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! LASRUG ! Lancaster and Skipton Rail User Group Newsletter - September 2016 Leaving Skipton, Class 142 ‘Pacer’ in charge of the 10.34 Morecambe to Leeds service on 15th August 2016. The connecting stopping service to Bradford Forster Square is standing in platform 1. © Gerald Townson In this issue we look towards the eastern end of the Bentham Line: the Chairman of the CRP explains how the Bentham Line starts at Leeds; we hear from our neighbouring rail user group in the Aire valley; the story of the electric services from Skipton into the West Yorkshire Metro area is told; a Yorkshire UNESCO World Heritage site is visited as one of our days out; and a familiar Leeds station landmark is highlighted. People are often puzzled by what Community Rail The Partnership and LASRUG have played a positive role, through their responses to Partnerships (CRPs) actually are and do and how they relate DfT consultations and in discussions with Train Operating Companies, in gaining the to Rail User Groups (RUGs). They are also often mystified greatly improved service for the Bentham Line due to begin in December next year. by the term ‘designation’. The chairman of LLMCRP and More immediate good news about fares can be found on page 6 of this newsletter. secretary of LASRUG explains. The CRP works in cooperation with an increasingly wide range of stakeholders to EAST ↔ WEST promote the use of the Bentham Line to both local communities and visitors. A recent Designation, the CRP and RUGS successful initiative, in association with Northern and the Forest of Bowland AONB, has seen Giggleswick, Clapham, Bentham and Wennington established as rail gateways The warmly-welcomed Community Rail Strategy was to Bowland. Through its Rail to Trail walking and cycling initiative, the CRP sets out to published in November 2004 to aid in the development of the more local and rural railways combine green rail travel with a healthy lifestyle. across the country. The route from Leeds to Heysham Port via Skipton and Lancaster was identified at an early stage as being one of the routes which could benefit from the The Annual General Meeting of establishment of a Community Rail Partnership. The CRP’s role would be to raise awareness and actively promote the use of the line in order to ensure its long-term future and greater contribution to the local economy. It would also assist in enabling the route to LASRUG become a thriving feeder route to and from both the East and West Coast Main Lines, as will be held in Bentham Town Hall at 7.30pm well as being promoted as a scenic trans-pennine route. on Friday, 16th September 2016 The three local Rail User Groups, councils in Yorkshire and Lancashire, county rail officers, and the train operating company, Northern Rail took on the challenge to improve Guest Speaker: Sally Buttifant the line for the future and in April 2006 formally established the Leeds-Morecambe Community Rail Partnership Officer for the Community Rail Partnership Co. Ltd, a not-for-profit company set up on co-operative Mid-Cheshire Line lines. The CRP is the main rail group for the line. The name chosen to market the route by ‘My Work as a Partnership Officer’ the company was ‘The Bentham Line’. Throughout, the CRP has also been supportive of station adoption. This is possible when local groups show a genuine interest in enhancing and developing their station making it a INTRODUCING OUR AGM GUEST, SALLY BUTTIFANT focal point and gateway to their community for the benefit of both residents and Sally lives in Ellesmere Port and is one of the leading women in the world of passengers. Community Rail. She is the Senior Transport officer for the Cheshire West and Chester All members of the management group of the CRP and the RUG committees are volunteers Council and the Community Rail Partnership Officer for the award-winning Mid- and give generously of their time and wide-ranging skills in support of the Bentham Line. Cheshire Line. The CRP benefits greatly from the support of our long-established RUGs. They continue to Her cheerful enthusiasm for all things community-based and her imaginative projects continue be free to campaign on behalf of their members and passengers for improvements have encouraged many volunteers to come forward to develop their stations and join in in services and timetables and monitor punctuality and reliability, as well as offering advice rail-themed art and cultural activities. In 2015, Sally played a leading role in the Mid- and assistance. All parties involved in the line clearly see that there is greater benefit to be Cheshire Community Rail Partnership’s becoming overall winner of the National gained from a unified and determined approach. Community Rail Awards for Outstanding Delivery of the Community Rail Strategy. After working for several years to establish the CRP, the time came in 2010 to seek a more Earlier this year Sally became a board member of the Association of Community Rail formal recognition of the CRP’s interest in and support for the line and work began on Partnerships, ACoRP. preparing an application to the Department for Transport (DfT) for the ‘Designation of the Bentham Line as a Community Rail Service’. This was then sent out for consultation to all Recently, Sally has been working hard, as an inaugural member, to establish and interested parties before the designation was granted and announced in Parliament in develop a new national group Women in Community Rail, WiCR. October 2012. Carnforth Station Heritage Centre Designation allows the CRP to work more closely with the train operating companies to better design services to meet local needs. It also permits more detailed discussions on such Monthly railway film nights will take place on the 12th September, 10th October, matters as timetabling, rolling stock, station development and marketing. The Partnership is 14th November and 12th December in the Furness and Midland Hall at 7.30 p.m. also able to contribute to county and local transport development plans. This has been Admission £4, including light refreshments. The programme can be viewed on the reflected in the recent publication of the Craven Local Plan. website: www.carnforthstation.co.uk 2 3 We thought it important to have a look at our neighbouring rail user group, which works One interesting fact was that 1991 was the last year services to and from Bradford regularly for users of the Skipton - Leeds - Bradford lines. Its treasurer, Rod Tickner reports. terminated at Keighley; although there was a fast 0730 train from Leeds calling at Keighley AVRUG - THE FIRST 25 YEARS only in order to get a unit back in time for another service. The Aire Valley Rail Users’ Group (AVRUG) represents users of the line from Leeds to Another item culled from the newsletter informs us that there were problems with the new Skipton and services to and from Bradford Forster Square. Since the demise of Forster Square stair and lift tower, which meant a depressing and dingy entrance alongside Wharfedale RUG a few years ago we maintain a watching brief over that line also as the Midland Hotel there. often issues on the one have a knock-on effect on the other. A recent example was the Trains were principally half hourly between Leeds and Skipton and hourly between landslip at Baildon when our chairman, Tim Calow, was featured in a news story. Bradford and Skipton. Carlisle services were suspended on winter Sundays. A full Sunday Our concerns primarily revolve now around the intensive electric commuter service service to Morecambe only lasted from May to September, a situation which was only although the longer distance services to Carlisle and Morecambe and the London services remedied quite recently. are of great interest. The whole of the Bentham Line needs to be seen in its entirety, even The car park at Shipley was though we are focussing only on one part. t o b e e x t e n d e d t o AVRUG was formed in 1991 when ten people accommodate a further 50 attended the first meeting. Numbers quickly vehicles. Keighley’s ticket grew and have been about 100 for quite a few office had been refurbished years now. – some of the station buildings had previously It is helpful to look back at our first simple been in use as a second- two-page newsletter: the emphasis then was hand furniture shop. Metro on whether or not electrification would were still looking for happen. Members of the fledgling AVRUG additional car parking were encouraged to write to their MPs space at Steeton and because of the possibility that, while Silsden which still had its expenditure for infrastructure had been given the previous year, approval to purchase 14 signal box in situ used as a new class 323 electric units from Hunslet TPL had run out in June 1991. A subsequent taxi office. plan used 322 stock and then from 1995 we had 35-year-old class 308s. So, there was much to I started commuting regularly by rail in 1991 when manual signal boxes from Kirkstall c a m p a i g n f o r , b u t Class 333 EMU approaching Cononley. Junction with attendant semaphore signals were a feature of the route, with a splitting electrification finally got distant for Apperley Junction, one of the few remaining examples on the BR network at underway. There was a lot of disruption in the early 1990s with services replaced by buses the time. Much of the infrastructure would have been similar to what it had been in after 2200 hours to give longer possession to engineers as track was lowered through Victorian times.

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