We must electrify!

I read with dismay of Secretary of State for Transport Chris Grayling sitting in front of the Commons Transport Select Committee, explaining why electrification in these islands is to be downplayed - even ended - because “bi-modes deliver almost all the benefits of electrification” ( RAIL 845). Note that word ‘almost’!

Even a cursory study of world trends shows that in all developed or developing countries around the globe, electric trains are flavour of the month. Wires are spreading everywhere - for example, in Kazakhstan and the other ‘stans’.

You will also remember the recent opening of a new standard gauge line between Eritrea and Addis Ababa in Ethiopia, which of course is fully electrified.

I won’t even mention Switzerland. Doubtless Chris Grayling would say that the Swiss, pioneers in rail electrification, would find it wasteful to dismantle all their electrified lines (100% of the Swiss railways).

It is truly intolerable that Government ministers still parrot this tripe. Yes, they were given the opportunity to do so by the ghastly Great Western Main Line electrification fiasco, but that mess was the fault of the designers/ engineers, not the concept.

Surely I cannot be alone in demanding that we in the UK should not be denied the benefits of electric traction to wherever it can be extended in the UK, and certainly over all the main lines in the land, starting with the Trans-Pennine route and the Midland Main Line throughout to Leeds, and then moving on to the Derby-Bristol line?

And for this to progress without having to wait for Grayling’s departure and before the loss of all electrical engineers, as has happened before. Why are we so blinkered in the UK and confident we know better than everyone else? John Gilbert, Cradley