RAIL fares expert Barry Doe says Government is at fault for problems with the Intercity Express Trains.
MY opinions on Great Western Railway’s Intercity Express Trains (IET, RAIL 845) produced one of the biggest email-bags I have ever had. Many said how appalled they have been as well, and that the Government must be made to admit it is controlling rolling stock design and be forced to explain why it is deliberately lowering standards of comfort.
One reader said he regularly travels from Kent using HS1, and that although the Hitachi Class 395 ‘Javelin’ is to all intents and purposes a Standard Class-only commuter train, he finds it superior to most recent builds in terms of comfort. He added: “It’s unbelievable that Hitachi has been dragooned into fitting out the IETs in a fashion that would shame the Stockton and Darlington.”
A one-time senior railway manager wrote: “Under British Rail the IET interiors would never have been passed by the Chief Passenger Managers, General Managers, Business Directors or the Design Panel. One of the reasons the Mk 3 carriage was such a success is that a prototype TSO and FO (Second and First Class open carriages) were thoroughly tested before the production design was approved.”
He went on to say that the Mk 3 sleeping cars were not as successful because they were “built in a hurry following the Taunton fire and no prototype was tested. Consequently, they had many small deficiencies… all of which would have been found at the prototype stage and been corrected at very small cost in the production build.”
It will now cost GWR a fortune to improve them, to stem an otherwise potential loss of customers - assuming it’s even allowed to do so.
I am getting annoyed at the press releases about future services being “transformed” by the IETs. The latest said journeys from Bristol will feature “two direct services per hour to London”, with journey times reduced by “up to 17 minutes”.
Well, there have been two services an hour for years, so what’s new? Today’s times are between 97 and 104 minutes off-peak. Let’s assume that drops to 85 minutes. Excellent - that’s what the Western Region’s High Speed Trains took as a norm 40 years ago.
I do have sympathy for GWR in that, sadly, with everything being dictated by the State in a way it never was when BR existed, it’s not free to tell the truth - that the dreadful design of the IET is 100% the fault of the Department for Transport.
The problems go back further, to the planning of what has become the national shambles of the electrification programme.
It was always obvious that the first scheme should have been the Midland Main Line (MML) - a straightforward railway north from Bedford with all the hard bits to the south already done. That would have cascaded relatively new ‘Meridians’, which could have gone to GWR.
The second scheme should have been the total electrification of GWR suburban - Paddington to Bedwyn, Oxford and all the Thames Valley branches (with Greenford going to London Underground).
Only after that should the Great Western Main Line have been done - a route at a time to completion. The West Country and Cotswolds could have remained diesel long term (MML’s ‘Meridians’ would have been very suitable).
Bi-modes would not have existed, yet now they’re going to be inflicted on the MML as well. Today’s electrification chaos is a total mess. Journey times will remain slow on many routes because the bi-modes gain on the short electrified sections and lose it on the remaining sections, owing to their weak power.
The blame lies with Secretary of State for Transport Chris Grayling. Born in 1962, he is old enough to have known the very high standards achieved by the InterCity Sector of BR.
A few days before I wrote this, he said in the House of Commons that BR had been “a laughing stock”. What a childish slur on the railway widely acknowledged as having been the most efficient in Europe.
He appears to have no idea of history and not understand his brief, which is why the railways are in the mess they are. He needs to see copies of BR’s 1965 and 1995 timetables, and study the vast improvements in speed and frequency that were achieved over that period.
Of course, services are even more frequent today - wouldn’t major improvements have continued from 1995 under BR?