‘Build it, and they will come,’ is sometimes attributed to Peter Hendy who, when he was transport commissioner for London, used the phrase to justify the large investment in London Overground.
Those words are actually a misquote from a 1989 film, but he was right about the Overground, which was created almost 20 years ago, because the result was a transformation. That word is often over-used, but on this occasion it was fair enough. Until 2007, the North London Line, part of the Silverlink Metro franchise owned by National Express, had been a disgrace.
Elderly, poorly-maintained trains, shabby, graffiti-covered stations and a thin service which had only narrowly escaped Beeching’s axe in the 1960s were all inherited by Transport for London in 2007, which began to deal with the results of decades of neglect.
The stations were improved dramatically, and new trains were ordered from Bombardier in Derby and yes – along they came.
For example, the insignificant station at Finchley Road & Frognal had been used by 83,000 people in 1997-98, which was the first year of privatisation. Last year, 2024-25, the total was 1.8 million.
The Overground is one example of railway investment paying off, and its experience has been reflected elsewhere.
The line through Larkhall, south of Glasgow, was closed in 1965, and by the present century it had become derelict. It was rebuilt from scratch from a junction near Hamilton Central as far as Larkhall and reopened in December 2005. Last year, the terminus alone was used by 255,000 people, although the totals had been higher before the Covid pandemic and have not yet recovered completely.
More recently, a freight line was upgraded between Newcastle upon Tyne and Ashington, and Ashington was used by 130,000 passengers in its first year.
Another modern success story is Okehampton, where the service from Exeter was withdrawn in 1972. The line remained in use for freight trains for many years, and Okehampton also hosted a special Sunday service each summer until the line was improved and a daily timetable restored in November 2021. Trains ran every two hours at first, but the frequency was doubled to hourly in May 2022. Okehampton was used by 348,000 people last year, and a second station on the outskirts of the town is due to open this year.
But will any improvement or new project reap dividends?
Another investment in south west England is the Mid Cornwall Metro, the first phase of which opened last month when the number of daily departures from Newquay was increased from eight to 17, including two direct services to London.
Next year, Newquay trains are to due to continue from the junction at Par to Falmouth Docks, via St Austell and Truro.
One oddity about the MCM project is that a number of commentators poured scorn on the idea, mainly on the grounds that the route between Newquay and Truro via Par is not direct, and the critics claimed that other modes of transport would still be preferable.
That is not necessarily the case. We can expect that Newquay to Falmouth trains will take 90-100 minutes, and indeed the journey by car can be an hour or less – if the roads are clear. (That time does not include the time it would take to find a parking space in Falmouth.)
But as people in Cornwall know to their cost, the price of the tourist industry includes long traffic jams in the summer, even though the A30 is now a dual carriageway. In these circumstances, a through train taking just over an hour and a half appears more attractive while, of course, not everyone has access to a car. They include thousands of students on the university campuses in Penryn and Falmouth. Falmouth harbour is immense and beautiful, but it has nothing to offer surfers, unlike the north coast at Newquay.
Buses are another option, but there are no through services between Newquay and Falmouth. Allowing for a change of bus at Truro, the journey takes at least two and half hours – and again can be much longer when the roads are congested.
Another problem with buses is that many motorists don’t like them, although they will travel by train (or tram).
Since only the Newquay-Par service has been improved so far, we cannot test the Falmouth section, but we do have some evidence that Mid Cornwall Metro is already attracting new business.
In its first week, starting on 17 May, the number of weekday passengers from Newquay rose by 25 per cent, and the total was up 50 per cent on Saturday.
Cornwall Council has claimed that there is a good deal of suppressed demand for a rail link between the county’s largest towns, and these very early figures from GWR suggest that the council could be right.
On the other hand, you should not attempt to justify any rail development on the grounds that ‘if you build it, they will come’.
Cornwall is also the subject of a recent proposal called ‘Kernow Connect’. This suggests that a new railway should be built between Okehampton and Bodmin, which would be electrified and have a line speed of 125 mph (200km/h). It would leave Okehampton and keep to the north of the A30, pass through a tunnel under Sourton Down, then cross the A30 and the Tamar on a viaduct before entering a new Launceston station near Pennygillam.
From there the line would continue along the A30 corridor, cutting across Bodmin Moor using tunnels where needed, and serve a new Bodmin Interchange station to the east of the town. It would then rejoin the existing Cornish main line. The existing line from Exeter to Okehampton would also be upgraded.
It is claimed that trains could run from Truro to London in two and half hours. Other novelties in the proposal include a claim that the existing main line is ‘unable to carry heavy freight’ – which would be news to the operators who take china clay from Cornwall to the Midlands. Even so, Kernow Connect says the scheme would make better use of the deep water port at Falmouth, and also provide a new Tamar crossing and form an alternative route avoiding the vulnerable stretch of coastal railway through Dawlish.
Other unanswered questions include what would happen to the electric trains when they reached Okehampton, because the nearest section of electrified main line is Newbury. Presumably, this project would include electrification beyond Newbury to Taunton and Exeter/Okehampton, and then from Bodmin Parkway to Truro, while as the present best journey time from Exeter to London is about two and a half hours, the trains from Truro to Exeter would have to be more or less instantaneous. They would also need some magically-created paths on the already busy main line between Truro and Bodmin Parkway.
Incidentally, the combined population of the Mid Cornwall Metro towns (Newquay, St Austell, Truro, Falmouth) is more than 100,000, while the combined population of Okehampton, Launceston and Bodmin is some 35,000, although the Kernow Connect proposal claims that the scheme would give 72,000 people ‘access to main line stations’. Even if you add Bude (which is some way from Launceston) that only increases the 35,000 to about 42,000.
Mid Cornwall Metro has cost about £56 million, most of which came from the govermment’s Levelling Up Fund.
That sum might allow a start to be made on one or two of Kernow Connect’s tunnels.
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