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Topic: Kenilworth (Read 3057 times)
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Graham Ellis
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I had a customer with me last week who lives in Kenilworth ... train user, but has to get a bus to the nearest station or drive there. Although trains pass frequently through the town (population around 22,000), there's no station there. A familiar story.
What has Kenilworth got to do with the TransWilts service?
A strong theory, officially denied but supported by a great deal of evidence, is that the TransWilts service is being scrapped to make way for freight services running from Southampton, via Salisbury, Westbury, Melksham, Swindon, Oxford, Leamington Spa, Kenilworth, and Coventry then on to the North and North West. There's just two stretches that are single line - Trowbridge to Chippenham, and Leamington to Coventry. Alternative routes from Southampron to the Midlands and the North, via Reading or via Bristol, are already heavily congested and cannot take the growth.
I have often been puzzled by the section through Kenilworth - it's been something of a weak point in the "we're loosing our trains to the future freight plans" theory, as there's already a bottleneck - if anything more of one - through Kenilworth. Well - it's great to have a local contact up there / knowledge. A new station for Kenilworth WAS put into the local plan and indeed it was due to open a while back, but somehow it got delayed. Reason given - congestion on the line, and it would slow trains down unacceptably. Then, in its damaging death throws, the SRA said that it saw no reasonable prospect for the station and put up another hurdle.
Now, I understand, there's serious talk of double tracking the Leamington to Coventry section. That would add the extra capacity to that line to take all the freight coming up "via Melksham" and it seems - if the talk is true - to remove the final weak point in the freight future theroy. It also shows, looking on a rather more positive side, that someone's prepared to look at redoubling a line where necessary; then the hourly crosscountry passenger service AND the freight should be able to get through.
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Lee
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It also shows, looking on a rather more positive side, that someone's prepared to look at redoubling a line where necessary As you know , Graham , I am a strong advocate of doubling the Melksham line , as I feel that it is the only viable option to safeguard the future of the Melksham passenger service beyond the medium - term. |
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Industry Insider
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Kenilworth is an interesting case and very similar in many ways to the village of Kidlington, which although it's a village still has a population of 17000 (compared with 22000 at Kenilworth).
They're interesting because they are both fairly large population centres which have a regular train service passing through and station re-opening has been mooted over the years at both locations.
The problem with both is that the regular trains passing through are long-distance Cross Country services. The lack of a suitable local service hinders the case for the station as operators of the long distance trains have understandably been concerned with stopping long distance trains at such places. Kidlington is slightly better off in that there is a local service from Oxford to Banbury, but this is not a regular service and is weighted heavily towards peak-hour flows. Just stopping those trains would give a Melksham-esque situation where the service is inappropriate and unlikely to fulfill its potential unless the longer-distance trains stop there too.
The quote Lee has used is the first time I can remember the incumbent operator expressing such support for a station, but, as ever, there's a long way to go!
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Graham Ellis
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It really makes huge sense where you've got a population of 20,000 or more within 3 km of the railway to provide a service, doesn't it? Especially where the population bubble is a small town ... with people's typical journeys in and out over the short distance for which a bus might be better suited! |
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