Parliamentary Train - Examples of Extant "parliamentary" Trains

Examples of Extant "parliamentary" Trains

Some modern examples of lines served only by a Parliamentary train are:

• Chester to Runcorn has one service per week on Saturday mornings, in summer only, using the one-way Halton Curve
• The Stockport to Stalybridge Line has one train per week one-way, usually northbound.
• Lancaster to Windermere, via Morecambe
• Sheffield to York via Pontefract Baghill on the Dearne Valley Line has two journeys per day each way
• Kensington Olympia at 1002 to Wandsworth Road (afternoons from Clapham High Street at 1611) has one train each way per day on weekdays.
• London Paddington to Gerrards Cross
• Walsall to Wolverhampton: to 17 May 2013, one train each weekday, departing from Walsall at 19:36, but replaced in the 19 May 2013 timetable by a Saturdays-only 06:38 from Wolverhampton.
• Sheffield to Cleethorpes via Retford and Brigg has three trains per week in each direction, all on Saturday. The services are operated by Northern Rail.

A station may have a parliamentary service because the operating company wishes it closed, but the line is in regular use (most trains pass straight through). Examples include:

• Tees-side Airport in County Durham — the airport (now Durham Tees Valley) is now better served by bus links.
• Pilning in South Gloucestershire, near Bristol – only one train stops each week.
• Barry Links and Golf Street in Carnoustie, Scotland
• Shippea Hill in Cambridgeshire and Lakenheath in Suffolk (between Ely and Brandon on the Breckland Line to Norwich)
• Polesworth has one train per day, northbound only. After major works on the West Coast Main Line, contractors neglected to replace the footbridge which they had removed, leaving passengers unable to access southbound trains.

One train every Saturday is scheduled to call at Bordesley, however, the station remains open for use when Birmingham City Football Club are playing at home.

Some stations still have regular services running but also a further parliamentary service that runs where a frequent service ran in the past. For example, the Stratford-upon-Avon to Oxford via Banbury - running just once a week on Friday evenings at 23.15. When Thames Trains ran the franchise in the area, this service would run frequently. However, First Great Western scrapped the service when they took over the franchise. Chiltern Railways now operates this "ghost train" calling at Warwick, Leamington Spa, Banbury and Oxford. However, regular services still run from Stratford-upon-Avon by Chiltern Railways and London Midland.

In the mid-1990s, British Rail was forced to serve Smethwick West in the West Midlands for an extra 12 months after a legal blunder meant that the station had not been closed properly. One train per week each way still called at Smethwick West, even though it was only a few hundred yards from the replacement Smethwick Galton Bridge.

A variant of the parliamentary train service was the 'permanent' replacement bus service, as employed between Watford and Croxley Green in Hertfordshire. This line was closed to trains in 1996, but to avoid the legal complications and costs of actual closure train services were replaced by buses, 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, which was the only passenger service between Factory Junction, north of Wandsworth Road, and Latchmere Junction, on the West London Line. This service was later replaced by a single daily return train between Kensington Olympia and Wandsworth Road operated by Southern. Consultation on the formal closure of this line is now in progress, with a closing date of 9 August 2012.