the biggest mistake of all?

Economists often talk of opportunity costs and misallocation of resources. I reckon that in 50 years time we'll all look back and see the Beeching cuts and the, once quite serious, belief that railways were finished and the policies that grew out of that huge error as the biggest misallocation of resources the UK has ever seen.

For a start the Beeching cuts didn't save the railways a penny - they made no contribution to reducing the costs of the railways. If anything they reduced the overall income as many people living on closed routes simply abandoned the railways altogether, rather than find alternative means to get to the railhead.

But even more importantly the consequent congestion effects caused by people being FORCED to use the roads, both for passenger and freight services, had a huge cost, massively outweighing any savings made by scrapping a few branch lines.

I know some people think that the second railway age will merely reverse the Beeching cuts, but remember that this assumption is based on some miraculous energy source being available to keep at least some cars running. In reality of course once the level of traffic on roads falls to a certain point it will no longer be viable to keep roads open. Rail will really be the only available option. So just reversing the Beeching cuts will nowhere near solve the problem, unless we're prepared to totally abandon whole swathes of countryside. But surely these will be the very areas that need transport to bring food to the towns and cities? So if lines will be needed to bring food in then surely it will be best to operate them as passenger routes as well? This supposes a huge expansion of light and ultra-light rail, bringing rail to every corner of the country. So as well as a total reversal of Beeching the trunk and branch lines will be accompanied by a Vicinal style network of narrow gauge and light railways. I do sometimes think most of us simply haven't taken on board the scale of the rail revival, and the benefits (and problems) that will bring!

And as for misallocation of resources - how many billions were wasted on developing a road system for a form of transport with a severely limited life, and what will the costs be to restore the network, particularly through developed areas, compared to the costs of keeping the routes open? These questions will keep transport economists in work for decades!

deadly serious

Swanage Railway.


Welsh Highland Railway.


Gartell Railway. (John Penny).


Jinty at Midsomer Norton 2005.

One of the oddest things about all this New S&D thing is that I still occasionally get asked 'Is this a serious scheme?' It's deadly serious. I have studied the economics of Peak Oil, of transport and of railways and I still can't see any way - short of apocalypse - that this can't happen.

Consider two futures. One in which - somehow - economic expansion continues and some sort of alternative/s to oil is found. Roads would become increasingly congested, towns would continue to expand. Already our railways are bursting at the seams - new lines are not just desirable but inevitable. And in this (extremely unlikely) scenario economic expansion could lead to increased carbon output. How long before every government finally 'gets' what the rest of us have for years - that fuel efficiency is one way of reducing atmospheric carbon? Railways are at least FOUR times as efficient as road transport, much more than four times as efficient as air travel (which even in this scenario is doomed). Light and ultra-light rail are even more efficient.

The other future, the far more realistic one, will see economic expansion halt and even contract, and the road system grind to a halt due to a mix of sky-high oil prices, deteriorating maintenance of roads and ever greater limits on carbon output. This could happen over decades, years or even weeks. In this scenario rail expansion won't only be desirable but a matter of life or death, for communities if not for individuals. New railways will be opening everywhere, not just totally reversing the Beeching cuts but reaching places that never got a railway first time round, because in this scenario no railway = no way of continuing as an economic community.

The New S&D has never been about dreams, but more about stopping a nightmare. A New S&D is already needed, many feel that the original line should never have closed, in twenty years time only a few rocking lunatics won't see the need for it.

What we need - HAVE - to do is get organised NOW, develop our networks and contacts, within the rail industry, among local people, at local, regional and national political levels. It will be a struggle to get resources, human and financial. We will be competing with hundreds or even thousands of other routes desperate to reopen before the oil runs out. Serious? You could say that!

innsbruck - the future of transport

Four shots from this week's trip to Innsbruck - urban and mountain transport at its best! More - but not too much - to follow!

rother valley progress

Track preparation and tracklaying westwards from Bodiam - another thing they told us we'd never see! (Courtesy Rother Valley website)



Bodiam station (18.4.1976), before regular services reached the station. It was amazing the way this bit of the KESR retained its Colonel Stephens atmosphere.

An excellent post to the message board - yet more trackbed is turning into a railway again. This is on the 'lost' section of the Kent and East Sussex Railway, the section westwards from Bodiam to the network junction at Robertsbridge.

The KESR was the jewel in the crown of the Colonel Stephens railway empire, which included lines like the East Kent Railway, the Selsey Tramway, the Shropshire and Montgomeryshire Railway and, closer to home, the Weston, Clevedon and Portishead Railway.

It opened in 1900 and closed to passengers in 1954. Freight traffic remained on the Robertsbridge-Tenterden section until 1961. A preservation society was quickly set up and the track remained in place. Tenterden is a reasonably sized town so does really require a railway.

Right from the start there was typical 1960s opposition to the line returning, most of which hinged on the railway's numerous ungated level crossings but mainly on the level crossing of the A21 trunk road at Robertsbridge. After court battles the KESR finally won the right to survive, but did have to abandon the link with the network. Over the years the line has gradually extended westwards in stages, and now reaches the honeypot of Bodiam with its castle.

But many supporters of the route never gave up on the 21st century idea of linking the line back to the network and at last the first bit of tracklaying has now happened on the section westwards from Bodiam. This part of the route is being restored by the separate Rother Valley Railway.

Even the most blinkered petrolhead will concede that in the future any heritage railway that wants to survive in an energy-poor future will need to offer both real train services and a link to the main rail network. I'll even forecast that some time in the next 20 to 30 years the KESR will look again to restoring the genuinely lost section of its route, the section northwards to Headcorn and a main commuter route into London, and beyond that to build the sections planned but never constructed, to Rye and Maidstone.

The light railway was an idea ahead of its time. Cheap oil killed many of them off, the end of cheap oil will signal a huge increase in light railway construction. They may not have the dubious 'charm' of the originals, but they will do what light railways were conceived for, providing cheap and modern transport to rural areas.