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A branch line is a secondary railway line which branches off a more important through route, usually a main line. A very short branch line may be called a spur line. Branch lines may serve one or more industries, or a city or town not located on a main line. Branch lines may also connect two or more main lines.
Industrial spurs can vary greatly in length and Goods wagon capacity depending on the requirements of the customer the spur is serving. In heavily industrialized areas, it is not uncommon for one industrial spur to have multiple sidings to several different customers. Typically, spurs are serviced by local trains responsible for collecting small numbers of railcars and delivering them to a larger yard, where these railcars are sorted and dispatched in larger trains with other cars destined to similar locations. Because industrial spurs generally have less capacity and traffic than a mainline, they tend to have lower maintenance and signaling (train control) standards.
Before the rise of the long-distance trucking in the early 1930s, railroads were the primary means of transportation around the world. Industries of the era were commonly built along railroad lines specifically to allow for easy access to shipping. Short (under a mile, oftentimes only several hundred yards) industrial spurs with very small (under ten car) capacities were a common sight along railroads in industrial and rural cities alike. As Car and roadway technology improved throughout the early and mid-20th century, most low volume industry spurs were abandoned in favor of the greater flexibility and economic savings of trucking. Today, railroads remain the most economical way to ship large quantities of material, a fact that is reflected in industrial spurs. Most modern day spurs serve very large industries that require hundreds, if not thousands, of carloads a year.
The smallest branch line that is still in operation in the UK is the Stourbridge Town Branch Line from Stourbridge Junction going to Stourbridge Town. Operating on a single track, the journey is long and the train takes around two and a half minutes to complete its journey.
The National Transportation Act of 1967 provided government subsidies for branch lines. Western railway development in Canada worked in concert with land settlement and cultivation, as pioneers were settled near railway lines, often on land the railways had owned. However, by the mid-20th century, railways began neglecting lines in western agricultural regions. This was historically driven by factors such as the Crow Rate, which regulated the price railways could charge for shipping grain. Railways had little incentive to invest in rural Prairie branch lines, but were legally unable to abandon them under the National Transportation Act, which also did not provide a subsidy for grain transport, and instead allowed railways to absorb branch line subsidies freely without making effort to improve the profitability of the lines. The term "grain-dependent branch lines" began being used as early as 1978 to refer to the special case of these branch lines in agricultural areas whose viability depended on the economics of grain transport. The Western Grain Transportation Act of 1983 addressed this case specifically, but was repealed in 1994 in the wake of the North American Free Trade Agreement and budget-balancing initiatives in favour of a one-time payout by the federal government directly to farmers, to arrange transport of grain themselves. From the mid-1970s to the late 2010s, more than of Prairie branch lines were abandoned or had a discontinuance of service.
David Blyth Hanna, the first president of the Canadian National Railway, said that although most branch lines cannot pay for themselves, they are even essential to make main lines pay.Hanna, David Blyth, Macmillan 1924Dow, Andrew, Dow's Dictionary of Railway Quotations, JHU Press 2006.
The Princeton Branch is a commuter rail line and service owned and operated by New Jersey Transit (NJT) in the U.S. state of New Jersey. The line is a short branch of the Northeast Corridor Line, running from Princeton Junction northwest to Princeton with no intermediate stops. Also known as the "Dinky Line", at it is the shortest scheduled commuter rail line in the United States. The run takes 4 minutes, 47 seconds.
Other than the Princeton Line, other surviving branch lines include the Gladstone Branch in New Jersey; as well as the New Canaan Branch, Danbury Branch, and Waterbury Branch in Connecticut. The Long Island Rail Road also refers to its services as "branches".
Earlier, a spur line was built in 1985 on the East Rail line to serve Racecourse station, bypassing Fo Tan station.
Also, the was built in 2004 on the East Rail line to serve East Tsim Sha Tsui station. However, after the Kowloon Southern Link was completed in 2009, this spur line turns into a section of the West Rail line.
Discontinued services include the Sha Tau Kok Railway and the Wo Hop Shek Branch.
A spur line to Siu Sai Wan has been proposed.
Delhi
On the Delhi Metro, the Blue Line has a Branch Line with 8 Stations, linking Yamuna Bank to Ghaziabad via Anand Vihar ISBT and terminating at Vaishali.
The first section of the Branch opened on 8 January 2010 with Anand Vihar as its terminal with six stations. It was further extended to Vaishali in 2011. The line is planned to be extended from Vaishali to Mohan Nagar via Sahibabad Station to link with the main line.
From 1990 to 1996, the section of the North South Line between Jurong East and Choa Chu Kang stations was operated as a separate line, known as the Branch line. It was merged into the North–South Line with the opening of the Woodlands Extension in 1996. The future Jurong Region Line and Cross Island Line will also have branch lines.
The MRT Pink Line will have a spur line reaching into "Impact, Muang Thong Thani", a commercial complex. This spur line, known as the Mueang Thong Thani Line, or the Impact Link, is currently under a soft launch, and is accessible via the Muang Thong Thani station.
The SRT Light Red Line will have a branch line heading towards Siriraj Hospital and the adjacent MRT Station. This branch line has been tendered, and will be constructed along with the main line, which will go to Salaya and possibly beyond.
Today, many of the branch lines have been closed, including almost all of the general-purpose country lines. Those that remain serve ports or industries far from main lines such as coal mines, logging operations, large dairying factories, and steelworks. In Auckland and Wellington, two branch lines in each city exist solely for commuter passenger trains. For more, see the list of New Zealand railway lines.
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