Partly it’s the nature of the route, weaving unobtrusively through the northern suburbs, often in deep cuttings, the slow pace of the train allowing glimpses of back gardens and allotments. Originally , it was built to connect the docks in east London with the London and Birmingham railway at Willesden, and it still carries lots of freight trains today.

The fact that after privatisation services were operated by Silverlink did nothing to help matters. Though the staff at Willesden were (and are) always helpful, Silverlink managed to give the impression that nobody was really in charge. Travelling late at night, stations were always unstaffed and trains mysteriously disappeared from departure screens without explanation or apology.

I often wondered how the marketing men came up with the Silverlink brand name. Perhaps they were inspired by ‘Silver Link’; Britain’s first streamline steam locomotive which reached 113 mph on its first trip in 1935 and was the prototype for ‘Mallard’ which achieved 126 mph. If so, they were playing a corporate joke on North London line passengers whose trains rarely reach 40 mph between frequent stops.

Then there are the trains themselves, which Silverlink inherited from British Rail. And though BR built many very good trains, the type used on the North London line is not one of them. At the time of their construction, BR were trying to make a radical break from the old-fashioned ‘slam door’ commuter trains whose design could be traced back to the first electrification schemes of the 1930′s. In doing so, they threw the baby out with the bath water and introduced far too many new features all at once, resulting in a design which has never been very reliable.

When Transport for London took over from the discredited Silverlink, new trains were seen as a priority and now they are starting to appear at Willesden. From the outside they look like any other new suburban train. But stepping on board for the first time is quite a shock because these trains have longitudinal seats like those on tube trains. This leads to a feeling of space because overground trains are wider than those running underground. The feeling of space is enhanced by the gangways between the coaches which are full width without any doors (rather like the gangway on a bendy-bus), enabling you to see along the full length of the train.

The aim is to make more room for standing passengers in the rush hour, while still providing enough seats at other times. This policy of reducing the number of seats is controversial, but I think it works. It might even improve punctuality by reducing boarding times. At present the trains are 3 coaches, but a 4th will be added once the short platforms at Willesden and Dalston have been extended.

Too often on the railways, what is merely replacement of life expired equipment is advertised as investment, but the new trains at Willesden really do deliver improvements in quality and quantity.

Amid all the proposals, great claims are being made about high-speed rail. Will Hutton, writing in the Observer, claims that the European high-speed network will ‘…create a network of fast growing ideopolises..you need to be on the line’. High speed rail will cut emissions by reducing domestic flights and will release capacity on the existing rail network. And everyone else has high speed rail, so we should too. Will Hutton says our lack of high speed railways is humiliating and that in this key 21st century capability, Britain is a banana republic.

Now, I like the idea of high speed as much as anyone but all this sudden enthusiasm and promises of London to Glasgow in 2 hours leaves me feeling rather ambivalent about the whole thing. So just to play devil’s advocate, here are some reasons not to rush into high speed.

1. Cost.

Building a high speed line is going to be very expensive. High Speed 1 from kent to London was the most expensive piece of high speed railway in the world at £70m per km. Building high speed lines in the UK is expensive because Britain is a small crowded island, which means high land values and construction costs with lots of tunnelling. Even NR admits that its £34bn scheme will not be profitable. More complex schemes which involve going via Heathrow airport for example will cost even more.

2. Limited benefits.

The main reason we only have one section of high speed line is Britains dismal failure to have any kind of coherent transport policy. But there are other reasons too. Distances in Britain are not great and though the trains are far from perfect, Will Hutton’s ‘banana republic’ jibe is just not true. On main lines, trains travel at 125mph (200km/h) bringing most major cities within 2-3 hours of London. The benefits of high speed rail would only be significant on London to Glasgow/ Edinburgh routes where even the fastest trains currently take over 4 hours. From London to Leeds or Manchester the train is already faster than flying city-centre to city centre, and high speed rail would only save about 30-40 minutes.

3. Disbenefits

Quite apart from whether you really want to live in a fast growing ideopolis, high speed rail is not all good news. Claims that it will release capacity on existing routes begs the question of what sort of service will exist alongside High Speed 2. The experience of France is that once a TGV service is introduced, the existing services are severely cut, partly through reduced demand, partly to force people to use the TGV in order to recover costs of construction.  Suppose we get high speed to Birmingham, Manchester and Glasgow. What would happen to Virgin services which serve not only these cities but others like Stoke and Coventry which would probably be by-passed by High Speed 2 ?.

4. Muddle.

High Speed 1 is a success- on time and on budget- so we should be able to do the same for High Speed 2. Except that the budget was huge, and it took years to decide on a route into London, despite the fact that High Speed 1 was a relatively simple project in conceptual terms- to connect London with the Channel Tunnel.

High Speed 2 is potentially much more complex, with several route options and destinations and muddled objectives. Economic regeneration, reducing domestic flights, increasing rail capacity- you name it, high speed rail is claimed to do it. This complexity can lead to planning delays and increases in cost through ‘project creep’. Proposals to include Heathrow airport on the route are a good example of this.

We’ll have to wait until later in the year for the report from High Speed 2 into preferred routes. NR’s announcement of a preferred route via the north-west has already led to protests from business leaders in Leeds and Newcastle who don’t want to be left without a high speed line.

With cities competing to be on the route and those in between campaigning not to have high speed trains slicing through their gardens, the development of high speed rail could be painfully slow.

To begin with, it appears that NXEC is still running the service and will continue to do so until it can no longer afford the premium payments to the DfT, which will probably happen some time in the autumn. Even when the inevitable happens and NXEC runs out of cash, the service won’t really have been nationalised, because NXEC is just a train operating company (TOC).  Network Rail owns the tracks, and rolling stock leasing companies (ROSCO) own the trains. National Express may have splashed their insipid colours over everything, but when they give up the franchise, the only assets which will change hands will be large volumes of franchise agreements.

In the current economic and political climate full nationalisation is out of the question. It would involve the government buying back expensive assets like trains and compensating shareholders for the loss of their businesses. And it would mean the DfT admitting that the franchising system had failed- which of course it has. Most of the focus has been on National Express, but it was the DfT which accepted NX’s bid to pay £1.4bn over 7 years.

The DfT has said it will re-let the franchise in 2010. No-one is going to be offering to pay anything like the NX bid, but if the economy subsequently improves, the franchise holder could make large profits while making relatively small payments to the DfT. This is the game of poker which is rail franchising- guessing revenue and costs of a complex business over several years and then trying to outsmart your competitors by out-bidding them to win. With nationalisation ruled out, is there any alternative to this crcus?

The only other model seems to be the ‘not for profit’ company like Network Rail, but even this is not without problems. The main drawback is lack of accountability- Network Rail is supposedly kept on the straight and narrow by appointed ‘members’ and by the Rail Regulator but the reality is that in large part NR does what it thinks is best. Even this would probably be a compromise too far for the DfT, which doesn’t want to lose face by admitting it got it wrong with GNER and NXEC.

Assuming that someone can be found to take on the ‘third time lucky’ East Coast franchise, they will inherit a fleet of trains in an unsightly mixture of liveries and will have to spend a fortune on re-branding. And an even bigger fortune on rebuilding the East Coast route’s image which has been damaged by short-sighted NX policies such as seat reservation charges and withdrawal of restaurant cars. Looking around at other train operators it’s hard to think of any that are up to the task of running Britain’s premier main line. Who in the early days of privatisation could have predicted that we would now be nostalgic for a private operator like GNER?

The news that National Express has given up the East Coast Main Line franchise is not really surprising. As the BBC points out, many commentators felt that the National Express bid was far too ambitious, requiring premium payments of £1.4bn over the franchise period. To meet these commitments required revenue growth of about 10% a year, which was fine during the boom, but unsustainable in a recession.

There won’t be much sympathy for National Express though, which most people feel has never managed to achieve the standard of service set by it’s predecessor GNER. Loss of revenue due to passengers downgrading from first to standard class might be expected in a recession, but has been exacerbated by National Express’ policy of withdrawing restaurant services.

My personal gripe with National Express is its dismal corporate identity, which doesn’t inspire anyone to travel by train. It’s hard to say which is worse- painting the trains so they look like National Express coaches or the meaningless and forgettable NXEC (National Express East Coast) brand name.

With some coaches still in the old GNER dark blue livery, it won’t be long before trains carry 3 different colours, since any new franchisee will presumably want to impose its own corporate identity on the route.

A new franchisee is yet to be identified however, and a complex and lengthy bidding process will have to take place before a new operator can take over. So who runs the trains in the meantime? In theory the service will be operated by the Department for Transport, but it’s not quite as simple as that. Most NXEC staff such as train crews, will continue as normal. But running a railway is a complex business, so the DfT maintains an ‘operator of last resort’ who can step in and take over when franchisees fail.

This operator of last resort appears to be a firm of railway consultants called First Class Partnerships who have a ‘retainer-based contract’. (Hansard 5 Dec 2006). In other words, a team of consultants is paid to sit around doing nothing, just in case a train operator goes bust. Just how much they get paid is a mystery- I am still waiting for my ‘freedom of information’ request to be answered, though I am sure the DfT will claim that this information is ‘commercially sensitive’.

Perhaps when the East Coast Main Line franchise is re-let, the DfT should insist on the franchisee adopting a sensible ‘does what it says on the tin’ name for the train service. And the name should belong to the DfT and be adopted by subsequent franchisees. This is how most successful franchises like ‘The Body Shop’ operate. How about something like London & North Eastern Railway?. Whoever takes over will not be willing to pay  anything like the amounts which GNER and NXEC promised. That two successive operators on Britains most profitable route have effectively gone bust illustrates just how dysfunctional the privatised railway is. Will it be third time lucky for the East Coast Main Line?

As the comedian Harry Hill might say  ’there’s only one way to find out- fight!’ but this is a battle which has been raging for over half a century, at least in Britain.

It all started with the modernisation plan in 1954. Designed to drag the railways into the 20th century, one of its main aims was to replace steam with diesel and electric trains. But as the railways finances worsened in the late 1950′s the plan was speeded up. Dieselisation was quicker to implement than electrification (which needed installation of overhead wiring) . By 1968, British Rail had eliminated steam but only one trunk route had been electrified- the west coast main line from Euston to Birmingham, Manchester,  Liverpool and Crewe.

This scheme was a huge success but the railways continuing financial problems meant that governments became wary of big rail investment projects.  Electrification of the west coast route  from Crewe to Glasgow wasn’t completed until 1974, and the East coast main line from Kings Cross to Leeds and Edinburgh wasn’t electrified until 1990.

Even with substantial parts of the suburban network around London electrified, only 39% of the British system is equipped to take electric trains. This is the lowest figure of any major European system and means that Britain is unique in Europe in relying heavily on diesel power, not just for secondary routes but for high speed inter-city services as well.

But why does this matter?  What’s so great about electric trains?. Most of the benefits stem from the fact that the power to drive electric trains is generated in a power station and not on the train. This means electrics are lighter- you don’t have to carry around power plant and fuel- and the amount of power is virtually unlimited. Without a power plant of their own, electric trains are simpler,  more reliable and cheaper to maintain. And they are emission free at the point of use, and their electric motors can act as brakes which generate power- reducing energy consumption by around 20%. And they don’t smell horrible like diesels do. And…

And as if all this wasn’t enough, the twin problems of oil prices and global warming are tipping the balance even further in favour of electric trains.  The only down side is that you have to invest in the overhead cables to supply power to the trains.

It’s this investment which has been lacking in the past - British Rail developed plans for a comprehensive electrification programme in 1981 which showed clear economic and operational benefits, but couldn’t get funding from the treasury.  With privatisation came separation of track, trains and train operators making decisions on electrification even more difficult.

Now though, with oil prices rising, electrification is back on the agenda and Network Rail is drawing up plans for key routes like the Great Western and the Midland main line. Perhaps finally, we are going to see most of the inter-city network electrified over the next ten to twenty years.

Just because its the right thing to do doesn’t mean its going to happen of course, and  we could still be rattling along in diesel trains on main routes in 2059, assuming there’s any oil left to power them.

Check out Network Rail’s website now though, and you will see that the term ‘not for profit’ has subtlety changed to ‘not for dividend’, which is not quite the same thing. Could this change in terminology have anything to do with the fact that NR has just announced a £1.52 bn profit?

How does a not for profit company make £1.52 bn in the middle of a recession? By operating in the Alice-in-wonderland world of the privatised railway where nothing is quite what it seems.

In the real world, big profits by a private company would indicate that it’s doing well, but in the parallel universe of railway finances this isn’t necessarily the case. To begin with, NR is a monopoly so comparison with other providers of railway infrastructure is not possible. And its income is virtually guaranteed in the form of a grant from the DfT and payments from train operators in the form of  ’track access charges’. The level of these grants and payments are determined by the  Office of the Rail Regulator (ORR), who also set targets for NR to meet in areas such as delays to trains caused by faults with track and signalling which are NR’s responsibility.

If NR is making a surplus of £1.52 bn it looks as if either the charges to train operators for using the tracks are set too high, or that NR is not spending enough on maintaining and renewing the infrastructure, or both.

The ORR is curiously silent on this matter, and the media barely noticed NR’s profit announcement, probably due to the current political crisis.

£1.52 bn is quite a tidy sum and even on the privatised railway where money doesn’t seem to go very far, it is enough to make significant improvements. A key area for investment which is currently under discussion is electrification. This is reckoned to cost around £550,000 per single track km, or about £1.7 m for a mile of double track railway. At this rate, £1.52 bn would pay for electrification of around 900 miles of double track . This is more than enough to electrify the main Great Western routes from London to Bristol, South Wales and the West Country (500 miles) and the Midland route from London to Leicester, Nottingham, Derby and Sheffield (about 200 miles).

These two schemes are seriously being considered and would mean that finally all the main trunk routes from London would be electrified, more than 40 years after electrification from London to Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool.  One reason why these schemes may not go ahead is that no funds are currently allocated for them, since NR spending plans for the next 5 year control period (2009-2014) were drawn up before rising oil prices put elecrification back on the agenda. Yet NR appears to have more than enough cash to go ahead with these projects.

Too often in the past, plans for trunk route electrification have remained just that, with the result that only 39% of the British network is electrified; a much lower figure than in other European countries. Why this matters will be discussed in the next post.

I get the impression that NR actively cultivates this ‘boring’ image in order to reassure people that it is concerned solely with safety and efficiency, and to distance itself from its disastrous predecessor, Railtrack whose greed and incompetence led many to believe that train travel was unsafe.

That NR is doing a better job than Railtrack almost goes without saying, but the structure of NR and the way it operates means that it is quite hard to assess its performance objectively.

To begin with, NR is a monopoly- the sole provider of track for train operators in Britain so there’s nothing to compare it with. Comparisons with track costs in other countries are difficult- in France for example the fastest trains travel on new high speed lines while in Britain, inter-city trains  share tracks with freight and local trains.

Then there’s the structure of NR. It’s a ‘not for dividend company’, so it doesn’t have shareholders. Instead, the board is held to account by around 100 members, including some from the rail industry. But these members are selected by a panel chosen by- Network Rail, and the suspicion is that the members are ineffectual in ensuring NR is run properly. In any case, the role of the members is limited to ‘ensuring good corporate governance’ and they are not encouraged to question policy decisions or investment priorities.

If you fancy becoming a member, NR is currently advertising on its web site. You’ll need to demonstrate experience of corporate governance, though it might be wise to play down any knowledge of or interest in railways. Roger Ford, an eminent railway engineer who writes for ‘Modern Railways’ and who has forgotten more about railways than most people will ever know, has applied several times and never succeeded.

Anyone who does manage to become a member could perhaps begin by questioning the salaries of NR executives. Ian Coucher, the chief executive, is on £540,000 a year. That’s more than 8 times an MP’s salary for running a company whose income from the DfT and train operators is guaranteed and which has no competitors.

The scandal over MP’s expenses is now widening into a debate about how politics can be made more democratic, accountable and accessible.

Perhaps the same process needs to take place with organisations like NR.

The renovation of Kings Cross was the subject of a recent BBC documentary ‘Full steam ahead’, which focussed mainly on discussions between Network Rail and English Heritage over the tricky business of bringing a Victorian station into the 21st century without damaging its historic features.

This was fascinating stuff, though you really  had to  pay attention to work out what was going on. The annoying background music didn’t help and at random points there were short clips from the Ealing comedy ‘The Ladykillers’ (which was set near Kings Cross), and from the 1950′s publicity film ‘Elizabethan Express’ . And the main feature of the project, which is to remove the 1960′s frontage and build a grand new entrance on the west side of the station, was explained by a man standing inside the station waving his arms round like a windmill.

But it was worth persevering through these distractions to witness the meetings between Network Rail and English Heritage which were very revealing. NR had come up with a design for the booking hall but EH rejected it as too modern. NR modified the proposal and EH seemed satisfied, apart from some old brackets which they felt were not visible enough. NR changed the design slightly to expose the brackets only for EH to reject the whole design again.

It appeared that a couple of people from EH could, on a whim, reject designs without giving any specific reason and there is no system of appeal. In similar fashion, EH insisted that the old footbridge could not be demolished but had to be carefully dismantled (closing the station for 3 days instead of 1). The footbridge was not an original feature of the station and no-one is interested in preserving it- according to the documentary its now sitting in a field in Cambridgeshire.

Ironically, it was the destruction of Euston station in the early 1960′s which really kick-started the heritage movement, but from demolishing the Euston arch and Great Hall the pendulum has swung so far that even bits of old ventilation pipe in the roof of Kings Cross have to be preserved just because they are old. Meanwhile, when NR pointed out that they had discovered a hidden atrium above the left luggage office, EH expressed no interest. They were too busy obsessing over those brackets in the booking hall.

The endless meetings at which nothing ever seemed to be decided and the hours of consultancy fees involved go some way to explain why these big rail projects are so costly. According to the Department of Transport, High Speed one (which included the rebuilding of St Pancras) was the most expensive section of new railway in the world at £70m per km. And 25% of that went on planning, administration and consultancy. In Spain, the figure for the Madrid- Barcelona line was 2-3%.  No wonder travelling by train is so expensive.

This is how car buyers choose a new car, trucking companies choose a new truck; its even how airlines choose new planes.

Unfortunately for train passengers and taxpayers, buying a new train is a good deal more complicated and expensive than this. To see  how much more complicated and expensive, you just have to look at the proposal for a new generation of Inter-City trains- the Inter City Express Programme (IEP).

The problem is simple- many of the trains used on long distance routes are now quite old and will soon need replacing.  The largest and oldest fleet is the Inter-City 125 or High Speed Train (HST). Now 30 years old, these diesel powered trains operate most services from Paddington to the West Country and South Wales. They also operate some services from St Pancras to Sheffield and on the ‘Cross-Country’ route from Newcastle to the South West.

Although the east Coast main line from London to Edinburgh was electrified 20 years ago, some HST’s are still used on this route to reach destinations like Aberdeen which are not electrified. And then there are the electric trains built to operate most East Coast services from Kings Cross to Leeds, Newcastle and Edinburgh, which are now 20 years old. Altogether, this means over 100 Inter City trains will soon need replacing.

So its off to the train builders we go with our specification- a nine or 10 coach Inter-City train able to cruise at 125mph. This should be easy. After all, this is the kind of train which has been running for the last 20-30 years and we’re not looking for any great advance in  top speed for example. It’s basically a like-for-like replacement of the existing trains with some improvements expected from technical developments which have taken place in recent years.

But then we come up against the first problem- incompatibility. With a few modifications, a Volkswagen Golf made in Germany, or a Renault built in France can be sold in Britain. But a standard European train built by Siemens or Alsthom can’t run on British tracks. It’s not the tracks themselves- most European railways are standard gauge just like Britains. The difference is in what is called the ‘loading gauge’- the size of the train itself.

Since Britains railways were the first to develop, they did so without any sort of blueprint. Even the gauge wasn’t standardised until late in the 19th century. Bridges and tunnels were built to quite limited dimensions. European countries soon realised that setting universal standards would ensure compatibility between systems. As a result, most European railways were built to a more generous loading gauge than British lines, so although the tracks are the same gauge, the trains themselves are higher and wider. This means that new trains in Britain have to be designed especially for the relatively restricted UK loading gauge.

If off-the-shelf designs from France or Germany are too big for our tunnels and bridges, the obvious solution is to buy a train already designed for the British loading gauge. This is where we come up against the second problem-  stop-go rail investment policies.

The last 9 coach 125mph Inter-City trains built for britain were the 50-odd ‘Pendolino’ trains for Virgin services from London Euston to Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool and Glasgow. They were built in Birmingham in 2000-2002, but after the order was finished, the factory closed as there were no further orders for this type of train. This sort of boom and bust cycle has been a feature of the market for new trains in the UK ever since the massive ‘modernisation plan’ of the 1950′s. In any case, even if the ‘Pendolino’ production line could be restarted, it wouldn’t solve the problem because the ‘Pendolino’ is an electric train. This would be fine for Kings Cross to Edinburgh which is electrified but not much use for Paddington to Bristol which is not. And this brings us to the third problem- the lack of a coherent traction policy.

Traction is what railway engineers call the stuff that pulls the train- steam, diesel or electric power. Having some sort of long-term policy about what kind of traction to use is usually considered a good thing, because new trains are expensive and they last a long time. But traction policy in Britain has been a mess ever since the mid 1950′s when Britain decided to opt for diesel traction on a massive scale, while countries like France, Germany, Italy and Japan steadily electrified their main lines. As a result, only two trunk routes in Britain are electrified- The West Coast main line from Euston (electrified in the late ’60′s/ early ’70′s and the East Coast main line from Kings Cross (electrified late ’80′s).  Even these were done on the cheap. Trains from Manchester to Glasgow are diesel powered because 30 miles from Manchester to Preston was never electrified- these diesel trains run ‘under the wires for almost 200 miles from Preston. On the East Coast route, Kings Cross to Aberdeen trains are diesel powered for the whole 530 mile journey because the wires do not go beyond Edinburgh (400 miles). So long distance trains in Britain are a curious mixture of diesel (Paddington- Bristol),  electric (Kings Cross- Edinburgh) and diesel trains running on electrified routes because the wires stop short of their destination (Kings Cross- Aberdeen).

Recent rises in oil prices and fears about future oil supplies mean that elecrification is now being seriously considered for the first time in 20 years. There is talk of electrification of the Great Western from Paddington and/ or the Midland line from St. Pancras, but lack of clear plans makes buying new trains for these routes very difficult. It’s no good building diesel trains if these routes are going to be electrified at some point in the next 10-20 years. And it’s no good building electric trains if the lines are not going to be electrified. What we need is a clear decision on future electrification before deciding what kind of trains to buy. Which brings us to the fourth and final problem; the fragmentation of the privatised railway.

This is no place for a discussion on the merits of privatisation (actually it’s exactly the right place, just not the right post), but the fragmented nature of the privatised railway means that its very difficult to make progress on projects like electrification.

The problem in this case is the three-way separation between track, train and train operators. Let’s say we want to electrify that 30 mile gap between Preston and Manchester so that clean, quiet electric trains could replace noisy smelly diesels on the Manchester-Glasgow route.

Network Rail is responsible for the infrastructure (track, bridges etc) and this includes overhead electric power lines. NR doesn’t want to spend money on electrifying the route for two reasons- it can’t force the train operator to use electric trains instead of diesel trains, and under the performance regime it will have to compensate train operators for any delays caused by problems with the overhead power lines.

And rolling stock companies (which lease trains to train operators) might be reluctant to invest in new trains on a route where the diesel trains are almost new. None of the players are in a position to impose a strategy, so the inevitable result is that there isn’t one.

Lack of a suitable existing design of train means starting from scratch with a completely new type of train -and that means lots of expensive development and testing. Half a century of stop-go rail investment means a new production line will have to be created- more expense.  Lack of a coherent traction policy means that both diesel and electric versions of a new train will have to be developed- another increase in costs along with uncertainty over how many of each type should be built due to uncertainty over future electrification.  No wonder buying a new train is such a tricky business. Can the new Inter-City Express Programme (IEP) overcome all these problems and deliver a successful new generation of long dstance trains at reasonable cost? The future of the railway is at stake- failure is not an option.

Perhaps the feeling of space comes partly from the fact that it was built to accommodate trains running on Brunel’s broad gauge, with rails over 7 feet apart. Brunel considered this was a superior track to the standard gauge lines built by the Stephensons, allowing greater stability at high speed. But the last broad gauge train pulled out in 1892, the advantages of a universal gauge far outweighing any technical superiority offered by the broad gauge.

The demise of the broad gauge is a good example of how the most technically advanced solution isn’t necessarily the one which succeeds.  And though the battle of the gauges seems a long way off, stepping onto the 11:00 to Bristol provides another example of the battle between technical sophistication and pragmatism.

Judging from the interior, the train looks new (my partner thought it was a new train). But this and other long distance trains from Paddington to South Wales and the West Country are in fact 30 year old ‘High Speed Trains’ (HST) built by British Rail in the late 1970′s and recently refurbished.

If you think the railways are in a mess now, its worth going back 40 years to the late 1960′s, which certainly weren’t swinging as far as the railways were concerned. The last steam train ran in 1968, but a fortune had been wasted on unreliable diesels and white elephants like giant marshalling yards. Dr. Beeching had closed large parts of the network in a futile effort to balance the books, and further closures left a demoralised system which seemed to be in terminal decline.

The opening of the ‘Shinkansen’ (bullet train) in Japan in 1964 demonstrated that railways could once again play a significant transport role. The key was higher speeds, which other modes of transport could not compete with.

In Japan, ordinary trains run on narrow gauge tracks, which could not be upgraded for high speed, so a completely new main line was built with trains running initially at 130 mph. (incidentally, the Japanese chose standard gauge for the Shinkansen, proving that broad gauge isn’t necessary for high speeds).

There was no chance of new main lines being built in Britain at that time, so instead it was decided to design a train which could travel at high speeds on existing routes. A key feature of the train would be the ability to tilt so that it could maintain high speeds around curves. Engineers were brought in from the aircraft industry to inject what we would now call ‘blue skies thinking’. This was the Advanced Passenger Train (APT).  No-one had attempted to build a train as sophisticated as this before, so a back up plan was devised- a conventional train which could travel at 125mph; the HST or Inter-City 125.

The APT never went into regular service- you can see parts of it at Crewe looking every bit as obsolete as Brunel’s broad gauge. To be fair to APT, it never stood much of a chance, it was too far ahead of its time and the development budget was tiny compared with Concorde’s for example.

The High Speed Trains (HST) meanwhile have been operating successfully for 30 years. They weren’t perfect- initially they weren’t all that reliable, and even with two diesel engines, they could only haul eight coaches which resulted in overcrowding on some trains. But they’ve come to be regarded as something of a design classic and still offer the smoothest and quietest ride of any inter-city train.

Even with extensive refurbishment the HST’s won’t last forever though,  so the question now is, what should the next generation of inter-city trains look like? The Department for Transport is betting on a high-tech lightweight train with sophisticated technology which will allow it to operate with different power sources- the Inter City Express Project (IEP). The ‘preferred bidder’ for the new train is a consortium including Japanese train builder Hitachi, who are calling it the ‘Super Express Train’ (SET). 

This looks like a pretty complicated design, which raises questions over cost and reliability and no-one has built a train quite like this before. Will it be APT all over again? More on the IEP/ SET later.

Bath, incidentally was very enjoyable. I was expecting it to be just a little smug and rather twee, but its an elegant city small enough to walk around and with plenty of attractive pubs and cafes- ideal for a day trip.