Part 6: Taken as a whole in text

This map is something like being to scale but we don't recommend you use it for holidays or anything like that. Attractions, buildings, and anything not associated with transport ommitted for clarity. Names are for the stations not the towns.

This is Part 6 of the Order of the Bed's plans for reopening the Wye Valley Railway

Part 6 covers the whole line and our various bright ideas for how to make it friendly to everyone.

On the map above is a vague diagram of proposed transport routes for when we've finished. In black are the railways. The tail beyond Monmouth Troy runs to our proposed depot.

In blue are the waterways. The main one is the Wye, but the Trothy, Monnow and Lower Redbrook Valley are all marked as well.

Red shows the major roads - the A466 goes up the valley, the A48 goes across the bottom right corner, the A449/A40 goes across the top left, and on the top right is the A4136 to Coleford.

In orange are the secondary roads and a few routes which used to be red but have been superseded by better roads.

Yellow shows the country lanes of various gradients and importance.

In green are the footpaths. Some are already there - notably including the Offa's Dyke Path, the Gloucestershire Way, and the Wye Valley Walk. Others are replacements for routes which will be abolished by the railway. We may add that an alternative to Tidenham Tunnel will not be provided. There is already a route over the top and anyone who claims that there should be an easement because they've been walking through it for 25 years will be prosecuted for trespassing on railways.

The replacement for the Redbrook-Wyesham footpath on the WVR should be the Wye Valley Walk on the river bank. Currently the railway is more heavily used - presumably because it goes past Wyesham, whereas the Wye Valley Walk hides on the river bank on the other side of the sewage works. The presence of the sewage works will put us on the (ludicrously long) list of re-opened railways which have a sewage works built next to them. As we are suggesting that the Sustrans/Wye Valley Cycle/Connect 2 people should turn their attention to the Coleford Branch, we will provide a way off it into Redbrook - possibly using the old incline. The route has a number of tunnels, which should make up for the loss of Tidenham, as they are also dark, wet and unpleasant, have bats, and are filled with stuff which will need removing. The Coleford Branch, being steeply graded from the point of view of a train, makes for a nice afternoon's amble and an invigorating cycle ride.

Between Whitebrook and Penallt the path has been moved slightly up the hill, although it could equally be moved down the hill onto the riverbank, where for much of its route there is already a footpath. It is not a public right of way, like that between Redbrook and Wyesham, but probably counts as having an easement over it and offering an alternative will reduce grounds for complaint.

At Monmouth the Ross and Monmouth bridge will be overhauled. This could be converted into a proper surfaced footpath, but it would also be nice to have trains roll around to a station near the former site of Monmouth May Hill, which is more convenient for the town centre. It is unlikely to acquire a car park since there is no convenient location for one there. Another footpath will lead around the back of the houses, with a solid hawthorn hedge on the west side and a wire fence on the east side - it will take people across to the Monnow, which they will be able to follow into Monmouth. This will allow passengers to access the town centre and possibly use the main town centre car park. Normally they would be encouraged to park in the goods yard (particularly as it has ridiculously easy access to the A40/A449), but this has been built on, and so we will try to persuade people not to disturb it. Given that Troy is likely to be a railhead and would be able to offer a park-and-ride service for people coming to Cardiff for events, good parking will however be essential, so the farmer who owns the field adjacent to the station may be persuaded to sell up.

The footpaths around Tintern are all there already although we may pay for the removal of some of the obstructions, like low branches and brambles. Three paths currently link Tintern with Tintern Quarry - that along the railway, that along Offa's Dyke and one which runs along the hillside about halfway between the two - so an alternative path should not be needed, with arrangements merely being made to move people onto the middle path. However, as this route is inaccessable to the less able we will look favourably on funding an alternative, 2 metre wide footpath a little below the railway. If this rather screws up the cost/benefit analysis on the railway to make it even less favourable than it already is we will investigate the possibility that the path is lightly used and that what is actually needed is a level path and where it goes is irrelevant (after all, the one along the railway goes most of the way to Tintern Quarry and then scrambles steeply up the hill, so any less able person who uses it will have to turn back and go home after a couple of miles. Therefore a two-mile long largely level path on the other bank of the river would arguably be of equal use - if it could be extended so such people could actually get to and from Chepstow along it, using the train for the return journey, it would be of even greater use).

At each of the halts, in order to minimise disturbance, we will consider a clever system whereby the light can be turned on at an illuminated switch by people arriving on the platform, and it will turn itself off 5 minutes after the train leaves. If nobody wishes to get on, the guard will be able to turn on the light when the train arrives. If nobody wishes to get on or off, then the light will not be turned on at all. This will hopefully keep us vaguely popular with the locals, as most of the halts are near houses. Car parks can be provided for commuters near various stations, particularly St Briavels. If the locals are worried about large numbers of people turning up in big cars to board trains at, say, Llandogo (though anyone who wishes to drive to Llandogo simply to board an electric train needs their head examining) we would be delighted not to provide a car park. Car parks are ridiculously expensive things to install.

Some consideration will be given to organising and setting up a water bus between Monmouth and Chepstow to work in conjunction with the railway, particularly in summer, although if this needs more attention than a railway company can reasonably offer it may be palmed off onto someone else. A road, set of footpaths, hourly rail service, two-hourly motorbus and two-hourly waterbus would provide an attractive service for tourists, who could spend most of a holiday travelling up and down the Wye Valley admiring the sights from various angles. It is curious that there is currently no option for being taken up the Wye gorge between Tintern and Chepstow in a boat.

Once the railway is in place, the A466 will no longer be needed to provide a lifeline to the communities, with the railway providing alternative transport and providing a service to all centres of population along the way, apart from St Arvans. The road can therefore be downgraded - the 50mph speed limit can be reduced to 40mph or even 30mph, while the 30mph speed limit through villages can be reduced to 20mph, with various chicanes, speed bumps and sections of road raised to pavement level being provided in the 20 zones - the last would be particularly useful outside pubs, shops, churches, stations and at the former level crossing for the Wireworks Branch in Tintern. The road would already have been realigned and regraded around St Briavels level crossing, which would probably be treated as a tram crossing with road vehicles being controlled by traffic lights (which they are at present, due to the width of Bigsweir Bridge). A series of speed cameras along the road would provide enforcement and a 50:50 split of the income between local authorities and the railway would provide a boost to the railway's income. The reduced speed limit would allow cycle lanes to be provided on each side of the road between St Arvans and Monmouth (south of St Arvans an alternative route around the back of Chepstow Racecourse would be found) with cyclists having some form of priority and lots of room without having to worry about pedestrians (who would be shunted around on various footpaths). This cycleway would be virtually zero maintenance and come at no cost to Sustrans, leaving them with no need to worry about bats, tunnels or expensive bridges. Aren't we generous?

All construction work will be done with rail-based equipment and all materials will be transported to the worksite by rail, which will mean no caterpillar-tracked vehicles compacting the earth (which makes life hard for wildlife). This will mean that construction would begin at Tintern Quarry and work north. We are not planning to install anything permanent which cannot be reversed to the state which the line is currently in - so nothing like solid concrete track - although one residential property would unfortunately have to be removed (although we would pay for a new house of the same or slightly higher value). Animals do not mind living around the railway - rabbits have been noted for living in railway embankments, which tends to ultimately require the bunnies to be removed. Other animals are not always so destructive. The railway can then provide a 15 mile long conservation area with minimal disturbance from passing humans and careful management.

Construction of the Channel Tunnel Rail Link saw track being laid on the formation at a maximum rate of 1,100 yards per day, although this was a double track formation which was newly built and pushing in two directions from a central point, so no work was needed on structures and one track could be used to deliver rails, sleepers, etc. for the adjacent running line rather than having to use a train to lay the track which it is standing on (which is no problem but just takes longer). The WVR is 23534.5 yards long (more or less) so construction at the same rate would take about 22 days (around a month, allowing for weekend reductions in work). This would be unachievable on the current infrastructure with one railhead and so we will double the time for each of the three differences (single track formation rather than double, second-hand rather than new trackbed and one railhead rather than two) and allow about 176 days, or about 6 months (and so all work could easily take place out of season). Once this was completed some work would probably still be needed on some structures to bring them up to scratch and stations would need building, but major construction work on a line where no trains are running would almost certainly not take more than a year and work at any one site would probably not take more than two months (most would take much less and a total of one day's work, probably split over two sessions of clearing and tracklaying, would install over 100 yards of plain track). All of the track and most of the structures could feature some form of off-site assembly so that installation on site would be a simple matter of screwing a kit together (a new bridge at Tintern could be brought up in several large pieces by train, put together and pushed out across the river in under a week - without a single lorry being needed to visit the Wye Valley). It would be entirely possible for the footpath between Tintern Tunnel and Tintern Quarry to close in October and feature a replacement rail service by March. Tintern station could be dealt with during its winter down-time; St. Briavels level crossing could be installed over a couple of nights (Network Rail converted the electrified single-track level crossing at Frinton in East Anglia from gates to lifting barriers in one night). The northern portion of the line - Penallt Viaduct, Redbrook station, Monmouth Viaduct and Monmouth Troy - would potentially take longer, although Penallt Viaduct may prove more cooperative than we expect. Any extension towards Monmouth May Hill station, which would entail a reversal at Troy, would probably be carried out once the main WVR had been opened.

Of course, if the weather turned nasty, the contractors went to the wall or things just generally went wrong in an uncooperative manner then completing construction could take much longer. Naturally, every effort would be made to ensure that areas of trackbed near housing were still completed in a prompt and efficient manner; the main risk in these areas is the possibility of the river flooding during the winter, which would not only delay the project but require areas to be relaid.

Once the line is opened a fleet of new 3-car trains will be leased to operate services (2-car would also be an option, but as 2-car trains could not be doubled up during busy periods to 4-car, because the surviving platforms and station areas at Tidenham, Tintern and St Briavels stations are too short, 3-car would probably be best). Suitable electric fleets are currently being delivered to London, although a comfortable long-distance interior would be specified. Modern diesel units have to comply with strict emissions and noise regulations so while an individual train might be noisier than a car, the average noise levels across an hour will be lower and there will be longer periods of quiet. A train pottering along between stations at about 40mph on continuously welded rail can be almost silent.

It may also be worth noting, with all the fuss about the safety of the A466 to walkers and cyclists, that it is much safer to live near a railway line than it is to cross the road.

We are plotting an hourly service which will run at least from Monmouth Troy to Chepstow (and preferably to Newport or Cardiff). It will look roughly like this:

Up Trains (Cardiff - Newport - Chepstow - Tidenham - Tintern - Llandogo - Redbrook - Monmouth Troy)  Station  Minutes Past Hour  Cardiff  xx:00 Newport   xx:13  Severn Tunnel Junction  xx:23  Caldicot  xx:25  Chepstow  xx:33  Wye Valley Junction  xx:35  Tidenham (Pass Down Train)  xx:39  Netherhope  xx:42  Tintern Quarry  xx:46  Tintern Junction  xx:50  Tintern  xx:51  Brockweir  xx:52  Llandogo  xx:57  St Briavels  xx:00  Whitebrook  xx:04  Penallt  xx:08  Redbrook (Pass Down Train)  xx:09  Wyesham  xx:13  Monmouth Troy (arrive)  xx:15      Journey Time  01:15

Down Trains (Monmouth Troy - Redbrook - Llandogo - Tintern - Tidenham - Chepstow - Newport - Cardiff)  Station  Minutes Past Hour  Monmouth Troy  xx:00  Wyesham  xx:03 Redbrook (Pass Up Train)  xx:08  Penallt  xx:09  Whitebrook  xx:13  St Briavels  xx:17  Llandogo  xx:20  Brockweir  xx:25  Tintern  xx:26  Tintern Junction  xx:27  Tintern Quarry  xx:31  Netherhope  xx:35  Tidenham (Pass Up Train)  xx:38  Wye Valley Junction  xx:41  Chepstow  xx:43  Caldicot  xx:51  Severn Tunnel Junction  xx:53  Newport  xx:03  Cardiff (arrive)  xx:20      Journey Time  01:20

Trains will not actually stop at Wye Valley Junction - that is merely what gets called a "passing time" - which is the time at which the train passes that point (normally at speed). If Tutshill Halt were to be re-opened trains would stop there at the same time as they are booked to pass Wye Valley Junction. The difference in journey times is mostly caused by differing lengths of wait at the passing loops. Arrivals at Monmouth May Hill would be about four minutes after arrival at Troy; departures would be about four minutes before departure from Troy, giving a turnaround time of about 35 minutes.

Single-track lines with passing loops at some stations tend to produce slightly unreliable schedules since if anything goes wrong trains end up sitting for ages in passing loops, with delays being passed on through the day (try visiting the Cambrian Coast line if you want to see how it works, although that line has improved in recent years). Thus, while only Redbrook and Tidenham would be used as loops in normal service, trains would also be able to pass at Tintern if necessary and it would be nice to retain Tintern Quarry for dire emergencies, excursion trains, stock movements and all these other little extras. St Briavels is the other possibility for a passing loop, but it is not really the best location since it would not be possible to fit the second platform on the loop line. Instead it would have to go in on the mainline, outside the loop and possibly north of the level crossing. So we'd probably just hope that it wouldn't be needed instead. (St. Briavels would probably still be used as a split between two sections though, since that would allow a train to head from Tintern to Monmouth and be followed by another ten minutes later.)

Why extend beyond the bottom end of the line? Well, Tidenham is often suggested as a southern terminus but is useless for passengers from Chepstow, being about half an hour's walk. A connecting bus would be needed, which would ensure that the line could not attempt to be commercially viable. Currently stabling at Chepstow between runs (the turnaround is 50 minutes) is not possible without spending money on trackwork, so the service could run to Severn Tunnel Junction. Here the former Wye Valley bay could be excavated, allowing trains to once again terminate in the former platform - but that would again require trackwork modifications and the reconditioning of the bay (with the added difficulty that one side of the bay is longer than the other, which would require lots of bits of paper to be filled out if trains were too long for the southern face).

However, it would be preferable to run though to Newport (as Severn Tunnel Junction is a barren platform which trains try to avoid stopping at). This would leave a turnaround of 10 minutes but it would all depend on access charges compared to how much additional income would be raised. Newport certainly will allow us to meet trains from London, Swansea, Cardiff, Bristol, Southampton, the North East, the North West, the North Welsh Coast, and the South West. This provides for maximum income and would provide the psychological boost of "the train goes from Newport to Monmouth" even among passengers who only went from Chepstow to Wyesham. Linking Chepstow to Newport on an hourly basis with a schedule set up to match that of Arriva Trains Wales and thus provide a roughly half-hourly service would be potentially a profitable activity. A journey time of less than 1 hour would look good on the posters (an upgrade of the South Wales Mainline and some decent trains would probably cut out about 5 minutes between Chepstow and Newport) but for now we have to go by what the old timetables say for a tank engine and single coach. A service to Newport would require three trains each day and a fourth would be kept as spare.

Extending to Cardiff would be even more desirable, except it would need a fourth train. The train would then end up spending 50 minutes lying around in Cardiff prior to returning to Newport. So we'd want to see how things looked and how much interest Cardiff (and the Welsh Assembly Government) have in sponsoring us. Cardiff's additional business could well be offset by the expense of having that much downtime in the working day, although this is coming from someone who has drawn up a timetable with 45 minutes of downtime at Troy (which has certain benefits - if Monmouth is home to the fleet depot a long turnaround allows for set swaps and minor maintenance, and having a train at the quiet terminus for ¾ of every hour would make the place feel more used). Of course, if the Welsh Assembly Government wish to pay us large sums of money to have a train running to Cardiff/ Cardiff Airport/ Bridgend/ Swansea/ West Wales (running from Monmouth to Fishguard on an hourly basis will require 11 trains plus at least 3 spare) we will be delighted to take their money. After all, we'd be paying our taxes.

Assuming that we make a profit, that is. What is certain is that we guarantee a better rate of return per £ invested than any other form of transport which could go on this trackbed. This is because we will actually be charging (probably about 50p to go between two stations plus 20p for each additional station, which isn't very much (£3.50 from Newport to Monmouth, with the 20p increased to 30p so it costs £5 for a return ticket)). Cycleways, footpaths, roads etc. require people to donate money and if they don't provide enough, funding falls short, and the cycleway/ footpath/ road falls into the Wye. We merely go on an advertising drive or change our fares.

Conclusion

The railway would cut down on road use, provide alternative transport up and down the valley, and would also be an attraction in rainy weather. It will bring extensive investment into the valley. It will also link Monmouth, Tintern and the other locations in the Wye Valley with the rest of Britain in a much more effective fashion than any other form of transport can offer.

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17/09/09