Mansfield & Ashfield: Stalled plan to reopen Maid Marian Line gets £500,000 from East Midlands Mayor

The Maid Marian Line – which ran between Kirkby and Pye Bridge in Derbyshire – served passengers until the 1960s, but is now only in use for freight trains.

It connects the Robin Hood Line – which runs from Nottingham to Worksop and includes Mansfield, Sutton, Hucknall, Kirkby, Bulwell, Newstead and Shirebrook on its route – with the Erewash Valley line in Derbyshire, and would allow for cross-county travel in the north of the region.

Proposals to reopen it have been going on since before the pandemic, with Ashfield and Mansfield Councils completing a joint study on its feasibility, and an outline business case report in conjunction with Derbyshire Council in around 2020.

But after plans went quiet, they reappeared at a recent meeting of EMCCA’ s transport committee, as part of a plan for the authority to commit £150m to regional transport projects over the next three years.

Documents say: “A revenue allocation of £500,000 has been included to develop the business case and enable the proposal to be considered as an option for capital funding in the later years of the programme.”

When asked about the funding, East Midlands Mayor Claire Ward (Lab) made it clear that there was no guarantee or promise of the line reopening.

She said: “We’ve had a series of different investments that we want to put in, including looking at the Maid Marian line, considering the feasibility of it.

"It’s not an agreement to do it, it’s not funding to do it.

"It’s simply to update that business case and see what the options are.”

The benefits and viability of reopening the Maid Marian Line as a passenger route have been researched and studied for a number of years.

It closed to regular passenger traffic in 1947 but continued in partial use until 1963, when it was shut as part of the ‘Beeching Cuts’ of that decade.

Currently, rail users can get to Derby city from Nottingham and vice-versa directly, but to get to anywhere else in either county, a change is required in either Chesterfield or Sheffield.

Ashfield Council started making the case for its reopening in 2018, with Coun Matthew Relf (Ash Ind) saying in 2020 that opening it was a ‘no-brainer’ to ‘dramatically improve Ashfield’s transport connectivity’.

During the pandemic, the authority applied for a grant from the Conservative Government’s Restoring Your Railway fund, but this fell through.

Then in November 2021, the line was referenced as part of the government’s £100 billion investment in the railways in the north and the midlands.

But those plans have also since changed, with HS2 being scrapped north of Birmingham and the Labour Government instead focusing on funding a reboot of Northern Powerhouse Rail plans across the Pennines, between Liverpool, Sheffield, Hull and Newcastle.

The reopening would provide train links between Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire for residents of Pinxton and Selston, whose station fell out of use when the line stopped being used for passenger trains more than 60 years ago.

At a meeting of the EMCCA transport committee on April 2, head of transport investment Alex Linton said that more than 100 projects had applied for funding available from the authority, but the Maid Marian Line was chosen at this point because of the fact that proposals are far more developed than those for other rail investments.

He said: “The Maid Marian Line has a specific line because the proposal is a bit further developed.

The information that has been shared with us is more detailed and a full specific request was made for that one.

“But that doesn’t mean that it’s the only rail network proposal we’re supporting.

"We’re also allocating £2m for rail development and that would be looking at what those other line options are and what those other infrastructure options around the rail line are.”

One of these other projects is the potential extension of the Robin Hood line, between Nottingham and Worksop, back out to stations that also closed during the Beeching cuts of the 1960s, such as Warsop, Ollerton and Edwinstowe.

Hucknall MP Michelle Welsh (Lab) raised the issue of the opening of the stations during a Westminster Hall debate in February, arguing that transport to her historic constituency was lacking and that a re-established line would provide an important tourism boost.

At the EMCCA meeting, Alex Linton said: “The Robin Hood Line would expect to be part of the considerations within there.

"But we have got that £2m allocation in there that is focused entirely around the opportunity to develop rail infrastructure and those options for us within the region

“It has the potential to be a massive game-changer in terms of the delivery of growth.

"So those other lines, while not specified within the program, there is an allocation within there that will enable us to look at those and develop those options.”

Ms Ward added: “There always has been an argument that we should extend those lines, whether it be that or other lines across the region.

“But obviously we need to have a really good case to spend money and to decide what the business case is.

"Will it bring more people into the region, help people travel around and create that economic growth that we’re looking for?

"So we need to understand what that business case is.”