Wonder if part of is the new clearances  required between platform and 25Kv O/H wire which might be why the footbridge needs renewal.

Looking at the explanations and pictures before I posted the original, I wondered whether to post under "Bristol Commuters" as there could be parallels with Pilning.  However, the proposal here is for complete closure rather than for a reduction from 2 platforms to 1, and perhaps that indicates something of a victory for the campaigners in South Gloucestershire in that they've retained a station at all.

Devil's advocate mode - questions from me on a line I have travelled, off a road I have driven (more than I have travelled the line!), but have little real knowledge of.   Asking purely to learn lessons so that we could make informed comment should a similar proposal arise in our area.

* You may have accepted that railways should be over engineered, but I'm not sure it would be the general view here in a poll.

* The electrifications cost of £49 million - is that projected cost before optimism factor, projected cost with optimism factors included, or what the final bill turns out to be?   Same question for the GW^▸ (Great Western) figure.

* Our experience shows that the provision of a "parliamentary" service does not condense all the potential traffic of a regular service onto to one train. I appreciate that there are only 150 uses per year - but what would / could that figure be if there was a "decent" service ... and with this station, there's a decent all-other-stations service passing through.

Why have I driven past?    Because I've been working in Falkirk / Linlithgow and driving ('twas back in my old days when I had too much to carry to use public transport) to my home in England.  The A71 / A706 junction is set in the midst of a rural area - I recall traffic lights and not much else at the junction.   And that sets me thinking ... do the places that the trains go to from Breich have any sort of congestion?  So with a decent service, would people park there and take the train into Glasgow or into Edinburgh on a daily basis?   You may answer that there's a better way that using this station, but I'm just wondering; the consultation report says "no development planned" but I suspect that there's an issue looking at passenger numbers and service level, and not fully exploring cause and effect.    Reduce trains calling at Tiverton Parkway to 1 a day each way, and I suspect passenger numbers would drop rather a lot!







Open mapping data via Scribblemaps / Well House license

I was working in Linlithgow for nearly 15 years, so also used to drive south vis Forth and Carstairs - and I was always struck by how bleak it looked, despite (or perhaps because of) the industrial remains. Those are mostly north of Breich, and so was the agriculture that used most of the land before the mines and ironworks. To the south it was and is moorland, now with plantations of trees but 200 years ago with none. So don't think of villages in leafy valleys served by branch lines - the parish to the north (Whitburn) had nothing worth the name village in it even in 1755.

Breich itself was a river (Breich Water), and named a bridge, when the railway came (the Calley - there was already the "Wilsontown Morningside and Coltness Railway"). And there was already quite a bit of post-industry - abandoned tramways to closed mines, spoil heaps, that sort of thing. (One side effect of this continuous earthmoving activity is that Breich Water itself has moved around quite a bit, and is now much more wiggly that when first mapped.)

Quite why a station was built there is not clear. It didn't have sidings for scattered local industry, and even the current houses at "Breich" - half a mile away - are no older than 1890. Now, it looks like one of those clusters of SSHA standard terraces you find all around here, and which pose the question "where do they work?"

The stations either side of Breich are 2-3 miles away, which is pretty close in an area like that. Addiewell, two miles to the east, is a little bigger than Breich and did exist as a place name before the railway. It has a car park and loads of empty land around it. Fauldhouse, three miles the other way, was a pre-existing settlement, though even now barely a town, and its station is also has parking and is outside the village itself.

If you wanted more stations there are longer gaps along the line to put one, nearer to where housing already exists. So maybe this one isn't worth fighting for. Just sit and wonder why it ever existed.

This forum never ceases to amaze me. Talk about an obscure station hundreds of miles away, and you'll find members with knowledge of it.

If no-one can foresee any practical use for it now or in the future and it requires massive expenditure, then sadly closure is probably sensible.  But that does not stop questions being asked:

* Are closure and the expenditure really the only options?   Are there other options such as taking away the footbridge and putting in a field gate or stile to access the other side?

* How does the procedure that (sadly) concludes "close" actually work.   Closure procedures have been slated as being biased to ensure a required outcome in the past - is this one truly clean and independently judged?

* Are any dangerous precedents being set?  Could one of the element from Breich be taken at a justification out of context at [not going to name anywhere specific!]

1. I used the word "we" in the general or societal sense, not as "you and I". However I was quite wrong to use the term "over-engineered". Professional engineers, with honours degrees and audited training and responsible experience are in the business of applying science, modelling, optimising for minimum life costs and safety margins, etc. I should have said "over sized" or "over-spent". Imagine the GWEP^▸ (Great Western Electrification Program) in the aviation industry!

2. The £49M is quoted from NR^» (Network Rail - home page) below:

https://www.networkrail.co.uk/.../network-rail-awards-49m-shotts-line-electrification-...

It is the let contract not the estimate and seems to be inclusive, although press releases are often technically incorrect. The £2.8Bn is the Hendy figure widely published. The stkm are from rail technology magazine supported by other reports.

3. There are rules of thumb about station access, population served etc. Only a well used bus interchange could save the halt in question.

OTC

Thats called 'future proofing' but its not something the modern railway does.  We all know that this country works on the basis of 'first cost' only....