FUEL FOR THOUGHT

In the last issue’s Comment, the editor wrote that, as steam enthusiasts, “we have to acknowledge and accept that steam railways and locomotives are not environmentally friendly”. I have to respectfully disagree. That statement is not a good or correct starting point for winning the arguments we must win, if we want to keep coal available and affordable.

Let me illustrate using a plausible example.

It is a Bank Holiday weekend. Twenty families are staying in and around Pickering. They decide to go to Whitby for the day and choose to do so by a North Yorkshire Moors Railway steam service. They walk to the station.

They are either on the train or walking round Whitby all day. Twenty cars are therefore not on the roads. The kids love it and, when back at home, want to use ordinary service trains for trips more than they did before.

Steam trains may not be as good for emissions as the more fuel-efficient trains, especially electrics, in everyday use, but they are a fair bit better than the number of internal combustion-engined cars it would take to convey the same number of people.

We need to get somebody to work out estimates for this: how much lower in terms of ‘greenhouse gas’ emissions is an averagely loaded steam service using British coal on, say, the NYMR than the equivalent number of cars doing the same journey?

There are other factors, which should help show us the direction the steam movement should take. People (who are not necessarily steam fans) want to get to places like Whitby, Haworth, Swanage and Minehead.

Lines that serve such places are the ones we should strive to keep open, and some extensions to ‘visitor hotspots’ (e.g. Peak Rail extending to Bakewell) should be a priority.

However, unless they want a train ride for its own sake, people have no need to get 500 yards away from a station platform and then trundle back to it again; hardly recreating the historical railway. I see that railways offering little more than this are still being set up, but is too late for that sort of thing.

Steam lines have a strong case for being public transport providers that can actually help to limit the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions when looking at the bigger picture.

Alan Elliott, Kirkstall, Leeds