Why Britain has ‘ghost trains’

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20150723-why-britain-has-secret-ghost-trains

by kposehn • 11 years ago

118 83 11 years ago

bloat• 11 years ago

Then he said, she came from the country, he saw? To which she answered in the affirmative.

‘By Parliamentary, this morning. I came forty mile by Parliamentary this morning, and I’m going back the same forty mile this afternoon. I walked nine mile to the station this morning, and if I find nobody on the road to give me a lift, I shall walk the nine mile back to-night. That’s pretty well, sir, at my age!’ said the chatty old woman, her eye brightening with exultation.

Dickens - Hard Times

waqf• 11 years ago

  The idiot who, in railway carriages, 
  Scribbles on window panes, 
  We only suffer 
  To ride on a buffer 
  In Parliamentary trains.

— W. S. Gilbert, "The Mikado"

EwanToo• 11 years ago

I think BBC journalists run this story out whenever they're low on other work to do, here's basically the same feature, exactly 3 years ago...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-18644343

0xdeadbeefbabe• 11 years ago

It's not just BBC journalists. I think they learned the technique from HN.

innguest• 11 years ago

Which is a shame because this ghost train story isn't as interesting as the real fake jobs story going on in the UK right now (real people working fake jobs).

But perhaps the BBC doesn't want to cover that story for some reason.

te_platt• 11 years ago

In the late 80s I flew from Santiago, Chile to Antofagasta on a quite nice LAN Chile 737. There were about 10 passengers. One of the best flights I've ever been on. I'm not sure what the need was to the government to keep that flight going or if it's still like that.

privong• 11 years ago

Nowadays a lot of those flights between Santiago and Antofagasta stop in La Serena. When I was on it a few months ago, the flight was full both ways. I assume that flight is important for mining operations, and nowadays for tourism.

chiph• 11 years ago

It may be that the plane needed to be in Antofagasta because the return flight was full(er). So a partial ferry flight.

I had a flight like that in the late 90's to Minneapolis. The flight crew wouldn't let the few of us sit in the 1st class section. :(

ISL• 11 years ago

Buried within the article is an argument in support of wilderness:

“It has to be one of the maddest places we have both been to,” he says. “No words can describe how isolated this place was.” The closest road was three miles away; the only nearby structures were a shuttered pub and an old windmill.

In the American West, Canada, Russia, and myriad places throughout the world, it's not hard to get three miles away from a road.

Wild places are good for the soul.

lfowles• 11 years ago

http://www.math.smith.edu/~nhorton/roadless/roadless-usgs.pd...

Average Distance to the Nearest Road in the Conterminous United States

Surprised to actually find something while checking your claim!

javert• 11 years ago

That map is so bad because the "spectrum" of colors goes from lighter to darker to lighter to darker. So it's not much of a spectrum.

(Still, thanks for providing the link.)

jessaustin• 11 years ago

If it had a pub and a windmill, I expect there was at least a jeep trail running through. Otherwise how would the pub have resupplied or farmers gotten grain to the mill? This would count as a "road" in the parts of North America and Asia you're talking about. Therefore the "three mile" claim is bogus.

frobozz• 11 years ago

My gut reaction to your question was to answer "by train". Another option might (considering it's in Norfolk), by canal.

Then I thought I'd better look it up.

The comment in the article was about Berney Arms[1]. Looking on the map, it looks like the station is indeed unserved by roads. However, the nearest road does appear to be 500 metres away (much closer than three miles). The pub and windmill are on that road, rather than at the roadless station.

The next junction along that road is about 2km away (still not 3 miles), and the nearest meaningful junction (i.e. that gives you a choice of destination) 3.5km (still not 3 miles).

The nearest junction with an A road is about 3 miles away, following the road. It is also the closest you can get with Google Streetview[2]

[1] https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Berney+Arms,+Great+Yarmo...

[2]https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@52.621769,1.651184,3a,75y,187...

giaour• 11 years ago

The pub has seven reviews on Google, several of which mention that it is accessible by boat. It appears to be right on a river.

ubernostrum• 11 years ago

In the American West, Canada, Russia, and myriad places throughout the world, it's not hard to get three miles away from a road.

It depends on where you are. In a lot of places west of the Mississippi, there are still pretty regular grids, spaced less than three miles apart, of roads. Without them, access for agriculture and ranching would be difficult/impossible.

Plus, even a lot of state and national parks have access roads running through them. You have to go out to places that have no agricultural, industrial or tourism value whatsoever in order to get that far from a road.

jacalata2• 11 years ago

Half of this article focuses on the tautological notion that since the term ghost train is a made up one with no meaning that nobody in the railways recognises, then it must be about a hidden thing that nobody knows about, and you can tell this is so because nobody knows the term. Even the attempted definition of "so infrequent as to be useless" appears not to fit the headline run, which is once a day six times a week - I know packed commuter lines that are less frequent!

jon-wood• 11 years ago

It seems that no one knew the term because the one used in the industry is a Parliamentary Train.

jloughry• 11 years ago

Thinking tactically, rather than strategically, has anyone asked the dispatchers? Rail networks are usually not partitioned (in the graph theory sense); moving equipment around for reasons of wear levelling, capacity, maintenance, replacement, or traffic control might account for some ghost trains. After a major snowstorm, airlines need to reposition equipment to meet schedules; they hate to fly aircraft empty, but they do it.

The same reasoning applies to road freight, pipelines, and probably fresh fruit and cut flowers too.

jcranmer• 11 years ago

The article is talking about revenue runs whereas the kind of movements you're talking about are non-revenue runs (or deadheading). On non-revenue runs, there's no need to provide service, unlike these ghost trains, where service still needs to be provided even if there is little or no uptake.

tobylane• 11 years ago

The main partitioning is franchise which is somewhat tied to the single London terminus they have. Some of the ghost trains, eg Paddinton to Ruislip, cross these boundaries. https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/a6/3b/45/a63b45c48...

deckiedan• 11 years ago

As a Brit, personally, I reckon it's because the train system lost the ball significantly last century.

Train tickets now are often more than the cost of petrol to drive across the country. So if you'd spend more on a train ticket, why not drive?

Sometimes it even cheaper to get a flight from Glasgow to London than it is to get the train.

To get a ticket, a week in advance, to go from Carlisle (where I live) to London costs roughly 120 pounds (that's 180 USD, ish).

It's crazy expensive, and the benefit really isn't there any more.

Goods wise, trains could / should have taken the same kind of approach that the shipping industry did, with containers.

If our company (live events A/V stuff, mainly) is doing an event down south, we should be able to call a train company, have them deliver a container (or pick up one that we own) at our warehouse on a flat bed truck, we load it, they take it to the train station, it get craned on, and then we minibus down there the next day and have it delivered to the location. But no, it's easier and cheaper for us to run our own bunch of trucks.

If there was a service like that, we'd use it.

arethuza• 11 years ago

"the benefit really isn't there any more."

Going from city centre to city centre on business I find trains to be much more pleasant than flying or driving - even going to London from here in Edinburgh is worth it - the trip is fairly scenic (e.g. going through Durham) and not that much longer than flying.

Mind you - I agree it's not a cheap option!

IshKebab• 11 years ago

On business

I guess it's fine if you're not paying...

jsprogrammer2• 11 years ago

Goods wise, trains could / should have taken the same kind of approach that the shipping industry did, with containers.

In the US, containers are transferred from ships directly to trains. A train may have hundreds of cars, each single, double, or triple stacked with standard shipping containers.

morsch3• 11 years ago

That's nuts. Double stacking doesn't seem viable with Central Europe's more thoroughly electrified rail network. Not that it's inherently incompatible, just that we'd have to rebuild it all. Also, the tunnels.

A curious case of technological leapfrogging (in a sense; I rather prefer the electrified network even at the cost of no double stacked freight trains).

fit2rule3• 11 years ago

Sounds like you Brits need to learn a few things from the Germans about trains ...

chestnut-tree• 11 years ago

Deutsche Bahn actually runs train services in the UK (as do Dutch operator Abellio and French operator SNCF). Sadly, their arrival hasn't brought with it the cheap, reliable travel that we view enviously on the continent. Instead, we get the same expensive, poor-to-mediocre service as every other train operator.

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/oct/12/rail-privati...

justuk• 11 years ago

Our rail system is set up to be mediocre and expensive. Much of it was built privately long ago, then it was nationalised, cut down and improved. Then is was 'privatised' - I use quotes because the train operators don't really have a say in what they do. The banks own the trains. The network is run by a non-profit. The government funds it, decides on the rules but takes no responsibility when it goes wrong.

xioxox• 11 years ago

Really? I live in Munich. Whenever I want to travel to other large German cities, I've found flying to be much cheaper than going by train. The only reasonably priced tickets seem to be the local ones. I don't understand how people can afford train prices unless they have a discount or someone else paid.

zero_iq2• 11 years ago

Last year, I went to Edinburgh from Oxford. It was slightly cheaper for me to: * Drive to Birmingham airport * Pay for airport parking * Fly to Edinburgh * Get the bus to/from Edinburgh center

...than to get the train, booked about a month in advance. And of course, I got the best part of a whole extra day in Edinburgh with the time saved.

Crazy.

matthewowen• 11 years ago

Oxford to Edinburgh takes about 6 hours on the train, going via London. The bulk of that is on the London - Edinburgh train (a nice 4.5 hour block).

Oxford to Birmingham is about 1hr15 if everything goes to plan. Parking, going through security, boarding, etc is, generously, at least an hour. The flight is about 1hr15. It takes 30 minutes to get from the airport to the city centre (but you'll also have to navigate your way through the airport to get to the bus.

Adding that up comes to at least four hours, and could well be closer to five. So you actually saved at most two hours, and possibly as little as one. However, you probably had a pretty miserable journey (whereas on the train you could have relaxed for four hours with a good book and a nice cup of tea).

m-i-l2• 11 years ago

According to thetrainline.com you can get a train from Carlisle to London a week from now (Thu 30 Jul) for £35 if you are prepared to go at one of the less popular times (e.g. depart 14.49 and arrive 18.10).

morsch3• 11 years ago

Train tickets now are often more than the cost of petrol to drive across the country. So if you'd spend more on a train ticket, why not drive?

Avoiding depreciation of the car or the cost of having one in the first place; lower risk of accidents; you get to use the time to work, read, or take a nap; you don't have to worry about parking. It's not all downsides.

to3m• 11 years ago

My car's TCO is £0.64/mile. Easily beaten by the train.

Assuming I'd have a car already, though, I'd already have paid for the car, insurance, MOT, tax, blah blah. So for a journey I'm contemplating taking, where the choice is car vs train, the train is competing against the marginal per mile cost: roughly, fuel+repairs.

For this my car's cost has been £0.28/mile - a figure that usually turns out to be pretty close to the cost of the train. (In fact, this comparison is being unduly generous to the train, because most of my driving is short trips. For longer trips the car is more fuel efficient, making the marginal cost more like £0.20/mile.) I'm also not taking into account the cost of travel to the station.

But then again, I'm also assuming there will be free parking at your destination...

vacri• 11 years ago

you don't have to worry about parking

Swings and roundabouts there, though; the train doesn't give you door-to-door service.

Scoundreller• 11 years ago

While in Germany, I found it cheaper to do a 1-way car rental on a Mercedes, a 2nd driver premium, and pay for gas (not diesel!) than to buy 2 train tickets from Munich to Berlin.

jdietrich• 11 years ago

Our rail network just doesn't have the capacity to support significantly greater passenger volumes. A large proportion of peak-time services are severely overcrowded. Inherent signalling limitations mean that we can't fit any more trains into the schedule on those services, and we can't make the trains any bigger without spending billions on infrastructure improvements. Building more lines in a country as densely populated as ours is astoundingly expensive, as we have seen with HS1/HS2; the IEA estimates that HS2 will cost £670m per mile.

Demand-based ticket prices accurately reflect the availability of seats. The cheapest advance fares from Carlisle to London are £24 each way; the most expensive open single is £239. It doesn't make sense for rail operators to offer cheap fares on trains that will be filled at a higher price.

venomsnake• 11 years ago

I think that UK is not that densely populated. Like at all. If Japan and China are expanding their rails networks (in their densest parts) the UK could probably do to.

WalterBright2• 11 years ago

Before airline deregulation in the US, when routes and schedules and fares were regulated, I often found myself on nearly empty flights. After deregulation, when airlines were free to set routes, schedules and fares, the flights are nearly always packed.

Looks like the same situation with British trains.

I also recall back in the 70s when the DOE regulated which gas stations got how much gas to sell. The result was a patchwork of gluts and shortages across the US. That ended immediately when Reagan abolished those regulations.

misterbwong• 11 years ago

Yes, but the other side of the coin of airline deregulation is that there fewer routes to smaller airports and/or they are more costly. There is a large fixed cost associated with providing service to each airport and because of this, airlines have decided to either hike up prices to make the route semi-viable or stop service altogether.

While this may be good for the airline, it's not necessarily good for the people that are now forced to drive multiple hours to the nearest airport.

I would think that something similar would happen if the trains were deregulated.

WalterBright2• 11 years ago

Having lots of big jets flying 75% empty would mean much higher ticket prices overall. The economics of airliners is such that they need to be full to make money.

I don't have figures handy, but airline fares (adjusting for inflation) are much, much lower today than when the government set routes, schedules and fares.

The hub and spoke system common today evolved out of the deregulation. Smaller airports are served by small "commuter airlines" today, not big empty jets.

_delirium• 11 years ago

The U.S. partly mitigates this by subsidizing service to smaller airports, via the $250m/yr Essential Air Service program [1]. This was part of the deregulation bill, thrown in to mollify representatives of smaller towns and rural areas, who otherwise would have opposed deregulation.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essential_Air_Service

m-i-l2• 11 years ago

Better to have ghost trains than the short-sighted Beeching Cuts[0]. For example, the town I grew up in once had two stations where it was possible to catch trains to both Glasgow and Edinburgh, but by the 1960s these were both closed, and now the roads are pretty clogged up with commuters every day, with little hope of ever reopening the lines given much of the land was sold off and redeveloped.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beeching_cuts

rrrx3• 11 years ago

These are the fascinating things that keep me coming back. Are there any ghost routes in the US that anyone knows of?

ItsDeathball• 11 years ago

Pretty much every Amtrak line outside of the Northeast or the West Coast is a "ghost route" in the sense the article describes. I took the Sunset Limited as a kid once from New Orleans to Mobile. Aside from my dad and my brother, there was one other passenger on the train. That leg of the route was cancelled after Katrina washed out the rail bridges in 2005; they've since been restored, but the train service hasn't.

pm246013• 11 years ago

You should get out more. My family and I ride Amtrak from California to Colorado. That 1 train is always busy. In a first-world country, there would be 2 trains/day instead of the single train.

selimthegrim• 11 years ago

This frustrates me to no end; I live in NO and would love to be able to get to Jacksonville, Pensacola, Mobile or Orlando without the interminably boring drive down I-10...

bodyfour• 11 years ago

The article briefly mentioned it, but the main reasons these are kept is maintenance and training. That's a far larger concern than the politics, but it isn't as interesting. Hence the nickname "parliamentary trains" -- people love to believe that it's some crazy bureaucratic reason behind them when they're usually very logical.

Some of these routes will probably never be viable on their own, but the segments of track might be needed some day as a detour. For instance if a bridge somewhere needed to be out of service for a year or something.

For example, one of the more famous "ghost trains" (since it's in London) is the daily Paddington to West Ruislip service. Since they're both served by the underground there wouldn't be much need for a mainline train between them. If long-term work disrupted that connection they might want to temporarily run a regular service on that line though.

If you just abandoned the track, you wouldn't know its condition when you needed it. Just as important, the regulators wouldn't let you run passengers using crew that hadn't been trained on that line.

So just running an occasional train and rotating staff through it, the line and the skills are always kept sharp. Then if you suddenly need that bit of track in an emergency it's ready to go.

And since you're going to run a train anyway, you might as well sell a few tickets if people want to join you.

MichaelCrawford• 11 years ago

The United States Navy still has at least one wind- powered wooden ship. It's used for training.

dag11• 11 years ago

That's really interesting. Anywhere I can learn more about this?

gabalese• 11 years ago

I think many navies around the globe keep at least one sailing ship for training purposes. The Italian Navy, for example, keeps the Amerigo Vespucci veliero as a training ship for the Naval Academy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_training_ship_Amerigo_...

speeder• 11 years ago

I am from Brazil, and I wish our politicians were "bureucratic" as UK politicians regarding trains.

In the monarchy (yes, that long ago), the government believed railroads were the future of the country, and invested in them heavily (in fact half of current railroads in Brazil were built during the reign of the last emperor).

Later during the military dictatorship, the government again saw the point of railroads, and started investing in them again.

Then during our redemocratization, the federal government ended owning lots of railroad companies (example: The São Paulo railroads were given to the federal government as payment because of the São Paulo bank debts with the fedearl government), the federal government then went and shut down every single line that looked unprofitable, even ones that were unprofitable for obvious reasons (example: still under construction, thus zero revenue).

Now we need trains BADLY, but even to use old trains is impossible, for example 0.5% of the country area has 40 million people (out of 200 million in the country total), yet there is nowhere near enough trains for it, most of the transportation is by road (including all the issues of ever increasing absurd traffic, and accidents, one of the highest amounts in the world) or air (São Paulo has the dubious distinction of highest number of helicopters in the world, because road transport is so unsafe, because of accidents and crime, that people that can afford going by helicopter go by helicopter).

My parents live in Valinhos, I live near a train station in São Paulo, the train track near my home passes behind my parents home, yet I cannot do this simple trip, because not only the track is overgrown and unmaintained, but the government decided to repurpose some stations for other uses, and paved over or cemented over the tracks, the sad thing is we have the tracks there, we have the demand, and we have the trains (in storage, the military government bought lots and lots and lots of then bleeding edge electric trains), but everyone sees it as an almost impossible task to fix it.

Also comparing São Paulo subways to other countries is not even funny, São Paulo city proper has 11 million people, this is São Paulo subway+trains: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-N0nE1VbO69E/USpnqXhm5fI/AAAAAAAAAB...

note this map has some other whole cities in it (Jundiaí is a city, also is the city where the track is paved over... the Ruby track is the one that passes behind my parents house, if it was still in use).

Now london: http://www.projectmapping.co.uk/Reviews/Resources/specialrep...

Paris centre (not the whole city): http://www.urbanrail.net/eu/fr/paris/paris-centre-map.png

Tokyo: http://www.bento.com/pix/subway/tokyosubway2011.png

At least São Paulo is not bad as Salvador (4 million people, only the solid red line currently exists, the rest is planned or under construction) http://www.tribunadabahia.com.br/upload/20141104015725_mapa-...

Or Campinas (2 million people in the metro area, has several rail lines already built, stations in almost all cities of the metro area and in the biggest neighbourhoods, but has only a single train running, it is a coal train, and most people using it are tourists wanting to have a train trip, usually parents wanting to show their children how it is to travel by train).

danans• 11 years ago

The Bay Area's rail transit map (population 7 million) isn't much to brag about either: https://rsnous.com/images/regional-maps/bay_rail.gif

tiatia2• 11 years ago

Brazil is IMHO well suited for trains, much more than the US. Connect all the major cities on the coastline. Unfortunately, strategic thinking is something not well suited for a Brazilian mind. And the money - a country with one of the highest tax rates in the world - is much better invested in some corrupt politicians pocket than into infrastructure, be it trains, ridiculous expensive airtravel or roads. Brazil had a home run the last 10-15 years. My prediction: Won't be a home run the next 10-15 years.

zw123456• 11 years ago

Just like a back up link in a network that may be higher cost or a higher latency but you still route a small amount of traffic on it just to make sure the link is good in case the primary route is down or becomes congested, you want to make sure you know the health of the back up route.

yokohama112• 11 years ago

The abandonment side doesn't really make a whole lot of sense.

There's plenty of train lines in the US that are kept on the books/maintained, yet don't see any regular service. Some brush cutting, an inspection train once a year, and that's about it.

There's also plenty which are entirely abandoned and overgrown in practice, yet are still kept on the books, which means the train company retains the right of way and can resume service at any time it wants even though a train hasn't run on it in at all in 30 years and it currently looks like a forest.

Training for emergency detours makes some sense, although unless the line is long you don't really need all that many people trained to be prepared for that. You can have a few people qualified and they can just get on/off the train (riding back and forth) in the section the normal engineers aren't qualified for. And if it's once a decade or longer planned work, it's going to be cheaper to qualify the workforce right before it rather than have to keep them all up to date all the time. (I'm also sure that not all of these lines are worthwhile detours)

akshat_h2• 11 years ago

I have always wondered what the Hogwarts express was being used for between the annual trips. It seems to be a perfect example of a "ghost train".

tiatia2• 11 years ago

Europe needs some huge infrastructure projects. I wish the EU would make some huge investments - yes, I know it is socialism. Why not connect all the major hubs? Why should it not be possible to go from Lisbon to Moscow by high speed train? Build 4 tracks, two for transportation of passengers, 2 for freight. The Transrapid was a stupid idea but rail is an established technology and can be improved easily.

Some of the Technology is there already, for example to reduce the huge traffic on the European roads: http://www.cargobeamer.eu/Technology-849174.html

Should be no problem, to have automatic coupling/decoupling of parts of the train, separating at major hubs going to different destinations. http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/login.jsp?tp=&arnumber=671327...

Also, Trains are run by electricity which can be created through nuclear energy (Thorium reactors in the future etc.). I see a point in the future, where we DON'T have the resources to build such an infrastructure anymore: http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/10/the-energy-trap/

And yes, I know, the Nazis thought up similar things: http://jalopnik.com/5819038/hitlers-giga-railway-from-paris-... http://www.breitspurbahn.de/3000.html

GrecoKL• 11 years ago

Slightly off-topic but the Royal Mail used to run a network of nine 'Mail Rail' stations underneath London with small trains that moved general mail around. They were discovered in 2011 by a group of photographers exploring abandoned tube stations.

If you want more detail:

http://www.placehacking.co.uk/2011/04/24/security-breach-lon...

sireat• 11 years ago

I do wish Baltics had something similar to ghost trains but I understand it is the privilege of richer countries.

The train infrastructure has fallen badly since Soviet times and it will be another 20 years until Rail Baltica https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_Baltica will be completed(that is politics and economics willing).

In 1930s you could take a train from Riga to Berlin in 14 hours(I have the original poster), from what I understand the only way you can make the same route is by going Riga-Moscow-Berlin which is not very convenient or making taking a lot of local trains http://www.seat61.com/Latvia.htm#Moving on

Why Britain has ‘ghost trains’

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