5 reasons to be proud of Britain’s trains

“So this is Christmas… and what have you done?” This isn’t just a famous John Lennon lyric – it’s also a question that will be asked by hordes of angry travellers over the festive period, as the rail network faces the grim inevitability of paralysis and chaos. Over-running engineering works, cancelled trains and the four most depressing words in the English language: rail replacement bus service. It isn’t going to be pretty, and it’s enough to make you despair at the state of our railways.

It’s why I want to argue that, contrary to all of this misery, we should be proud of Britain’s railways – because we British are pioneers. Here are five reasons why:

1. We invented rail travel, and much of it still works

Railways were first invented in Britain in the 19th century, emerging from the fires of the Industrial Revolution. The Liverpool-Manchester railway was the first service in the world to operate entirely on steam and a timetable. And if this isn’t something to be proud of, I’m not sure what is. Trains began to snake across Britain and, in a matter of years, journeys that had previously taken days took hours.

But this wasn’t without challenges. Being first is great for the ego, but less positive engineering-wise, as there is no-one to learn from. For example, London was where Brunel took a risk and attempted to build the world’s first tunnel under a navigable river, and the place where he pioneered the “tunnel shield” construction method that enabled deep-level tunnelling. If the Thames Tunnel hadn’t been first, he might have looked at the design and realised that the tunnel, which later became the East London Line, really needed to be much wider in diameter. To this day, trains on that line are restricted in size by the need to squeeze into the historic tunnel.

So what is impressive is just how long the old stuff lasts. Until 2012, when trains were replaced with “S” stock (perhaps so-called because the interconnect carriages make them snakelike), the Metropolitan line ran on “A” stock trains, which first came into service in 1961. Today, the Bakerloo line still runs on trains that first came into service in 1972. Those are good innings.

The story is similar for National Rail, with one of the most common engines still InterCity 125 “High Speed Trains”, which were first developed in the early 80s for what was then British Rail. Thirty years on and we still rely on them to shift us around the country. And you thought that your iPhone 4s was getting old.

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2. Threading Crossrail through London

If you’re a Londoner, dark blue hoardings emblazoned with “Crossrail” have been a fact of life since 2009. Around 14,000 people are working to build London’s newest railway line. At times this has been annoying, with services suspended and stations closed, but this shouldn’t overshadow the scale of what is being achieved beneath our feet.

Unlike previous underground lines and extensions, the dual Crossrail tunnels are built for full-size mainline trains, despite going deep underground. When the line opens fully in 2019, the 200m long trains will carry 1,500 passengers in every train – and, in the central section, will run at 24 trains per hour. The new line will single-handedly increase London’s rail capacity by 10%.

The complexity of this challenge is hard to overestimate – and it is mind-boggling to consider the myriad of large and small problems faced during building. Unlike in the olden days, when rail companies were able to simply bulldoze their way through slums, or in China where the country is only now industrialising for the first time, building in 21st century London requires engineers to tread carefully lest they disturb any of the 4,500 buildings above ground on the route. To protect the Grade 1-listed House of St Barnabas in Soho Square, engineers went as far as digging a number of extra trenches in order to inject extra grout into the soil, to ensure that the ground remains stable.

Building the stations is just as tricky as building the tunnels. For the new Canary Wharf Crossrail station, it was decided that the best way to build it would be to drain an entire dock. The work at Tottenham Court Road and Bond Street is perhaps the most impressive. Although the new railway line is being augmented onto existing stations here, the stations have mostly remained entirely operational and open to passengers (both have closed individual lines for a little while, but they’ve mainly managed to build around serving millions of passengers).

And the engineering isn’t even the beginning. Imagine planning such a mammoth £20bn project: first spending literally decades building the political will, and then coordinating different stakeholders to make it all come together on time and on budget. Crossrail is a modern wonder of the world.

Crossrail photos by Katy Moon (Flickr), used under Creative Commons.

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3. Squeezing every drop of efficiency out of the system

Okay, so Britain might lack the shiny new trains and dizzying array of new lines that China is capable of building, but that doesn’t mean that we’re not masters of maximising what we do have. Just look at some of the ultra-detailed work carried out by Transport for London.

Have you ever wandered into the tube station at Euston and wondered why the in and out ticket barriers are not in a line? In fact, the two gate-lines (as they are known) are staggered for good reason: someone analysed what layout best facilitates the most efficient flow of passengers, and has found that not having everyone bunch around the same places means that more people can safely pass through the station.

This level of thought is shown throughout the London Underground. In 1991, when Angel station was rebuilt to use escalators instead of lifts, they had the foresight to build a whole new platform for the Northern Line so that the gap between north- and southbound would be much wider. This made the platforms larger, enabling more people to squeeze underground and meaning that boarding, alighting and processing people through the station became more efficient

Transport for London has a habit of carrying out tests to maximise what it’s doing. Earlier in the Crossrail build, unsure which material would be the most durable for new platforms, engineers installed two new surfaces – one made from granite, the other from terrazzo – into the floor at Victoria station, so that they would be able to see which is better at taking a heavy pounding from commuters.

TfL is also good at squeezing capacity out of the lines, too. In recent years, the Victoria and Jubilee Lines have received signalling upgrades that enable them to run trains closer together, and thus run more trains per hour – without having to build any new lines or stations.

You can see how carefully TfL thinks about design by looking at the recently released “design idiom” document, which is essentially a design Bible for any future stations and upgrades. Just as the famous roundel immediately signals that you’re at a tube station, the agency wants the rest of its design to have some degree of consistency so that stations become more intuitive. The designs in the idiom won’t look too radically different to anyone who has travelled on the post-1999 Jubilee Line Extension (linking Westminster to Stratford), but what is new is the suggestion that lighting could be better used to highlight where exits are found. The station of the future should hopefully allow passengers to move around more quickly by pointing them in the right direction subconsciously.

Most recently, as has been widely reported, TfL committed a heresy at Holborn tube station and instructed commuters to break London’s cardinal sin and stand on the left of escalators, as well as the right, to see if everyone standing still means that it will be less congested at the top by the ticket barriers. This culture of experimentation means that, even if we don’t have the biggest transport network, London will hopefully still be able to cope with a growing population.

All photos copyright of TfL

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4. Safety record

Britain is managing to build some impressive stuff and make it efficient – all the while facing the challenge of ancient infrastructure. And here’s what makes it even more amazing: our railways are comparatively super-safe, too.

In fact, the European Rail Agency rates Britain as one of the safest countries in Europe on a measure of fatalities and serious injuries per million kilometers travelled by trains. That’s second only to tiny Luxembourg. This is despite Britain trailing pretty much the rest of Europe in installing automatic train protection (ATP) systems, which force trains to obey signals and commands. While nearly all German and French train journeys use ATP systems, less than 5% of Britain’s do.

On the construction-side, Britain maintains high standards. So far, during the construction of Crossrail there has been only one fatal accident. And while it is perhaps difficult to directly compare the unique engineering standards faced by different megaprojects, you only have to consider the high death tolls we hear about on big projects in other countries.

5) Sense of community

Finally, well… if there’s one thing that will finally get British people to break the taboo of talking to strangers on public transport, surely it is being stuck at a red signal for an indeterminate amount of time? Given this vital role, the railways are not just Britain’s arteries, but are also Britain’s social lubricant. Don’t look at the wall of cancellations as something to despair about – look at it as an invitation to join your fellow humans in a brief moment of unity. Whatever our background, creed, race or wealth, we have a deeper bond: everyone gets annoyed by trains. Perhaps we’re not so different after all?

Ever wondered how your Oyster card actually works? Then click here to find out what’s inside TfL’s iconic blue card. (Hint: It’s a mini-computer)