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Britain will need an M1 railway: Test-bed is wanted at once: Six signalboxes could control SR: Don't undersell the diesel: Promoting the Pullmans: What happened to the WR timetable? The mini-buffet litter problem
Letters
Towards reliable BR wagonloads
Blueprint for an automated commuter railway
New automatic car park control on London Transport
Hydraulic vs electric: the last words
SR's Guildford power signalling is complete
£30m Scottish resignalling plan
BR's diesel testing station at Swindon
British Rail 1966-7 timetables: LMR's North-West local services are redesigned
New WR timetable has fastest-ever schedule
Waterloo-Exeter service worsens: NER improves connections
Wanted: a more precise measurement of BR locomotive performance
Continental Express
Japanese thyristor locomotive for a.c. electrified branches
Rebuilding a Paris terminus
Accident report
New diesels from Hunslet
Train running and traction performance
Beyond the Channel
Today and tomorrow
Traffic report
New books
TN the euphoric afterglow of the LMR's April 18 launching electrification has plainly changed from a dirty to an "in" word both at the Ministry and in Marylebone Road. There have been other nostalgic echoes of 1955 about these past few weeks. Encouraging noises from the Minister have set everyone bubbling with electrification projects just as the rustle of Treasury money had operators and engineers gaily spending millions in their mind's eye - and later in fact - eleven years ago. Weaver Junction to Glasgow might be all over bar the press parties to judge from the way Regional officers are bending journalists' ears to their own backyard schemes, never mind what the BRB seems to contemplate (see page 334). The Minister herself has been reported to hanker after an electrified trunk route network comparable to that of France.
But the ultimate French network is almost complete now. Even with the quicker tempo of electrification possible on BR, the availability of capital, manufacturing resources and qualified technicians is likely to prolong a comparable conversion of British trunk routes until the late 1980s at least. The characteristics of an a.c. electrified railway on the present BR model should still match freight traffic requirements by then. It is highly improbable that they will still have much commercial appeal for inter-city passenger travel.
Dr Sydney Jones, the BRB's Research Member, said recently that existing BR track would not stand speeds in excess of 125 or 150 m.p.h.; according to one senior LMR officer, little over 110 m.p.h. can be got out of the Euston-Manchester and Liverpool routes as a practicable operating maximum without massive engineering works. This is no criterion on which to spend a hundred or two more millions for the 1990s and beyond. There was always a powerful case against electrifying the existing LMR main line instead of building the rail equivalent of a new motorway from scratch, as the Japanese did in their New Tokaido Line. A decade later, with all the interim advance in railway technology, it is that much more imperative to bring one or possibly two brand-new trunk railways into the consideration of future investment, as well as more straight electrification of present heavily-loaded routes. It it jolting to reflect that the East Coast "Deities" are nearly halfway through a reasonable life expectation for diesel locomotives so intensively utilised. Now is the time to plan seriously what will supersede them. That this should be electric traction capable of only a marginal improvement in performance, or diesels of enormous output as the only means to get fractionally higher average speeds between curves, is an ad hoc approach which cannot be entertained as a development policy likely to span 25 years and more. ' β
If an Anglo-Scottish equivalent of Japan's New Tokaido Line could be projected on some median between the present East and West Coast rail routes, it would bring Glasgow, and Edinburgh