Why Britain has secret ‘ghost trains’

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Probably over technical for an article for the general public, but reading about the remoteness of some of the stations you have to wonder how the railroad handles the crew.
 
Long Train Runnin' said:
Probably over technical for an article for the general public, but reading about the remoteness of some of the stations you have to wonder how the railroad handles the crew.
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While some of the lesser used railway stations in the UK are indeed remote, they're only remote by the standards of our tiny little island :D None of these ghost stations present much of a crewing challenge, because they can be served by short round trip diagrams from larger cities. Even in the far north or west of Scotland, Scotrail can crew the Inverness > Wick and Glasgow > Mallaig trains with staff from major stations.

I'm only about 15 miles from Berney Arms as I write this, and I still haven't visited. Something for the bucket list.
 
Closing lines is particularly rare these days. Its far more common to see new lines opening or limited service lines being returned to full service.
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No, we're not in Kansas anymore--or anywhere on its continent. Not that the way the Britain got to this position shows clear thinking, but it beats the situation here.
 
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jamesontheroad said:
Even in the far north or west of Scotland, Scotrail can crew the Inverness > Wick and Glasgow > Mallaig trains with staff from major stations.
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I rode the train from Glasgow to Mallaig in 1970. It was absolutely lovely. Please tell me THAT's not a Ghost Train!

willem said:
No, we're not in Kansas anymore--or anywhere on its contintent. Not that the way the Britain got to this position shows clear thinking, but it beats the situation here.
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Hubby grew up in Kansas, and worked the frieghts during summers (harvest season) in high school. The line he worked was abandoned long ago, and the tracks pulled out (sent to China for the steel to be recycled). The depot is still standing in his town.
 
These "ghost trains" are just legal technicalities. As the article states, it's easier to run one or two trains a day (or a week) to keep the line active than to go through a long process to abandon. If eventually the line needs to be fully reactivated (and this has happened on a regular basis in the UK in recent years), then service can be resumed with little fuss. Unlike the U.S., where unused rail lines become bike and hiking trails which are next to impossible to reclaim for rail use.
 
For the last available period (2013-14), the data from the Office of Rail and Road indicates the 10 least used railway stations in the UK are as follows. The number in brackets is the total annual number of station entries and exits (recorded by all tickets sold starting or ending at that particular station).

Tees-Side Airport (8)
Shippea Hill (12)
Reddish South (26)
Barry Links (40)
Coombe (42)
Breich (64)
Buckenham (80)
Pilning (88)
Golf Street (90)
Denton (110)

Although all their Wikipedia pages are reasonably up to date, I still believe Denton is the least served in terms of the number of trains, with one train a week in one direction only. I suspect its relatively high number of annual entries and exits derives from it being such an unusual station to visit so close to central Manchester!

Tees-Side Airport is an oddity. It is completely useless for passengers flying to or from Tees-Side Airport itself, being a long walk from the airport terminal.
 
I understand some of what is going on here, but presuming that the issue isn't one of rolling stock being unavailable/crew work requirements, what I don't understand is why the limited services are intentionally timed to be inconvenient. Put another way, if they've got to have the station why not at least try to drag whatever ridership/revenue they can out of the station?
 
Anderson said:
I understand some of what is going on here, but presuming that the issue isn't one of rolling stock being unavailable/crew work requirements, what I don't understand is why the limited services are intentionally timed to be inconvenient. Put another way, if they've got to have the station why not at least try to drag whatever ridership/revenue they can out of the station?
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It's complicated, and depends on the particular Train Operating Company's (ToC) agenda and local politics. In most cases there simply isn't the local population to justify regular service, and in the case of Denton, while the station is in a densely populated suburban conurbation close to Manchester and Stockport, most of the demand for public transport is along a different axis to the rail line.

While we're on the subject, have a look at this thread over at the Rail UK Forums: Parliamentary services and stations in next Northern Franchise
 
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Anderson said:
I understand some of what is going on here, but presuming that the issue isn't one of rolling stock being unavailable/crew work requirements, what I don't understand is why the limited services are intentionally timed to be inconvenient. Put another way, if they've got to have the station why not at least try to drag whatever ridership/revenue they can out of the station?
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I think the timing has a lot to do with when there is space. UK terminals are very crowded these days and it doesn't make sense to use up a track during a peak time for a train hardly anyone rides.

Peter
 
Anderson said:
I understand some of what is going on here, but presuming that the issue isn't one of rolling stock being unavailable/crew work requirements, what I don't understand is why the limited services are intentionally timed to be inconvenient. Put another way, if they've got to have the station why not at least try to drag whatever ridership/revenue they can out of the station?
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Often these trains are at the bottom of the food chain when it comes to rolling stock and staff. So if there is actually a shortage of staff or of trains, those trains may actually get borrowed for more deserving purposes and the ghost service run some time later as conditions allow. This is probably the better solution that having to cancel some well patronized train at short notice to be able to run a ghost train using the staff and equipment.

If people actually used the trains you would need to apologizse if a train was dirty, or ran late, or was cancelled and this would mean extra costs for the TOC and also suck up management time.
 
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cirdan said:
Anderson said:
I understand some of what is going on here, but presuming that the issue isn't one of rolling stock being unavailable/crew work requirements, what I don't understand is why the limited services are intentionally timed to be inconvenient. Put another way, if they've got to have the station why not at least try to drag whatever ridership/revenue they can out of the station?
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Often these trains are at the bottom of the food chain when it comes to rolling stock and staff. So if there is actually a shortage of staff or of trains, those trains may actually get borrowed for more deserving purposes and the ghost service run some time later as conditions allow. This is probably the better solution that having to cancel some well patronized train at short notice to be able to run a ghost train using the staff and equipment.

If people actually used the trains you would need to apologizse if a train was dirty, or ran late, or was cancelled and this would mean extra costs for the TOC and also suck up management time.
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That makes sense for a few of the trains (e.g. one that was being run solely to keep a connecting track in London in service); what I'm thinking is an otherwise-valid, properly placed and maintained station which basically gets a random X-times-weekly stop from a through train. The best analogy I can think of would be if MARC had a station on the Penn Line they wanted to keep in service...but they only stopped an off-hour train at the station.

(Of course, the other thought with the Ghost Trains would be to market them to railfans with a notice attached concerning, as you noted, possible train conditions a la Amtrak's "Holiday Extra" NEC trains)
 
Marketing and then staffing to adequatre level costs money. Unless you can at least sell enough tickets to cover that cost it is not worth it. A lot of companies focused on revenue growth make this mistake of growing bad revenue, which costs them more than the value of the revenue, and eventually sinks them.
 
Anderson said:
That makes sense for a few of the trains (e.g. one that was being run solely to keep a connecting track in London in service); what I'm thinking is an otherwise-valid, properly placed and maintained station which basically gets a random X-times-weekly stop from a through train. The best analogy I can think of would be if MARC had a station on the Penn Line they wanted to keep in service...but they only stopped an off-hour train at the station.
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As far as I am aware, most stops served are also served by other trains, thus there is little incremental cost. For example the Paddington to West Ruislip train is basically about not having to initiate closure procedures for that section of the former GW & GC joint line that the Birmingham via Chilterns trains used when they still started from Paddington (they now start from Marylebone). Totally abandoning the Paddington line might be short sighted as it is a useful diversionary route. The tracks run parallel to London Underground tracks for much of their route and that is thus the more attractive way to make the journey for most. There are however no active stations on the actual "rare" section, with London Underground having dismantled any main-line side facilities if ever they existed.

Back in the 1980s there were plans to totally close Marylebone and divert residual Chiltern trains into Paddington. This would have revived this line. Today such a move would be unthinkable as Paddington has become busier and there would no longer be the capacity.

Some of the rural ghost trains do serve stops that otherwise don't get service. But here we're really talking about a concreete slab for a platform and if you're lucky a (vanadlized?) bus stop to shelter under when it rains. To walk there you may well need to stomp across fields and there are no signs and even locals don't know about the existence of these stations. There are definitely no staff, and many of these are request stops (what in the US would be a flag stop) so in reality it could be no train actually ever stops there. I once wanted to get off at such a stop and pressed the request stop button and a conductor actually came over to ask if I hadn't pressed that button by accident? The occurence must have been so unusual. A station like that is not costing much to maintain.
 
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Imagine living in a country with train services and stations so obscure that they are actually hard to track down. Amtrak's system map is depressingly uncluttered and there's nothing (IMO) that remotely approaches "ghost train" status on Amtrak. Even services like the Cardinal and the Sunset Limited, while operating just 3x a week, are by no means obscure or hidden.

I suppose there would be a few commuter rail/transit branches that might qualify. But it seems like in the US, passenger rail is so (relatively) rare that we just don't have the concept of an obscure, little-known branch. [Not counting "rare mileage" tracks that don't have regularly scheduled service but are sometimes used for detours]
 
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fairviewroad said:
Imagine living in a country with train services and stations so obscure that they are actually hard to track down. Amtrak's system map is depressingly uncluttered and there's nothing (IMO) that remotely approaches "ghost train" status on Amtrak. Even services like the Cardinal and the Sunset Limited, while operating just 3x a week, are by no means obscure or hidden.

I suppose there would be a few commuter rail/transit branches that might qualify. But it seems like in the US, passenger rail is so (relatively) rare that we just don't have the concept of an obscure, little-known branch. [Not counting "rare mileage" tracks that don't have regularly scheduled service but are sometimes used for detours]
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I suppose the Sunset East is not exactly a ghost service in the category of the Uk ones but its a service that is officially still there although factually not operated.
 

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