Struggles further west

I was surprised to see that the maximum speed of the IEP Class 800s is affected by the “adverse grades between Reading and Swindon” ( RAIL 842).

My reference book suggests that the maximum gradient on this section of the route (once christened ‘Brunel’s billiard table’) was all of 1-in-640. I wonder how these trains will cope with the long stretches of 1-in-80 they will encounter west of Taunton, where even the diesel-enhanced Class 802s will be challenged, also by inferior acceleration from speed restrictions caused by sharp curvature.

It looks as though our new frontline trains here in the Far South West will be unable to deliver the schedules of their 40-year-old predecessor HSTs without substantial infrastructure improvements, even allowing for at-platform time savings made by the replacement of slam doors.

These enhancements may well be a decade away if the recent DfT attitude to rail west of Bristol is anything to go by. Even the replacement of 50-year-old signalling in West Cornwall is being paid for by the cash-strapped local authority, rather than Network Rail.

I hope, therefore, that the quotation of ‘bi-mode’ as the latest panacea for all railway ills will be soft-pedalled by DfT and the ministers involved, who still seem woefully ill-briefed. Richard Giles, Exmouth