Something to say? This is your platform.
The article by Nigel Harris on vaccines and railways ( Comment,
RAIL 925) was most interesting. Yes, Kate Bingham and her team have done a remarkable job as the UK’s Vaccine Task Force, and I am delighted that by February 24, some 18 million UK citizens had received their first jab.
But it is seeing the task through to the very end which yields the true glory. Let us all hope that their work is a success and that we can all face the future with some renewed faith.
However, could someone do the same sort of thing for the UK railway system?
The first thing to recall is that the Prime Minister gave Kate Bingham a clear instruction, and it is at this point that I doubt if the UK railways and the Vaccine Task Force can be compared.
For a start Bingham and her team did not have to endlessly consult Mick Cash and his mates.
She did not have to consult endless self-appointed ‘focus groups’, consider the views of over 30 million people who have at some time or another travelled on a train or who have a pet scheme to rebuild the Cheshire Line from Liverpool Central to Southport.
So even if the UK rail industry has an equally talented ‘guiding hand’ as Bingham waiting in the wings, he or she will never be able to expedite the task as he/ she will be sucked into the morass of politics, trade unions moaning and groaning, and ministry administration.
The freedom to get on with the job will not be there. Every criticism will have to be treated with care and to be fair.
RAIL frequently features articles on how various locomotive building programmes, UK rail reorganisations, electrification schemes and so on have been carried out since 1945.
All of the articles have set out histories of committees reporting to committees, eventually resulting in presentations to this board and that board within railway Regions, and finally/maybe the Minister and his Ministry.
It has been fun to read, but any man or woman who would take on such an offer to ‘do a Bingham for the railway’, faced with such a history, would be mad.
A J Slatter, Reigate
While agreeing with the praise heaped upon Kate Bingham, it is not a comparable situation to the plight of the railway industry in the UK.
The vaccination development process was hugely expensive and received full financial and moral backing from the Government and the overwhelming majority of the population, as it was perceived to be - quite rightly - in the best interests of the nation as a whole.
I feel that the vast majority of the country would be dismayed to see such financial support for a mode of transport which to many people is seen as niche at best and almost irrelevant to their needs.
Future rail use will surely be greatly reduced as work and leisure habits change radically.
This is without considering that so many train operating companies do not invest enough of their profits back into their operations, but rather reward the foreign governments and companies that own them.
It’s also a bone of contention for many of my friends that so much of our rolling stock and rail equipment is now manufactured outside the UK, thus depriving UK citizens of gainful employment.
Eric Dawson, Bolton
Has the industry missed its chance to restructure?
Nigel Harris ( Comment, RAIL 925) summarises the problem faced by the rail industry perfectly.
We need a Kate Bingham. We NEEDED a Kate Bingham last March.
I subscribed to RAIL last year as part of your offer to railway staff and have enjoyed reading it. But the common theme running through all issues since (apart from ‘we need HS2 in full’) has been the need for the rail industry to reorganise and restructure to meet the new normal.
Twelve months on and nothing much has changed. But millions of people have been vaccinated and hopefully the country will return to normal in four months’ time.
Sadly, the rail industry will look very much the same as it did last year. The same problems will be there - interfaces, internal competition, a ridiculous fares structure, lack of Oyster card systems… the list goes on and on.
I fear the Government will now take charge, and that cost savings will be quicker and easier to implement than restructuring.
It may be too late now to make those changes. As the saying goes: “that ship has already sailed”. Or perhaps that should be: “that train has already departed”.
Keep fighting hard for my industry. There are many railway staff who appreciate your efforts.
Devon Johnson, Wakefield
Reversing Beeching
It is easy for a later generation who were not born at the time to blame Dr Richard Beeching and Secretary of State Ernest Marples for a programme of cuts to the rail network that was haemorrhaging money and grossly underused.
Yet the reduction in rail services cannot be viewed in isolation, but as part of the social revolution that was taking place at the time.
As Britain emerged from the drab 1950s, an explosion of renewal and optimism was taking place.
Old Victorian High Streets were making way for new shopping centres with large car parks. The BMC Mini was launched in August 1959 and the M1 motorway followed in November.
Old heavy industries were closing, while new businesses in smart offices were opening. Full employment meant young men no longer had to toil in dirty mines, shipyards and steam railway sheds, but could join the growing electronic industries that would change all our lives. Visiting a new shopping centre by car was so much easier than waiting for an old steam train to get you there.
When the government announced that thousands of miles of railway would be closed, what was the public reaction?
There were no mass protests, marches or demonstrations. No union objections or strikes. Quite simply, the British public were deserting railways in their droves, and the closure of a local station made little difference to their lives.
It was not Beeching or Marples that closed the railways, but the people who chose not to use the trains.
So, 60 years on, will ‘Reversing Beeching’ be a realistic policy in an age of mass car ownership? Will people who never experienced life when a local station existed actually use trains?
In some cases, yes, where congestion and growth has made road journeys difficult. But I fear getting people out of cars in the 21st century will prove just as difficult as stopping them from getting in them in the 20th century.
Doug Fennell, Coulsdon
Fewer and longer trains
Network Rail Chief Executive Andrew Haines has been tasked with the production of yet another East Coast Main Line utilisation report.
I fervently hope that he will recommend that long-distance high-speed trains must be formed of at least nine vehicles on the southern section of the route - between London and Doncaster - except perhaps at the quietest times of the day and week.
The available capacity on the route has been gobbled up in recent years by open access operators running small trains. Their businesses could still continue, post-pandemic, by running ten-car trains to Doncaster and dropping off portions for (say) Hull or Bradford.
COVID-era operations have proved, to no one’s surprise, that a smaller number of trains leads to improved performance. Let the ECML lead the way in operating fewer, longer trains.
Peter Foot, Bedford
Waiting for the wires
The news that no fewer than 30 Class 93 multi-power locomotives have been ordered is excellent news ( RAIL 923).
Just one point, though. Given that (English) politicians are noted for foot-dragging on electrification schemes, will they use these new locomotives simply as an excuse to defer more electrification schemes?
For example, when will we see actual work start on the already agreed extension of the Midland Main Line wiring from Kettering to just Market Harborough (never mind any further)?
In that context, it will be interesting to see the reaction of the Department for Transport to Network Rail’s recently presented proposals for ‘No Regrets’ further wiring! And how speedily and positively they react!
Breaths should probably not be held!
John Gilbert, Herefordshire
High hopes for integration
It was encouraging to see the very positive approach of senior railway officials to the post-COVID-19 era ( RAIL 922).
There was one glaring omission. There was no reference to integrated travel to those areas not served by rail.
This requires addressing, with bus companies jointly discussing timetables which are user-friendly for the passenger. This, together with good marketing, should enhance income for both train and bus providers.
James P S Thomson, Holt
Follow the leader
I have to totally disagree with Christian Wolmar’s arguments regarding a new structure for the UK rail industry ( RAIL 922).
Basically, he is confusing leadership with management. Leaders lead and managers manage.
The best leaders build a team of experts to deliver the leader’s vision while at the same time keeping the project on track. Think JFK and the Apollo Project, or Elon Musk and electric cars.
It’s fairly obvious that currently the industry is hampered by a surfeit of experts, ‘ego trip’ engineers and consultants, and by a dearth of finance business partners who ensure projects are properly managed - rather than the current Treasury response to every overspend being a binary choice between giving in and funding overspends or cutting back other projects to keep within the spending cap.
The majority of deadlines are artificial. A project extended by a couple of years to standard is remembered as a success by customers. Botched projects, tilting trains, a ticket but no seat, and missed stops to meet end-to-end punctuality linger in the memory as reasons not to ‘let the train take the strain’.
In summary, we need a leader and a management team of experts - not one or the other,
Ian Partington, Hartlepool
Third way to run a railway
Christian Wolmar discusses the privatised/nationalised railway and comes down firmly pronationalisation ( RAIL 922).
Having lived through the post-war era to the present, through various nationalisations and privatisations, customer experience is of a toss-up between lacklustre inertia/‘bloody mindedness’ from the nationalised industries, or an exploitative ‘rip off’ culture in the private sector.
Perhaps a solution lies in recognising the potential of the free-market railway economy, while addressing its faults.
The conventional political Left and Right would argue about the extent of ‘command and control’ intervention by Whitehall/ Westminster, so another model (the third way?) might look not
at the size of government, but rather at a change of role - command and control being replaced by facilitation and incentivisation.
Instead of the DfT trying to gain increasing detailed control of the railway, its role would be (as far as feasible) to inject into the transport market incentivising subsidies and charges to represent ‘hidden’ benefits and costs (what economists term ‘externalities’), making the market more complete.
Within such a framework, let the rail companies make their own decisions, while DfT concentrates on the railway’s financial framework! We can’t ‘buck the market’, but we can influence it.
David Cooper-Smith, Bletchley
Compressed natural gas
‘Zero carbon’ is the new catchphrase, and all sorts of changes and prohibitions are coming along in order to try to achieve this.
Various ways to decarbonise are becoming popular - in theory, if not in practice - and some of the limitations of the practice seem to have been ignored. The battery needs lithium, among other items. Current estimates question the world supply of this being adequate.
Battery weight and size on the railway will not be small. If a car weighing barely a ton only gets five miles per KWh, with no lights on, no heat in winter and no air-con in summer, you do the maths.
Forget recharge between trips. A diesel multiple unit can turn round in the two minutes it takes the crew to change ends. Trains don’t earn money being idle while batteries are recharged.
Whether one could have the capacity for the 18-mile Oxenholme-Windermere round trip, and then recharge from the catenary en route to and from Manchester remains to be seen. Replacing the diesel engine with a battery in bi-modes is more sensible, especially if it is just the ‘last mile’. Getting from Inverness to Wick is going to be a bigger problem.
Hydrogen needs to be manufactured, with significant loss of efficiency.
So, if a ‘perfect’ zero carbon railway cannot be created, what is achievable?
Burning hydrogen with a bit of carbon attached brings one to methane - CH4, the simplest hydro-carbon - better known as natural gas.
In the 1980s, the Union Pacific Railroad experimented with compressed natural gas (CNG) instead of diesel fuel. Because each cylinder of CNG has less calorific value than diesel, their mile-long freight trains needed five CNG locomotives instead of four diesels. Then oil prices dropped, the experiment seemed unnecessary, and no more was heard.
We don’t have mile-long freights, so burning CNG in diesel engines with cleaner exhausts (albeit with some CO ) may be the 2 ‘achievable’.
Someone will be able to calculate how many thousands of trees we will need to plant, to absorb the CO we cannot avoid 2 still creating. ‘Off-setting’ has been around for some time - maybe its time has come at last?
So, can we ‘de-carbonise’ by proxy, and get there faster by wholesale ‘de-dieselisation’ converting to CNG power?
We could also make better use of the electrification we already have. It has been claimed most freight is still diesel-hauled, despite a big percentage being under wires, while Voyagers (among others) still travel hundreds of miles on the West Coast Main Line.
Wesley Paxton, Scotland
Take a transport census
Michael Waugh’s letter and Andrew Weaver’s guest column ( RAIL 922) both relate to customer engagement regarding postCOVID travel needs.
It is worth pointing out that this year presents a once-in-a-decade opportunity to canvass every household in the UK, via the National Census. In the past, I seem to remember there have been optional census questions on the use of public transport.
Somewhat surprisingly, the census still appears to be going ahead, despite COVID.
However, I feel a delay would be sensible - not just to reduce the potential for spreading the virus through any necessary door-todoor contact, but also to help ensure that responses regarding future travel needs can be made when the post-COVID employment world is somewhat clearer.
Dave Bennett, Surbiton
Newark overhead crossing
Paul Stephen’s article on the Newark Flat Crossing states that there are no easy solutions to its removal ( RAIL 923).
As someone who does not know the area, I have looked at the OS map covering the crossing. What are the problems in putting in a sloped viaduct on the NottinghamLincoln line to carry it over the East Coast Main Line - 20 feet or so in height?
It could start just after the A46 bridge taking the road over this line (to the south west of the
ECML crossing), and then drop back to ground level just east of the Crinkley Point level crossing. There doesn’t appear to be much in the way of physical obstructions on either side of the Nottingham Lincoln route at this point.
I am not a civil engineer, but I would have thought that pre-formed concrete slabs for the viaduct ought not to be prohibitive in terms of cost.
Mike Foinette, Crowborough
High-speed links
I remember lingering for many happy hours at Trent station, a long time ago.
Most passengers didn’t want to be there at all, but they had to change trains at Trent.
In RAIL 921’s Comment, Nigel Harris said that a high-speed link at East Midlands Parkway would be another Trent. If he’s correct, then I expect that the high-speed station at Birmingham Interchange would also be another Trent, and the high-speed station at Crewe another…
Malcolm Goodall, Newark
Noisy Class 68s
I read with interest the report concerning complaints from Scarborough residents about the noise from Class 68s at the TPE depot ( RAIL 924).
As a recent owner of a property in Leeman Road, York, adjoining the Siemens depot, I suffered similar disturbance - the deep throb emanating from a Class 68 caused the greatest nuisance.
What I failed to understand was the apparent necessity to keep the engines idling for six hours at a time.
Living near a rail depot, a certain level of noise must be expected. The Class 185s, the main occupiers for many years, caused little or no problem as they tended to be moved with traction from a single
car. Steam movements were relatively quiet, but the presence of a Class 68 was immediately noticeable and (in today’s world) unacceptably loud.
It does seem extraordinary that such little attention was paid to noise emissions during design and manufacture, or that no measurement standards exist to prevent entry into service without modification.
Nicholas Long, York
No intent to ‘level up’
I read with anger, but not surprise, that the Government plans to cut the Transport for the North budget by 40% ( RAIL 923).
I smiled when Boris Johnson promised both before and after the last election to “level up” the country. I didn’t think then, and I still don’t, that he has any such intention.
You only have to look at the controversial Castlefield Corridor in Manchester. If the corridor was in south east England, or even more so in central London, then the extra tracks, platforms and all the necessary work would have been completed years ago.
Instead, the ‘solution’ is to run fewer trains over the corridor.
Having stood on a through platform at Manchester Piccadilly and Manchester Oxford Road to witness the people crammed into trains like sardines, especially (but not only) at rush hours, then I know that this is not the answer.
It is not only the North that suffers. Several years ago, we all remember what happened at Dawlish, with promises made to the people of Devon and Cornwall that the northern route would be reinstated. Where is it?
Dawlish and Manchester are roughly the same distance from London. In truth, the politicians just do not care.
Roger Wragg, Cheshire
Lynton and Lynmouth
For a few years in the 1970s, my father was a member of the three-man local VAT tribunal, and he always said the most interesting case he heard involved the Lynton and Lynmouth Cliff Railway ( RAIL
922), and the actual title of which is the Lynton and Lynmouth Lift
Company Cliff Railway.
VAT was introduced in 1973 and an immediate question arose as to whether or not the Cliff Railway was subject to it. It all depended on whether it was a lift or a railway - if one it was subject to VAT, but not if the other.
I regret I can neither remember which way round it was, nor what decision the tribunal reached. Perhaps another reader knows the answer?
Philip Shelton, Barnstaple
Level crossing near miss
Reading the article on the Norfolk level crossing near miss ( RAIL 921), I was concerned that an accident was only prevented by the instructor telling the trainee driver to apply the brakes. Is rail safety dependent on the single train prediction system, with known failure issues in this case?
It reminded me of the Hixon level crossing disaster in 1968, when the approaching train correctly triggered the barrier closing but a heavy transporter vehicle was stuck on the crossing.
That accident was caused by the improper use of a telephone to ensure the vehicle had a clear passage, but it highlighted the fact there was no secondary system to provide a failsafe operation.
Bruce Lumsden, Stafford
Rail electrification
No doubt the structural engineers can tell us, but why are the steel structures that support the catenary not constructed as arches?
Metal arches require less steel and shallower footings - and so are cheaper to construct than using the conventional method.
Andrew Blundy, London
Comfortable bus seats
I read with interest the letters in connection with buses, and often coaches, used as rail replacement vehicles.
I wouldn’t mind betting that many would acknowledge the seats on these are a darn sight more comfortable than those on the vacated trains!
John Tompsett, Seaford