

I was promoting this hydrogen train six years ago in my many emails trying to get your local mainline back in use by saying it would be ideal for our 120 Kms Black Country Railway!

 Image of hydrogen train 01.pdf

I've pasted my letter to Rail Professional magazine at the bottom of this page:

 Image of hydrogen train 02.pdf

When we spoke last night, I thought that I had read about the hydrogen (or similar) train sometime last decade but could not remember for sure.  I wrote emails at the time saying it would be ideal for our regional railway from Worcester to Derby, if only the middle section of 56 Kms could be completed with commuter, regional and freight trains.  However this was not to be.  BECAUSE OF:

METRO TAKEOVER!

This is from an email I wrote earlier today to a LibDem activist I met before yesterday evening's meeting started, Jed Marson, Vice Chair, Campaigns, Green Liberal Democrats who is from Hallow, a village north of Worcester.  A vital city on our forgotten principal mainline railway.  Jed wrote:

"Glad to meet you this evening. I note your concern about the jamming of major intercity corridors with trams, potentially blocking routes for trains.  I will engage in the LibDems party to find out how we can do both."

MY REPLY:

"We already have trams and trains in seven places in the UK out of a good few more than seven.  Unfortunately, our taxes have been misused and wasted to the tune of hundreds of millions of pounds in both price and in weight of greenhouse gas emissions (GHG), over 42 years, to give us a miserly 25 Kms of tramways of which 18 Kms are on the first mainline railway destroyed.  The second, would you believe, one of only two between Brum and the Irish Sea is being turned into the world's first TRAIN-TRAM-TRAIN mainline railway "of national strategic significance"!!

 "of national strategic significance".pdf

"Actually, the world's first TRAIN-TRAM-CYCLE/WALKWAY-TRAIN mainline railway of 120 Kms between Worcester and Derby.  How absolutely absurd.  Not at all.  You will just have to hire a bike between Walsall and Lichfield - a great idea to keep passengers in trim!

"Yet again, the UK becomes a laughing stock around the world - Brexit, HS2, two mainline railways downgraded to tramways.

"What is the point of replacing and duplicating buses and trains with trams when we desperately need the two main modes to be as good as they are on the mainland of Europe?  Those two main modes, in addition, have nowhere near come to being finished as electrified modes, have they?  The authorities have been diverted by the lure of trams which we all do love to ride on - me most of all!  But it has been a fatal and foolish fascination, don't you think, Jed?

"We've seen the destruction of railway lines for trams and buildings.  For example, for over 20 years, up until 2015/16, the Camp Hill Line was designated to be given over to trams!  All you good politicians and transport experts then changed your minds and decided to use it for TRAINS, after all, and to rebuild three stations.  Yet, that cannot even be done because, I think, you all love extravagant trams more than trains and ran out of money!!  The three stations won't be finished until next year, now.

"Trams and trains, I think, means:

1. Duplication or replacement/conversion of perfectly adequate buses and trains that need to have electrification finished.
2. Very high greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) from all the steel and concrete that has to be manufactured for the steel tracks and the concrete that they get laid in.
3. Places like Kidderminster have the most disgraceful and slum looking bus station imaginable, while Brum luxuriates in the second most expensive transport mode, per Km, to construct after HS2.
4. I see Metro as very desirable but just far too greedy and extravagant.  Swish, swanky and smooth but the wrong priority.
5. Use the £15 billion for Metro's 150 miles and eight lines to restore our railways instead of destroying them.
6. Use the money for insulating the homes of the poorest; for Fare-Free Public Transport for all (and not just for my age group); to build homes at High Plateau, Merry Hill SC; for transforming the 25 Kms Black Country Cycle/Walk Mudway, the UK's grandest, longest and most important cycle-walk mudway.
7. Use some of the money to finish the Black Country Urban Forest and to do the ecological survey at Daniels Land, Merry Hill SC to see if it is an SSSI.
8. Above all, free rides on the bus, train and tram for all you youngsters!"

END OF MY EMAIL TO JED.

My banner near Brownhills:

 M6 Toll banner 01.jpg

The steel train tracks nicked by metal thieves!  Looking towards your city, David.  This is the planned cycle/walkway:

 M6 Toll 03.jpg

David, Can you and your wife, with Jed and I, promote the UK's only unfinished railway "of national strategic significance"?  Is there any chance of us working together to get something done?  Since the 1990s I've been working on my own but, since last decade, with the help of a wonderful train driver, Dave Parsons who lives nearby, understands and agrees with me.

Very best wishes, whatever you both think!

The Western Rail Bypass of train congested Birmingham

I attended my first Railfuture national conference on Saturday 7 November in Bristol.

Steve Wright, Secretary of Railfuture West Midlands, suggested a semi-fast rail service on the Black Country Line for the 38 Km from Stourbridge to Lichfield and a further 36 Km on the present freight only line from Lichfield direct to Derby, instead of passengers having to go via Tamworth.  Those 74 Km (over a 100 Km from Worcester) could, perhaps, take Euro-style, sleek, white, ICE trains.  Brilliant! In the meantime, diesel trains from lines finally electrified might be used.  Therefore, cheaper, simpler and easier to achieve than the new mode, tram-train.

It would be the first rail project in Dudley and Walsall for over 100 years, after decades of the total destruction of the tram network, then destruction of half the rail network.  This was followed by the construction (at least 1 Km on a rail line) of fast roads and motorways quickly delivered, one after the other and, over very many miles.

After very many years of asking, Dudley borough on the shortest branch line in the UK, was eventually allowed to have the much more sensible Parry People Mover taking over from a DMU that had to travel over from the other side of Brum every morning and back in the evening!

Re-learn the wisdom of our forebears of putting trains where the people live and work.

The Black Country Line gives us the choice of a train into Brum from Dudley or a train as a direct service to the south or north of the UK. The new line bypasses Birmingham Grand Central and Wolverhampton but with a link to both by changing at Dudley Port on the WCML.

Stop the bypassing of the Black Country with Brum getting all the light rail and heavy rail projects.

Position statement on rail re-openings

The VLR project to go at the former Brierley Hill Steel terminal site on Moor Street, with the extra 1 Km of line, instead of preventing, for ever, the return of inter-city and local trains to our last remaining, UK north-south, high speed line.

There is no need for Dudley Council and ITA/Centro to shuttle passengers to the high speed line in the neighbouring borough (Dudley Port in Sandwell) when, in so doing, they destroy their own high speed line they are using to shuttle the passengers the one mile.

They should use their own high speed line (Stourbridge, Dudley, Walsall, Lichfield) to increase rail capacity and to reduce road and rail congestion.

Please get down to, urgently re-opening all our 72 Km of former passenger lines in Birmingham and the Black Country, instead of keeping them for freight only and for LR and, now, VLR tram projects that never, ever materialise.

Where is the morality in your policy of keeping unused, double track rail lines, devoid of trains and stations, alongside bumper to bumper commuter traffic?  This is literally the case in Dudley and Birmingham.  This is your long term strategy and has been for decades.  Will you change it, please?

For me, it is a scandal that we are spending £100 million per mile for Midland Metro extensions in Brum city centre and £54 million per mile for Wolverhampton but, only £10 million per mile for the return of passenger trains, rail structures and stations (the 29 miles costing £294 million for a rural rail line reopening, this September) in southern Scotland!!  What on earth is going on in this supposed age of austerity, of prudent use of depleting resources and of frightening, human caused climate change?

Am I right in thinking that all UK rail groups support your policies, plans and priorities?  Please give me their names.

Why was there no public consultation over VLR (while still keeping LR) for the Black Country inter-city Line?

Trains Back on the Tracks - Briefing Paper

BACKGROUND BRIEF:

Please could you consider using your position and influence to help to re-open the Black Country inter-city Rail Line?

Could you help to re-open our Dudley borough's, mothballed, 13 miles (21 Km) inter-city and local train line and, to stop the present plan to use one mile of it to shuttle passengers' to the inter-city line in the neighbouring borough?  The present plan will destroy forever, what was, for about 100 years, a successful passenger line!

SUMMARY:

Did you know that in 34 years, the West Midland councils have opened only one Metro tram line out of a dozen or so that they wanted and spent much taxpayers' money trying to get?  Did you know that that one line finally gets completed this year?

Did you know about the 72 Km of freight lines in Brum and the Black Country that all had passenger trains for 100 years until 50 years ago?

Do you not think that they need top priority over tram lines with which the councils have failed to deliver any (apart from the one on a rail line they should never have closed) over these last 34 years?

Do you not think that chronic road and rail congestion at and around New Street Station could be alleviated by re-opening the Black Country Rail Line for inter-urban and local trains through the heart of three Black Country boroughs?  Ideally, extending it to Lichfield, of course, on National Cycle Route 5.

Why not take some of the pressure off Grand Central/New St Sta?  In this way, the councils would improve the passenger experience in giving us the choice, in the Black Country, of going to London and Scotland by either the Black Country or by Brum.  We would have a direct connection to the south and north of the UK by going via the Black Country boroughs on our own reinstated inter-city line!

Did you know that all of that continues to be lost with 34 years of light rail Metro trams (never achieved) and, now VERY light rail trams being introduced as a shuttle service on only 2 Km of the 21 Km Black Country Line?  Below is a map to show the 72 Km of freight only lines and missing stations in our congested conurbation.  Read more in my 'Horrible History ...'.

 Absent trains, stations.JPG

 One horrible history ...

Increasing rail capacity does not need to wait until 2026 and HS2!

Many thanks if you feel able to help - and, to help us all to get around with a little less congestion on our road and rail networks!

Tim