Fellow long-suffering colleagues in the eternally beleaguered industry we call rail. Another Rail Minister goes having served no longer than it takes me to write a chapter of Napier Deltic – Britain’s Forgotten Opposed-Cylinder Panacea, just as yet another industry review gets started (and spurning my suggestion of getting involved and leading it from a new project office in what’s left of Vulcan Works); a growing list of rail franchises look set to hand the keys in; the introduction of the Azumas and Caledonian sleepers are put back yet again; Great Western electrification is massively behind schedule and over budget; Midland Main Line electrification is nowhere to be seen; the Elizabeth Line may end up starting posthumously at this rate; and the Freight Operators have made no attempt to exploit the woefully under-utilised Channel Tunnel to attract desperate pre-Brexit freight customers onto rail.
Well well well well well well.
I do find it strange that I was the only one to see all of this coming, as set out in copious past editions of Permanent Way Industry Knowledge (PWIK to those with the subscription). I set out the conclusions of the current Rail Review at least 4 years and 28 seconds earlier in my article on The Triangular Opposed Franchise Engine which proposed a three-way structure of Regulator, Infrastructure Manager and Railway Undertaking, capable of generating 3,300 horsepower. This would have sorted at a two-stroke the issues of franchise specification, industry fragmentation and timetable chaos, assisted by blowers to improve cylinder exhaust scavenging.
The challenge of new rolling stock designs was also addressed about 15 years ago in my article on Push-Pull: Opposed Traction and Rolling Stock Strategy, which suggested use of English electric locomotives coupled at either end of rakes of Mark II or III coaching stock, using diesel and/or electric and/or diesel and/or electric traction depending on the time of day and interest level of the traincrew. Hybrid solutions were possible using recycled chip fat from the Vulcan Fryer in Newton-le-Willows.
As for all the other cares and woes, it strikes me as obvious, and intuitively apparent, that this could have all been solved years ago, had the Government and British Rail not chosen to short-sightedly stop production of the Class 55 and their world-beating pairs of D18-25 series II type V Deltic engines: mechanically blown 18-cylinder engines each rated at 1,650 hp (1,230 kW) continuous at 1500 rpm. Why oh why oh why oh why they didn’t follow my advice in my article Build More Deltics: You Idiots remains a mystery to me to this day.
Still, can’t say I didn’t warn them. And as to their own dysfunctional proposals, all I can say is, I wouldn’t have done it like that.
This article is an abridged version of the 200-volume Encyclopedia Delticus, Flawed R, published by Hoddle and Hyprocrite, price £55.55 from a good bookshop. Back copies of PWIK are available on monthly subscription somewhere.