The railways!

Different projects funded and operated by different groups of people. It's like asking why The owners of Boots don't improve the clothes at M&S.

At least, that's how I see it.

Privatisation of the railways may not have helped but that's a political as I'm going to get

as political...

Someone's pet project? Promises made? Tit for tat? Definitely political IMO.

HS2 is seen as necessary for businesses? And to open up the North, culminating in HS3.

The cock-ups with electrification is slightly laughable. Who would have known railway lines had bridges?

I don't think we can just improve what we've got as our railway system is archaic compared to the rest of Europe. But I need to ask various members of my family for the exact details [we are very much a railway family]. Track size and all sorts of things. Our railways excaped somewhat unscathed after WWII, whereas a lot of Europes were rebuilt and modernised [again, I need to check out the details]. Various past governments have had no time for the railways, preferring to pander to the road transport lobby and privatisiation just meant that even less money was ploughed back into it. #realised it'simpossibletoanswerthiswithoutgettingpoliticalthough.If money isn't spent now, it will only cost even more in the future. I'll never forget coming back to England after a rail trip abroad and being ashamed of the trains here compared to the ones I'd been travelling on abroad [although this was a long time ago and Eurostar meant that things did improve in that area.

The trains, even the grottiest ones, I travel on now are a big improvement on the ones I travelled on to and from uni back in the late seventies. Things have i proved and still are improving, I think.

Except for luggage space on the Pendolino, which is pathetic.

I realise we need to provide better access to 'the north' but wouldn't that be done (to a large extent) with electrification and other improvements to the existing system. I do understand what you are saying about Boots and M&S bags but it's basically all money for the railways.

Tegan, railways hold a special place in my heart as my favourite grandfather was instrumental in the introduction of diesel engines onto LMS having helped to design and build them. He was the chief electrical engineer and when I go to antiques fairs in the Roundhouse at Derby I recall being taken there to see some of 'his' engines and I always get a lump in my throat.

Kitty Peter Soulsby and other local politicians are mounting a campaign to continue with the East Midland Mainline Electrification.

After all, a lot of money has already been spent modifying the bridges and making them higher, on the route to accommodate the electric lines.

x

What is interesting shelving current projects, are the Government going ahead with HS2 ?
Mick

I saw that as well, J52. He always sounds so pompous but actually manages to pull things off quite well - eg Richard III.

I think it's a shame that so many small branch lines were cut by Beeching. At one time you could travel to all kinds of lovely places just on the train but now you have to complete your journey by bus(if there is one) or by prohibitively expensive taxi.

We could have, if we could manage the steep steps lugging a blooming big staircase, gone from our village all the way to Lyon to board our river cruise earlier this year. So it's not all bad.

I travel by train quite frequently these days, and was disappointed to hear that the improvements to the trans Pennine express are being postponed. I totally agree with bags about luggage space on the pendolino too. Honestly, there is a lot of England beyond Birmingham and Manchester, and I am fed up with being invisible.

So Midland Mainline electrification between London and Sheffield has been been "paused" so that work on Great Western can be safeguarded! For 'paused' read 'stuck in a siding for all eternity'! Up here we know that everything the government proposes for Sheffield is usually a bit too good to be true!

"Our railways excaped somewhat unscathed after WWII, whereas a lot of Europes were rebuilt and modernised" - unscathed? Well , relatively, I suppose, But they were worn out, and fit mostly for the scrap-heap. The calling in of Dr Beeching was an essential step in saving the railways from bankruptcy.
As for the small branch lines whose loss we mourn, people didn't use them. Beeching did not suggest lifting the tracks and selling the land - that was the government's doing - he believed that some of those lines might well have become viable again, when they could have been re-opened.

Isn't there talk of re opening some of the lines again?

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jun/26/damning-hs2-report-reveals-serious-cost-concerns

Sorry but it can't be anything but political.

I suspect it's impossible to discuss the railways without getting political but I'll do my best. I live near Manchester and honestly don't see that getting to/from London 15 minutes more quickly is more important than improving our existing lines. We've had the number of carriages on our trains into Manchester reduced so much that the trains are terribly over crowded and by the time they reach our local station it's vanishingly rare for anyone to be able to get on. Our local MPs have been raising this in parliament for all the good it's done.

The cost of rail travel is problematic, it's expensive and finding your way through the various charges on different train services is time consuming and imo daft.

Tegan's points are interesting

I agree with all your points Iam.

I have members of my family from Spain, Denmark, the US and Norway.

They are embarrassed at the state and the cost of the railways here.
We need to renationalise to get them improved. We pay subsidies and then pretend they are private. The Eastern and Western lines are run by Virgin, when the idea of privatising was to break up monopolies.
Transpennine stock are old bus carriages on different wheels. How was the company allowed to get away with that? It's up North, of course, so out of mind.

It's political.

theconversation.com/without-network-rail-upgrades-the-northern-powerhouse-will-falter-43582

For once, I find myself in complete agreement with Durhamjen! I now feel faint and have to go and lie down in a darkened room!

I'm hoping someone will maintain the Severn tunnel - I was once stuck on a train in it for several hours and sat watching water from the Severn Estuary cascading down the walls from the leaks. Whilst returning home afterwards by taxi (courtesy of the train company) in the middle of the night, we were regaled by a train track engineer (who was sharing the taxi and had also been trapped in the train) with the details of the age of the tunnel and how unsafe it is! I hold my breath when I go through now!

Hence my cynicism about H2 etc. - if we are putting rail passengers' lives at risk every day because of inadequate investment in maintenance, then maybe there are better priorities!

The transpennine trains I've been on were not buses. Can you pose some pics please, jd, of what you mean?