TurnipRail 2 year Anniversary - The Best of the Second Year

What a couple of years it has been. As I write, my Turnip Rail website hosts 213 posts on a range of railway history topics. However, despite what I have produced, the past year, and especially the last six months, has not been one of the easiest periods in my life. In September I began suffering from anxiety, which has affected my ability to work and, I think, the quality of my output. I also broke my toe around the same time - which I'll only say was annoying. Gladly, both these problems are mostly resolved. Nevertheless, in the last couple of months I have gone through a process of a work restructure. Therefore, I have been made redundant and will have to re-interview for a job in the coming months. Consequently, combined with an increasing work-load from my PhD (which has until late September to be submitted) I have been reduced to doing a post a week.

Despite these things, I hope I have turned out posts which you have found entertaining and interesting. I have certainly enjoyed researching and writing them. So, in this anniversary post I have randomly chosen some of my favourites from the past year. 

1. “When Victorian Beer Trains Crash” – In some sense, this post from April explored the link between the railways and the brewing industry.  Indeed, I looked at some of the interesting ways that crashed beer trains were reported. I was unsurprised that the newspaper reports always seemed to have humorous remarks, this being the funniest:  “Alcohol can thus baffle her Majesty’s mail as well as her Majesty’s Government.”[1] However, what was particularly interesting was that the majority of the accidents I found befell Midland Railway trains coming from Burton. This was logical though, Burton being the centre of the Victorian brewing industry.

2. “The York Tap - A piece of railway heritage restored”– OK, this is another beer-related post, but in a different way. A trip to York in early December meant I had the pleasure of going into the York Tap, a pub sited on the York Station platform. In the post I described how the building the Tap inhabits was opened in 1907 as the station’s tea room, and its recent conversion to a pub restored the building to its former glory. I love the Tap and would recommend a visit to anyone.

3. “Unlocking the Early Railway Manager – Parts 1, 2, 3 and 4” (The link is to Part One) – Using three directories of railway officials from 1841, 1847 and 1848, these four articles sought to investigate the validity of a long-held belief that early railway managers were mainly ex-military men, as well as look at early managers generally. However, rather than presenting four finished pieces of research as I normally do in posts, I set out to describe how this investigation progressed over the period of a few weeks. The results were startling and should change the content of railway history books in the future. Firstly, I concluded that ‘the notion that military men were the driving force in early railway management is erroneous,’ given that they constituted a tiny proportion of all railway managers. Secondly, in 1848 the three great engineers of the period, Brunel, Locke and Stephenson, directly controlled  the engineering affairs of 28.81% of Britain’s railway companies. Yet, even more impressively, engineering matters for 59.13% of all Britain’s total railway mileage was under their collective charge. These are important findings and I would like to do much more work on this subject in the future.

4. “A New High-Speed Line, an Old Victorian Assumption?”– I got some interesting reactions to this post which simply highlighted something I observed. The building of Britain’s second high-speed line (HS2) was being promoted by its supporters as adding capacity to the railway network, as the number of passengers using the railways is predicted to massively grow in the future. I suggested that if you talked to any railway manager before 1900 they too would have said that traffic growth was inevitable. Yet, the expected growth didn’t occur, and after 1900 the number of passengers using the railways levelled off and then began falling. All I did was compare the two situations, observing that this part of railway history shows us that passenger traffic growth can be hard to predict. I will state this now, I did not post this because I necessarily oppose HS2; I posted it only as a consideration. I will not reveal my position on HS2, because I don't think getting political is what my blog is about.

5. “‘Crabbed, morose and irritable’ - One Liverpool Man's Complaints Against the L&NWR in 1867” – This was a post that discussed of six long letters that ‘A CONTRACTOR’ wrote to the Liverpool Mercury in 1867 complaining about the station facilities of the London and North Western Railway. The station that received the most criticism was at Huyton Quarry, which he argued ‘might be a station in Chancery, so out-of-elbows does it look, or belong to some bankrupt company, who could not afford a few pounds to put in a tolerably descent condition.’[2] Generally, these letters were just interesting insights into how the public felt about railway managers at the time and the services they received.

6. Lastly, I have done three posts this year about the first sixteen female clerks to be employed at the London and North Western Railway’s Birmingham Curzon Street Station between 1874 and 1876. The first in August looked at how the company’s decision was reported in the press. Indeed, the newspapers detailed the basic facts of their employment, for example, whose decision it was, the company’s attitude, their working environment and their pay. However, on Ancestry.co.uk releasing digitised railway staff records, I was able to look these women up and do some detailed statistical analysis of their employment. In two following posts (HERE and HERE) I examined the women’s ages, promotional prospects, length of employment and pay. Indeed, on this latter point I found that up until their eighth year they received the same pay as the men, at which point it was curtailed. This was a very interesting finding, showing that the newspapers at the time were wrong when they said that the employment female clerks was immediately going to reduce company costs.

Overall, I cannot say these were my absolute favourite posts, yet, they are definitely near the top. I strive hard in my blog to pass on entertaining and interesting pieces of railway history, things I find, and elements of my PhD. In return I have received a lot of love, complementary comments and warmth. I just want to thank all my readers so much for your support this year. My blog wouldn't have been a success without you all reading, re-tweeting and re-posting, and for that I am eternally grateful.

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[1] Lloyd's Weekly Newspaper, Sunday, August 10, 1873; Issue 1603

[2] Liverpool Mercury, Tuesday, November 12, 1867; Issue 6175

A New High-Speed Line, An Old Victorian Assumption?

There is a debate going on in the world of all things ‘railway.’ The building of Britain’s second high speed line, or HS2 as it is more commonly known, fills the pages of newspapers, magazines, blogs and websites, with those in the ‘yes’ and ‘no’ camps fervently arguing their corners. Indeed, such is the storm that has been whipped up that some campaigners use fall into trap of using emotional arguments to try and win the debate, disregarding evidence and research. However, the emotion involved can some times obscure  the central question at hand; does the nation need a high speed line to accommodate future passenger traffic growth?

The response of those who oppose the line to the projected passenger growth centres on the idea that the existing rail network will be able to be upgraded to accommodate the increasing traffic. This may have some credence, and the network does have the capacity to be modified to allow faster, longer and improved trains, as the West Coast Main Line was in 2008. On the other side of the argument, the supporters of the line argue that routes between London and Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool will start to breach their capacity before 2030 even with modification. Indeed, they believe that while upgrading the West Coast main line is an option, this can only go so far given that the Victorian network’s twists and turns prohibit high speeds. Thus, HS2 is not just desirable, it is a necessity.

Yet, for all this back and forth debates, I believe a central issue has been overlooked and ignored by most involved. Simply put: will passenger traffic actually continue grow at all? Clearly, those who support HS2 think it will. But even those who oppose the line, and dispute the pro-HS2 camp’s predictions of how quickly traffic will increase, still accept that more and more passengers will ride the rails.  Indeed, most accept future passenger growth is a reality on the basis that passenger numbers have grown between 1994 and last year from 735 million in 1994 to 1320 million (see graph below). But, I have seen very little in my reading that even mentions the idea that passenger numbers will plateau or even decline in years to come. I have seen projections of how passenger numbers could increase, but this simply isn’t the same as saying they will increase. Therefore, everyone in every camp is making a massive assumption.

However, this assumption isn’t new, has been made before by railway mangers, directors and commentators. A conversation with anyone in a position of influence in the late Victorian railway industry would have elicited no inkling from them that the massive traffic growth of the period would slow. The graph below shows that between 1870 and 1900 passenger growth increased at a rate at which not even the most astute railway mystic could predict, from 337 million to 1115 million. Indeed, the idea that traffic and revenue growth would never slow was the premise upon which almost all railways invested and embarked on new projects. Thus, those deciding current transport policy, as well of those not deciding it, have fallen into the same mind-set: “Passenger numbers will grow, so let us prepare happy in the knowledge that our assumption will pan out as expected.”

But this reasoning fails to appreciate that traffic growth is not always assured, as Victorian railway managers found out to their horror. The ever-increasing passenger (and goods) traffic numbers of the 1890s deceived railway companies’ managements. They thought that whatever investment they made in their networks would, in time, give healthy returns to shareholders because of the continually increasing traffic and revenue. Consequently, capital investment in the late Victorian period was large, including the myriad of light railways, the rebuilding of stations, a multitude of small works at stations and yards, and the Great Central Railway’s expensive extension to London.

Yet, as the graph shows, passenger traffic growth on Britain’s railways slowed after 1900 and started to decline beyond 1911, as the railways’ trade came under attack from new forms of transport such as trams and motor transportation. Indeed, after the First World War Britain’s passenger numbers went into further free-fall. Thus, all the major capital projects that had been started and finished before 1900, as well as those that were continued on with after it, were building capacity into the network that was simply not needed.

But there was another problem after 1900 that affected the railway industry. In the 1890s railway companies’ costs had risen and their profitability had fallen, making their shares were less attractive to investors after the turn of the century. Consequently, their access to capital was diminished.  This meant that the progress of many major capital projects had to be slowed. But, more importantly, because capital costs were already high the railways’ could not easily invest in the infrastructure to counter the new forms of competition. Thus, the casual acceptance by railway officials before 1900 that traffic and revenue would continue to grow, weakened the industry's financial position after it.

Of course, I am not necessarily saying that the current upward inertia of passenger numbers will slow in the years to come. Indeed, there is an important difference between the trading environments of the Victorian period and those of the current day. Before 1900 the railways had a virtual monopoly in inland transportation, the competition they had was negligible, and their officials found it much harder conceptualise that any external threats that would challenge their long-established hegemony. Contrastingly, in the current trading environment the railways’ competition is already in existence (unless some Star Trek-esque transporter equipment is developed) and transport policy is directed by the Department for Transport. This makes future passenger growth easier to predict.

Yet, the fact that current policy makers and others continue to ask the question of ‘how much will passenger traffic grow,’ while completely ignoring the question ‘will passenger traffic grow at all,’ suggests that the same assumptions that their predecessors had over a hundred years ago may have set in. This is a worry, to be sure.

Goodbye Lord Adonis...You'll be missed

What will happen to the railways of this nation in the next five years? I don't know, who knows? The media certainly didn't talk about it throughout the election campaign. I think this is principally as one of the most expensive additions to the British railway network, the new high speed line to the north of the county, High Speed 2, was debated by the parties before the election date was even announced. Further, because the three major parties broadly agreed on how this line would be built there was no real need to highlight the small differences in each of their approaches. This said at an estimated cost of around 34 billion, 14 billion more than the Trident renewal cost, you'd think it'd at least be mentioned...once. (Ok, it probably was, I just must have missed it)While I am in no way a Labour supporter, one of my main irritations about the fact they are now out of government is that Lord Adonis, probably the man in the country who least lives up to his name, will have left the Department of Transport (DofT). I think that at the moment it is a shame he will not go down in British political history for his work at the DofT. Every time I hear his name mentioned on the news it is to regale us with tales of how he was one of the members of the Labour party negotiating team that tried establish a Liberal Democrat-Labour coalition, against the wishes of many in his party. This is, unfortunately, not what he should really be remembered for. After all, he was only trying to keep his party in power. What's more, it is likley that he will also be remembered as the man who erroneously grounded everyone under an ash-cloud when the Icelandic volcano blew its top. Again this is not really something he should be remembered for.

What Adonis should be remembered for is the many policies that he enacted and drove forward to improve this country's rail network. He took office as Minister for Transport in October 2008 under Geoff Hoon, and succeeded him as Secretary of State in June 2009. Hoon was pro-plane and pro-car in his approach, but largely ineffective. Yet Adonis felt that the 'green' transport policies were the future, and as such railways took centre stage. As such, Christian Wolmar stated in Rail Magazine that 'the new Transport Secretary has effected a complete revolution in the government’s handling of the railways.' (RAIL No. 624, August 11th 2009)

Firstly, and it has already been mentioned, he was the man that got the plans for building a new High Speed Line to the north off the ground. This was after years of political indecision and having the proposal firmly locked away in a filing cabinet. On Adonis' advice, the Government set up the the High Speed Two Ltd company in February in 2009 to look into the viability of the project. Adonis therefore brought the issue to the forefront of politics and this had the effect of forcing the other two major parties into developing their own policies regarding a high speed line. Subsequently, there was universal consensus in the election manifestos that the development of High Speed 2 is now an economic, social and environmental necessity. Therefore there is now a real hope that building work will start in the next parliament (even if the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives do disagree on the finer details). This said, the sad thing is that if it does succeed Adonis won't be at the helm to take any credit for getting this gargantuan project off the ground.

Further, Adonis set out in July 2009 a Government plan to electrify important lines that still are dependent on diesel traction. These included the Great Western main line to South Wales and the Liverpool to Manchester route. This would electrify 300 miles of railway, would give faster journey times, and provide travellers with a more pleasant journey. This last part is particularly relevant to me. Having recently completed two journeys on the Great Western mainlLine I can say that the juddery, jiggery and jumpy service was more than a little irritating at times, especially when trying to consume hot tea. While the plans were given a very negative reception in the mainstream media, the railway media and franchise holders for once had the same opinion, and applauded the vision that Adonis had shown. However, I think the electrification plans are less likely to be undertaken by the incoming government. It was a proposal that came from Adonis and his team, and not from business or the travellers. Therefore with him gone, electrification probably won't see the light of day for a long time. In addition, while relatively cheap compared to HS2 at 1.1 billion pounds, it was only projected to break even after 40 years. With a massive debt the Government are highly likely to side-line it based on this projection.

The last area where the loss of Adonis will be felt is in his support for the travelling public. He demonstrated frequently that for him the traveller came first. Mainly this ethos was expressed through the DofT's increasing influence over the companies running the franchises. Yes, Adonis was accused of micromanagement, but there are a number of cases where this was of very large benefit to the customers. Additionally, there were none that come to mind where it was not. Firstly, he beat South West Trains up (something that I am never unhappy about) regarding their plans to close ticket offices, reversing the decision. Secondly, as National Express East Coast's own money worries were beginning to hit the quality of the service, he told them that their game was up and stripped them of their franchise. As a result we now have the Government running East Coast as a not-for-profit company. I certainly have no complaints and to my mind the service has improved. Lastly, he conducted a rail tour round the country experiencing the delights of the British rail network. The joy at the end of it was that he complained about the fare prices and gave an ear-full to the Train Operating Companies (TOC). This was a man who frequently supported the rail user over the TOC's lust for profit.

There were of course mistakes, and the Intercity Express Programme (IEP) springs to mind. This was a project to replace all of Britain's ageing high speed trains, some of which are nearly 35 years old, at a cost of 7.5 billion. Yet, the plan was correctly put on hold in February this year after £20 million had been spent. The project's value for money was to be reviewed given the financial crisis. Yet, as I have stated before in my blog, it was better to spend 20 million erroneously, than waste 7.5 billion. I suspect, given the fact that Labour dropped the plan in February, that this project will not be revived. This is one case where I won't complain and for various reasons I am happy to see the back of it.

As I write there is no Secretary of State for Transport, the new government hasn't appointed one. Lord Adonis was a man who could see into the future. He envisioned a Britain where people used trains more than cars, where rail transportation was clean and comfortable, and where the rights of the rail user were above those of those of the TOCs. He saw that long-term rail policy is not something that interests a great many people, that the rail user is essentially concerned with those aspects of travel that confront them from day to day, such as fares, open ticket offices and quality of service. He addressed these things, yet at the same time realised that their were bigger issues that needed attention to make the railway industry a success, such as long term strategy, funding and the environment. He realised that the media and the public would not demand these changes, rather that the big initiatives needed to come from his office, from his mind. Therefore this is why I feel that in the last year and a half Britain probably had its best Secretary of State For Transport in a very long time (well, as far as the railways go). It is just a shame that his tenure is now cut short.

What, therefore, are the priorities for the new Secretary of State for Transport regarding Britain's railways? The important things are having vision and the protection of the interests of the traveller. It is not good enough for the new Secretary of State to simply accept the 'way things are.' He or she needs to push to make Britain's railways the best they can with ideas, confidence and having the railway user always in mind. Adonis' momentum needs to be continued, but I suspect it will not as it will be hard to better this exceptional Secretary of State for Transport. Goodbye Lord Adonis.

The child who sits out games...the Tories and High Speed 2

Now I didn't think I could get away without mentioning a little announcement that came on Thursday regarding plans to build a second high speed line northwards out of London. However as an avid reader of left-leaning and liberal blogs, I was surprised not to find any criticism of the Conservative position on High Speed 2 (HS2) beyond the established press. OK I may not have been looking that hard, but at least I did look. In truth I, and most rational people, feel that High Speed 2 should not be a party-political problem, as its development and construction will take place over a period of 20 years. Therefore given it could take four parliaments, possible alien invasions, and hover-boots to get going, the parties have to work together to make this happen.

All the parties endorse high speed rail. Indeed it was the Lib Dems that committed themselves to it first, the Conservatives followed, and lastly Labour signed up. So with this consensus established, in January 2009 they rallied around the company set up by the Government to look into building this line, the imaginatively named 'High Speed Two Limited' (HS2 Ltd). This cross-party cooperation was consistently and unequivocally backed by the Secretary of State for Transport, Lord Adonis who stated that the issue should be “above politics.”

Get to mid-February and the Conservatives bolted from the consensus, refusing to see advance versions of HS2 Ltd's plans and waiting, like the rest of us, to see the report which was released on Thursday. In the process they also drew up their own plans using some 'industry experts.' Theresa Villiers, The Shadow Transport Secretary's, reasoning behind this lack of cooperation was that the Conservatives were "not going to give a political blank cheque to Labour." Withdrawing was a matter, or so she said, of holding onto their rights to draw up a separate alternative to the HS2 Ltd plan. She also stated that it would be “unfair” to make a deal behind closed doors. The problem with this argument was that it was all part-politically motivated, an attempt in an election year to separate themselves from what has, in all honestly, been a well thought out, well run, process.

Their arguments for withdrawing from the consensus were so wishy washy that you'd worry that the Conservatives were serious politicians. Firstly there was no indication that there was a political blank cheque anywhere. Such a thing would entail Lord Adonis standing up and saying “Look what I did! Praise the Labour initiative.” Well sorry Theresa, you can't win this one. Of course, the fact that Labour is in government means that they are the driving force behind the project, but Adonis has consistently and repeatedly stated that this is not a party political matter and has promoted this fact. In addition Lib Dem Transport spokesman, Norman Baker, said on the Guardian Daily Podcast, that he, and Villers, have had been given access to Lord Adonis, HS2 Ltd and all briefings. Additionally he said he was involved in the formulation of the proposals all the way. How then, Theresa, has the HS2 initiative been a blank political cheque when the project has consistently and loudly been shouted from the roof-tops as being cross-party and there has been no attempt by the Government to restrict the other parties' access? In truth the the fact that the Conservatives bolted is because it was an election year, and they would rather not be seen cosying up to Labour on anything. This was a mistake for them though. In reality the prominent cross-party nature of the project meant that, even in February, their rejection of this principal meant that they just ended up looking petty and isolated.

But it got worse on Thursday. It is not surprising that on day of announcement the Conservatives rejected, in part, the plan proposed by HS2 Ltd. While still wedded to the idea of the high speed line their two main objections were the proposed connections to Leeds and to Heathrow. Firstly lets take a look at the Leeds debate. In the HS2 Ltd plan the second stage of the route proposes that the line makes a Y shape after Birmingham, with one line going off to Manchester and another to Leeds. I would think this is a common sense approach considering that the aim of the line is to speed up the links between the North and South, and therefore stimulate economic growth. Well guess what, the Conservatives alternative plan rejected this logical simplicity. Their projected line would be run to Manchester and cross to Leeds in a L-shape. Why on earth would anybody wanting to go to Leeds travel to Manchester first, particularly when there is already a 2 hour link from London out of King's Cross? There would be no benefit in time saved for the traveller! This is a ridiculous plan, and just another attempt by the Conservatives to distinguish themselves from Labour.

The second bone of contention for the Conservatives was the Heathrow question. The line planned by HS2 Ltd would run out of Euston, through Old Oak Common, where travellers can connect with Crossrail and a 11 minute link to Heathrow through the Heathrow Express. There would be no direct link between HS2 and the airport. Again the HS2 Ltd plans were logical for a number of reasons that they set out, including the high cost of tunnelling under Heathrow itself and the fact that a direct route would add 15 minutes to the journey time from Birmingham. Thus the final route they proposed has been supported almost universally by the transport press, by Labour and the Lib Dems. It is the best plan, that avoids unnecessary effort and keeps an efficient and quick, albeit not direct, link between HS2 and Heathrow.

However on Thursday Theresa Villiers raised strong, but factious, objections to this plan. The Conservatives have been pushing for a direct link between HS2 and the airport from the start of the process, in an attempt to offset the mess they have got themselves into over the third runway. Villiers said that HS2 Ltd's plan was a 'betrayal' of the original vision and that not connecting Birmingham with Heathrow was a 'big mistake.' Thus the Conservative alternative proposals have the Heathrow embedded in them, like a tick, with a direct link between HS2 and the airport. This said, their plans actually don't have a perfect link between HS2 and Heathrow, and their route still means that travellers would have to get off the train just short of airport and get a shuttle bus service. Therefore how long would that take out of the passengers journey times? 11 minutes perhaps? Add the 15 extra minutes on the train journey and this adds a significantly large amount of unnecessary time onto journeys from Birmingham. Therefore, like their alternative route to Leeds the, the Conservative's Heathrow alternative has thrown logic out of the window, in an a paper thin attempt to differentiate themselves from Labour. This, however, has once again made them look ridiculous and confrontational.

In an interesting postscript to Thursday's events, yesterday Villiers' objections to HS2 Ltd's plans were further exposed as wishy-washy by resistance to the alternative proposals from individuals within her own party. Firstly Boris Johnson rejected the alternative scheme. While he did not commit to Labour's plan explicitly, he stated that, “A central London terminal is essential as well as an interchange with Crossrail to the west of London in order to whisk people to and from Heathrow as speedily as possible.” This, in essence, was a tacit acceptance of the HS2 Ltd plan. Further, on Thursday Villers made the foolish mistake of calling the Old Oak Common interchange site, which is in the Conservative controlled Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham, “Wormwood Scrubs International.” This quite naturally brought ire of the local council, and Mark Loveday, the council's head of strategy came out saying “It is unrivalled as a site for west London's High Speed 2 interchange.” While I wouldn't like to speak for the whole of the Conservative party, it is clear that the illogical stance of the Shadow Transport Secretary has divided internal party opinion.

Therefore from start to finish the position of senior Conservatives has been to go with their partisan instinct, rather than act with their brain, by consistently making this a party-political issue. They have consistently presented alternatives to the HS2 Ltd that are illogical and are simply different for difference's sake, in bumbling efforts to differentiate themselves from the consensus and Labour. However their plans, and their objections to the HS2 Ltd plans, have been rejected by the transport media, the other parties, and most notably voices within their own party. This has therefore made senior Conservatives look weak, confrontational and obstructionist. By separating themselves from the political consensus they are now simply the child who sits out games, when everyone else is having fun.