Here we are - stuck in the middle…

The study concluded that a latent demand existed for rail travel of between 500 and 600 passengers a day, and that given a cost of less than £1 million to build a single-platform station and complete minor infrastructure upgrades, there existed an impressive benefit:cost ratio of 5:1. 

The case for reopening was not without its pitfalls, however, not least a chronic lack of spare stock available to then-operator Northern Rail. The council also faced more pressing funding priorities, amid a worsening global recession and savage public spending cuts enforced by the Coalition Government. 

Predicted revenue from the line of £700,000 per annum would have left local council taxpayers with a hefty bill to meet running costs of anything up to £2.1m per year to begin with, making the scheme politically unattractive. 

However, local authority support was eventually forthcoming. Six years later, and with a much improved fiscal outlook, East Cheshire Council allocated land for a new station in its Local Plan in August 2015.

With a new housing development now encroaching onto the former station site’s footprint, a new station would need to be located on the opposite side of Holmes Chapel Road bridge, just east of the town centre and using an existing car park. 

Congleton MP Fiona Bruce was also persuaded to throw her weight behind the campaign, and in April 2013 she presented a petition with around 2,000 signatures to Parliament. 

Sensing that the prevailing winds were now turning in its favour, the campaign group has opted to make two significant strides forward in the past 12 months, as its calls for the Middlewich reopening approach a critical new phase. 

In November 2015 its name was shrewdly changed to the Mid Cheshire Rail Link, as part of a deliberate change of tack to widen its geographical scope. And in August this year a 40-page updated business case and consultancy report was published, to shore up the group’s already compelling arguments. 

“This campaign has been running for some time, but was always just focused on Middlewich until about 18 months ago when we started to shift gear completely,” says Mid Cheshire Rail Link Campaign Secretary and Middlewich Town Councillor Samantha Moss.

“We recognised that it wasn’t just about Middlewich but the whole of mid-Cheshire, and that this was going to be good for a much wider population. The whole emphasis had to change to the line being an underused regional asset if we’re to get support from national politicians.”

Northwich Town Councillor Andrew Cooper adds: “Where there was an emphasis before on just trying to get Network Rail on board, we shifted to talking directly to the decision-makers like the Local Enterprise Partnership. And by attacking it that way we have been far more successful.”

According to the campaigners, restoring passenger services on the Middlewich line would not only reconnect Middlewich and its overly car-reliant residents to the national rail network, it could also play a key part in relieving desperate overcrowding on many services running during the day on the neighbouring Mid Cheshire Line. 

With patronage climbing by 167% in the past decade, extra services are needed to supplement the line’s two-car or sometimes four-car Class 150, ‘156’ and Pacer units far more urgently than in 2009 (at the time of the original consultancy report), on what is now one of the most heavily over-subscribed lines in the north of England.