Rail firm may restore old route (BBC News)
 

Passengers in Shropshire could soon have access to a second direct rail service to London, it is revealed.

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Its good to see the rail companies are now starting to think expansion rather than contraction. I didn't realise how big the movement back to rail was until I saw this amazing graph.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...rs_by_year.gif

If this trend continues then enormous amounts are going to have to be invested in new lines stations and routes.

That graph is quite an eye opener Pesmo. At just over 1200 Million passenger journeys we are less than 100 million from the 1300 million peak of the late 1940s. We need more rail.

So the introduction of the HST was the beginning of the return to rail from about 1980 onwards! Strangely enough what Beeching hoped for!

Incidentally I am not always the biggest fan of Pete Waterman but I thought his programme on BBC 4 last night, (Beeching Tracks in the West Midlands) was excellent.

Best wishes,

John H-T.

Yes, I thought he summed it up very well. Its still on the iplayer if folks have missed it on TV.

Incidentally I think the 2008 figures have now matched or broken the previous record, so there are now more people using rail in the UK than ever in its history.