Moorlands and City Railway

https://www.churnet-valley-railway.co.uk/news/leek1115

 

Yes - The Virgin Train one over the awarding of the WCML franchise.

 

I would imagine Mr Shooter's 'D-Train' would be ideal for a Stoke -Leek service ,

Jon

 

Whilst I do agree, such a move would destroy my dream of 3CIG / 4VEP appearing in North Staffs! Good old slam door - we have the 33 to do such!

 

Now you are talking jonjon!

 

Now if we did get a running set of 4VEP we could do the job properly at put the third rail in as well. That might keep the dog walkers at bay a bit more.
If we are going down that route - a 2BIL would be better.

 

Around 2005, some people made generous contributions to bring a donated 4VEP to Cheddleton only to see it cut up for scrap (and a few spare doors.) Perhaps that was before your time. No wooden spoon, just fact.

 

4VEP was gone before I joined the railway. Shame but listening to those in C&W who were here, there just wasn't the team available to keep it going as the repairs list built up. If the railway was located a bit more closer to the Southern region that may have been different, as at times a lot of preservation is about what people have memories of. 4VEPs in Staffordshire will never generate the same interest as 4VEPs on the SWML sadly.

 

Working up near Bradnop today trying to clear a blocked drain pipe that had resulted in an upwelling of water in the cess. Started with the drain rods and that seemed to be working until we got to a point about 20 rods in where we could make no progress. Then commenced digging out where water was coming up, and tried blocking the drains higher up so the hole was not constantly filling with water. No success at any of these so eventually dug a channel so that the water ran down to the nearby culvert away from the track bed. Read next weeks thrilling episode ............ when we might need to use a pump or mini-digger.

 

HS2 announcement set to prompt work to bring railway back to Leek despite link at Crewe

http://www.leek-news.co.uk/HS2-anno...ring-railway/story-28319852-detail/story.html

David R

 

What I am leaning towards is a "full specification" line (i.e. not speed limited) from Stoke to Leek with CVR running on a parallel track to Leek, all with appropriate crossovers at Leekbrook Junction. This would not be impossible to achieve if local authority support could be mobilised. More of a dream perhaps would be to find a way to fund a route through Morrison's and relay to North Rode, electrify the whole loop and operate the Manchester to Stoke locals each way round it. I reckon that one could do it for one extra unit.

 

Leaning towards something a bit more realistic would be rather better

PH

 

Any long term heritage "value" of the leek-stoke section could be regarded as debatable so a cross platform interchange at an attractive rebuilt Leek station would be ideal for CVR. Commercial mainline trains running Stoke to leek, bringing lots of bums on seats at the weekend for CVR services down the existing valley. Win win one could say!

Sent from my HTC Desire 620 using Tapatalk

 

Paul, you always seek to ridicule any suggestions of railway expansion, very often because of your (I accept experienced) model of heritage railways' business bases. However, I am not suggesting anything that M&CR/CVR do anything that they are not already pursuing. I make two suggestions; one quite realistic that the Stoke to Leek operation becomes a public project and the other, perhaps more fanciful, that a more ambitious scheme would be nice.

 

Ah! The dreaded word "nice". This is politicians stuff mixed up with gricer's romanticism. Someone else pays.

PH

 

"Nice" is shorthand for "Let's do some lateral thinking". How do you think that any proposal of any type gets examined? It's because someone (not a committee but a person) has an idea which is then floated to others. If there is a degree of belief in the idea it eventually gets a formal assessment. Marylebone to Oxford started with someone looking at the map and spotting a possibility. If there hadn't been open fields where the chord is it would have gone nowhere. As for paying, one can't dismiss an idea out of hand because it would have to be paid for. Anything expected to be done at public expense has to have a rigorous value for money assessment. There are only three ways of providing anything. (1) By political will of our elected representatives. (2) If it is profitable and (3) By a fairy godfather. We've had few of these last examples with locomotives and, even with infrastructure, some railways have had significant bequests.

 

At its worst, it's a sentimental expression easily uttered by those who have no intention of contributing either in terms of effort or money towards what they consider "nice". This is regardless of what potential users think is appropriate, unless the latter are similarly emotionally over-excited. More "lateral unthinking" than "lateral thinking".

It is a tough tough business running any kind of railway as those who were involved in the early revival schemes quickly found out when they tried to run "public service" trains. A great pity that the same lesson has to be re-learned with each generation.

PH

 

Thanks for that Paul, very inspiring.