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Parliamentary train

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Parliamentary trains in the UK were passenger services required by an Act of Parliament passed in 1844 to allow cheap and basic railway travel for less affluent passengers. The legislation required that at least one such service per day was run on every railway route in the United Kingdom.

Such services are no longer a legal requirement, and the term has come to be used instead to describe train services that continue to be run to avoid the cost of formal closure of a route or station, but with services reduced sometimes to one train per week, and without specially low prices. Such services are also often called "ghost trains".[1]

Nineteenth-century usage

In the earliest days of passenger railways in the United Kingdom the poor were encouraged to travel in order to find employment in the growing industrial centres, but trains were generally unaffordable to them except in the most basic of open wagons, in many cases attached to goods trains.[2]

Great Western Railway open passenger car

Political pressure caused the Board of Trade to investigate, and Sir Robert Peel's Conservative government enacted the Railway Regulation Act, which took effect on 1 November 1844. It compelled "the provision of at least one train a day each way at a speed of not less than 12 miles an hour including stops, which were to be made at all stations, and of carriages protected from the weather and provided with seats; for all which luxuries not more than a penny a mile might be charged".[3]

The legislation no longer applies and "parliamentary trains" in this sense no longer run.

The basic comfort and slow progress of Victorian parliamentary trains led to a humorous reference in Gilbert and Sullivan's comic opera The Mikado. The Mikado is explaining how he will match punishments to the crimes committed:

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

Modern usage

Legacy of the Beeching closures

In 1963 the nationalised British Railways produced a report, The Reshaping of British Railways,[4] designed to stem the huge losses made by the railway industry. The Chairman of British Railways was Dr Richard Beeching, and the report became known as the Beeching Report. It proposed very substantial cuts to the network and to train services. The Transport Act 1962 included a formal closure process allowing for objections to closures on the basis of hardship to passengers if their service was closed. As the objections gained momentum, this process became increasingly difficult to implement, and from about 1970 closures slowed to a trickle.

In certain cases where there was exceptionally low usage the train service was reduced to a bare minimum, but the service was not formally closed, avoiding the costs associated with closure. In some cases the service was reduced to one train a week, and in one direction only.

These minimal services had resonances of the 19th-century parliamentary services, and among rail enthusiasts they came to be referred to as "parliamentary trains", or more colloquially "parly" trains (following the abbreviation used in Victorian timetables) or "ghost trains". However, this terminology has no official standing.

So-called Parliamentary services are also typically run at inconvenient times, often very early in the morning, very late at night or in the middle of the day at the weekend. In extreme instances, rail services have actually been "temporarily" withdrawn and replaced by substitute bus services, to maintain the pretence that the service has not been withdrawn (as cited below).

Speller Act

When the closures brought about by the Beeching Report had reached equilibrium it was recognised that some incremental services or station reopenings were desirable. However, if a service was started and proved unsuccessful, it could not be closed again without going through the formal process, with the possibility that it might not be terminated. It was recognised that this discouraged possible desirable developments, and the Transport Act 1962 (Amendment) Act 1981 permitted the immediate closure of such experimental reopenings. The Bill that led to the Act of 1981 was sponsored by a pro-railways Member of Parliament, Antony Speller, and it is usually referred to as the Speller Act. The process is still in effect, although the legislation has been subsumed into other enactments.

Examples of extant "parliamentary" trains

Only one train in each direction calls at Pilning each week.
File:Parliamentary Train 0759 Woodgrange Park to Willesden Junction.svg
Example Parliamentary Train 07:59 Woodgrange Park to Willesden Junction, London Overground using Junction Road Junction.[5]

Some modern examples of lines served only by a "Parliamentary" train are:

An up-to-date list is maintained at the "PSUL". website.[8]

A station may have a "parliamentary" service because the operating company wishes it closed, but the line is in regular use (most trains pass straight through). Examples include:

  • Teesside Airport, which serves Durham Tees Valley Airport in Country Durham, lost most of its services due to its relatively long distance to the terminal as well as competition from buses which offered more reliable services (which in turn were withdrawn due to the airport's sharp decrease in air passengers). The current service is operated only on Sundays and comprises the 1029 from Darlington-Metrocentre via Hartlepool with a return at 1219. Operated by Northern Rail.[9]
  • Pilning in South Gloucestershire, near Bristol – only one train in either direction stops each week. These are on Saturdays only at 0832 (0800 Cardiff Central–Bristol Temple Meads) and at 1541 (1521 Bristol Temple Meads–Cardiff Central). Operated by Great Western Railway.[10]
  • Barry Links and Golf Street in Carnoustie, Scotland. These are served by the 1703 Glasgow Queen Street–Carnoustie service (1711 Saturday) and the 0600 Carnoustie–Dundee return. Operated by First ScotRail.
  • Shippea Hill in Cambridgeshire and Lakenheath in Suffolk (between Ely and Brandon on the Breckland Line to Norwich). Shippea Hill is served at 0723 Mondays–Fridays (0725 Saturday) Eastbound and 0927 Saturdays only westbound. Lakenheath, however, is served by 7 trains on a Sunday. There are no services Monday–Friday and just a single journey in each direction on Saturdays.
  • Polesworth has one train per day Mondays–Saturdays, northbound only at 0723. After major works on the West Coast Main Line, contractors neglected to replace the footbridge which they had removed, leaving passengers unable to access southbound trains.

One train every Saturday is scheduled to call at Bordesley; however, the station remains open for use when Birmingham City Football Club are playing at home.

In the mid-1990s British Rail was forced to serve Smethwick West in the West Midlands for an extra 12 months after a legal blunder meant that the station had not been closed properly. One train per week each way still called at Smethwick West, even though it was only a few hundred yards from the replacement Smethwick Galton Bridge.[11]

A variant of the "parliamentary" train service was the "temporary" replacement bus service, as employed between Watford and Croxley Green in Hertfordshire. The railway line was closed to trains in 1996, but to avoid the legal complications and costs of actual closure train services were replaced by buses, thus maintaining the legal fiction of an open railway.[12] The branch was officially closed in 2001. Work is to begin to absorb most of the route into a diversion of the Watford branch of the Metropolitan line into Watford Junction.

The "temporary replacement bus" tactic was used from December 2008 between Ealing Broadway and Wandsworth Road[13] when CrossCountry withdrew its services from Brighton to the Northwest, which was the only passenger service between Factory Junction, north of Wandsworth Road, and Latchmere Junction, on the West London Line. This service was later replaced by a single daily return train between Kensington Olympia and Wandsworth Road operated by Southern until formal consultation commenced and closure was completed in 2013. [14]

The "replacement bus" tactic - on a long-term basis - is being used to cover Norton Bridge, Barlaston and Wedgwood stations, which had their passenger services withdrawn in 2004.

†There are regular Walsall to Wolverhampton services, but these run via Birmingham New Street rather than over the direct line.
‡There are, however, more services in the opposite direction: Stanford-le-Hope at 0429 to London Liverpool Street; Grays at 1948, 2046, and 2333 to London Liverpool Street; and Barking at 2051 to London Liverpool Street.

See also

References

  1. ^ "On Board a Real-Life "Ghost Train"". BBC News. 1 July 2012. Retrieved 9 December 2012.
  2. ^ D.N. Smith (1988) The Railway and Its Passengers: A Social History, Newton Abbott: David & Charles
  3. ^ MacDermott, E.T., History of the Great Western Railway, London: Great Western Railway, 1927, Vol. 1, part 2, page 640
  4. ^ "The Reshaping of British Railways" (PDF). Her Majesty's Stationery Office. 1963.
  5. ^ "PSUL 2016". Retrieved 9 January 2016.
  6. ^ Rural Railways – Fifth Report of the Session 2004–05 (PDF), The Stationery Office, 9 March 2005, retrieved 16 September 2009
  7. ^ Williams, Michael (19 December 2011). "The hunt for Britain's ghost trains". The Independent. London.
  8. ^ http://www.psul4all.free-online.co.uk/intro.htm
  9. ^ "Rail buffs to highlight Teesside Airport 'ghost station'". The Journal. Trinity Mirror. 14 October 2009. Archived from the original on 26 October 2009.
  10. ^ "All aboard for the ghost train". Western Daily Press. 10 August 2006.
  11. ^ "Smethwick West Station 1867–1996". railaroundbirmingham.co.uk. Retrieved 16 September 2009.
  12. ^ [1]
  13. ^ Hamilton, Fiona. The Times. London http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article5462099.ece. {{cite news}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
  14. ^ "Consultation: Withdrawal of scheduled passenger services between Wandsworth Road, Kensington (Olympia) and Ealing Broadway". Department for Transport. 10 May 2012. Retrieved 3 July 2012.
  • Billson, P. (1996). Derby and the Midland Railway. Derby: Breedon Books.
  • Jordana, Jacint; Levi-Faur, David (2004). The politics of regulation: institutions and regulatory reforms for the age of governance. Edward Elgar Publishing. ISBN 978-1-84376-464-9.
  • Ransom, P. J. G. (1990). The Victorian Railway and How It Evolved. London: Heinemann.
  • BBC News [2]

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