Esk Valley Line secret?

[www.buseireann.ie]

I overheard someone recently saying trains are always quicker than buses but as some of you will know, that's not always the case. The Esk Valley line does have it's attractions such as luggage racks and tables on the trains, nice scenery and fewer crowding issues thus more of a chance of a seat but I can't help but think their are many users who falsely believe it's quicker than the Arriva X93 bus so use it for that reason.

[jc]

Apparently the Esk Valley route is handy for ferrying schoolkids between Castleton and Whitby. Perhaps more telling would be whether the route via Loftus would be quicker by bus or rail were it still open?

[Kenton Schweppes]

It really hacks me off that Whitby is inaccessible from the Yorkshire heartlands by rail. I'm sure the council put up with the lost revenue through tourism or potential revenue from the reopening of line from Malton through to Whitby.

[jc]

Somewhere being inaccessible by rail is a far cry from being inaccessible full stop. Malton to Pickering would at the very least require The Ropery and carpark to be dug up and commercial premises pulled down in Pickering, and then if you wanted a seamless journey to Whitby (i.e. not jumping on a steam train for the final leg) you would need running rights over the NYMR.

What would all the tourists think if every other departure was a class 185?

[Kenton Schweppes]

From West Yorkshire we have the Coastliner bus service from Leeds that takes 3 hours each way, so that's a return journey of 6 hours, are you for real about Whitby being accessible?

As for the reinstatment of the line to Whitby it would probably be easier to build a new line round Pickering and have a Pickering Parkway station outside the town and rejoin the line further up, you could even build a parkway type station for Flamingo Land too.

As for running rights why couldn't Network Rail and NYMR enter into a mutually benefit partnership, 'you scratch our backs we'll scratch yours' kind of arrangement. Beside not everyone is interested in steam trains, it wouldn't affect NYMR business imo because if you want to catch a steam train over a DMU you will, simple as that!! The DMU service would be for the tourists who want to access Whitby and not want to jump on a steam train, I'm sure the natives of Whitby would be pleased with a service Yorkshire's heartland rather than Middlesbrough, must say who wants to go to Middlesbrough? What a god awful place!!!

[jc]

Dec 7, 2013 23:41:13 GMT 1 Kenton Schweppes said:

From West Yorkshire we have the Coastliner bus service from Leeds that takes 3 hours each way, so that's a return journey of 6 hours, are you for real about Whitby being accessible?

Depends how you define accessible, if you caught the 0915 Leeds to Whitby (arr 1239) and the 1745 back (arr 2106 - with 2 changes : that would give you about 5 hours in Whitby for £14 return, with nothing on Sundays.

Alternatively the Arriva 93 connects reasonably well with the trains at Scarborough at an hourly frequency, still hourly on Sundays with the train every 2 hours, taking around 2h30 from Leeds to Whitby. Off peak return to Scarborough is £25.70 (obviously cheaper in advance) so you would be looking at £30+ overall.

[Kenton Schweppes]

Accessible means a journey time of 2 hours or under!!

Yeah I know its easier to get the train to Scarborough and then the X93 onto Whitby. A day return from Huddersfield to Scarborough is over 30 quid!!

[stevieinselby]

Dec 7, 2013 23:41:13 GMT 1 Kenton Schweppes said:

From West Yorkshire we have the Coastliner bus service from Leeds that takes 3 hours each way, so that's a return journey of 6 hours, are you for real about Whitby being accessible?

Accessible means a journey time of 2 hours or under!!

Yeah I know its easier to get the train to Scarborough and then the X93 onto Whitby. A day return from Huddersfield to Scarborough is over 30 quid!!

If you're going to make a long journey then you expect it to take a long time and cost a lot of money.

Leeds to Whitby by road is over 70 miles and takes 1h40 according to Google. Given that it is going to be a secondary branch line, even with no changes running on a fairly direct route you could not realistically expect to do the journey in under 2 hours by train. On the current service pattern, you can get a train from Leeds to Malton and then change to the Coastliner bus to get a journey time of about 2h30. It's unlikely that even a through train could significantly improve on that.

Compare and contrast other places a similar distance from Leeds, like Kendal and Lincoln. These are both rail-connected and likewise tourist destinations as well as being regional centres (and much bigger) in their own right. Leeds to Lincoln is as often well over 2 hours as it is slightly under, and Leeds to Kendal ranges from 2h30 to 3h15.

£33.50 for a day return covering the 85 miles from Huddersfield to Scarborough sounds like good value compared with the £28.70 it would cost you to go the other way to Liverpool, which is only 60 miles.

Until we invent teleportation, places that are further away will pretty much by definition by slower, more expensive and less convenient to get to, and to say that somewhere is inaccessible because it is a long way away is just stupid.

As for the reinstatment of the line to Whitby it would probably be easier to build a new line round Pickering and have a Pickering Parkway station outside the town and rejoin the line further up, you could even build a parkway type station for Flamingo Land too.

You're having a laugh, aren't you?

The line into Pickering runs in a narrow gorge. A mile from the town, the banks are 30m high, two miles away they are 60m high. It would be physically impossible to run a surface route round Pickering from that gorge without massive earthworks of the sort that would not be considered viable for a motorway or HS2, let alone a piddly branch line. The only way to get from the NYMR to Malton without going through Pickering would be to bore a 2¼ mile tunnel from the curve near Kingthorpe to Swincroft Hill, but that would put the nearest station to Pickering half-way along the A170 between Pickering and Thornton-le-Dale, which is going to be damn-all use for the large proportion of passengers that would be wanting to travel to/from Pickering.

Pickering and Malton would be the parkway stations for Flamingo Land. It's not a long bus ride from either of them, and you wouldn't be able to get a railway station close enough to the park to make it a sensible walking distance, so you're still going to need shuttle transport, which would render the additional station pretty pointless. Come on, if Alton Towers, Chessington WOA and Thorpe Park don't merit stations, how the hell do you think that Flamingo Land could justify one?

What a joke.

[SCH117X]

The heritage line is also pretty slow, could a 185 say do the trip faster or are the speed restrictions so prohibitive. If it could do it faster what impact does that have on the heritage line timetable, passing places etc. Have experienced 50 minute delays on the heritage line, imagine what impact that would have on wider services, actually thought it would be more sensible of them to cancel a train and get the whole lot back on time but then there might have been overcrowding issues.

[www.buseireann.ie]

With a bit of advanced planning you can get to Whitby from Leeds in just over 3 hours by train all the way for as little as £20 return with good connections at Middlesbrough, and should you decide to use the bus at Middlesbrough it gets even cheaper, £16 return with a total journey of 3 hours including a good break in Middlesbrough, the best bits yet to come, using Megabus (and a fast no messing driver) from Leeds, some journeys connect with the X93, so if all goes well and you get the lowest Megabus fare you could get to Whitby by bus from Leeds in around 2 and a half hours for £8.50 return! The Middlesbrough to Whitby fare on the X93 during the summer was £6 return by the way so those fares are based on that part of the journey not going up in price. Sods law says it probably has!

On a side note, Whitby residents may prefer to travel to Middlesbrough rather than the heart of Yorkshire due to it being the closest major town to it with very good facilities, Scarborough does have good facilities including an A and E hospital but Middlesbrough has better rail connections, more shops including 2 good retail parks close to the town centre, it's not over ran by tourists, and it makes a change from seeing the sea. I know Middlesbrough residents themselves slag off the place but for an alternative day out from the sea, it makes a refreshing change to the endless stream of gift shops, pubs (complete with drunken idiots every Saturday, and I thought the ale trail was the only thing that got hijacked by the lager brigade), cafe's and fish and chip places Whitby appears to be over ran by. Oh and forgot to add anoher good reason to visit Middlesbrough, Middlesbrough Transporter Bridge!