The unofficial AFC Rushden & Diamonds messageboard

It's one of the lines laid out in a campaign for better transport. I think this follows from the promises made by the Lib Dems. Putting that they suggested it aside, what are everyone's views on this? Should Rushden/Higham Ferrers have a railway station of some form?

http://www.bettertransport.org.uk/campa ... _reopen#em

it's an absolute must that a reversal of the Beeching report which efectively killed off the railways in this country is at least partially brought about. The problem however will be the cost. Losing this infrastructure has damaged our country beyond measure.

The cost is the massive problem.

The Lib Dems plans made me pay attention, the amount of money they want to invest is brilliant. However, in order to get that money the want to cut the road budget by about 90%. Our roads are in just as bad a state as the Railways compared to the rest of Europe and considering 90% of journeys in this country are made by car and 5% by train it's hard to justify the cut.

Imo, i think its a nice idea but totally impractical! To do just this branch line, there would need to be major costs involved, including rebuilding the bridge by Asda, and the small matter of the road to Higham Senior school being in the way, (although ive got no problem with knocking that down ;) ).

Having said that however, i honestly think that in this case, Dr Beeching was right, there is no way that this link could be economically sustainable. I know a lot of people will want to go to Wellingborough, but i think that RUshden spreads out over a relatively wide area, that most people will not be bothered to go to the other side of town, to get the train. For example, people who live in the Whitefriars area, imo, are unlikely to walk, (I'm not sure there are any plans for additional car parking as yet) to Rushden station, to get on the train to Wellingborough, as it would double their journey time.

Having said that, what this country does need is more cross-country routes, i.e going from east to west. A problem i have noticed countless times, is that it is relatively impractical to get across country from many railway stations. Take Oxford for instance, by road it is about an hour, depending on where you are of course. For those travelling by train, it would be either a trip north to Leicester/Birmingham i think, or to the South into London. This means that the journey time is already doubled, which for people with the option, is frankly a no brainer. In my opinion, if the government/the nest government want people to use the railways, they must consider new lines which will make the journeys that they want to make more practical, and make the choice between road and rail a fairer one. To do this i think they will need to focus their investment in a few key routes, rather than spreading their investment around on small branch routes, with less use for the wider community. Imo, we should be looking at building lines that benefit everyone, whereas the route mentioned above would only ever benefit the few people in Rushden/Higham and possibly Irchester. At the very least we should look at building lines that join two current, big-ish stations. If this line went to Peterborough, for instance, (i am fairly sure this would not be possible, but go with me), this line would have a lot more economic potential to help people make thier journeys make sense.