Excellent Dudley Museum

Dear friends

I came across this wonderful, well presented Dudley Museum that includes many exhibits and one dinosaur that made me jump as it unexpectedly burst into life behind me!  There was also attractive information about the Black Country UNESCO Geopark and two videos on a loop in the video room.  There was an art gallery and a Dudley heroes galley to be seen, too.

I was there for about an hour and a half, this morning but saw only one couple.  There needs to be lots of attractive signs to our brand new museum from each of the other four tourist/leisure attractions that are on either side of the Archives and Local History Centre.  Visitors to the Living Museum, the Portal and Zoological Gardens/Castle should not be missing out.  They are certainly doing so, now.  Signs are needed, I think from both the old, top town and the new, Castle Gate, low town centre.  Signs on the walking/cycling routes, please including to the canal towpath that takes walkers and cyclists to Brum.  The land train route needs to be much better signed, in my opinion and, the white railway type gate kept unlocked during the daytime.

I also noticed that the smart, top quality Station Hotel is missed out from the Accommodation brochure.  The other three hotels at Castle Gate are all included.  This is a serious omission and the owner should be rightly upset.  The useful 'Discover Dudley' brochure has the Village Hotel Club featured but, the older and more established Station Hotel, once again, is not.  Also missing is the 100 years of successful service to Dudley town - the railway station.  It was once important and, like Station Hotel, must have had visitors/passengers from London and the North, in past years.  It could do so again, of course.  Hint, hint!

Best wishes

The Black Country Ghost Train Attraction

The Black Country Ghost Train attraction

There is still time to stop Brum palming us fine Black Country people off with a piddling little shuttle tram line. This, on our own mainline railway to our neighbours' in Sandwell. Ours gets completely ruined in the process. How scandalous and stupid is that?

STATION Hotel, that smart top hotel opposite the site of the railway station, has to put up with a tram stop of all things. Giving it the trains back will help it flourish between traditional old Dudley town and new, low town at Castle Gate.

Please protest, act and insist that we get the proper thing back - TRAINS, once more on all 120 Kms between Worcester and Derby, through Dudley.

​

OR,

Beware of audacious, dishonest scam  

1. Digging up roads and wrecking any prospect of completing our 120 Kms mainline railway is done to replace diesel buses/trains with electric trams.
2. It is turning a mole hill into a mountain.
3. No mole hill exists because the tram brainwave is a solution looking for a problem.  And this has gone on since 1981 but, in this decade it has taken off - big time.
4. Road digging, moving pipes and cables and overhead power lines all makes tram extensions the world's second most expensive form of transport after HS2.  SOURCE:
   
    Like for like comparison of infrastructure buil...
5. Even more expensive than nearly every Maglev train project in Japan, South Korea and China!
6. All you need are electric, fareless buses on 100% bus lanes, with traffic light priority to speed buses and inconvenience car commuters but help those who must use vehicles. 
7. Democracy is denied to drive through, autocratically, that road digging, railway wrecking project.
8. It appears that not one political party, even the Green Party, has ever discussed and then voted on the wisdom of spending over £1.5 BILLION for the 32 Kms and five schemes in the Black Country and Brum.
9. Every political party wants trams.  Everyone includes them in their manifestos.  But with no democratic legitimacy.
10. Not one council in membership of the Combined Authority has ever voted to approve this massive expenditure.
11. The HQ of the Combined Authority shares the building with the HQ of the national tram promotion group.  Vested interests.  Improper influence.  Complicity, collusion, corruption.  That explains it all in upstanding, Boris's Brexit Britain!
12. Maintaining the first very expensive tram on a railway line meant every tram was replaced after only 17 years and the track after 18 years.  And, four business in Bilston went bust over the many months of work!

Your excellent piece in the Chronicle 19.4.18

Good morning, Mark.  A very good read, once again - thanks!  But Dudley, capital of the Black Country, gets a shuttle tram service to ferry people to the national railway network on a mainline railway that is already more important than the mainline railway passengers are shuttled to!!  And Station Hotel will have to renamed Tram Stop Hotel.  

A possible 7 new railway stations (3 for Brum) but a definite 17 tram stops for Wednesbury to Brierley Hill tram extension.  From the Express and Star I have copied and pasted the Magnificent Seven Stations.  My suggestions in blue:

Willenhall and Darlaston St James on a restored Walsall-Wolverhampton service.  BUT, this service was underused in the last decade and soon stopped.  The difference, this time, seems to be two stations being built, first.  Yet, there is a good, frequent Platinum bus service between Walsall and Wolverhampton.  Should not all available money be going to complete the 120 Kms Black Country Railway "of national strategic significance" (Network Rail and DfT) FIRST?  Only then do Wolverhampton to Walsall to Sutton Coldfield to Brum for passenger trains.

Merry Hill Shopping Centre, which would sit on the Walsall – Stourbridge line.  Please could journalists call it the Black Country Mainline Railway.  Merry Hill gets the tram which will wreck the high and landscaped canal embankment that has to be rebuilt to take the heavy trams.  It does get a tram stop, only but, on the high embankment.  Some kind of link will still have to be provided into the shopping centre.  SIMPLER TO: Reinstate the Black Country Railway and the driverless Shop-Rail Link but, this time, remember to connect it to the railway line!!  Merry Hill and the DY5 Enterprise Zone then gets a railway station on the railway "of national strategic significance".

With my suggestion, everything is upgraded from tram to proper railway with stations linked to buses.  AND, there are no changes between train to tram and back to train again to make progress across the Black Country between Worcester and Derby.  ALL OF THIS AT A FRACTION OF THE PRICE OF THE GROSSLY EXTRAVAGANT TRAM, especially if you start with diesel locos and, then, Alstom's hydrogen electric train!

West Midland Safari Park located on the Severn Valley Railway.  W Mids Railway working together with SVR is brilliant.  And, learning from SVR how to reopen railways.

Moseley, Kings Heath and Hazelwell on the Camp Hill line.  This was going to be another tram line until quite recently - 2015!!

​But completing the 120 Kms Black Country Railway gets spoilt for ever by 6.7 Kms of tram lines and tram stops, a test track, an innovation centre, a trail of trees, Himalayan Balsam and a jungle of undergrowth!

"I am absolutely committed to restoring some of the routes that were lost under Dr Beeching.  You've got routes that are still there with freight trains running on them in what are busy city areas. It makes no sense at all to me not to restore passenger services.  It's blindingly obvious this Moseley line and the Walsall to Wolverhampton line I visited earlier are places linking important centres and important commuter routes and there should be trains running on them.  We are trying to deliver a revolution in commuter railways in Birmingham."  Chris Grayling quoted  by James RodgerAdvanced Content Writer BIRMINGHAM LIVE  13 APR 2018

What about delivering a revolution in commuter railways in the Black Country, too, Mr Grayling?​  We get pedestrian trams at 22 mph average speed and stops at every 650 metres on a half used railway "of national strategic significance". (Network Rail and DfT on 8 March 2018 in a letter to me)