MORE THAN JUST A NEW STATION...

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Tuesday 29th September at 8pm

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CAMPAIGN UPDATE 28th JULY 2015

60009 Union of South Africa at Sandbach, 24th July 2015  Photo: Nigel Allcock (used with permission)

There have been several meetings of the MRLC Group in recent months.

At the meeting of 28th April discussion largely centred on Cheshire East Leader Michael Jones' plans to develop, along with London & Continental Railways, 'the Middlewich Rail Corridor' as part of plans for an HS2 hub station at Crewe. MRLC Group members felt that the Middlewich scheme should be considered on its own merits, whether or not the proposed High Speed Link was built.

The meeting on the 28th May was concerned chiefly with the future role of MRLC

given that Cheshire East and L & C R plan to develop the 'Middlewich Rail Corridor' with or without HS2. It was suggested that MRLC's  role would be mainly as a pressure group aimed at ensuring that a passenger service on the Middlewich line and a new station were included in any plans. It was felt that, in the continuing absence of any real news on HS2 and Cheshire East's intentions towards the Middlewich line, we should intensify our campaign to make sure that the Middlewich line remained firmly on everyone's agendas. To this end we intend to forge alliances with as many organisations as possible, including the Mid Cheshire Development Board (formerly Weaver Valley Project) the Heritage Railways Association and Saltscape. 

MRLC will also ensure that plans for the line are included in the Neighbourhood Plan which is currently being put together by the Town Council and which would, in turn, feed into Cheshire East's Local Plan. The Middlewich line has great potential for connecting communities across Cheshire with a North-South connection and we intend to make sure that this fact is fully understood by all concerned. Our campaign has always created a lot of interest locally and to ensure that this continues MRLC has placed a full page advert in Go Local,  the  magazine which reaches every house in the town.

We're very grateful to our parent organisation, the Mid Cheshire Rail Users Association, which has funded this advertisement and to Bernice Walmsley of Go Local for her help and support..

At a meeting on the 30th June the MRLC Group decided that MRLC, which is a sub-committee of MCRUA (the Mid Cheshire Rail Users Association) would be re-structured in order to become the Middlewich Rail Link Campaign Group.

In future a Campaign Update will be produced after every meeting and published here on the Group's website.

We intend to forge links with local companies who support our campaign, and ask them to make their support public.

MRLC welcomes the fact that Cllr Simon McGrory recently put forward a motion to Middlewich Town Council asking that it affirm its support for the Campaign and ask Cheshire East to establish the re-opening of the station as an agenda item for the next meeting of the CWLTB (Cheshire & Warrington Local Transport Board). The motion was seconded by Cllr Mike Hunter and unanimously accepted by the council.

In future MRLC Meetings will be held every two months on the last Tuesday of the month.

Thus the next few meetings will be held on: September 29th, November 24th, January 26th 2016 and March 29th 2016.

On the 22nd July an informal meeting was held to discuss the steam tests which no 60009 Union of South Africa was running on the Crewe-Sandbach section of our route. It was originally planned that the loco would run up the Sandbach-Middlewich-Northwich line as part of these tests but news reached us during the meeting that the plans had been changed and, in the event, the loco only travelled as far as Sandbach, where it ran round and went back to Crewe. Then fact that 60009 didn't travel up our line proved irrelevant, as many of the 50-60 people at Sandbach on both days had picked up the information from Friends of Sandbach Station who had, in turn, got the information from our website. We were thus able to generate some useful publicity and create new links with various people from the Sandbach area, including FOSS.

Steam dreams....Union of South Africa  at Platform 3, Sandbach Station 23rd July 2015.  Photo: Alan Rivers (used with permission)

Several Virgin Euston-Holyhead services are being diverted over the Middlewich line this weekend (1st/2nd August) and MRLC Members are looking forward to seeing the line put to passenger carrying use once again.

'....not suitable for passenger trains....?' Two Virgin Voyagers pass in the Middlewich loop, May 2014.
Photo: Greg Mapes. From the North Wales Coast Railway Noticeboard website

HISTORIC STEAM LOCO VISITS SANDBACH STATION, JULY 2015

'Union Of South Africa'     Photo: Peter Herring (from his book Classic British Steam Locomotives, Abbeydale Press 2004

by Dave Roberts

A distinguished visitor is due to call at Sandbach railway station  on July 23rd and 24th 2015 in the shape of Union Of South Africa, an A4 Pacific express passenger loco built by the LNER in 1937.
All the A4s, which hauled prestigious express trains on the East Coast Main Line from Kings Cross to Edinburgh, were originally going to be named after birds - the most famous of them being the record breaking Mallard - but it was decided that five of them should instead be named after Dominions of the British Empire, so 60009 was given the name she still bears today instead of the intended Osprey.* Her original LNER number was 4488.

In 1963 'no 9' hauled the final scheduled steam-hauled service out of King's Cross and then became the last steam loco overhauled at Doncaster - Peter Herring

*Paul Hurley says that no. 60009 did carry the name Osprey when the South African regime was out of favour during the apartheid era. This would make her unique in being given her  original intended name without her having carried  it at the start of her life - if you see what I mean!

I have fond personal memories of Union Of South Africa and her class mates because in the late 1950s and early 1960s I would spend childhood holidays in Welwyn Garden City and enjoy many hours watching them haul fast trains from London to Edinburgh. As time wore on they were gradually replaced by the equally famous 'Deltic' diesels. I remember seeing the prototype Deltic looking magnificent in blue and white, on the West Coast Main Line when I was on my way to school at Wimboldsley in the early 1960s.

The Deltic prototype at York
Photo: David Heys collection

Number 60009 is making test runs from Crewe Heritage Sidings to Sandbach this Thursday and Friday under the auspices of Network Rail and the West Coast Rail Company.
In the nature of these things the planned itinerary has changed several times since the runs were first planned.
 Originally the engine was going to run up the WCML from Crewe to Winsford but the route was then altered to Crewe-Sandbach-Middlewich and Northwich.
Unfortunately, at the last minute, the branch line part of the itinerary was dropped and the loco will now run only to Sandbach station.
It will, however, be pulling into platform 3 at Sandbach which will, when our branch line re-opens to passengers, be the platform for trains to Manchester via Middlewich.
There is a remote possibility that things may change again, leading to the branch line trip being re-instated but this is considered 'very unlikely'.

Network Rail forbids the publication of its special notices giving timings for these special runs, but we can tell you that rough timings for both days are:

CREWE HERITAGE SIDINGS  11.40am  SANDBACH (PLATFORM 3)  12.14pm

and return

CREWE HERITAGE SIDINGS  3.20pm   SANDBACH (PLATFORM 3)  3.53pm

and return


Full timings can also be found on the Realtime Trains site.
Train nos are 5Z60, 5Z69, 5Z80 and 5Z89


Many thanks to Marc Holmes for this information.

We hope railway lovers will be out in force at Sandbach to witness this rare steam working, and would welcome any photos and videos for possible publication on the Middlewich Station website and/or the Middlewich Diary. Full acknowledgments given.

THIS ARTICLE ALSO APPEARS ON THE MIDDLEWICH DIARY

MORE ON THE MAY DIVERSIONS

Voyager meets Voyager in the Middlewich loop, May 2014. The train on the left is heading for Euston via Crewe and, as can be seen, has a green light to proceed. The other train is heading for Holyhead via Chester and will also have a green light from  the signal on the right as the line via Northwich West Junction and Chester will be clear, at least as far as Northwich. These trains are 'crossing' in Middlewich, to use the correct railway term, with the Holyhead train being held at a red light until the Euston train arrives. In practice, as Charlie Hulme points out on his website, trains were arriving fifteen minutes early at this point, leading many to believe that some, at least, of the speed restrictions on the line are somewhat redundant. There have been a lot of improvements to both track and signalling in recent years. Just beyond the green light, which stands on the same spot as the old Middlewich signal box, is the site of the  LNWR Middlewich Station with the Holmes Chapel Road Bridge (or 'Station Bridge') at the top of the picture.
Photo: North Wales Coast Railway website/Greg Mape

 This sign is one of several placed on  the old Down platform at Middlewich by a former campaign member and catches the eye of many a passenger on diverted trains running via Middlewich. Sadly the website address is no longer valid although, obviously, anyone interested can always use Google to access the site you're looking at now and find out more about the Middlewich Rail Link Campaign. Significantly, although Network Rail track maintenance workers are frequently on site (they have an access staircase from Holmes Chapel Road leading down to the Up Platform), no one has seen fit to remove these signs as yet.
Photo: North Wales Coast Railway website/Simon Barber

Back in May 2014 many trains were diverted through Middlewich while engineering work took place on the Chester line.
As always Charlie Hulme and his excellent North Wales Coast Railway website were on the case and featured photographs of some of the diverted trains, including several taken at the Northwich end of our line.

You can see these photos at:

NORTH WALES COAST  RAILWAY NOTICEBOARD

(scroll down to 'Middlewich Diversions')

And while you're there take a look at some of the other 'Noticeboards' which, week after week, chronicle the news and events relating to the Crewe-Holyhead and related routes.

See also:

ONE OF MANY (VIDEO)
MORE MIDDLEWICH DIVERSIONS

CAMPAIGN UPDATE - JULY 2014

CAMPAIGN UPDATE: Things have been quiet on the MRLC front lately, but as always there is much going on behind the scenes. We're in the process of updating our website and have re-registered the Middlewichstation.co.uk URL which will (we fervently hope) soon be back in action. Please note that the Middlewichstation.org.uk is no longer valid (although it still appears on the signs on the old LNWR station site which were put there by a former campaign member). Go to that website now, and you'll find advice on losing weight. Perhaps they're trying to tell (some of) us something? At present we find ourselves unable to buy the name back at a reasonable cost. Meanwhile we are writing several important letters to various key players and hope to get things moving again soon. Make no mistake, we are still very much in the business of getting this railway line re-opened to passenger trains and getting a new station built in Middlewich. This is not just a matter of local concern - we are promoting a scheme which will bring immense benefits to Middlewich, to the Weaver Valley, to the County of Cheshire and the North-West region in general. By no means the least of these benefits will be a new direct route to Crewe for passengers on the Chester-Manchester line, particularly those living east of Northwich, who will for the first time in many years be able to travel to this important railway hub without first having to go to Manchester or Chester.

Dave Roberts
Chairman
MRLC
7th July 2014

ONE OF MANY: A VIRGIN LONDON-CHESTER TRAIN PASSES THROUGH MIDDLEWICH IN MAY 2014

A very short video showing just one of the many trains which used the Middlewich line over the week from the 12th - 16th May 2014.

WATCH IT ON YOUTUBE

MORE MIDDLEWICH DIVERSIONS, MAY 12th - 16th 2014 (ARCHIVED)

ARCHIVED

Diverted Virgin Train passes British Salt, Middlewich, in March 2014. PHOTO: GLEN LEIGH

The following has been received from our parent organisation, MCRUA, and is adapted from a posting on the MCRUA website by Simon Barber:

The Crewe-Chester line is closed next week, Monday May 12th- Friday May16th, for drainage works at Christleton tunnel and and almost the whole Virgin Trains service is running via Middlewich.

A few VT trains are not running at all, and a few are running via Warrington Bank Quay with a reversal there, which is a faster diversion but evidently a route without much spare capacity.

The times are available on http://www.opentraintimes.com (the code you need is MDLW)
SERVICES AT MIDDLEWICH

Worthy of note is that many of the Voyagers are being timetabled to cross in the Middlewich loop, with the Euston-Chester train timed to wait for 15 minutes (from xx15 to xx30 most hours) whilst the southbound train runs through non-stop at xx26.

There  will also be ECS (empty coaching stock)   and freight workings running over the line all through the week.

All in all a busy week for the Middlewich line with some good photo opportunities at the loop and at Northwich West and South junctions.

Many thanks to Andrew MacFarlane of MCRUA for sending us this information and to MRLC member Peter Shillito who has also brought this to our attention.

We would, as always, be grateful for any photographs/videos of trains on the Middlewich Branch during this busy period.

Dave Roberts, Editor.

Update Saturday 17th May:

The flurry of trains has died down now, but there are still some using the line on a regular basis - something like two or three trains a day on average. The link in the above post will enable you to find out when trains are expected. We welcome any photos of trains on the line. -Ed

First published 11th May 2014
Re-published 17th May 2014