The splendid brick-arch railway viaduct crossing the River Can in Chelmsford’s Central Park was built around 1840; certainly by 1843 it was carrying trains. It has been repointed in many places, some of the facing bricks have been renewed, and the area is subject to flooding every few years. Nevertheless, a structure built nearly 200 years ago – to carry far fewer and much lighter trains than those using it today – continues to function faultlessly.
If only the same could be said for the modern railway using overhead 25,000 volt overhead lines. Yet again, today, these lines failed, disrupting the travel of tens of thousands of commuters using the line between Norwich and London. It is easy to carp, but I do wonder whether the design margins on these structures are really adequate given the level of use they get, coupled with the cost of disruption when they fail. Furthermore, railway fares in this country are notoriously some of the highest in Europe. Are we not severely short-changing our hard-pressed commuters by demanding premium ticket prices for a barely adequate service? One more thought occurs: how can we encourage people to leave their cars at home and use the railways when they are so expensive and the wretched trains keep breaking down?
2 Comments
Clive
24/10/2019 08:24:58 pm
Peter, first of all, what's this got to do with Brexit? I'd rather forgotten that there were other topics to discuss. I think you've been a bit harsh -the trains are reasonably reliable, and while the 25k overhead cables cause chaos when they fail, their other qualities are significant. They allowed us to discard heavy, smelly diesel-powered trains, and are infinitely better than the third rail option. You mention the weight, but the lightweight units are nothing like as heavy as the early diesel locomotives. They weighed between 100-130 tons, just the locomotive, never mind the carriages. The line towards Chelmsford from the south is quite a steep gradient in railway terms, and whatever noise there is at the moment, the noise from a diesel loco trying at full throttle to get up the hill into Chelmsford was considerable. As for the cost, the apparently cheaper fares across Europe are a mirage. If the French knew how much their TGV network was costing them -ie the tax revenue needed to supplement fare revenue, they'd be horrified. In Italy, the fares are very cheap, but that's again because they don't even pretend to make the network pay for itself. We used massively to subsidise trains here too, but the ghastly Maggie set out a programme across a number of years to put an end to that. I think the only remaining subsidies are for the South-East commuter network -so even at their apparently usurious level, it seems the fares you pay still don't cover the cost of the service.
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Peter Maggs
24/10/2019 10:13:37 pm
Lad, don't mention the 'B' word ...
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