» Issue 1: Autumn 2004

Britain’s railways: atrophy or renaissance?

Professor Rod Smith’s food for thought at Guilds’ Christmas lunchtime seminar

IN RECENT years, Rod, Head of Mechanical Engineering at Imperial College, has been deeply involved in railway engineering. He is particularly well acquainted with the Japanese railway industry. Beginning his talk, he quoted historian Trevelyan who said that railways were England’s gift to the world. Earlier, John Bright had said: ‘Railways have rendered more services and received less gratitude than any other institution in this country’. The contribution of railways to the first and second world wars was immense, he said, but the combination of the two, with depression in between, left Britain’s railways in a very poor state.

Particulate pollution

He produced pictures of particulates diesel engines are pumping into the atmosphere. They left a thick haze over the mainline stations. ‘If something isn’t done soon’, he said, ‘this will go on for the next 40 years’. The government has run out of patience with the railways, said Rod. The whole idea of privatisation was to remove the railways from the Treasury’s pocket so that it operated without state assistance – but this didn’t happen. State assistance now represents about 60% of the railways’ running cost.

Out-of-date

Rod asked rhetorically, after producing pictures showing the rundown and out-of-date look of our railways: ‘Are we content to have our railways like this for the future? ‘My Japanese experience is that they run a very successful railway. Their fully-automatic trains leave every four minutes from Tokyo to Osaka, That’s like travelling from London to Edinburgh. Their maintenance takes place between midnight and 6am.’ In December, a train using the same principle, developed in Imperial College by Prof Eric Laithwaite, achieved a speed of 360 miles per hour. It was fantastic to ride, he said. Displaying a map with red lines representing high-speed railways in service now across Europe, Rod pointed out Britain’s small contribution. It reaches only halfway to London from the Channel. ‘In 20 years time most of Europe will have connections for high-speed trains, but we will be sitting on the outside’, he said. ‘Maybe that’s what we want – to sit aloof from the development. But the engine of our economy, our transport, will stall by 2020.

Future capacity

‘It takes a long time to build infrastructure and we need to think seriously, in order to plan and cope for the capacity needed over the next 50 years. We are in a mess now and, believe me, we will be in a greater mess in 10 to 20 years time. We need to marry the new railways with the car.’ Rod ended: ‘Some people think they are Napoleon and some people think they can sort out the railways’.