Missing Links

See Coming soon | Enabling Growth | Connecting unserved communities | Campaigns by other groups | Chords | Route protection | Links success

Railfuture campaigns for railway lines to be opened or reopened, in alliance with other groups throughout Britain, have been a success. Over the past half-century more than 500 miles of route have been added to the network, gaining tremendous popular support. Clearly there is no prospect of reopening all the lines closed by British Railways, but in some places - where the economic factors that brought about their closure have changed - there is a need for new or reopened lines to meet the increasing demand for connectivity. Our guide (endorsed by and published jointly with the Department for Transport) Expanding the Railways will help stakeholders and campaigners navigate the process of gaining agreement to a new railway.

Railfuture focuses on schemes which we believe will most support economic (housing / productivity) growth, and therefore offer the greatest chance of success. This potential for growth can be monetised using Land Value Capture to help finance these rail schemes. See our Guidance for promoters.

Coming soon

Schemes in progress are primarily to improve connectivity within or between cities, which need more capacity as they grow, including:

Oxford – Cambridge. The first phase of East West Rail, to reinstate Oxford and Aylesbury to Bletchley and Bedford, was approved on 16 July 2012. Passenger services started running between London Marylebone and Oxford Parkway via Bicester Village from 25 October 2015, and were extended to Oxford on 12 December 2016. Services between Oxford - Bletchley - Bedford / Milton Keynes are planned to start in 2025, whilst the proposed East-West Expressway was abandoned by government on 18 March 2021. This is a fantastic result for Railfuture - we are continuing to campaign for completion of the project to Cambridge and to include services from Aylesbury.
{img fileId="2057" link="/article1826" width="150" imalign="left" styleimage="padding-right:10px" title="New Portishead station as proposed in 2015. Image by North Somerset Council.”}Portishead. On Tuesday 8th July 2025 Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander announced that the line to Bristol will be reopened to passengers, connecting 50,000 additional people to the network. This key element of MetroWest will ease congestion around Bristol by attracting commuters with quicker and more reliable journeys.
Washington. Proposals for reintroducing rail services to Washington were submitted to the Ideas Fund of the Restoring Your Railway fund were unsuccessful, but in November 2022 Transport NorthEast submitted a business case for the Washington Metro Loop to the North East Joint Transport Committee as a step forward to re-opening of the Leamside Line. Washington - current pop. c.67k - bore witness to the first Beeching station closure when it lost its passenger services on 9 September 1963, while Ernest Marples was Minister of Transport. Designation as a New Town followed on 24 July 1964. The station closed to goods on 7 December 1964. Meanwhile the nearby A1(M) was being built between junctions 56-65, and opened in stages from 1965-70. In July 2024 the newly-elected North East Mayor committed funds to start development of plans to extend the Tyne & Wear Metro to Washington, via new stations at Follingsby, Washington North and Washington South on a loop, using part of the former Leamside Line, between Pelaw and South Hylton.

• Midland Metro extensions to Wolverhampton rail station, to Digbeth High Street, Deritend via Curzon Street, and from Wednesbury to Brierley Hill.
• West Yorkshire Metro Leeds – Bradford
• Manchester Metrolink to Stockport
• Camp Hill line will be reopened to regular passenger services between Kings Norton and Birmingham New Street via new stations at Pineapple Road, Kings Heath and Moseley.
• Walsall – Wolverhampton will be reopened to regular passenger services Street via new stations at Willenhall and Darlaston.
• Cowley line reopening to passengers announced on Thursday 23rd October 2025 during visit to Oxford by Treasury Minister James Murray, with confirmation of £120 million government investment for the £155 million scheme anticipated to complete by 2030 including two new stations at Oxford Littlemore and Oxford Cowley on the upgraded freight-only line, supporting the creation of up to 10,000 new jobs.
• HS2 is funded from Euston to Birmingham and Handsacre. It must be extended at least to Crewe to provide a step change in strategic network capacity, relieving the West Coast Main Line to enable better passenger services at intermediate stations - and additional freight services.

Let's keep them coming!

Enabling Growth

The government’s national objectives of long-term economic growth and creation of housing with access to jobs depend on providing connectivity for new housing locations. The government has identified the location of the first 12 ‘new towns’; a strategic plan is needed for future rail served growth locations.

The Liverpool and Manchester mayors are proposing a new route to connect these cities, which with the already-funded Transpennine Route Upgrade between York and Manchester via Leeds and Huddersfield will create a Northern Powerhouse, linking the Northern cities of Liverpool, Preston, Manchester, Sheffield, Bradford, Leeds and Hull into a single strategic economic entity to realise the economic potential of the region.
Ely grade separation. Ely North Junction is a major bottleneck on the strategic F2N freight route. The need in the Ely area is to enable freight on the east-west alignment (which has no business at Ely station) to have an uninterrupted journey, maintaining efficient line-speed and minimising journey-time, between the Bury St. Edmunds line and the Peterborough line. A grade-separated Ely area would also minimise impacts on passenger services especially on the north-south alignment. Railfuture's proposal is illustrated here.
Heathrow southern and western rail access. London Borough of Wandsworth and Surrey County Council's rail strategy both call for direct access from Surrey and south-west London to Heathrow. Various proposals including Airtrack and Airtrack Lite have been put forward but failed. The DfT identified southern access as one of the first Never-never railways in their drive for market-led proposals. On 4 April 2021 it was reported that in summer 2021 DfT would invite private partners to fund the southern rail link. Heathrow Southern Railway is a prime contender for this initiative. Railfuture advocate extending Heathrow Connect to Staines as a first step, followed by extension of Heathrow Express services to Woking, and Guildford when grade separation of the junction at Woking creates more capacity on the South West Main Line. Meanwhile a western rail link with Reading via Langley may be stalled officially but in 2024 Thames Valley Chamber of Commerce Group are among those seeking to revive it.
Hoo Peninsula Railway, an upgrade of the currently freight-only Grain branch to reinstate passenger services to a new Hoo St Werburgh station, is justified by major growth of up to c.15k new homes and industry over the next 15 years or so as part of the Medway Unitary authorities 2024 Local Plan (2012-2035). A new east-south Higham chord to connect with the Medway Towns and with the Medway Valley Line via Strood will create a Medway Metro.
Uckfield - Lewes Railfuture is campaigning to support economic growth in East Sussex and Kent and reconnect communities by linking the East Coastway and Wealden lines via Uckfield and Lewes. This could support sustainable housing growth to help meet Brighton's unmet housing needs. It would promote economic growth in East Sussex by providing access between the Weald and employment opportunities in Brighton, help regenerate Newhaven, create additional peak capacity between the South Coast and London to complement the Brighton Main Line, and help maintain Brighton's visitor economy by providing an alternative, diversionary route between the Sussex coast and London.

• Carterton. A new line connecting over 50,000 people, RAF Brize Norton and the new Salt Cross garden village in the Eynsham-Witney-Carterton corridor, was an unsuccessful bid in round 3 of government's Restoring Your Railway Ideas Fund. However, the new County Council administration instead funded, and in 2023 published, the Strategic Outline Business Case, first a summary in May and then in full in November, followed in July 2025 by West Oxfordshire District Council publishing an independent Economic Appraisal

Connecting unserved communities

Reconnecting left-behind towns can promote economic recovery, raise living standards and promote social inclusion. When the population is 25,000 or more a good business case can be made.

Cambridge: capacity and connectivity for continued, and lo-carbon, growth. Cambridge Connect, based around the vision of an 'Isaac Newton line', is the Railfuture East Anglia-supported choice to resolve the conundrum. Although the recently-elected Mayor of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough has halted the proposed bus-based Cambridge Autonomous Metro (CAM), he intends to ‘reinvent’ the Local Transport Plan to incorporate knowledge on new technologies, zero-carbon journeys and modal shift which had been gained as part of the CAM programme. The plan includes restoring routes to:

• Haverhill in the District of West Suffolk has grown five-fold to a population of nearly 30,000 since the railway was closed, and the town is still growing. Railfuture commissioned Jonathan Roberts Consulting to produce the A1307 Corridor report, which backs our earlier high-level conclusions , showing there is a strong case for the restoration of the railway.
• Wisbech. The 7 miles of railway from March to Wisbech closed to passenger services in 1968 and to freight in 2000. Reopening this mothballed line into the town would connect the 30,000 people living in the area with jobs in Cambridge. Our 2008 proposals led to a petition with 3784 signatures, encouraging Cambridgeshire County Council to fund a business study and North East Cambridgeshire MP Steve Barclay to host a Rail Summit of key stakeholders in 2014. The business study showed a BCR of 3.0 justifying funding for the following engineering study. In 2018 Railfuture joined with local people, rail planning experts and influential local business leaders to progress Wisbechrail through a new Wisbech Consultative Group. In 2020 the Cambridge and Peterborough Combined Authority approved the conclusions of the full business case for restoring the link.

West London Orbital A new London Overground link around west London which Transport for London are developing, running between Hendon and West Hampstead, Harlesden and Hounslow, via an interchange with HS2 at Old Oak Common.
Skelmersdale - Kirkby. The West Lancashire Master Plan (p.29) includes re-connecting Skelmersdale (pop. c.40k) to the rail network with a new rail station and bus interchange in the town centre. The development is in the package of twelve rail priorities which make up the Liverpool City Region Long Term Rail Strategy published by Merseytravel in 2014. A GRIP 3A study for both a new station at Headbolt Lane in the Northwood area of Kirkby, and for a new railway branch line from Rainford into Skelmersdale town centre, is expected to conclude late in 2020. In March 2020 West Lancashire MP Rosie Cooper received assurances from the DfT that Restoring Your Railway funding could be used to accelerate schemes such as Skelmersdale. In June 2020 Lancashire County Council confirmed acquisition of the site of the former Glenburn Sports College, and approved £2 million to demolish the buildings on the site and prepare the area for the construction of a rail station. Merseytravel electric services will be extended beyond Kirkby to Skelmersdale, where they will connect with Northern services from Wigan diverted from Kirkby. In August 2020 it was reported that work on the scheme could be “accelerated” under a new funding application. In December 2020 it was reported that Lancashire County Council is expected to present its business case for a new Skelmersdale rail station in the first few months of 2021.
St. Andrews in Fife has a resident population of 17,000 but is now six miles from the nearest railway station at Leuchars since its own station and connecting line closed in 1969. It is home to the University of St. Andrews, as well as being synonymous with golf. Two grants from Transport Scotland's Local Rail Development Fund, first in August 2018 and again, after the Fund was re-launched in February 2019, in August 2019 have enabled detailed appraisal work to progress, 50 years after the town lost its rail service.
Hythe and Fawley in the Hampshire District of New Forest have a population of over 20,000, and thousands of new homes are planned for the Waterside area. These communities are currently dependent on increasingly heavily-congested roads since rail passenger services last ran in 1966, whilst the ferry service between Hythe and Southampton Port has been threatened with closure as passenger numbers have declined due to its unreliability. A rail service between Fawley, Hythe and Southampton, via Totton, on the existing freight branch would offer a much shorter journey time to the city centre than either the bus or the ferry. On 23 May 2020 the Transport Secretary announced that Hampshire County Council's bid for the Waterside line is one of the first 10 bids to the first round of the Ideas Fund to be selected to receive shares of the £500k Restoring Your Railway fund. On 28 July SWR ran a special train along the branch carrying a high-level delegation. The 2021 Autumn Statement (para 4.69) announced £7 million development funding from 2021-22 to 2024-25 to reopen passenger services. In August-September 2022 Network Rail ran a public consultation, including a short film, and Three Rivers Rail Partnership issued a promotional video.
Bere Alston - Tavistock. Seen as part of Devon Metro, an example of a local authority - Devon County Council - taking the initiative, supported by the local population, to reopen a railway line to meet a local transport need. The County Council worked with Kilbride Group to raise funding from developers of new housing at Tavistock (pop. 13k +), and progressed the business case and technical investigation of the route's structures for GRIP stages 2 and 3. In July 2014 the council agreed to progress the detailed design and in September 2014 approved outline planning permission for the 750 home development to help fund the rail link. A report commissioned by the Campaign to Protect Rural England Rural reconnections: the social benefits of rail reopening, published in June 2015, had used Exeter-Okehampton-Tavistock-Plymouth as its case study. With high-profile support in early-2019, and despite rising costs reported that autumn, it had been hoped that the scheme would make accelerated progress in 2020 through the DfT's new Restoring Your Railway Fund in view of the large amount of work already undertaken. Tavistock to Plymouth Rail Reinstatement was included in the full list of bids to the Ideas Fund first published 8 September 2020, updated 12 May 2021 and again on 27 October 2021, meanwhile on 15 June 2021 confirmed by Devon CC. On 27 October 2021 the Chancellor of the Exchequer's Autumn Budget included the project as one of the 13 winners in round 3 of the DfT's Ideas Fund. Renewed signs of optimism before and during a meeting on 6 April 2022. On 14 November Devon CC announced publication of the latest Strategic Outline Business Case. On 4th October 2023 the local MP received this letter and the following day Devon CC issued this press release.
Bideford together with Appledore, Westward Ho! and Northam make up the largest single population grouping in Devon, c.31k people, without direct access to a passenger rail service. The nearest railhead is Barnstaple, about 8 miles away and with just an hourly service which takes over an hour to reach Exeter only 40 miles away, failing to compete on time with the road alternative. Extension of the North Devon (Tarka) Line to restore a rail link to Bideford is proposed. See North Devon MP Selaine Saxby speaking in Westminster Hall Restoring Your Railway Fund debate on 24th January 2023.

• Ivanhoe Line. The Campaign to Reopen the Ivanhoe Line aims to reconnect Burton-on-Trent to Leicester by upgrading the existing freight railway for passengers, serving 8 new stations including Gresley, Ashby and Coalville in a corridor with a population of circa 275,000 people facing economic, social and environmental challenges identified by the strategic outline business case.
• Aldridge station reopening on the currently freight-only Sutton Park line.

Campaigns by other groups

There are many reopening campaign groups, including:

• The Peaks and Dales Railway is leading the effort to fund and deliver the Strategic Outline Business Case (SOBC) for the full reinstatement and upgrade of the former mainline railway between Ambergate and Chinley, with the support of Manchester and East Midlands Rail Action Partnership. Originally the Midland Main Line to Manchester, part is now the Peak Rail heritage line. The one-man Campaign for the Peak Line has since come on the scene.
• Skipton - Colne The campaign group SELRAP propose the reopening of the Skipton - Colne line to connect the relatively depressed areas of Burnley and Colne via Skipton to Leeds and the Aire Valley and drive economic regeneration. Six local authorities, including Lancashire County Council, have formed an Outputs Definition Group to promote the proposal. On 3 February 2018 the Transport Secretary announced a feasibility study into the value of reopening the line and in October 2019 the scheme was included, at stage 1 Determine (of 5), in the DfT's Rail Network Enhancements Pipeline.

Stratford-on-Avon - Honeybourne. The Avon Rail Link will reinstate six miles of single track along the former track-bed between Stratford-upon-Avon station and Long Marston, to join an existing three-mile freight branch from Honeybourne. This will reconnect Stratford-on-Avon with Oxford and Worcester, generating tourism benefits. A GRIP 3 study by Ove Arup was completed in April 2019. The scheme is promoted locally by Stratford Rail Transport Group, in alliance of the Cotswold Line Promotion Group, Shakespeare Line Promotion Group, Solihull & Leamington Rail Users Association and Railfuture, winning support from the DfT Restoring Your Railway Ideas Fund in November 2020 to take it forward. However in a Written Statement to Parliament on 20 June 2022 Rail Minister Wendy Morton confirmed through publication of a Restoring Your Railway Fund update that the scheme was one of eight which would not progress beyond the Strategic Outline Business Case which had been produced with support from the Restoring Your Railway Ideas Fund.
South-West rail network resilience. Alternative routes between major economic centres are needed to create additional capacity and resilience in the strategic network. The risk of single points of failure in the rail network was cruelly exposed by the damage in 2014 to the sea wall at Dawlish, which cut off south west England from the rail network for two months.
Due to unstable cliffs and extreme weather on the coastal route serving Plymouth and Cornwall, via Dawlish, the first priority for the South-West must be route resilience to ensure that connectivity by rail is maintained at all times - see Peninsula Rail Task Force (February 2014). The alternative Okehampton route from Exeter to Plymouth could be reopened, eventually, but in the meantime every £10million invested in enhancing the resilience of the coastal route may be taking £10million off the value of the benefits of any alternative route. A first step has been taken by restoring regular Exeter-Okehampton services to The Dartmoor Line in late-2021 (official opening 17 November, public opening 20 November, frequency doubled to hourly from 15 May 2022) using the existing track. The reinstatement of regular passenger services between Plymouth and Tavistock (pop.13k) would complement this (see TavyRail - a group including rail professionals, academics & stakeholders focused on providing objective information for the Northern and Southern Dartmoor Rail Route debate). The alternative would be to construct a variant of the Dawlish Avoiding Line first proposed by the GWR in the 1930s, and considered again by Network Rail in 2014.
Cross-London links Further cross-London links (and extensions to Crossrail, such as to Ebbsfleet garden city) will be required after the Thameslink upgrade and Crossrail to provide the capacity required to meet the longer-term increase in demand for rail travel and support economic growth. Crossrail 2 is proposed to link South Western and West Anglia inner suburban services by tunnel between Wimbledon and Hackney, supported by London First, with implementation expected in the 2030's. East London and Essex authorities particularly advocate an East London Riverside Route. In the longer term, with implementation needed for the 2040's, Railfuture also advocate Thameslink 2 on a north - south axis via Docklands (the eastern expansion of central London) to connect northeast with southeast London and Gatwick Airport, relieve congestion at London Bridge and release capacity on the East London line, Jubilee line and Brighton Main Line.

Chords

Often reinstating or creating a new chord can create opportunities for new services which meet a latent transport demand:

• Adswood curve would provide an alternative route to Trafford Park freight terminal and a new freight terminal, relieving the Castlefield corridor
• Almond Chord. Construction would give a connection from Edinburgh Airport to the west. The chord would also make it possible for a new Winchburgh station to support the proposed £1Bn Winchburgh Village development.
• Crigglestone chord would enable quicker direct passenger services between Sheffield, Barnsley and Huddersfield.
• Cuxton Chord would link the Medway Valley and Chatham Main lines, passing under the M2 Medway bridge, to enable direct orbital rail services to connect the Medway Towns with Gatwick Airport. See Railfuture's response to the draft Kent Rail Strategy 2021 and the County Council's consultation report and revised strategy in Cabinet papers as at 15 January 2021.
• Hall Farm curve for direct Stratford-Walthamstow-Chingford services.
• Hoo-Higham chord as an integral part of Hoo Peninsula Railway would enable existing freight and new passenger services to access both the Medway Towns and the Medway Valley line directly, via Strood.
• Nuneaton diveunder beneath the WCML would enable a through Leicester-Coventry service which would capture for rail some of the 97% of journeys on this route currently made by road.

Route protection

Transport schemes take a long time to develop. Rail reopenings, as enhancements to the rail network, now need to work their way into and through the DfT's 5-stage Rail Network Enhancements Pipeline. Like most rail projects, they also have to go through Network Rail's 8-stage Governance for Railway Investment Projects process, GRIP. This too can be both long and slow. Without protection with the legal force of a Local Plan these linear assets can all too easily be destroyed by redevelopment. Therefore Railfuture consider that planning authorities should protect potentially valuable routes for which a business case has not yet been established and in 2001 published a leaflet For want of a Rail..... Characteristics which justify protection for a closed route include the following:

• Short lines which link growing towns to the network
• Duplicate lines linking major cities, which may be required to provide additional capacity in future
• Lines which fill gaps in the network
• Lines with one of the characteristics above but currently operated as a heritage railway, where public transport (rather than leisure) services could be offered with the agreement of the heritage operator - see preserved lines as public transport..

The South Derbyshire Local Plan sets a good example by protecting sites for potential stations at Castle Gresley, Drakelow and Stenson Fields on the Leicester - Burton freight route, now one of the first 10 winning bids to the DfT's Restoring Your Railway Ideas Fund.

Links success

Railfuture campaigns have helped to put over 100 links and 500 miles of route (and more than 400 stations) on the map in the last 60 years. Buy the sixth edition of Railfuture's A-Z guide to line and station reopenings since 1960, Britain's Growing Railway, published in 2017, here.