Christian Wolmar
Railways of the past and future.
DEAR reader, you deserve a break. As do I. We’ve all been inundated with Brexit, Leavers, Remainers, Boris Johnson and Operation Yellowhammer for what seems like years. And in the rail industry it has been just as frenetic, with the Williams Review, collapsing franchises, declining performance, daft ministerial statements and doubts over HS2.
So, it’s time for something different. For one column only - no mention of any of the above, but instead a peek into the past and a few thoughts about the history and future of this wonderful industry.
I have been out of the fray, as I am currently sitting in a bar in Cluj in Transylvania, having spoken at a conference on railway history. And my brief immersion in a completely different culture and in the past provides me with a bit of perspective.
The presentations at the conference, called the Railway Journey from the 19th to the 21st Centuries, focused largely on the former, and made me think about the contrast between today’s railway and the 19th century one.
Often, in comparing the two, we look at the technology - perhaps dreaming of the steam that a few of us old ones can still remember being used as the principal form of traction on the main railway network, rather than being restricted to a few charters and heritage lines. We look at the old railway maps and see a network far bigger and more extensive than the system today, and watch films of the huge marshalling yards that once were a feature of every major town and city in the country. Inevitably nostalgia, with its rose-tinted spectacles and tinged with sadness at what has been lost, sets in.
Certainly, some of the presentations at the conference tempted me down that road. One showed how the restaurants in the early stations in Transylvania (which was then part of the Austro-Hungarian empire, and came rather late to the railways) were often the best in town - so good, in fact, that sometimes the railway company would open another branch or two in the town centre itself. Even the restaurants aimed at Second Class travellers would provide good food and wine (not ‘alcoholic beverages’!).
uncomfortable seats. But not only has the railway (a 19th century invention which reached its peak in terms of mileage exactly a century ago) survived, it has thrived. Those railway workers in the various pictures displayed at the conference would probably be amazed that 100 or more years later, the railways are still a vital part of the economy and a fantastic way of getting around the country.
Of course, it is different. It is not only the technology that has been transformed. The railways perform a very different task than they did in the late 19th century. They are an addition to our transport network - a key part of it, but there are (for the most part) alternatives when they are not functioning.
The railway today is crucial in two main markets: inter-city travel and commuting. Outside of those two key markets, any total breakdown of the system would lead to chaos on the roads and a sudden rush to using alternatives such as videoconferencing and Skype, but we would still muddle through.
For the most part, the rest is a kind of social service that represents a great way to travel, but not an essential component of our transport system. It is only a generation ago that the Serpell report suggested essentially paring back the railway to this kind of bare minimum, and it is a measure of the progress that the railways have made since then that anyone making such a suggestion today would be laughed out of court.
So, instead of harking back to a past which (as I have often written in my history books) was never quite the Golden Age that is represented in those shots of heritage railways used in countless films, we need to focus on the amazing railway we have today, and how it first survived and now thrives as a much-used and still much-liked transport system.
I’m afraid it is back to Brexit, HS2, Williams and politics next time, as the party conferences will be in full swing. Goodness knows what they will come up with in these troubled times.