Yorkshire lines bid for £500m chance to undo cuts

BIDS HAVE been revealed for a £500m fund to reverse the Beeching cuts of the 1960s, with seven Yorkshire schemes among those hoping to benefit from rail restoration.

Dr Richard Beeching, then chairman of British Railways, had recommended a third of the rail network should be axed due to low demand and high costs.

Now under the Restoring Your Railway Fund, 50 projects including heritage lines in the Yorkshire Dales and commuter links in York, have submitted bids for new funding.

Rail Minister Chris HeatonHarris said access to transport links was vital to levelling up the nation: “Receiving so many bids once again underlines how passionate people are about reconnecting communities.”

Among the seven schemes in Yorkshire are the Minsters Line, linking York and Beverley, which was closed in 1965 amid concerns it was a under-used. The bid would see stations in Market Weighton and Pocklington, both have which have since grown considerably.

In the Yorkshire Dales, one of the smaller bids is for the reopening of the Hawes branch of the Wensleydale Railway, where services stopped in 1959 but which still has an existing trackbed and station.

In Sheffield, the bid would reopen stations at Heeley and Millhouses, increasing capacity at Dore and Totley, to ease congestion on commuter corridors.

There have been plans dating back as far as 2011 to create a commuter service for the Keighley and Worth Valley Railway, run as a heritage line since the 1960s, but local councils could not raise subsidies. The new bid would see a daily passenger service.

In Rotherham, at a development site for the Advanced Manufacturing Park, a bid has been submitted for a station to serve homes and businesses including Rolls-Royce and McLaren.

There are further calls for subsidies for a new train service from Barton-on-Humber to Gainsborough, and in South Yorkshire, to reopen three stations at Dinnington, Maltby and Tickhill.

Submissions have been entered by local authorities and MPs, with a decision expected in coming weeks.