Open Access
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Some time back in the 1990s, a reporter on the BBC Radio 4 programme Going Places was given an unusual assignment.
Chris Hipwell was asked by his producer to accompany a geological scientist, armed with a seismometer, on a three-leg railway journey.
Starting out from Paddington the pair headed for Reading, purchasing a cup of coffee before setting out. They then left the HST they were travelling on and transferred to the Basingstoke platform, taking with them another cup of coffee (and the seismometer). At Basingstoke they purchased tickets for the ‘slow’ train to Waterloo aboard a notorious slam door carriage. Again, a coffee was ordered.
The brief was to apply the seismometer to the carriage movement. And along with the scientific test, they were to also apply the ‘coffee cup test’. Suffice to say, the coffee cup was undisturbed on the first and second legs, but somewhere between Fleet and Farnborough it fell over, spilling its contents.
Worse was to come. The seismometer readings went into the red, far above the ‘serious earthquake’ level, such was the poor condition of the line between Basingstoke and Woking.
I was the instigator of the exercise, having had frequent experiences of the line whenever there was a problem with either the Up or Down Fast lines on my daily commute. Before that, I’d spent a year commuting on the recently electrified East Coast Main Line from Grantham.
It was an interesting comparison. While the ECML trip was undoubtedly faster and smoother, the pre-privatisation BR Waterloo-Southampton provided far more trains per hour at much less cost. And there was always the chance that if I could leave the office at Broadcasting House early enough, I could get the Mk 3 coaching stock to Salisbury headed by a vintage Class 50.
I travelled recently from Basingstoke to Waterloo on South Western Railways stock. A ticketing glitch on my part meant we were heading east on the old slow line - and the coffee cup experience came to mind. But although I was accompanied by a paper cup brimming with Americano, barely a ripple showed on the froth.
From Farnborough we joined the Up fast line with no noticeable difference. The carriage was clean, and the information headers fully operational. And while I wasn’t counting mileposts, we were going plenty fast enough to make the overall journey time just 50 minutes.
It was a clean, quiet, pleasurable experience. It was third rail at its very best. So why is third rail treated with such disdain?
I now live in Derbyshire, close to the Midland Main Line and the Hope Valley trans-Pennine route. Recently I travelled to London from Chesterfield on a newish diesel unit that gave an acceptable, but by no means smooth ride. It was noisier… and late!
On another occasion I went to Manchester, joining a Northern Pacer at Grindleford. My seismometer test would have gone off the scale! And in Cowburn Tunnel I actually thought we’d derailed. Packed with off-peak travellers, it was a lousy experience.
But why? Third rail offers the north of England the chance to have cast-off (but still very usable and infinitely superior) rolling stock and a transformed travel experience at a much lower cost, and in a much shorter timeframe than OLE electrification.
Third rail, delivering reliable 100mph services and currently enabling millions of commuters to reach the capital every morning, is the obvious way forward for the UK’s every-day travel.
When politicians say that third rail is out-of-date technology, and when I see what the ugly mass of wire and steel has done to the beautiful Thames Valley and think how that would brutalise the amazing Hope Valley and Edale scenery, I despair for those who can’t see the bigger picture.