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!

RailNOfuture - true to form and maintaining its abysmal track record

Dear Don - and all of you in Railfuture who want a bigger and better railway but seem to do nothing to ever get one!  Except to say 'Amen' to whatever the authorities want.

You wrote, "Longer term goals

• Reinstating the Stourbridge - Dudley - Walsall - Lichfield line to relieve heavy congestion on the existing Black Country rail & road networks.

Rome wasn't built in a day. We will get their.​   Donald​"​

That has been your stated goal in your literature for many decades, Donald.  For exactly the same number of decades as you have all fully supported the break up of the same, 120 Kms mainline railway with trams on two short sections (and much else put on it, too!).  Is that correct?  Is that called hypocrisy, Don?  RailNOfuture says one thing and does the opposite?

Is it true that you cannot​​ possibly "get their​"​​ because I have seen no evidence that RailNOfuture has done anything to stop the only feasible site for a rebuilt Dudley Railway Station from being given over to the £28 m National Innovation Centre for VLR - that is now being built.

​Not one member of RailNOfuture submitted an objection to Dudley's Development Control Committee when the planning application went before them on 17th October 2016.  I was present, as Rob Mayor, BBC reporter will confirm, when the decision to use the railway station site was made.  And, as a result, to ditch any hope of the mainline Dudley railway from ever being reinstated!

Dudley town will never again have a railway station.  The largest town in the UK without one!  It will now have a piddling little tram stop for ever and a day.  And, it has to shuttle passengers on your own former and existing mainline railway to your neighbour's in Sandwell.  What a joke!​

​Never mind.  It's not the end of the world.  Please learn from your mistakes.  But do try and STOP destroying the remnant that remains of our railways. 

​Best wishes to each and every one and, my genuine concern for you all to turn over a new leaf - PLEASE!

Tim​