Railwatch 069 - October 1996

Lincolnshire

By Paul Jowett

£3 million wanted The new private train operator which took over Britain's most modern trains on the East Coast main line has dashed hopes of providing an InterCity service from Grimsby through Lincoln to London King's Cross. The Great North Eastern Railway has made it clear to the Lincolnshire Rail Forum that it would want £3 million from local councils to run such a service. Councillors in Lincolnshire are learning the hard way that privatisation is not all that it was cracked up to be. Yet in 1995 Lincoln MP Kenneth Carlisle said on TV that he had had no doubt privatisation would provide the impetus for a train service from Grimsby to King's Cross. He has been strangely quiet since Great North Eastern's decision. The new set-up actually seems to be working against the creation of new services. RDS will make a new approach to the Franchise Director and Great North Eastern but it may be that the best hope of a good service will be Central Trains which could run a class 158 Express to King's Cross from either Doncaster or Cleethorpes, via Lincoln, providing some competition for Great Northern. Isn't that what privatisation was supposed to be about?

Cheap Trains Central Trains has introduced a few cheap fares to compete with buses, for example from Sleaford to Lincoln, Nottingham and Peterborough, but not to Boston, Grantham and Skegness. Unfortunately the cheap fares are only available from staffed stations so there are some alarming anomalies, particularly for people travelling from unstaffed stations.

Limbo land 1996 should have seen Sleaford-Spalding modernised and Donington and Pinchbeck stations opened, and an hourly service from Doncaster to Lincoln and Peterborough. Sadly we seem as far away as ever from these real improvements. In fact there have been cuts, by 50% in the case of the Lincoln-Doncaster service. The changes have wrecked many chances of connections.

Hold-up Hopes of connecting Boston Docks back to the rail network seem to be held up by a terrible combination of the Department of Transport, Railtrack and the new rail feight set-up. Lorries continue to serve the docks and clog up the roads with steel and other cargo which should be on trains. How sickening!

Seaside service Tourist traffic to Skegness has held up reasonably well but there is enormous potential to increase loadings if a better service is provided. Road coaches seem to have moved in to transport the thousands who used the Jolly Fishermen extras until withdrawn two years ago.

Green Line success The RDS Green Line intiative which urged industrial, office and housing development to be concentrated on rail corridors has been taken up and included in the draft County Plan which is very pro-rail. It also calls for positive consideration for new stations to serve areas with more than 2,000 population. The practice however has to catch up on the theory.

Lukewarm responseThere has only been a lukewarm response to RDS member John Lewis's suggestion for a new station on the Spalding-Peterborough line to serve the 10,000 population in the Deeping area. And there are great doubts whether the train operating companies can deliver better rail services when they will be under pressure to maximise profits with diminishing resources. Local authorities have little influence on train service patterns even when they fund capital improvements. Perhaps we should have passenger transport executives based on the shire counties to provide some strategic planning.

Better late than never The draft County Plan also suggests protecting disused rail routes. This should of course have been a nationally imposed policy 30 years ago. In the meantime many routes have been built over or cut by road building! A proper survey should be undertaken now of the surviving routes to establish what work would need to be done to bring disused lines back into action. There should also be protection of routes which are potential rail corridors. For instance, Boston could be provided with a rail link to the south by building new track between Swineshead and Donington. Potential road corridors are protected. Why not rail?

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