Parliamentary train
Encyclopedia
A Parliamentary train or Parly (also referred to as a ghost train) is, nowadays, a British English
term for a train that operates a Parliamentary service - that is to say a token service to a given station, thus maintaining a legal fiction
that either the station or, in some cases, the whole line is open, although in reality the train operating company has almost completely abandoned the station or line.
The term originates from the Railway Regulation Act 1844
. Working people were increasingly travelling long distances to find employment in the growing industrial centres. Such third class facilities as there were consisted usually of open wagons, often without seats, nicknamed "stanhopes". The Act was an attempt to make train travel available – and safe – for those who could ill afford it. The Act set minimum standards for passenger accommodation, and was influenced by the railway accident at Sonning Cutting
on Christmas Eve 1842 when nine stonemasons were thrown from open wagons and killed.
These trains run because rail transport is heavily regulated in the United Kingdom
and it is sometimes considerably cheaper for a train operating company to run a parliamentary train than it would be to go through the legal process of applying for a station or line to be permanently closed.
The train operating companies feared loss of revenue as a result of increasing or improving third class because they feared that those who could afford second class would choose the cheaper option if it became bearable. The companies responded by following the absolute letter of the law and no more: thus, they ran just one train with decent third-class facilities per day, at a useless time, such as very early in the morning or very late at night, and that one train really would stop at every station and halt along the line so that the journey extremely slow.
These services became known as parliamentary trains and, because of upper-class attitudes of the time, even got a mention in Gilbert and Sullivan
's The Mikado
as follows:
However, some companies realised that the new enforced lower fares could attract large numbers of new passengers to their trains, which could be profitable if they were run at peak times, when the trains would be virtually full. The Great Eastern Railway
, serving the industrial areas of east London and Essex
, developed a dense and busy suburban system running 'workman's trains' almost exclusively during the rush hours at the Parliamentary rates, which proved very profitable. The Midland Railway
abolished second-class accommodation on its trains in 1875, redesignating all second-class stock as third-class and removing all the old third-class stock from use so that passengers could travel in previously unattainable comfort at minimum cost. This massively boosted the Midland's passenger numbers and proved so effective that all the competing companies eventually had to follow suit.
The more modern sense of the term, a train that fulfills the minimum service required by the law, came about from the mid-20th century when railways came under competition from road transport and previously profitable lines began to lose their owners money. However, each railway line in Britain required an Act of Parliament
to allow its owner to construct and operate the railway. Such an Act also gave the railway company the right to purchase land to build the railway and, in return, the railway service was required by law to remain in operation. Some Acts also laid out specific services required to stations on the line.
This legal background means that more legislation would be required to release the owner from the obligation to maintain the service. The legal costs of the public enquiry and parliamentary time that this would entail made it undesirable or even impossible for a company to close a line entirely. Railway companies that went bankrupt in the 19th century were obliged by their own Acts to continue to run trains, either in administration or once they had been purchased by another company. The London, Chatham and Dover Railway
and the Midland and South Western Junction Railway
both continued to exist as functional systems despite being technically insolvent for many years.
The cheapest option for the owner of an unprofitable line was to reduce the service to the legal minimum with the lowest practical staffing levels. This could also become closure by stealth
as the reduced service reduced demand for the service even more, strengthening the owner's legal case that the line could be closed. Line closures by the nationalised British Rail
were eased by the passing of specific legislation, but the original Acts from the 19th century could still prove difficult: the Bluebell Railway
was kept from closure for a while when campaigners cited two Acts that required a service of four trains per day along the line in perpetuity. The Acts were later repealed.
Alternatively, an individual station may get a parliamentary service because the operating company wishes it closed, but the line itself is still in regular use (most trains speed straight through). Example of such stations are the following:
in County Durham, although the airport itself was renamed Durham Tees Valley
in 2004. in South Gloucestershire, near Bristol
- only one train stops here each week. and both in Carnoustie, Scotland. in Cambridgeshire and in Suffolk (both between Ely and on the Breckland Line
to )., one train a week (on Saturday), except when Birmingham City Football Club are playing at home, in which case certain trains stop to coincide with the matches. has a service one train per day in one direction (Northbound) only. After major works on the West Coast Mainline, contractors neglected to replace the footbridge (which they had removed) which enabled passengers to access the Southbound services.
In the mid-1990s, British Rail was forced to serve in the West Midlands
for an extra 12 months after a legal blunder meant that the station had not been closed properly. This meant that one train per week each way still called at Smethwick West, even though it was only a few hundred yards down the line from its replacement .
A variant of the parliamentary train service was the 'permanent' replacement bus
service, as employed on the Watford and Rickmansworth Railway
. This railway line in Hertfordshire
was 'closed' in 1996, but to avoid the legal complications and costs of actual closure train services were 'suspended' and a bus service ran between the stations, thus maintaining the legal fiction
of an open railway. The track and station structures are still intact, but are now heavily overgrown and damaged by lack of maintenance. The branch was officially closed in 2001.
The 'permanent replacement bus' tactic was used from December 2008 between Ealing Broadway and Wandsworth Road
when Cross Country Trains withdrew its services from Brighton
to the North West. Because this service was the only passenger service to use a particular chord between Factory Junction, north of Wandsworth Road, and Latchmere Junction, on the West London Line
. This service was later replaced by a singular daily return trip over this chord by Southern
between Kensington Olympia and Wandsworth Road
.
British English
British English, or English , is the broad term used to distinguish the forms of the English language used in the United Kingdom from forms used elsewhere...
term for a train that operates a Parliamentary service - that is to say a token service to a given station, thus maintaining a legal fiction
Legal fiction
A legal fiction is a fact assumed or created by courts which is then used in order to apply a legal rule which was not necessarily designed to be used in that way...
that either the station or, in some cases, the whole line is open, although in reality the train operating company has almost completely abandoned the station or line.
Railway Regulation Act 1844
The Railway Regulation Act 1844 was a British Act of Parliament introduced as a means of providing a minimum standard for rail passenger travel.-The prior situation:...
. Working people were increasingly travelling long distances to find employment in the growing industrial centres. Such third class facilities as there were consisted usually of open wagons, often without seats, nicknamed "stanhopes". The Act was an attempt to make train travel available – and safe – for those who could ill afford it. The Act set minimum standards for passenger accommodation, and was influenced by the railway accident at Sonning Cutting
Sonning Cutting
Sonning Cutting is on the original Great Western Railway built by Isambard Kingdom Brunel. It is to the east of Reading station and to the west of Twyford station near the village of Sonning in Berkshire, England. It had been intended to route the railway around the north of Sonning Hill past the...
on Christmas Eve 1842 when nine stonemasons were thrown from open wagons and killed.
Methodology
A typical parliamentary train will serve its stations or line as little as once per week, and never when the service would be useful to any passengers. Parliamentary services will typically be either very early in the morning, very late at night or in the middle of the day at the weekend. Quite often the service will run in one direction only.These trains run because rail transport is heavily regulated in the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
and it is sometimes considerably cheaper for a train operating company to run a parliamentary train than it would be to go through the legal process of applying for a station or line to be permanently closed.
Origins
The Railway Regulation Act 1844 bound the various train operators to provide third class passengers with a minimum standard of service: specifically, that at least one train per day must have adequate facilities in third class including a covered carriage with seats. Furthermore trains so equipped needed, on any given day, to serve every route and station in the railway company's area (across the whole day's service) each day. Finally all this had to cost no more than a penny per mile in third class.The train operating companies feared loss of revenue as a result of increasing or improving third class because they feared that those who could afford second class would choose the cheaper option if it became bearable. The companies responded by following the absolute letter of the law and no more: thus, they ran just one train with decent third-class facilities per day, at a useless time, such as very early in the morning or very late at night, and that one train really would stop at every station and halt along the line so that the journey extremely slow.
These services became known as parliamentary trains and, because of upper-class attitudes of the time, even got a mention in Gilbert and Sullivan
Gilbert and Sullivan
Gilbert and Sullivan refers to the Victorian-era theatrical partnership of the librettist W. S. Gilbert and the composer Arthur Sullivan . The two men collaborated on fourteen comic operas between 1871 and 1896, of which H.M.S...
's The Mikado
The Mikado
The Mikado; or, The Town of Titipu is a comic opera in two acts, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert, their ninth of fourteen operatic collaborations...
as follows:
"The idiot who, in railway carriages
Scribbles on window-panes
We only suffer
To ride on a buffer
On Parliamentary trains."
However, some companies realised that the new enforced lower fares could attract large numbers of new passengers to their trains, which could be profitable if they were run at peak times, when the trains would be virtually full. The Great Eastern Railway
Great Eastern Railway
The Great Eastern Railway was a pre-grouping British railway company, whose main line linked London Liverpool Street to Norwich and which had other lines through East Anglia...
, serving the industrial areas of east London and Essex
Essex
Essex is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in the East region of England, and one of the home counties. It is located to the northeast of Greater London. It borders with Cambridgeshire and Suffolk to the north, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent to the South and London to the south west...
, developed a dense and busy suburban system running 'workman's trains' almost exclusively during the rush hours at the Parliamentary rates, which proved very profitable. The Midland Railway
Midland Railway
The Midland Railway was a railway company in the United Kingdom from 1844 to 1922, when it became part of the London, Midland and Scottish Railway....
abolished second-class accommodation on its trains in 1875, redesignating all second-class stock as third-class and removing all the old third-class stock from use so that passengers could travel in previously unattainable comfort at minimum cost. This massively boosted the Midland's passenger numbers and proved so effective that all the competing companies eventually had to follow suit.
The more modern sense of the term, a train that fulfills the minimum service required by the law, came about from the mid-20th century when railways came under competition from road transport and previously profitable lines began to lose their owners money. However, each railway line in Britain required an Act of Parliament
Act of Parliament
An Act of Parliament is a statute enacted as primary legislation by a national or sub-national parliament. In the Republic of Ireland the term Act of the Oireachtas is used, and in the United States the term Act of Congress is used.In Commonwealth countries, the term is used both in a narrow...
to allow its owner to construct and operate the railway. Such an Act also gave the railway company the right to purchase land to build the railway and, in return, the railway service was required by law to remain in operation. Some Acts also laid out specific services required to stations on the line.
This legal background means that more legislation would be required to release the owner from the obligation to maintain the service. The legal costs of the public enquiry and parliamentary time that this would entail made it undesirable or even impossible for a company to close a line entirely. Railway companies that went bankrupt in the 19th century were obliged by their own Acts to continue to run trains, either in administration or once they had been purchased by another company. The London, Chatham and Dover Railway
London, Chatham and Dover Railway
The London, Chatham and Dover Railway was a railway company in south-eastern England from 1859 until the 1923 grouping which united it with other companies to form the Southern Railway. Its lines ran through London and northern and eastern Kent to form a significant part of the Greater London...
and the Midland and South Western Junction Railway
Midland and South Western Junction Railway
The Midland and South Western Junction Railway was, until the 1923 Grouping, an independent railway built to form a north-south link between the Midland and London and South Western Railways allowing the Midland and other companies' trains to reach the port of Southampton.-Formation:The M&SWJR...
both continued to exist as functional systems despite being technically insolvent for many years.
The cheapest option for the owner of an unprofitable line was to reduce the service to the legal minimum with the lowest practical staffing levels. This could also become closure by stealth
Closure by stealth
Closure by stealth is a term most frequently used in the UK and Ireland to refer to the deliberate downgrading of a service by the management or owners with the intention of driving away users or customers. The aim is to make the service uneconomical, and thereby justify its closure or withdrawal...
as the reduced service reduced demand for the service even more, strengthening the owner's legal case that the line could be closed. Line closures by the nationalised British Rail
British Rail
British Railways , which from 1965 traded as British Rail, was the operator of most of the rail transport in Great Britain between 1948 and 1997. It was formed from the nationalisation of the "Big Four" British railway companies and lasted until the gradual privatisation of British Rail, in stages...
were eased by the passing of specific legislation, but the original Acts from the 19th century could still prove difficult: the Bluebell Railway
Bluebell Railway
The Bluebell Railway is a heritage line running for nine miles along the border between East and West Sussex, England. Steam trains are operated between and , with an intermediate station at .The railway is managed and run largely by volunteers...
was kept from closure for a while when campaigners cited two Acts that required a service of four trains per day along the line in perpetuity. The Acts were later repealed.
Examples
Some modern examples of lines served only by a Parliamentary train are:- The Chester to Runcorn (Main Line)Runcorn railway stationRuncorn railway station is in the town of Runcorn in the unitary authority of Halton in the north west of England. The station lies on the Liverpool branch of the West Coast Main Line between Weaver Junction & and is operated by Virgin Trains...
route has one service per week on Saturday mornings, (summer only) using the one way Halton CurveHalton CurveThe Halton Curve is a railway line in the borough of Halton, Cheshire. It runs from Frodsham Junction to Halton Junction , providing a link from the North Line to the Liverpool branch of the West Coast Main Line.The line can now be used only northbound because the southbound line and the...
. - The Stockport to Stalybridge LineStockport to Stalybridge LineThe Stockport to Stalybridge Line is a short railway line in Greater Manchester, running from Stockport north east to Stalybridge. Although it once received a frequent service, for the past few years it has been served by a single train run by Northern Rail, once a week in one direction.This...
where just one train per week runs in one direction. - The Gainsborough (Trent Junction) to BarnetbyBarnetby railway stationBarnetby railway station serves the village of Barnetby-le-Wold in North Lincolnshire. The station area still uses semaphore signals. It is operated by First TransPennine Express, with East Midlands Trains and Northern Rail also serving the station....
section (via Kirton LindseyKirton Lindsey railway stationKirton Lindsey railway station serves the town of Kirton Lindsey in North Lincolnshire, England. The station was opened in 1849 on the former main line of the Great Grimsby and Sheffield Junction Railway which became part of the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway.The station was built...
and BriggBrigg railway stationBrigg railway station serves the town of Brigg in North Lincolnshire, England. It was built by the Great Grimsby and Sheffield Junction Railway and opened on 1 November 1848. The GG&SJR subsequently became part of the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway main line between Grimsby and...
) of the Sheffield–Lincoln–Cleethorpes Line, where three trains per week run in each direction, all of them on Saturdays. One of the stations on this line, , posted lower passenger figures in 2006 than , a station which is actually closed. to , via . - Sheffield to York via Pontefract Baghill (two journeys per day each way)
- Kensington Olympia to Wandsworth Road (one train each way per day on weekdays)
Alternatively, an individual station may get a parliamentary service because the operating company wishes it closed, but the line itself is still in regular use (most trains speed straight through). Example of such stations are the following:
in County Durham, although the airport itself was renamed Durham Tees Valley
Durham Tees Valley Airport
Durham Tees Valley Airport is an international airport in north east England, located southeast of Darlington, about southwest of Middlesbrough and south of Durham. The airport serves County Durham and parts of North Yorkshire, and is in Middleton St George in the borough of Darlington...
in 2004. in South Gloucestershire, near Bristol
Bristol
Bristol is a city, unitary authority area and ceremonial county in South West England, with an estimated population of 433,100 for the unitary authority in 2009, and a surrounding Larger Urban Zone with an estimated 1,070,000 residents in 2007...
- only one train stops here each week. and both in Carnoustie, Scotland. in Cambridgeshire and in Suffolk (both between Ely and on the Breckland Line
Breckland Line
The Breckland Line runs from Cambridge in Cambridgeshire to Norwich in Norfolk, in East Anglia, England. It is so called because it runs through the Breckland region of Norfolk. The line also passes through Thetford Forest. The line is part of the Network Rail Strategic Route 5, SRS 05.09 and part...
to )., one train a week (on Saturday), except when Birmingham City Football Club are playing at home, in which case certain trains stop to coincide with the matches. has a service one train per day in one direction (Northbound) only. After major works on the West Coast Mainline, contractors neglected to replace the footbridge (which they had removed) which enabled passengers to access the Southbound services.
In the mid-1990s, British Rail was forced to serve in the West Midlands
West Midlands (county)
The West Midlands is a metropolitan county in western central England with a 2009 estimated population of 2,638,700. It came into existence as a metropolitan county in 1974 after the passage of the Local Government Act 1972, formed from parts of Staffordshire, Worcestershire and Warwickshire. The...
for an extra 12 months after a legal blunder meant that the station had not been closed properly. This meant that one train per week each way still called at Smethwick West, even though it was only a few hundred yards down the line from its replacement .
A variant of the parliamentary train service was the 'permanent' replacement bus
Bus
A bus is a road vehicle designed to carry passengers. Buses can have a capacity as high as 300 passengers. The most common type of bus is the single-decker bus, with larger loads carried by double-decker buses and articulated buses, and smaller loads carried by midibuses and minibuses; coaches are...
service, as employed on the Watford and Rickmansworth Railway
Watford and Rickmansworth Railway
The Watford and Rickmansworth Railway Company was a short-lived company that ran services between Watford and Rickmansworth in Hertfordshire, England...
. This railway line in Hertfordshire
Hertfordshire
Hertfordshire is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in the East region of England. The county town is Hertford.The county is one of the Home Counties and lies inland, bordered by Greater London , Buckinghamshire , Bedfordshire , Cambridgeshire and...
was 'closed' in 1996, but to avoid the legal complications and costs of actual closure train services were 'suspended' and a bus service ran between the stations, thus maintaining the legal fiction
Legal fiction
A legal fiction is a fact assumed or created by courts which is then used in order to apply a legal rule which was not necessarily designed to be used in that way...
of an open railway. The track and station structures are still intact, but are now heavily overgrown and damaged by lack of maintenance. The branch was officially closed in 2001.
The 'permanent replacement bus' tactic was used from December 2008 between Ealing Broadway and Wandsworth Road
Wandsworth Road railway station
Wandsworth Road railway station is on the South London Line from London Victoria to .It is operated by Southern. The next stations are to the west, towards Victoria and to the east, towards London Bridge.-History:...
when Cross Country Trains withdrew its services from Brighton
Brighton railway station
Brighton railway station is the principal railway station in the city of Brighton and Hove, on the south coast of England. The station master is Mark Epsom...
to the North West. Because this service was the only passenger service to use a particular chord between Factory Junction, north of Wandsworth Road, and Latchmere Junction, on the West London Line
West London Line
The West London Line is a short railway in inner West London which links lines at in the south to lines near Willesden Junction in the north. It has always been an important cross-London link especially for freight services...
. This service was later replaced by a singular daily return trip over this chord by Southern
Southern (train operating company)
Southern is a train operating company in the United Kingdom. Officially named Southern Railway Ltd., it is a subsidiary of Govia, a joint venture between transport groups Go-Ahead Group and Keolis, and has operated the South Central rail franchise since October 2000 and the Gatwick Express service...
between Kensington Olympia and Wandsworth Road
Wandsworth Road
Wandsworth Road could refer to either:*Part of the A3036 road.*Wandsworth Road railway station....
.