30th January. The Age of The Train......

During the early 1980's the late multiple sex offender Jimmy Savile would pop up on our screens during the Corrie ad break with the phrase "this is the age of the Train" encouraging us all to 'let the train take the strain' - though at the time I suspect the only thing straining on Savile's train were the fifteen year old girls making for the emergency cord!  As it happened (sorry) it certainly wasn't the age of the train, shortly after they were privatised and the whole network fell into terminal decline. 

Fast forward 30 years and Jimmy is rotting in Hell and the age of the train is eventually upon us. I got a whiff of the proposed HS2 route a week or so before it was announced and didn't really appreciate the impact that it would have.  On the face of it it's route through South Yorkshire isn't too drastic, though it looks as though we'll lose some mature woodland in North Sheffield. The route passes through the whole of the Rother Valley skirting the edge of  Rother Valley Country Park then passing through Woodhouse Mill, Orgreave, Treeton and Catcliffe on a massive viaduct at speeds of up to 360kmph and around 8 times an hour each way!!  Of course this is a long way off and by the time it's completed (assuming it's done on time) I'll be 60! The route looks a pretty done deal, though there could be some minor amendments, and on the whole I reckon South Yorkshire will come out of it relatively unscathed - though the affect of the ancillary works could prove more disruptive.

Looking at the both routes from Birmingham i.e. Manchester and Leeds there's an awful lot of birding sites that it speeds through e.g. Rostherne Mere, Swillington and Wintersett.  The potential economic benefits to the North are apparently massive, but at what cost to the environment?

The route through Orgreave, Treeton and Catcliffe