BBC Future explains why there are some very odd trains that run on British railways, but aren’t advertised or even known about by railway staff:
The Leeds-Snaith line is what rail enthusiasts call a ghost train; Snaith station, a ghost station. The webpage about Snaith on ticket sales site TheTrainLine.com warns that ticket machines are not available at the station. Nor is there a ticket office, taxi rank or cab office.
It’s one of many train services around Britain that run with empty carriages – sometimes once or twice a day, sometimes as rarely as once a week. Sometimes even ticket sellers don’t know they exist, and it takes dedicated amateurs to seek them out. So why do these trains run at all?
There is no single definition of what constitutes a ghost train, although the general consensus is that it’s when a service is so infrequent, the train becomes effectively useless. Slippery or not, though, the term “ghost train” seems apt. It implies a service that is not exactly whole – something that whispers through towns and countryside, leaving barely a dent in its wake.
Perhaps most important of all, the term ghost train implies something that only a special few know exists. The press contact of the National Rail Museum of York, for example, was baffled by my request for an interview about ghost trains, thinking I wanted to discuss “haunted items” in the museum’s collection.
Nobody knows exactly how many ghost trains there are. On the website The Ghost Station Hunters, run by rail enthusiasts Tim Hall-Smith and Liz Moralee, there are 37 listed, and those are only the stations the intrepid pair has gotten to and written about so far. Hall-Smith says he’s counted more than 50 by looking through timetables.
So what is the point of running trains that almost nobody uses or even knows about?
Given the overcrowding on Britain’s trains, it may seem odd for these empty carriages to ride the rails – or for empty stations to stand sentry over them. From 1995-96 to 2011-12, the total number of miles ridden by train passengers leapt by 91%, while the entire UK train fleet grew by only 12%.
“Ghost trains are there just for a legal placeholder to prevent the line from being closed,” says Bruce Williamson, national spokesperson for the advocacy group RailFuture. Or as Colin Divall, professor of railway studies at the University of York, puts it: “It’s a useless, limited service that’s borderline, and the reason that it’s been kept is there would be a stink if anyone tried to close it.”
That is the crux of why the ghost trains still exist. A more official term is “parliamentary trains”, a name that stems from past years when an Act of Parliament was needed to shut down a line. Many train operators kept running empty trains to avoid the costs and political fallout – and while this law has since changed, the same pressures remain.
Closing down a line is cumbersome. There must first be a transport appraisal analysing the effect of a closure on passengers, the environment and the economy. The proposal is submitted to the Department of Transport and at that point its details must be published in the press, six months ahead of the closure. Then comes a 12-week consultation period, during which time anyone is welcome to protest; public hearings are sometimes held, especially if the closure is controversial. Then, finally, the plans are submitted to the Office of Rail and Road, who decide if the line closes.
In other words, it’s cheaper to run just enough service to keep the line “active” than it is to go through the bother and cost of shutting it down.
