We love the railways – you love them too. Just think of that Cheshire/Lancashire tilting-lines tango last autumn, or the Channel Tunnel tracks going between England and France last year. By 2030, the average age of Britain’s trains will be 21 years old – more than double the national average of 13 years. The British public spends £30bn a year on travel across the railways, but as the independent Rail, Maritime and Transport union told a Lords inquiry last week, trains are shabby and old. The lifespan of new rolling stock – such as Bombardier’s Chatsworth Express – is just 15 years.
No wonder the Tories have paid special attention to the railway, helping to axe the Tory policies of the last 20 years in favour of a doling out of rolling stock for the likes of Crossrail, HS2 and Thameslink. Britain’s railways are in dire need of an overhaul and investors have been arriving. Last year a consortium of Chinese firms unveiled plans to build and operate Britain’s first high-speed train line. They are planning to launch a fund to buy rolling stock for Crossrail (possibly an order of up to 200 new GWR trains), and are already talking about high-speed rail between London and Manchester and London and Birmingham. Crucially, they said they would hold trains to a minimum of 20 years, whereas most on the market are scheduled to reach the end of their life span in about 15.
But the £700bn they want to spend on buying new trains could backfire if they are not run by the British people. In a Guardian interview this week, Tory MP Theresa Villiers said: “London’s line is a wonderful symbol of how transport has changed, the Heathrow connection was brilliant and can always be improved. But in terms of what’s actually happening there, the commuter network needs further investment, and we need to be more thinking as a government of how the whole network is run.” The same time, Research firm Invensys entered talks about selling a majority stake in its Tube Lines subsidiary, the part of the rail and maritime engineering business it has been trying to sell for seven years. A deal could allow It to pay off its debt to the NHS and leave it for an attractive valuation a decade down the line.