Restoring Your Railway Round 3 Annoucement
29th October 2021
At the end of Budget Day, Peaks and Dales Railway and Manchester and East Midlands Rail Action Partnership (MEMRAP) received the results of the Department for Transport ‘Restoring Your Railway’ programme.
This popular, highly competitive initiative saw some 85 proposals submitted in the third round, of which just 13 have been approved for funding.
“Whilst we are naturally disappointed not to have secured the funding we were seeking through ‘Restoring Your Railway’, we continue to pursue other, existing avenues via the appropriate agencies.
The process has been helpful in that it has really accelerated the development of our proposal. We’ve made the strategic, economic, social and environmental case strongly for this railway reopening. And we continue to develop our proposal, working with key stakeholders to improve their understanding of the significant benefits of the proposed Peaks and Dales Line reinstatement.”
Stephen Chaytow, CEO, MEMRAP
Improving access to the Peak District National Park for its 13.25m annual visitors is one key benefit. Described as “unsustainable”, the present situation is that 90% of visitors come by car - congesting local roads and creating pollution. MEMRAP’s campaign aims instead to provide them with a quality passenger train service which encourages visitors to arrive in the park by rail - bringing their bikes by train, and leaving their cars at home. For people who do not have access to cars, or do not drive, the proposal would deliver a significant improvement in accessibility to the National Park.
The Department for Transport (DfT) has said that the proposal to reinstate the Peaks and Dales Line “presents a strong strategic case for levelling up and tackling a transport problem” and recognised that “there has been a relatively high amount of stakeholder engagement for an early-stage project”. The socio-economic benefits had already been assessed last year as “strong” by the DfT.
So both Peaks and Dales Railway and MEMRAP are grateful to the DfT for the opportunity presented by this programme. The team takes encouragement from the constructive feedback, too. This will be used in MEMRAP’s continuing campaigning to deliver what it believes to be a nationally significant infrastructure project - improving access to jobs, education and leisure activities for at least 7m people along the strategically important East Midlands – North-West corridor.
Funding is now being sought to complete the next phase of work - the development of a Strategic Outline Business Case. This will consider different options for delivery, show why the reinstatement is strategically important, how it would work, how it would incorporate the exciting local proposals to reprovision the Monsal Trail, and how it would catalyse economic growth, create jobs, and enable people to travel for work, education and leisure more sustainably by train as the UK works to achieve Net Zero emissions.
Further Information on the Proposal
Formally sponsored for the Restoring Your Railway programme by local MPs Robert Largan and Nigel Mills, and supported by Lilian Greenwood MP, Jane Hunt MP and William Wragg MP, as well as by both Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council and Charnwood Borough Council, support is still growing for this proposal to reverse one of the most damaging of the Beeching-era closures, with the petition in support of the reopening having already attracted over 19,000 signatories.
The proposal would see Buxton and Matlock once again connected directly with a double-track mainline railway, re-connecting isolated and left-behind communities across Derbyshire. New stations along the route would include Rowsley, Bakewell, Millers Dale and Chapel-en-le-Frith, all served by regular local train services running to/from Derby/Nottingham and Manchester. The current termini at Matlock and Buxton would see services extended along the full line. The team’s modelling projects that the re-opening of this section of the former Midland Mainline would take thousands of cars and HGVs off the roads, particularly the heavily-used but narrow and winding roads of the Peak District.
Train operators are already interested in running the proposed new public train services, which would benefit local communities left isolated by the cuts of the 1960s as well as enabling residents of Derby, Nottingham and Manchester to visit the Peak District by train.
This project would help encourage sustainable travel, with the Peaks and Dales line looking for high-quality new trains which it is hoped would be built in Britain. And walkers and cyclists should also be pleased, as they would be able, once again, to travel more sustainably by train to some of the ‘honeypot’ locations of the Peak District - rightly one of Great Britain’s most popular National Parks. There would be plenty of room for bikes as special carriages for them are proposed as part of passenger trains serving the Park.
The plan to reinstate the railway recognises the requirement to re-provision the popular Monsal Trail, which was originally approved by the Peak District National Park Authority to ensure that the route of the railway was properly safeguarded for potential future reinstatement. So local volunteers are working together to develop plans for the re-provisioned and expanded Monsal Trail. The intention is to link up all the railway stations on the re-opened route, and to protect and enhance the trail’s “local micro-economy”, as well as create links with existing trails. Overall, the plans are set to enhance the experience for cyclists and walkers, and enable users of the trails to continue to enjoy the magnificent Peak District scenery, welcoming pubs, splendid eateries and fantastic attractions.