The LNER Encyclopedia

The Law Commission has recently announced plans to repeal various Acts for railways which were never built and I thought it might be interesting reading as some of them would have been LNER lines!

http://lawcommission.justice.gov.uk/doc ... report.pdf

Most interesting - it's amazing how many more failed schemes there were than are generally listed.

But many of the repeals are abandonment acts. Surely if you repeal an abandonment act, it means that the proposed railway has to be built.

Not sure about that, bw. Here's section 9.6 on page 237 of the act (my bolding). To me it seems pretty clear cut, but then I'm not a lawyer.

9.6 Most of the Acts now proposed for repeal were enacted in the period 1860 to
1895. By 1860 the principal arteries of the railway network in England and Wales
had been completed but there was a need to link outlying rural areas with the
network. Branch lines and extension railways were commonly planned to meet
this need. Many such railway projects proved uneconomic. Each of the Acts now
proposed for repeal in this Group has been examined to ensure that none
supports (a) any operating railway or (b) any disused railway that could be
restored to use.

(b) any disused railway that could be
restored to use.

Thats an unusually sensible clause. Its nice that they thought of that possibility.

An interesting idea, but I would have expected any disused railway to require a Transport & Works Act Order as has happened with Evergreen to Oxford (in spite of the rails still being in situ and some in use) and also applied in Scotland (all be it using the Private Bill process) for recent and planned reopening

Maybe that's because it is part of the "national network"? The Welsh Highland Railway was of course never formally abandoned and they were able to simply rebuild it using the existing powers.