This story is a part of BBC Britain – a new series focused on exploring this extraordinary island, one story at a time. But in the world of transport and infrastructure, where efficiency and budgets rule, it’s also a quirky aberration – one that might not be around forever, but that, for now, provides an acute sense of joy to a small, passionate group of people who love it for its Alice-in-Wonderland-style absurdity. It might be a waste of resources and potential. A secret that not even everyone who works in that world knows exists.Ī ghost train might be a bureaucratic hangover. “That’s what we love about this,” Hall-Smith says: knowing a secret that, in the hyper-organised and planned world of rail transport, shouldn’t exist. The Snaith train was listed on the board of departures, but the person at the ticket desk still hadn’t heard of it. On our ride to Snaith, the two tell me about the trouble Moralee had procuring her ticket. Other nations run limited service trains, but experts say that the particular politicisation of Britain’s railways – and the creation of so many steps required to close them – means that when people say “ghost trains,” they’re usually referring to British ones. Then, finally, the plans are submitted to the Office of Rail and Road, who decide if the line closes.Īs a result it often costs less – in terms of time, paperwork and taxpayers’ money – to keep a line running at a bare minimum. Then comes a 12-week consultation period, during which time anyone is welcome to protest public hearings are sometimes held, especially if the closure is controversial. The proposal is submitted to the Department of Transport and at that point its details must be published in the press, six months ahead of the closure. There must first be a transport appraisal analysing the effect of a closure on passengers, the environment and the economy. Many train operators kept running empty trains to avoid the costs and political fallout – and while this law has since changed, the same pressures remain.Ĭlosing down a line is cumbersome. A more official term is “parliamentary trains”, a name that stems from past years when an Act of Parliament was needed to shut down a line. That is the crux of why the ghost trains still exist. Or as Colin Divall, professor of railway studies at the University of York, puts it: “It’s a useless, limited service that’s borderline, and the reason that it’s been kept is there would be a stink if anyone tried to close it.” “Ghost trains are there just for a legal placeholder to prevent the line from being closed,” says Bruce Williamson, national spokesperson for the advocacy group RailFuture. From 1995-96 to 2011-12, the total number of miles ridden by train passengers leapt by 91%, while the entire UK train fleet grew by only 12%. Given the overcrowding on Britain’s trains, it may seem odd for these empty carriages to ride the rails – or for empty stations to stand sentry over them. If there is anyone else on the train, it’s probably another ghost train enthusiast. Since the trains are run on extremely inconvenient schedules, sometimes without a return trip, sometimes before sunrise, the journey means a lot of legwork. “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. “It has to be one of the maddest places we have both been to,” he says. To celebrate his 50th birthday, they went to Berney Arms in Norfolk. They take pictures at each one and try to put them on their website, with detailed descriptions about how to get there and what to expect. Hall-Smith has been chasing the trains since 1993, visiting 41 ghost stations. The sheer mystery of ghost trains is part of what makes them compelling to a small, but passionate, community of “ghost train hunters” that, Hall-Smith and Moralee say, spans the globe, sharing information online through websites like theirs. But a request from the Department of Transport for overall numbers turned up nil: “The department doesn’t hold a definitive list of these low-frequency routes, because we don’t use the terminology of ghost train – there’s no formally agreed definition of what would constitute one,” says Andrew Scott, one of the Department of Transport’s press officers. Northern Rail, which runs the Leeds to Snaith line, said they have six such trains that’s out of 2,500 services they run each day. Official figures are difficult to track down.
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