Pointless railway lines?

R

rjhowie

Active member
When I was younger a railway fan friend of mine told me there was a free book in the railway offices next to St Enoch rail terminus here in Glasgow. It was an excellent book on the West Highland Railway. Many didn't know it was there and a pile had been found in an old store cupboard. Anyway, it metnioned that off the line was a route which went up to Fort Augustus in the Great Glen. Now as it happened I knew of that route gone many a year.

The original intetnion had been to take this route all the way up to the Great Glen to Inverness but couldn't get an Act of Parliament due to opposition from the Highland Rly and others who didn't want the competition. Passeneger services never materialsied to anything beacuse the area is so sparse popilation wis but was kept open until around 1948 for a timber mercant then closed and lifted. It was of course a beautiful run through that part of the Highlands but dead as far as making money was concerned. Is there a pasasneger route you can mention that was never going to be a financial positive?

ps. The West Highland Railway Coy provided the infrastructure of it's mailine to Fort Willaim and Mallaig but had no money left to buy trains so it eventually went to the North British! It is still one of the Earth's group of highly prized runs today.
 
The Worcester, Nashua, and Portland which was built to compete with the Boston and Maine route to Portland. They had the big cities on the route, but the rest of the route ran through rural countryside, bypassing the other big cities and towns that the B&M served so there was very little online traffic to generate revenue. The line was also very heavily graded with some sharp curves which caused train delays and some derailments. The B&M kept the line in service after they took over until the 1930s. The line was then abandoned in sections. There are a few segments still in use on either end, with the Ayer to Worcester section being a main connection between the two cities. A small section within Nashua was removed about 10 years ago, and other sections lost out much earlier near Freemont and Epping, Windham, and Brentwood. The only northern section still in operation is from Portland to Westville and serves as an industrial branch in that area.

This line like many cases here, was built to compete with the larger companies. The B&L (Boston and Lowell) held a monopoly on the traffic between Boston and Lowell until 1870. Up until that time, the Boston and Maine had to wait its turn on the B&L tracks, so to get back at the B&L, they built their own line which is still in use today. They even went as far as to rip up a connecting track at Wilmington. The B&L went to court and lost and eventually both became the same company in 1887. The B&M also egged on and supported other smaller redundant branches such as the Salem and Lowell, and the Lawrence and Lowell. Only small segments of these lines are still in use but they fought pretty hard for entry into these cities. The L&L was eventually abandoned in favor of a newer line built between Andover and Lowell. This line today is the freight main line to points west on the system. The L&L is still in use in sections on either end. In Lawrence the line was kept in place up to an industrial park. In Lowell the remains serve a small industrial park at that end. S&L remnant that remains active is a short spur in Peabody.

John
 
There was a beautiful line through the Appalachian mountains that was owned by the B&O and later CSX. The passenger service itself fell into the hands of Amtrak. The line went from Parkersburg,West Virginia to Clarksburg, West Virginia. Now days the line is named the "North Bend State Park" and is a rail to trail area.

The line wasn't so pointless when it was built since it was one of the few lines coming from the east and the line ended at the Ohio River. The railway experienced a great life during the Civil war by transporting troops west off the battle fields and east into battle.

The line lasted well into the 80's and I believe CSX decommissioned it in the late 80's or the early 90's. I think I remember there being a picture of the last freight train going through in the early 90's before they pulled up the track.

One of the main issues with the route later on in it's life was simply all the small towns along the line. Too many small towns which wouldn't add revenue and they were having a decline in freight at the time so the line was deemed pointless.

Funny how I heard a rumor a few years ago, when the freight boom started, that CSX were kicking themselves and actually asked the state park if it might be possible to buy the right of way back. Considering the fact that this line would reduce the amount of time and traffic on the other main lines it isn't too far fetched to think that rumor might have actually happened.
 
I heard some where from a fellow railroader that rail to trails, while state land, where still owned by the railroad. And that if the railroad needed, they could put the track back in at most any time. But that's just what I have heard.
 
When the Stratford on Avon and Midland Junction opened in the late 19th century, the financial prospects of their main line from Blisworth to Stratford were perilous at best. However they also built a link line from Towcester to Ravenstone Wood just outside Olney on the old Northampton to Bedford line. With two intermediate stations, one serving a small village and the other (Salcey Forest) in the middle of nowhere, passenger services only lasted a few weeks. The section was retained for occasional freight movements and occasional excursions from St Pancras to Towcester, but was probably an example of a railway that never ought to have been built!
 
And of course, there's the New York, Ontario, and Western (O&W), abandoned in 1957, which could never really compete with the New York Central and the Erie. Indeed, Rail historian George Drury commented that the O&W "had always been sickly and should not have been built" at just "541 miles".

Another was the Milwaukee Road's Pacific Extension. Expensive to maintain and operate, and never really competitive with the Northern Pacific and the Great Northern (not to mention Burlington Northern). Nearly all of the Pacific Extension was abandoned in 1980.
 
thartman1956 said:
And of course, there's the New York, Ontario, and Western (O&W), abandoned in 1957, which could never really compete with the New York Central and the Erie. Indeed, Rail historian George Drury commented that the O&W "had always been sickly and should not have been built" at just "541 miles".

Another was the Milwaukee Road's Pacific Extension. Expensive to maintain and operate, and never really competitive with the Northern Pacific and the Great Northern (not to mention Burlington Northern). Nearly all of the Pacific Extension was abandoned in 1980.
Click to expand...

The Milwaukee Road's Pacific Extension is said to have actually lead to the roads long decline into bankruptcy because of the high maintenance costs associated with the route coupled with the minimal amount of traffic on the route that didn't bring in enough revenue to cover the expenses.

The Old Woman I agree somewhat shouldn't have been built, but then there was some use for the route up until the expressway was built. After that the hoards of summer vacationers took their cars up to the Catskills instead of taking the train. Today parts of the route would be useful as commuter lines and probably would have been done if they were merged into the Erie or one of the other existing lines at the time. Instead of merging, the owners just quit and sold everything off.

When you think back at how long ago when some of these lines were built and how long they lasted, it's truly amazing that so many people didn't think of them as part of the local history. In my area many of the routes were built between the early 1830s and early 1870s. There are some a bit later, but most are during this industrial boom. The Boston & Maine for example built it's main line in the 1840s and competed head-to-foot with the Boston and Lowell. There were all kinds of court battles and probably turf wars as the railroads were trying to gain control of the traffic between the big cities. This is just of like Railroad Tycoon if you think about it.

What's interesting is the Boston and Lowell thought they'd be smart and build the best line around, using the best materials, and utilizing the best grades. Well they got the grades right with less than a 1% climb in 10 miles. (Their mainline was only 26 miles long). For the railroad its self, they used granite slabs with iron rail fastened to it just as the Granite Railroad used in the early 1830s. All of this was expensive and imported from England. The engineers and owners figured they would one-up the Boston and Maine and Boston and Worcester which used rail fastened to wooden ties just like we use today.

When it came to to run the fast trains on the B&L, they bounced around too much, making a passenger trip more like an amusement park ride than a commuter service. The railroad grew quite quickly and eventually they needed to double track. During the double tracking upgrade, they replaced the tracks with rails fastened to wooden ties.

John
 
Another pointless route was the Balloch to Stirling line which came off what is now part of the suburban electric system at Jamestown station south of Balloch, through very sparsely populated countryside north of the Clyde Valley. A passenger line it was never to see any proper return for the money spent. Nice countryside but zilch for a railway to operate with any potential. On the way there was a branch off north to Aberfoyle and south to Kirkintilloch which joined the main Glasgow-Edinburgh tracks. Walked part of this once but all gone gone now of course.
 
One of the most pointless railway lines on the planet must have been the Victoria Railway's Noojee Branch.

It was built to tap the timber traffic from the head of the LaTrobe Valley which was being carted a long way on privately operated 3' gauge railways and ultimately to Yarra Junction in the Yarra Valley, thence to Melbourne. Problem was that the Noojee line ran to Warragul which is roughly the same distance from Melbourne as Yarra Junction but the rub was that the main line through Warragul was primarily dedicated to brown coal briquette traffic to Melbourne's many gas works and timber traffic was very much 'second rate'. Yarra Junction on the other hand was a dedicated timber trans-ship yard. In fact up until the rain forest timber boom YJ trans-shipped more timber than any other railway station in the world. I live just a couple of miles from YJ, believe me - there are a LOT of trees hereabouts!.

Anyway the timber exploitation industry continued to use the 3' gauge private lines over the summit of a hill known as 'The Bump', down through Powelltown and on to Yarra Junction rather than the new line via Warragul - the timber simply got to the Melbourne markets faster that way. To boost the Government run Noojee line's income the Victorian Legislature passed an Act of Parliament expressly prohibiting the shipment of timber 'over The Bump Summit'. The wording is important! The operators of the 3' line promptly dug a short tunnel below the Bump Summit, thereby avoiding the exact wording of the Act.

Timber continued to be carted out of the LaTrobe Valley under The Bump till the whole industry was wiped out by the Black Friday bushfires, the worst fires in Australia's history up until Black Saturday just a few years ago.

The same fires significantly damaged the Noojee Trestle Bridge and since the line had hardly carried any timber in its short history the cost of repairing the bridge was used as an excuse to close what had been in fact an utterly pointless branch line...
 
Ah, yes. I can think of several just here in Colorado. The Denver, South Park and Pacific was one. As the name implys, it's original goal was to get to the pacific, which never happened. It was a bankrupt narrow gauge line that had a very hard time being able to compete with it's neighbors (Rio Grande, Colorado Midland). The line also wandered aimlessly through the mountains, trying to find sources of traffic. It was abandoned in 1937 (I think), except for a segment from Leadville to the Climax Mine, which now serves as the Leadville, Colorado and Southern Tourist Train.
 
High speed rail is a global thing so curious Euphod about that project in California being pointless. Is it on cost grounds and returns? Or just that passenger rail in America is very much on the low burner side compared to goods? Until recently I had been of the thought that Californai had been a leading light over there?
 
I was puzzled at you querying California as your link was on that State? Still unsure why this is regarded as pointless - is it on the cost, Euphod?
 
rjhowie said:
I was puzzled at you querying California as your link was on that State? Still unsure why this is regarded as pointless - is it on the cost, Euphod?
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I am saying that it is pointless to try to build a multi-billion dollar railroad when your state is already about to go bankrupt already! I get the "big picture" concerning the future and the importance of rail travel, but sometimes "kitchen table" economics have to be taken into consideration!
 
As I've pointed out, some of the so-called pointless routes did serve a point in the beginning of railroad history. The New York Central, Pennsy, New Haven, Boston and Maine, and many others built redundant or even small aborted short branches just to thwart the building of their competitors. In some cases, the routes lasted quite a long time before being ripped up. A good example of this is the old Boston and Maine branch that ran from their main line in Wakefield (Greenwood) to Newburyport. This line lasted until the 1940s, or just about 100 years before being abandoned in pieces. The first section was up in the Haverhill and Georgetown area from Newburyport to Topsfield along with the Bradford and Georgetown, all of which lost out during some washouts caused by a previous hurricane. This branch in general saw little business at all and only served as a competing line to get to Newburyport ahead of the Eastern Railroad. In fact the B&M, the Georgetown and Newburyport, and the Eastern all had separate terminals. The B&M merged everything together in 1887 and that spelled the end of these other lines.

The lower part of the same branch lasted until about 2001. By then B&M was gone and Guilford ran the freight service. They let the service dwindle down to nothing and trees actually were growing through the trackbed. Trains would take a whole day to travel from Wakefield to Danvers, the largest section remaining. The line remained open until Smurf-IT paper closed, and the line flooded. The other businesses had either closed or switched to trucks because of the high demurage charges set by GTI at the time to discourage business. The last segment of the Bradford and Georgetown lasted until the 1980s when Haverhill Paperboard closed. This one mile segment ran from Bradford Depot to nearly the Groveland line. The remaining part of the branch was cut back in 1941 after the line was washed out during a hurricane in 1938. The B&M was too poor to repair the line, and there wasn't enough business to justify rebuilding it anyway.

Should these lines have been abandoned? I think so. There is still very, very little business along the Bradford to Georgetown segment, and even less on the lines to Newburyport or Danvers. This area even today is very rural with open pastures and lots of wetlands. Estes Lumber in Groveland received lumber by rail in the 1930s until the line was ripped. There's also a new sand and gravel pit in Groveland close to Georgetown. They could very easily ship sand by train. These are definite candidates for rail service on my route.

On my route I am rebuilding the Bradford to Georgetown segment along with the wye and the Georgetown to Newburyport line. This is what's cool about Trainz. We can reconstruct rail lines fairly easily and either bring them to life in a historical context, or bring them forward to the current times and continue the operate them as though nothing had interrupted their existence. What if the line remained open? In our world we can put in businesses along the line. I can see giving Townsend Fuels a freight spur. Today this oil company sits next to what was the small yard in Georgetown just at the apex of the wye. The only sign of a rail line is the obvious wide area. The line is traceable because it's covered in power lines today.

Georgetown Center - note the yard area on the right.
http://binged.it/J77nj2

Haverhill Paperboard
http://binged.it/J77wTC

Bradford Depot area. The branch used to head over the cut-off bridge to the right. There used to be a yard to the west of the station. Today the MBTA parks their trains there and the new station platforms eat up the yard tracks.
http://binged.it/LLRkW3

Newburyport Train station area. If you look carefully, you can see where the line crossed the Eastern and headed to its own terminal. The current train service area sits on one of the wye legs, and the power lines continue on the old grade. Later on this section became the City Railroad which served the docks. This segment lasted until the early 1980s.
http://binged.it/JV2NQH

Wakefield Junction.
The line is still connected but runs into the dirt.
http://binged.it/J78L5e

Danvers Center. There was a level crossing with the Danvers Railroad and Essex Railroad. The Essex came up in the 1920s and the metal was sold for scrap. The line to the right was closed when the bridge burned. The yard was where those new apartments are today. There was another building, I can't remember what, where that empty lot is.
http://binged.it/J799kp

If you follow the line north, after Danvers, you can see why it was ripped up. There's no business along the length of it until you get up near Topsfield, and even that wasn't enough. Boxford had nothing, and finally Georgetown was a bit bigger, but not much. Even today it's still rural.


John
 
That's a bit clearer and informative Euphod. Thanks.

During the massive expansion in rail in Victorian times it was like a contagious free-for-all in building lines everywhere. When I was a boy there was a line that ran along the north bank of the River Clyde in Glasgow through Whiteinch on an embankment. The stations even then were usually deserted. Built in the end of the 19th century in a high population route the trams took pasengers away when they were electrified around 1901. The rail companies were very much against the trams in suburban settings but still lost out. It was one of several lines in the suburban network that lost out although I travelled on it once and enjoyed the quaintness of it. On another occasion went on a Sunday School trip of 7 coaches all the way from Whiteinch to Campsie Glen station which was a complete contrast from inner city life!
 
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