The railways!

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

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

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

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.

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 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.

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?

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

as political...

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