Letter: A little imagination is all it will take to see benefits of rail link
Your campaign for a direct rail service from Shrewsbury to London is to be welcomed. However, I think it should go one step further and also concentrate on the route the line would take and how more residents of Shropshire (and Staffordshire) could benefit.
The former line from Wellington to Stafford was closed as part of the Beeching cuts in the 60s. A small section from Wellington to the new freight terminal at Donnington was reopened recently. It would take the reopening of only 15 miles or so of the remaining route to complete the whole section of the track.
So what are the implications of such a proposal? As far as cost is concerned, an exercise was carried some three years ago which established a cost of £170 million, £260 million if the line was electrified through to Shrewsbury. This needs to be put into context. The HS2 project would cost some £42 billion.
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The justification for the line re-instatement stems from a number of factors. The first of these is a tremendous resurgence of rail travel in this country, and an increasing population which will only increase further the demand for such travel. This increase in population is in evidence in the East of Telford (Hadley, Trench, Muxton and Donnington), in Newport, (and also Gnosall and Haughton in Staffordshire).
The bus service between Stafford and Telford is slow, uncomfortable and relatively expensive, and a rail service connecting the two centres would be a major improvement.
Secondly, very little has been made of the fact that Newport/Edgmond is now a university town. Thirdly, the current fast train from Shrewsbury to Birmingham takes about 50-55 minutes, the service from Birmingham to London takes 1 hour 25 minutes or thereabouts, and as there are three services an hour from Birmingham to London, even with a change at Birmingham, the journey from Shrewsbury to London can be achieved in about 2 hours 30 minutes.
It really needs someone with the imagination to see the benefits of a fast service from Shropshire to London and also the benefits of a regular stopping/local/connecting service from Shrewsbury to Stafford to grasp the nettle, gather together a group of individuals with 'can-do' mentalities to make this happen.
Richard Rawcliffe
Newport
