{"id":1744,"date":"2025-06-25T18:51:11","date_gmt":"2025-06-25T18:51:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lancashireloominary.co.uk\/index.html\/?p=1744"},"modified":"2025-06-26T08:40:53","modified_gmt":"2025-06-26T08:40:53","slug":"northern-summer-salvo-327","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/lancashireloominary.co.uk\/index.html\/northern-summer-salvo-327","title":{"rendered":"Northern Summer Salvo 327"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Northern Summer Salvo<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Incorporating \u00a0Weekly Notices, Sectional Appendices, and Northern Weekly Salvo <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Published at Station House, Kents Bank, Lancashire-North-of-the-Sands, LA11 7BB <\/strong><\/p>\n

email: paul.salveson@myphone.coop<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Publications website: www.lancashireloominary.co.uk<\/strong><\/p>\n

No. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 327\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 July\/August April 2025\u00a0 \u00a0(Bolton Holidays Edition)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Salveson\u2019s half-nakedly political digest of railways, tripe and secessionist nonsense from Up North, luxuriating in the tepid bath of managed decline into old age<\/p>\n

Summer Special<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Another long gap, which hopefully won\u2019t be repeated \u2013 the lame excuse has been shifting from Bolton (in part at any rate) to Kents Bank. I\u2019m<\/p>\n

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Join us this Saturday in Daubhill (pronounced ‘Dobble’) – Bolton – for a great day<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

now fully settled in at Station House, but keeping a foothold in Bolton \u2013 Horwich to be precise \u2013 where my Lancashire book collection is housed and where (soon) the garden railway will be operating.<\/p>\n

Apart from domestic stuff I\u2019ve been busy with chairing \u2019Rocket All Aboard\u2019, celebrating the 200th<\/sup> anniversary of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, as well as Bolton and Leigh 200, Station Library and getting back into writing. My writer\u2019s desk is, it must be said, pretty good \u2013 I look out over Morecambe Bay, with a view of the<\/p>\n

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Happy retirement Angie! Angela Hunte, Huddersfield’s much-loved Station Manager, is retiring after many years’ service. Have a great retirement and enjoy the book! Here she is at the launch of Better Transport Week recently<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Furness Line under my window. Nothing more exciting than class 195s and 156s and a twice-daily couple of \u00a068s on the Nuclear train and the occasional steam charter. But all the same\u2026.(having just written that, 66739 Bluebell Railway<\/em> and another class 66 Justine<\/em> have just trundled past on what looked like a weed-killer train \u2013 thought I\u2019d share that with you). I\u2019ll be at \u2018The Greatest Gathering\u2019 at Alstom in Derby on August 1st<\/sup> and 2nd<\/sup> with the Rocket All Aboard<\/em> stall. If you\u2019re there, pop round and say hello. We will have some Rocket memorabilia for sale including t-shirts.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d welcome reader\u2019s views on frequency of The Salvo<\/em>. The days when it used to be weekly are long gone, but I could manage monthly \u2013 or perhaps more easily bi-monthly. It will continue the usual bizarre mix of railways, culture, some politics and recommended fish and chip shops.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll try and limit the \u2018politics\u2019 to things relevant to the rest of the Salvo<\/em> though I think some issues transcend \u2018politics\u2019 and are about basic morality. Perhaps above all Gaza. I have some good Jewish (and non-Jewish) friends who do not share my views on this (as well as some that do!). I can\u2019t sit back and say nothing about the daily slaughter of the innocents \u2013 and most of them are<\/em> innocent \u2013 who are being massacred by the Israeli armed forces. We seem to have become inured to what\u2019s going on, with any criticism of Israeli being dismissed as anti-Semitic. No it isn\u2019t. Like many people I was horrified by the atrocities that happened on October 7th<\/sup>. That does not justify the daily slaughter of children in the name of Israel \u2018defending\u2019 itself. It\u2019s barbarous. Speak out against what\u2019s happening, support charities like Oxfam and International Red Cross.<\/p>\n

The Government Spending Review<\/strong><\/h5>\n

The Chancellor\u2019s Spending Review was good news for the North \u2013 and for public transport. At last, after many false starts, the North appears to be getting the investment it needs in transport \u2013 with rail at the top of the list. Hidden away in the announcement is a very significant statement about criteria for infrastructure investment: the mysterious \u2018Green Book\u2019 used by the Treasury to determine what represents \u2018value for money\u2019. The criteria has been heavily skewed against the North,<\/p>\n

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Gear to hear that more will be invested in light rail. Here’s a Metrolink tram in Rochdale<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

with too little attention given to wider social, economic and environmental benefits. It has been an issue that environmental campaigners have lobbied over for decades and it seems that finally someone is listening. A new approach to evaluating schemes ought to reduce our obsession with road-building and big projects which benefit areas which are already doing OK \u2013 such as much of the south-east.<\/p>\n

For now, many projects in the North will get substantial funding allocated to them, including light rail projects in Greater Manchester, heavy rail in the Liverpool City Region and other major conurbations. Which is great, it\u2019s much needed.<\/p>\n

Where the statement was weak was addressing infrastructure challenges in less urban areas, such as parts of Cumbria, Northumberland, Durham and Lancashire. Control of the latter two counties recently passed to Reform and there was little in the statement that would prove them mistaken. In Cumbria, Barrow is to get a large order for new submarines and the Government\u2019s fixation on nuclear power will<\/p>\n

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The Lancashire Nanas were right to protest against fracking.. where is the challenge to nuclear?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

benefit Sellafield. Where are the \u2018green\u2019 forces in Labour challenging these dangerous ventures? We seem to have sunk into a lazy attitude where \u2018nuclear\u2019 is regarded as the only way forward. Yet it\u2019s hugely expensive and will take decades for nuclear power stations to be ready.<\/p>\n

In many parts of rural Britain rail closures in the 1960s have left communities very vulnerable \u2013 many bus services that tried to fill the gap after your station closed have now gone themselves. There has been a modest revival in some areas, through Government-sponsored \u2018bus service improvement plans\u2019 for local authorities. In my village we now have six buses a day instead of three, and they are being well used. No irony intended here \u2013 most bus passengers in towns and cities would consider a bus every fifteen minutes at the limit of what\u2019s<\/p>\n

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Altrincham – a good example of excellent integration between bus, rail and tram with well-trained railway staff; supported by Transport for Greater Manchester. Let’s have more<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

acceptable. Turning round the damage that has been done to rural public transport is a massive task and won\u2019t be solved by a few \u2018demand responsive\u2019 dial-a-ride buses. At the same time, there are many \u2018left-behind\u2019 towns across the North which don\u2019t have powerful champions like metro mayors to argue their case, and aren\u2019t \u2018rural\u2019 either. Places like Blackburn, Burnley, Accrington, Bacup, Northwich, Consett and others. When investment is made in towns like these, the results can be spectacular. The new line to Ashington, in Northumberland, is already exceeding its targets by a big margin.<\/p>\n

There remains a place for private \u2018open access\u2019 operators despite less than supportive noises coming from the transport secretary, Heidi Alexander. Operators such as Grand Central have already brought towns and cities such as Halifax, Sunderland, Bradford and Stockton back on the inter-city map and there are proposals from several operators, including First and Virgin, to connect other towns across the North. Meanwhile, the great hope of a co-operatively owned train company is running into trouble. Go-op, a co-operative formed to run services in the south-west (and recently awarded access rights subject to some onerous requirements) is facing big financial challenges. Why not a partnership with this Labour government, demonstrating their co-operative credentials?<\/p>\n

It\u2019s right that Labour takes a strategic approach to longer-distance transport links. The Government has given the go-ahead to a new high-speed railway (\u2018Northern Powerhouse Rail\u2019 – NPR) from Liverpool via Manchester Airport, central Manchester and possibly continuing across the Pennines to Leeds and beyond (which I\u2019m less<\/p>\n

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Knaresborough has benefited from the work of its ‘station friends’ group. The line should be electrified<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

sure will happen, or for that matter should happen). Yet the biggest headache facing transport planners in the North is the rail bottleneck through Manchester which impacts on the rail network across the whole of the North of England. Unless this is addressed (and it will benefit freight as well as passenger services) building new railways risks being counter-productive. The new high-speed line will certainly alleviate some of the problems but I suspect not all. And it will be decades before we see any benefit from it. Four-tracking through Deansgate won\u2019t be quick, but quicker than NPR.<\/p>\n

The issue of HS2 still hangs like a bad smell over rail investment. Huge sums of money continue to be poured into this calamitous project, which a few isolated voices (like Chartist<\/em>!) argued against from the start. The general view seems to be that \u201cwe\u2019ve got this far, there\u2019s no option but to carry on and get it finished as far as Birmingham.\u201d And I suppose that\u2019s right, but it must not let politicians regard any future major investment in rail as money down the drain. There is still need for better links between Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool, and Scotland – connecting in to NPR from east to west. Some major lessons have got to be learned from the HS2 fiasco with Government and its new \u2018guiding mind\u2019 Great British Railways getting on top of costs.<\/p>\n

At the same time, some of the worthy schemes seemingly shelved by Labour when it took office should be revisited. Top of my list for the North , in terms of wider regeneration and environmental benefits as well as useful transport links, would be:<\/p>\n