Chatting with my friend Chris Milner, Deputy Editor of the Railway Magazine, he points out that in 1954, it took a steam train, on average, 1hr 15min to travel the 33 miles from Nottingham Midland to Lincoln St Marks, calling at all stations. All but one of the stations are still open today, and the journey time 60 years on is 1hr 07 mins, so very little improvement, and this current time was the same in 1972, in fact one 1972 train did the journey in 61 mins, omitting one station. Some services skip the stations after Newark and manage the journey in an hour, but really…. (This charming picture shows the steam-age manual crossing gates at Finkerton on the Nottingham-Lincoln line, taken by Chris on March 13)
With all this talk of HS2, surely we should be looking at dealing with local service improvements first? I suspect there are many more examples. With a relatively small amount of money and care, we could make our rural railways – which are so essential for local communities – so much better.
