Lib Dems plan huge rail expansion (BBC News)
 

The Liberal Democrats have set out plans to reopen thousands of miles of railway tracks and stations.

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mmm I will vote for them if they promise steam locos and slam door compartment rolling stock
I dont think so but it would be great

I am very quickly going off the tories. They are certainly up my street. That middlewich station will be very useful for me.

So have they just taken the ATOC list from last year which had a degree of credability about it and added a few more, or is it a completely new list of projects ?

to me it looks like a fanciful suggestion for projects that won't get approval due to "cost-to-benefit ratios"

I can come up with a good policy......

How about......

Electrify all railway lines

That was hard, maybe i should be a politician

There are at least two strategic routes that should be re-opened. The East West Oxford - Bletchley, and the Woodhead route and probably the Waverley route through to Carlisle.

Beeching was completely right about basket cases but totally wrong on strategic planning, the trouble was that railways had been written off as "outdated technology" (a term coined at the time by the all powerful road lobby) with no long term future. Check out Earnest Marple's quote on the opening of the M1 "This is the end of Railways"

If they are intending to do this, where exactly do they intend to get the finance to do it from? I did ask one of their Party last year, but still awaiting the answer.

Marples would say that he was a director of a road building company.

Very true but unfortunately he was also the Minister for Transport!!

It says in the article.

This would have had more effect if he had not been standing on the steps of his 'Battle bus' when he announced the policy. In fact several members of the press pointed out this irony at the time but, as a Lib Dem, he just could not see it. In today's terms £3bn won't get him very far.