Symbolic Forest

A while ago—I can’t find the exact post—I set myself a target of having more posts on here filed under Trains than I do under Political. I think I even said the target I was giving myself was by the end of last year. Well, I’m still clearly a long way off that at the time of writing (58 versus 113) but this is an attempt to make amends. Right at the start of the year, you see, I went out for a trip on the Middleton Railway.

The Middleton Railway is quite an interesting little line, for its history if nothing else. There are various claimants to the title of “oldest working railway” in various parts of the UK, partly dependent on what counts as a railway and what doesn’t. If you insist steam trains have to be involved, then various branch lines around Darlington usually get the prize, as they opened in 1825 with a mixture of steam trains and horses. If you’re happy with horse-drawn trains, the stretch of the Ebbw Vale line between Rhisga and Pye Corner opened in about 1805. Both of these are lines that carry passengers in main line trains today. If you’re happy with railways that are just for freight, there’s a branch line near Dunfermline that might have had trains on it in the 1760s, although its early history is a little unclear. The Middleton Railway, by contrast, has a definite starting date, as the first railway to be authorised by Parliament, in 1758, during the reign of George II. Moreover, and something that is unusual for a volunteer-run heritage railway, it has operated continuously ever since, switching from commercial to volunteer operations in 1960.^*

Of course,^** none of the railways I’ve listed above really resemble their original form and the Middleton is no exception to this. In the 19th century it ran from Great Wilson St—roughly where the Crown Point branch of Pets At Home is now—and ran down to, naturally, Middleton. The furthest-south point I’ve found on a map was “Bleachground Engines”, on the 1854 six-inch map, nowadays at the very south end of Middleton where Middleton Park Avenue meets the A654. As the crow flies, it’s a distance of about 3.5 miles. The current Middleton Railway runs for about a mile, from Moor Road to the northern edge of Middleton Park. Moreover, the landscape it runs through has changed entirely, the coal mines it was built for all turned into post-industrial green spaces.

Being built purely as an industrial railway, the Middleton didn’t carry passengers at all until its heritage days. The first passenger trains were run using a hired diesel pulling a second-hand Swansea and Mumbles tramcar.^*** Later, they needed proper carriages. Those in the picture are the underframes of old 4-wheeled parcels vans, which the Middleton has rebuilt with completely new bodies to give themselves a passenger rake.

Behind the scenes, the Middleton has an awful lot crammed onto a very small site, with their workshops packed full of stuff under restoration. I can imagine shunting things to the right place in the workshop is a bit of a pain. If they didn’t specialise in small ex-industrial locos, they’d hardly have room for any. As it is, everything is jammed in rather tightly, with just enough room inside for people to move around them and actually do the work. I have an old friend who works at the Middleton; he managed to arrange for the both of us to have a little tour behind the scenes, and see the locos under repair, those undergoing major restoration, and the next carriage the railway has started to build.

We had a few round trips, too, shuttling back and forth along the mile of track. The Middleton Railway might be very different to its original intention, and might run now for a slightly different purpose. It’s still a fascinating place to come and visit, and was an excellent way to start the new year.

* The only other heritage railway that can really claim this is the Talyllyn, which opened in the 1860s. The Ffestiniog has never quite closed, having leased out a short stretch of its track for former customers to use, but their claim is a wee bit of a stretch.

** And unlike the railways in the first footnote.

*** Another early railway: the Swansea and Mumbles, also known as the Oystermouth Railway, was carrying horse-drawn passengers from the first decade of the 19^th century. It later essentially became a tram line, and closed just before the Middleton became volunteer-run. If you’ve ever visited the Gower, you have likely travelled by car along part of its route. The tramcar which moved to Leeds was sadly destroyed by arson.

Keyword noise: Yorkshire, Leeds, railway, trains, Middleton Railway, steam, steam trains.

As promised yesterday, I’ve been doing some closer looking at the West Of England Partnership’s guided busway – sorry, I mean “Bus Rapid Transit” plans, and some measuring up on aerial photos. It seems I made a couple of misconceptions, though. Firstly: some of the plans show the Harbour Railway converted into a sort of tramway running along the same road as the buses. Secondly, I was slightly wrong about the route in the Winterstoke Road area. My mistake was to assume that it might actually serve a residential area; I was wrong, it doesn’t, and its sole use is as a replacement for the current park-and-ride services. The council have also said it will serve the football ground; but that slightly contradicts other things they’ve said.

Anyway, here we go: what does a guided busway actually look like? Never mind the Partnership’s shiny traffic-free plan: here’s a real one. This is the A64 on the outskirts of Leeds, which has a single-carriageway busway down its central reservation.

Never mind the bus lanes at top and bottom; the busway is that lovely expanse of concrete in the middle. The width of the whole thing, by my calculations,^* comes out at about 3.8m. So, for a two-way busway such as the council wants to build in Bristol, you’re looking at 8m width. That’s for plain road without stops. Here’s a picture of where the council wants to build it: Cumberland Road. To the same scale, as you can tell by the cars.

From the top: road, railway, cycle track, river.

The plans include building over the railway for one side of the bus route. Remember what Councillor Bradshaw told me: the plans “do not prevent” trains being run. Does that mean no bus services at weekends when the railway’s running? Or fewer trains? Who, at present, knows? Anyway, that means, for our Militant Invective Laboratories simulation (better value that the Partnership’s, I’m sure), we only need paint over part of the road:

There goes the railway and just under 4m of the road, painted over in wobbly freehand. That’s the amount of land the council’s planning to concrete over for its posh new buses (and all the older ones which will also be allowed to use the busway).

So, goodbye to half of Cumberland Road – even by narrowing the pavement on the north side, there wouldn’t be enough room to make the road full-width. The council’s simulation does seem to show there being a bus lane in the road at this point, rather than a proper busway. However, there’s a slight problem with that: the buses and the road traffic would be going in opposite directions, unless one were to drive on the right, so no space gets saved. The published proposals go on and muddy this point by showing both buses and normal traffic driving on the right at this point – which, of course, would be no help at all.

Still to come: the even more awkward pinch-point where the busway is due to run alongside the Portbury Dock railway line, at Winterstoke Road, with a stop which will take up even more space. They seem to be planning to run the busway over Network Rail land – I wondered if Network Rail knew about that, so I’ve asked them. For that matter, I wonder who owns the land the rest of the busway will run on – presumably either Network Rail or BRB Residuary, the organisation that is one of the last remaining stubs of British Rail. BRBR’s website is a bit broken at the moment, so I can’t search their property listings to see what they do or don’t own.

* including the small width of kerb separating bus and road on the buses’ left, which is presumably needed for safety reasons.

Keyword noise: Bristol, Bristol Harbour Railway, buses, Cumberland Road, guided bus, Leeds, Mark Bradshaw, Militant Invective Laboratories, planning, transport, West of England Partnership.

Mike Troubled Diva recently wrote about how it feels to be middle-aged at gigs, and suchlike. I’m not middle-aged yet, but I know how he feels, because on Saturday night I went to my first gig in ages, at Leeds Met SU. It felt like: I was the only one there over 25.

We hid up on the balcony, with a small crowd of other late-20s people, and watched. Sometimes I wasn’t watching the band as much as I was watching the frenetic crowd, moshing away. They were here to see a local band, Hadouken!,^* who (if you believe the NME) are part of the New Rave scene. Personally, I think the NME is only ever interested in puns on “New Wave”, but there you go.^** I might not believe in the existence of New Rave as a genre myself, but the crowd definitely seemed to. The crowd of 17 year olds were wearing outfits last seen in 1989, and covered themselves in heavy trees of glowsticks. After a few minutes they started to get bored,^*** and threw them all at the stage; or broke them open to drip and spray each other with luminous toxic goop.

The band themselves: well, they were energetic. Rapping with guitars, and very very loud. It definitely got me bouncing; but when my own attention span occasionally started to fade, I began to wonder: does “rapping with guitars” really deserve its own genre name? And whatever did happen to Baxendale, anyway? But then, I started bouncing again.

* the exclamation mark is part of the name, I think.

** Hands up who remembers the NWONW scene!

*** “I don’t know, kids today, no attention span at all…”

Keyword noise: gig, Grindie, Hadouken!, Leeds, live music, music, New Rave, NME, review, Yorkshire.