Fleetwood: On the right track or off the rails?

It’s hard to imagine that Fleetwood, a once busy and thriving fishing port, actually had 2 railway stations and a direct rail link to London; hence the name of the North Euston Hotel.

Anyone living in Thornton or Fleetwood will see that there is horrendous congestion; locally and on the no longer fit for purpose A585. This is the result of years of mismanagement by governments, quangos and local councils. The relief road (blue route) for the A585 at the moment seems remote so that leaves the railway option, at least for now.

Despite losing both stations, the railway actually survives as a de facto siding, just terminating behind the Carla Gran holiday park. The single track was renewed in the early 90s and it was used up to the mid 1990s to deliver chemical tankers from the adjacent ICI complex to Runcorn. The ICI complex itself had an extensive rail network, now all gone. The tracked remains (and is protected), all the way up to the old power station site; the rail yards that possessed numerous lines, long gone, ironically swept away to make way for the gridlocked A585 that was extended into Fleetwood.

Transport is so poor in Wyre that the Local Futures Group places it in the BOTTOM 3-4% of its transport connectivity index, below that of the Shetlands! Testament, not that any were needed, to the folly of planners and bureaucrats who have presided over the managed decline of the area. Sounds familiar?

Now following 3 reports, there appears an opportunity to reopen them line and put Fleetwood – the largest town in the UK without a railway link – back on the map. But what value would it bring if it were reopened?

Well, local enthusiast group PWRS want to reopen the line as a heritage option.

Personally I don’t believe PWRS could run a railway, they can’t even keep their website up to date and they make claims without evidence nor analysis. It’s now known that they used the community payback team to clean up Thornton station, an admission in Thornton Community news. But most of all they have neither money nor any business backing that I know of. I consider them to be well intentioned romantic dreamers who need to get real. Regardless of my own opinion of PWRS, the ATOC report actually bins the heritage option as a no go.

If the line were to be reopened it could serve as an avenue of regeneration for Fleetwood which is trying to reinvent itself as a destination town.

How, you may ask?

Well by integrating a reopened line with the Isle of Man ferry, a passenger in London would see Fleetwood not just a destination town but as a means to get the ferry to the Isle of Man and elsewhere. Imagine the station name as “Fleetwood Freeport for Isle of Man” on a billboard. Access to Freeport would be improved and an expansion, provided that Callow and his contemptible cronies don’t object, could occur. Bring people in and you bring money; it’s that simple.

But why not get those hideous HGVs of the roads and onto rail, making the A585 safer and easier to use?

Let’s go for gold here; why not integrate the line with the trams? In fact such a connection did exist many years ago, crossing Copse Road, where coal wagons were shunted across and pulled up to a storage yard in Thornton Gate.

In the interim, the line could be reopened up to Burn Naze where a station current exists. In addition a 600 house housing estate is currently being built close by, reinforcing demand for a renewed passenger rail link and as a means for freight, as the old ICI complex is being replaced by smaller industrial units.

One thing is for certain, the placing of a new Fleetwood station is going to be challenging as the Halcrow report shows and you can forget the old sites as they are a no go as they have been built on. Challenging yes, but by no means impossible!

As I write this article, I am aware that a local council committee is to approach LCC for funding and a 4^th report will be made, probably to support their application. But progress is terribly slow, as slow as the traffic on the A585 and this has to be done sooner rather than later.

I see great things ahead if the line were to be reopened, and we need politicians (even Dave Cameron supports it) with the will, vision and the courage to do just that.

Bring it on!