rail v road

I have been reading a fair bit about Peak Oil etc lately but have a question for you. If electric cars are a bit of a con, how are we going to run trains in the future? I ask, as electric trains seem to be the only way forward [ ] with big electrification schemes coming to fruition.

It's a question of scale and efficiency. I read somewhere that to actually replace our entire car fleet by electric cars we'd need to increase our electricity generating capacity fourfold.

Trains of course are far more efficient for two reasons. Because of the lower friction of steel rail on steel wheel they use energy four times as efficiently. They can also get their supply via third rails, overhead, stubs, conduits etc. They don't need to carry the extra weight of batteries or all need recharging at the same time (overnight mainly in the case of cars).

The other problem for cars is that road surfaces need constant repairing using asphalt, which is oil based. As the price of travelling by car increases less and less people will be able to afford to run cars. This will decrease the tax take, which will probably mean higher road taxes, driving even more people off the roads. If the government try to shift the cost of keeping roads open to the general taxpayer, most of whom will never use roads, they will face huge opposition. Of course the cost of maintaining roads will increase despite the general reduction in traffic levels as the cost of asphalt will be directly connected to the price of oil. All this will be in a background where the future will mean less and less oil.

We'll see a wholesale shift to rail transport both due to government policy and the inability of most people to afford to run a car. The expansion of the rail network will of course mean even less electricity available to the car driver and at the end of the day any government will take the strategic decision to support rail over road, particularly as freight will be switching to rail in huge quantities. I can't see successful electric artics ever working because of the weight of the batteries needed to haul, say, 40 tonnes. Unless they start wiring up all the roads of course, but what would be the point? They may as well then convert them all to railways, to get that 400% efficiency gain!

assailed by peak oil from all sides

When Peak Oil starts reaching the national press - especially the Climate-Change-loving Independent - you know something's up! This was Thursday's headline. Seems cheap oil is running out faster than even the most pessimistic forecasts. The current recession hasn't helped at all (apart from depressing demand slightly) as a lot of investment has been cut back.


Then on Friday MoneyWeek headlines with this. Of course electric cars will only be a short-lived fad as nobody is explaining how all this extra generating capacity is going to be provided or fuelled ...


... and reads even more stupidly when Friday's Economist carried this headline. We can't even keep up with existing demand, especially once the current crop of nuclear power stations are decommissioned over the next decade or two. Electric cars are possibly the biggest con yet.


And on Saturday this succinct gem appeared on a leaflet pushed through the door - no doubt with patriotic force - by the BNP!

the future - I don't think so!

This is the Nissan Leaf. It's being marketed as 'zero-emission'. This is what our leaders seriously think will be the future of transport, along with biofuels, fuel cells, hydrogen and no doubt magic spells.

Let's get this straight. This vehicle is NOT zero-emission. Even a tram or train is not zero-emission. Even a bicycle isn't as it has embedded energy in its construction and maintenance. Nothing, short of walking barefoot, is zero-emission.

Our 'leaders' think we are stupid. We've been sold the semi-myth of global warming as the reason for all this faffing about looking for new 'clean' energy sources. They are TERRIFIED of Peak Oil, the only consolation being that they will not have to worry about the consequences. Even airhead George Bush lives off the grid.

We will almost certainly NEVER find a zero-emission energy source. Anything that helps produce energy or uses energy will have required energy to build it. How much embedded energy went into building this wonderful 'zero-emission' car for example?

And, more to the point, how is it going to run? Well it's 100% electric. So it will need batteries. Batteries need metals to work. Are they mined and transported with NO energy use? And will these batteries never need recharging? No, they'll need recharging very often as the range is just 100 miles! And the electricity needed to recharge them - that's going to be zero-emission is it? No, even if it's fuelled 100% by renewables including nuclear there is still loads of embedded energy in the construction and maintenance process. But of course they will just be topped up via the grid. That means burning coal and oil which produce tons of emissions.

The point is that energy in the future will be constrained. The easy energy has now all been used up. Every decision - economic, political and personal - in the future will have to take into account energy use and availability. Personal transport is unlikely to be anything more than bike, foot or, if you're lucky, horse. To keep freight moving, and people moving further than the range of a bike or horse, we'll need railways. To move perishables quickly we'll need railways. To get people to work or on holiday we'll need railways. To get people around towns and cities we'll need trams. Everything we currently move on our congested and crumbling roads will need to be moved by rail or horse. As cheap energy runs out it'll become harder and harder to seek out alternatives.

The main point is that we can do all we need to do in the future using pre-oil technology. That doesn't mean it has to be dowdy, utilitarian or boring. It can still be ultra-modern. But the principles behind it will be mainly pre-oil. Rail uses a quarter of the fuel to move equivalent loads compared to road transport. It's all to do with friction. It can also have energy delivered by many different modes, from using wires, third rails, conduits, stubs or batteries for electricity, to burning wood or waste for a new generation of steam locomotives. The linear nature of railways will allow plenty of methods of collecting and distributing renewable energy, from solar panels on telegraph poles to windmills at station and loco shed sites. Woodland can be planted alongside railways for future fuel sources.

Roads will die sooner than most of us think. As fuel becomes more and more expensive less and less of us will have the option of personal transport use. We'll be clamouring for public transport. Sustainable public transport. More and more freight will switch to rail, particularly as new lines are opened, taking pressure off the current network. The roads themselves will crumble as oil, a principal component of asphalt, becomes almost impossible to find. Roads may survive in towns, carrying a few underpowered and expensive electric delivery vehicles, but roads between towns will fall into disuse as we all take the train and tram. Their maintenance costs will rocket just as the tax take from a smaller and smaller number of functioning vehicles plummet.

This is the future. Rail will be cool, roads will become like our savaged rail network in the 1960s. For those who doubt that what we are proposing will come about, give this article some serious thought. If we all work towards building a sustainable transport network for the future - cycleways, canals, tramways and railways - then the apocalypse predicted by many (using the old scapegoat 'climate change' as the catalyst) will not happen. The future is, in reality, much brighter than that. The future is a New Somerset and Dorset Railway!

more web content heading your way

Expect loads more content on the website over the next few weeks. We're trying to do a piece on each station, past, present and future. We're always happy to get any further info, especially on the current status of S&D stations. Visit the station part of the website here.

feeding the tigers

We spent this afternoon at the High Sheriff's Garden Party in Bristol. It was a very civilized afternoon!

What's this got to do with the S&D you may well ask!

Well, these are precisely the movers and shakers we will need to bring round to what we are doing. Not in Bristol of course, but in Somerset and Dorset.

Next year we will be launching a company with the sole aim of building and operating the New S&D. It will be a commercial company but owned 51% by the New Somerset and Dorset Railway group. It will be able to raise money through all the normal channels open to commercial companies, through bank loans, grants and subsidies and, of course, by share issues. A ballpark figure of two billion pounds has been suggested for building a New S&D. Whilst this sounds like a lot of money to your average heritage railway 'puffer lover' it's chickenfeed in the business world.

But the clever thing is that it will be owned 51% by a group that understands and appreciates the heritage and history aspect of the original S&D. It will also be well aware of the business case for manned stations, manual signalling and regular steam services overlaying the normal passenger and freight services.

If you're the sort that loves networking and making contacts then why not offer your services to the New S&D?

turning points

(Abingdon 1985)

I was looking at the Waverley route site yesterday and one of the FAQs was - Why was the route shut down previously – was it not lack of passenger demand? Why should it be any different this time?

I liked the answer so much I've modified it and nicked it for the sidebar!

The original Waverley Railway line was axed after the Beeching Plan which predicted a national decline in rail traffic. It focused entirely on long distance intercity passenger and freight services without due regard to the needs of local areas. Since then there have been major improvements to rail technology. Railways are now increasingly important to solve local travel needs and reduce the environmental impacts of road traffic and road congestion. There has consequently been a major resurgence in the demand for rail travel. As a result there is much more government emphasis today on improving public transport in order to provide an integrated public transport network.

This really does hit the nail on the head. The Waverley route was closed really late in the hate campaign - 1969. It was, like the S&D, a main line. It served several large towns, particularly Hawick and Galashiels. Nobody locally wanted the line closed. It left the whole of the Scottish Borders devoid of any real transport.

Devolution has led both Scotland and Wales to push well ahead of England in restoring rail lines that should never have closed. The new Waverley route will not have as large a population catchment area as the new S&D. Yet they are years ahead of us.

To me the real turning point was in 1976 when the possible closure of the Settle and Carlisle was reversed. From that date there have been no major rail closures in the UK. Lines and stations began reopening soon afterwards, even in England. The Channel Tunnel was built as a rail tunnel only. The new link to the London Olympics is rail only, there is no car parking. The world is changing, and this is before Peak Oil really hits. Petrol and diesel are still incredibly cheap, yet already our railways are busier than they have been for over 50 years.

And now 'our' government is beginning to soften us up for the end of generally available personal private powered transport. New railways and tramways, road pricing, congestion charges, Sustrans as custodians of future rebuilt rail routes, even busways are part of this process.

More on busways next post. Make sure you're sitting down when you read it!

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!

you couldn't make it up!

I know this looks like some sterile Photoshop fantasy, but this madness is actually happening in Cambridgeshire. This is the guided busway that some loonies have been building - on a railway route would you believe - between Cambridge and St Ives.

In the words of one of our members - I have been meaning to go over and photo some of this meaningless busway before it opens, just as a warning to other railway re-opening schemes just what can be imposed by government if you're not careful.

I doubt very much that this would ever happen through the Mendip Hills, but it just goes to show that rather than accept the fact that they were wrong to close these lines in the first place, they will re-open them as busways instead, as it can mean less loss of face.

They won't last into the future, as its really a poor mans' railway, albeit at twice the cost!

I have to pinch myself looking at these pictures. What the hell are they thinking of??

This line has a vigorous campaigning group, seeking to have the (previously intact) route restored, electrified and ready to carry hundreds of thousands of former car users into Cambridge and on to the network. Instead they get this total joke, an oil-using monstrosity that peters out on the outskirts of Cambridge to just push more (inevitably almost empty) dirty buses to fight their way through the congestion to the sanity of Cambridge railway station - at more than twice the price of a restored railway (three times the cost of a modern tramway or light railway)!

So what poor St Ives gets is a time-limited joke, more oil guzzling buses that aren't even flexible. No solution to future freight transport. A one-off system with no ability to expand, a soon to be overgrown 'showpiece' that is unlikely to tempt anyone out of their cars once the novelty's worn off. It's already looking tatty, even before it's opened. It'll be no use in the snow. All it will do is encourage the citizens of St Ives to call for the restoration of their railway ASAP. What a total joke.

Mick Knox cleverly likens it to the Haytor Granite Tramway (below).



That also was a one off, and you can still see its remains high up on Dartmoor. This will be the perfect monument to this hopelessly failed government - an overgrown anachronism. A badly thought out 'solution' to the end of cheap oil, that appeals to no-one, doesn't do the job and was a total waste of money. All it tells us is that they have no intention of allowing us to own private transport in the future.

This caused a major upset in Cambridgeshire. 3800 people voted for the railway, 4 for the busway. 4!! And I doubt even they will use it ....

teasers

I've got a host of posts lining up but still not recovered from swine 'flu so thought I'd just put a few teaser pics up to hold your interest and as an aide memoire!

Hopefully I'll get them done over the weekend.

gartell weekend

(Details and photos courtesy John Penny)

This weekend sees 'our' railway - The Gartell Light Railway - hold the second of our Transport events after the success of last year. We had a lot of compliments after our first event of this kind, mainly because we are more relaxed than some other events of this type! This year Steve Rodd, the man behind it all, has organised a two-day event, with more exhibits than last year, and yet entry is free with your train ticket, although a donation is appreciated of course. Take a look at the NEWS section of glr-online.co.uk We're just South of Templecombe - you can't miss it. See you Saturday or Sunday!

rail future

Things have been buzzing around New S&D headquarters this week - and not just because of the swine flu! I've had a host of emails, letters and phonecalls. I will eventually dilute them all down to blog posts, but I'm still not 100% by any means ...

One thing we have done is join, as a group, Railfuture. It is the campaigning arm of the long-lived Railway Development Society Ltd. They must feel vindicated after all these years now that rail reopenings and developments are on everybodys' lips. Yet bad habits die hard and there is still a feeling of 'they're out to get us - this time with busways!' which I find more amusing than alarming! Fear not - busways are a 21st century version of the Blennie Railplane.

We'll be placing an ad in their next issue as this is a targeted market for us. I'd also advise all of you to join as individual members as this is a really good cause. Their website is here.

toe in the water

The New S&D appeared 'out there' over the weekend.

It wasn't a New S&D stall, but the Wessex Society stall at the Tolpuddle Martyrs' Show carried some hastily printed leaflets for us. Below is David's report back.

Take-up of the leaflets was very slow and I have most left over. Bob Craig took a batch of them over to the RMT stall, where they were apparently well-received.

I had three good conversations with folk who expressed interest, along the lines of 'nice idea, but it'll never happen'. They were all concerned at how practical it would be to deal with route obstructions. Buying-out what is now prize real estate and constructing diversions were both viewed as hopelessly expensive. Nevertheless, the idea of trying to secure whatever bits of trackbed come onto the market was applauded as very far-sighted. Although it was thought that the planning system might also have a role in protecting the route its limitations in this respect were appreciated. Where a route is safeguarded at all, it is likely to be no more than the width needed for a footpath or cycleway, as reportedly has happened at Radstock. A visitor from Midsomer Norton also welcomed the fact that New S&D would be looking at the line as a whole and hoped that it would enable the groups on their three different sites to work together more closely.

A teacher from the Blackmore Vale recalled that pupils used to travel by train to school but that the pattern of schools has now changed so that this would no longer be practical today. She did think that the Blackmore Vale - with the Dorset/Somerset boundary winding through it - was one area where an over-arching Wessex identity could help in addressing rural deprivation, especially access to facilities. She also recalled that the railways had had quite a socially divisive effect on Templecombe, as a barrier to movement within the village. She still finds bits of coal in her garden and wondered at the pollution involved in re-instating the railway.

There are some interesting points raised here. We overcame the 'nice idea, but it'll never happen' mindset years ago, but it's clear that we've got all that to look forward to again once we bring the message to new areas and new people. No problem! Many of the naysayers from a few years ago are now active members and supporters of the New S&D. At Radstock the protected piece of land is wide enough for a single track. In any case it is very rare that development takes place right up hard against a protected right of way, and it is more often that not just a garden extension, hardly a problem. It's also pretty clear that 90% of the population are still unaware of Peak Oil - or 'energy security' as our 'rulers' like to call it. It wasn't that long ago that 90% of the population were ignorant of climate change! As for development on S&D trackbed - there is very little, none of it is 'prize real estate' but poorish farmland. I doubt there are 65 dwellings on the whole trackbed of the S&D - but this number have been compulsory purchased and will be demolished as the Waverley route south of Edinburgh is rebuilt. This really is a non issue, and stems from ignorance.

To me the most interesting comments were those about Templecombe, that the S&D tended to be divisive there. How this compares with a motorway, A road or indeed airport runway wasn't gone into!

None of these are major issues, and we've been here many times before.

I'm really looking forward to the New S&D going 'out on the road' later in the year, bringing the message to those villages and, disgracefully, towns, that are still waiting for their trains to come back.

working together

It's really important that the four groups currently rebuilding the S&D and/or preserving its heritage should commit to working more and more closely together over the coming years. This has always been an important aim of the New S&D. It's very sad that in the past certain S&D groups barely acknowledged that each other existed!

I personally don't understand this attitude at all. We are all surely working towards the same thing?

I feel there are some obvious areas where we should already be working together. Joint membership would surely be a good idea, allowing S&D supporters to pay one membership fee that would allow them to work at ALL S&D sites. Joint events would allow us to throw all our resources together. There are some pieces of equipment and people with specific skills that could be applied to all the sections of line as they are restored. Also it would be great if all the existing groups could do an audit of stock and create one big ecommerce site to sell this on more efficiently.

What are your views on this because I've been hearing - at a 'high' level - that this is not a popular idea. The New S&D is committed to this but if you are a member of the other groups what is the general feeling in your neck of the woods? Please post comments to the comments section! And is the New S&D right in backing this, or should we perhaps think of ourselves only?

apologies

Apologies for my recent absence from the blog - been fighting swine flu and still not quite winning! I've got loads to post but I need a clearer head before doing so. Should be 100% recovered in a day or so.