to Megan and Ros

Dear Megan and Ros

I hope to be there, with Mark I expect, but we cannot speak in the public forum.  But you two have 3 mins each!

Would you both like to read out these questions, please - one each, perhaps?

1. With the urgency of responding effectively to the climate emergency, the fuel poverty crisis and, the migrant crisis would this committee recommend that the Dudley Cabinet gives a high priority to putting low cost, highly energy efficient, 1/2 bedroom apartments on the 10,000 sq m of wasted, brownfield land at High Plateau and Daniels Land at Merry Hill Shopping Centre?
   
    WBHE plan for Merry Hill.jpeg
2. Now that the Dudley Tram is arriving in Dudley town centre, is this the right time to recommend to Dudley's ruling Cabinet that the promise of reopening the full 120 Kms Black Country Railway has finally arrived and must be worked on?  Laura Shoaf, Chief Executive of the WMCA has reassured us that "passive provision" for freight and passenger trains to return is being built in to the Dudley tram line (a paltry concession as both have standard gauge track, anyway.  Or, is that only what she means?).

EXPLANATION AND BACKGROUND

Since the 1990s, under Centro and the Passenger Transport Authority, the promise of reopening the middle section of our railway "of national strategic significance" 

 "of national strategic significance".pdf

has always been dependent on the tramline going on the two nibble sized sections first: "Light rail investment provides the basis for restoring heavy rail services at the appropriate time" (letter from Tom Magrath, Passenger Services Director, Centro, dated 18 September 2000)

 Magrath quote, MM history and costs

Light rail is the Dudley Tram aka the Wednesbury, Brierley Hill Extension (WBHE) of Metro.

Heavy rail is commuter, regional and freight services or, the regular trains that we see elsewhere on railway lines not yet converted to tram lines (to then have their trains back decades or centuries later!!)

VERY MANY THANKS!

to Tony Whitehouse

I don't want to annoy anyone, let alone your good self.  I always want to be corrected when I am wrong.  I was wrong over buses not being able to use the Five Ways underpass and I'm delighted that I was!  However, no one at TfWM/WMCA corrected me.  Not even yourself, Tony.

The points I am constantly making is that with the long running climate crisis and now with the economic, cost of living, energy, inflation crises on top of climate we are definitely wrong and very foolish to persist with HS2, Metro, Sprint, X1 and X2, especially when they over benefit Brum and we, in the Black Country get left out yet again.

Over the decades we've had six of Dudley's railway lines destroyed and the seventh is the Dudley Tram running on the railway "of national strategic significance" - the 120 Kms Black Country Mainline Railway.  Two of the Black Country's mainline railways are now lost for good.  Although the second, we have been told since September 2000, is not lost forever but has to have trams on it in order to get the trains back, the authorities tell us!

In a letter to me, dated 18.9.2000, from Tom Magrath, Passenger Services Director:

"light rail investment provides the basis for restoring heavy rail services at the appropriate time."​

 Magrath quote, MM history and costs

​

The four Black Country boroughs are very much the poor relation to Big Beautiful Brum.  Even Coventry is getting so much more than us. Coventry is the UK's electric bus city and is also getting VLR and ULR, too!

But enough from me.  See you on Thursday.

WMCA formed on 17 June 2016 - 5th anniversary

Thanks so much, Mark for phoning.

Please be bold in asking these pertinent questions and use my name whenever you like.  Blame me!  You could take the approach of being sceptical, even unbelieving over what I have told you and, all the time, being on their side.  Really, you need to be neutral, of course!   Tim

THE UK's LAST MAINLINE RAILWAY - Derby to Devon via Dudley - wasted, unused between Stourbridge Jct and Burton on Trent

1. How is it that you still maintain that "light rail investment provides the basis for restoring heavy rail services at the appropriate time"?  (letter to Tim Weller, dated 18 September 2000, from Tom Magrath, Passenger Services Director, Centro)
2. More recently, how is it that your Laura Shoaf, MD, TfWM, told BBC reporter Peter Plisner on 'Midlands Today' that "passive provision" would still enable freight and passenger trains to return to the double tracks being given to trams on two nibble sized sections, totalling 7 Kms, to spoil a 120 Kms mainline railway?
3. What, exactly, is the "passive provision" that is being built in to the Metro line at the very time we speak?
4. How can "passive provision" be built-in when the only feasible site for a rebuilt Dudley Castle Hill Railway Station has been given to the National Very Light Rail Innovation Centre?
5. Tim Weller says that it is hardly surprising that you are spending £15 billion of public money to 2040 for mainly underground and overground Metro trams, over 150 miles and 8 lines, when you share the same building with the national tram promotion group.  Is he right?  Is there improper influence?  Are you finding it difficult to maintain a professional distance between yourselves and a lobby group?​

 Railfuture's full map.pdf

​​

 WBHE map

​

 Metro map with my notes.pdf

​

ACTIVE TRAVEL aka fossil-fuel-free travel or human-powered travel

1. When the Ordnance Survey has it down on their Explorer map as a "traffic-free cycle route" on two disused railway lines over 22 Kms, why is it that the Dudley section is particularly unacceptable and very slow going because of the mud and waterlogging in wet weather?
2. When will the WMCA be giving this major business, commuter and leisure route for mainly cyclists to use, a National Cycle Route number?
3. When will it be upgraded for responsible shared use between walkers, cyclists and horse riders?
4. Why has it never had any recognition and is even missed off on the Starley map, as a significant, even important, off-road route for those taking the climate emergency seriously?
   
    Disgraceful Dudley section of BC Cycle-Walkway ...
   
   
    Disgraceful Dudley section of BC Cycle-Walkway ...
   
   

SOURCES:

Report from self, dated 22 September 2015

"In a letter dated 18.9.2000, from Tom Magrath, Passenger Services Director:

"light rail investment provides the basis for restoring heavy rail services at the appropriate time."

To tell me that light rail Metro was needed to be put on the Black Country Line in order to be able to restore heavy rail services at a later date on that line is complete nonsense.  That idiocy is now repeated with the insistence that Very Light Rail must go on that inter-city line but that it will not stop express and local trains returning at a later date (conversation with David Golding, Principal Strategic Planner, Network Rail at ITA meeting on 16.7.2015)  No wonder, I am thinking that there is something very corrupt, very wrong at the heart of the West Midlands Combined Authority, Network Rail, ITA, Centro - and, for decades, too.  They all want express and local trains returning but want Light Rail and/or Very Light Rail, first to help get the everyday trains back!

This is either a scandal or, an April Fool that never ends and never will!

Dear friends

After your conversion of our mainline railway to tram line, with steel rails coming to our roads and pavements to add to road congestion; with now trams on our roads, too and a slower public transport journey in our multi-mixed up public transport scene of more changes, we now have PLASTIC GRASS to replace perfectly good paving slabs and tarmac!  Just paint them green!

What is going on?  Don't bother, please!  JUST BOTHER TO READ THIS MERRY TALE, BELOW!  Tim

Our politicians and transport planners completely destroyed our tram network in the 1950s.

This was followed by them destroying about 100 Kms of our regional railway lines and keeping passenger trains off 50 Kms of lines only allowed to have freight! 

Their next trick was not to stop the destruction of further railway lines and to restore the trains but, this time, to convert part of the train network to the tram network.

This, at much greater expense than putting the commuter trains back!

That first line opened in 1999 on an important commuter and regional railway line from Snow Hill to Wolverhampton.

But, they forgot to connect the new trams to Wolverhampton bus station or, the very last Wolverhampton railway station (out of four, originally).  It fell well short!

That first rebuilt tramline meant that 25% of Snow Hill station was taken out of railway use, together with 3 or 4 Kms of double-track railway line lost, either side of Wolverhampton Low-Level mainline station.

And the station was turned into a conference and events centre!

Now, that first tramline, to replace the perfectly good railway line, is being extended to destroy an even more important railway line.

This is the half-used but fully available (until recently), the 120 Kms railway, supposedly, "of national strategic significance" between Worcester and Derby via the Black Country!

That 120 Kms is now being broken in half for use as an extended tramline from the first, in order to take Dudley and Sandwell shoppers to Merry Hill.

Yet, it is supposed to help regenerate Dudley's rundown shopping centre, not Merry Hill!

And, worse is to follow.  It is not just a slow tramline to Merry Hill!

Our nationally important railway even gets used for a 2.2 Kms test track for Very Light Rail, too.

What was once on the national railway network going through the boroughs of Dudley, Sandwell and Walsall to Derby, may yet get ultra-light rail, because the Stourbridge Shuttle is being promoted to link Stourbridge and Brierley Hill on this same strategically important mainline railway.

All because the light rail, "bus on rails" Metro tram falls short of going all the way to Stourbridge Jct!

Remembering to finish the UK's last mainline railway with commuter and regional trains over the full 120 Kms is completely beyond our truly hopeless politicians and transport experts.

Instead, they make a dog's breakfast out of it with, possibly ultra-light rail, Very Light Rail and Light Rail all on one principal, mainline railway that was so successful as a railway.  It brought passengers from London and Oxford, even.  For 100 years!

And, Dudley will remain the largest town in the UK without its own railway station.  It wanted a piddling little shuttle tramline and tram stop instead.  It got tired of being on the national railway network.

What a wonderful joke to keep us all merry!

THIS IS THE LAST STRAW (a straw man) - what do I mean, I wonder?:

 Magrath quote, MM history and costs

Tim Weller

declared Independent candidate for Metro Mayor 6 May 2021 to help expose this scandal/April fool and to maintain the merriment to infinity and beyond!

The future of our wasted railway line up the road in Netherton, next to your constituency, James

Dear James - and copied to Head of W Midlands Rail Executive, Malcolm Holmes - and Cllr Ian Ward (Google is not giving me Malcolm's email address at the moment, if Ian could please forward this to him, please.)  Thanks!

This may give you a useful briefing about what TfWM/WMCA is probably planning to do, like Manchester.

A member of Railfuture wrote to me to ask,

 "If it's going to be double (SELF: Metro light rail trams on double tracks) then how do they expect to be able to run heavy rail services along a frequently used tramline in the future?" 

The tram is double track but tram-trains enable them to get round the promise of heavy rail services:

"Light rail investment provides the basis for restoring heavy rail services at the appropriate time." (letter from Tom Magrath, Passenger Services Director, Centro in September 2000)!

If it looks like a tram, runs as slowly and stops as often as a tram, it must still be a tram.  Therefore, the tram-train is a tram and not a heavy rail train.  However, Metro trams and, presumably, tram-trains can cruise at 50 mph, I believe.  Ultimately, I think electric tram-trains will run between Worcester, Dudley town centre and Derby.  It will be much more expensive and much slower, from the outset, now, than putting faster, with their fewer stops, electric, hydrogen-powered trains through the Black Country to bypass congestion bottleneck Brum.  Far better to use electric buses for what we want electric trams to do.  My suggestions are much more financially responsible with lower greenhouse gas emissions.  Therefore, more money is left to extend free travel from all old people like me to all younger age groups.  Free as compensation for the greater infection risk in using public transport.  SEE:

https://tfgm.com/future-travel/tram#:~:text=The%20Metrolink%20tram%20system%20is,stops%20covering%20nearly%2060%20miles.  

Best wishes