What a way to run a Railway

 Today’s speaker was Stuart Lines with his talk What a way to run a Railway, Stuart never worked on the railways but remembered as an 11yrd old being an avid train spotter. 

He took us on a journey from the early days of steam engines right up to the present day and explained the many mistakes governments had made in trying to run the railway system. Back in the 1800s when engineers like Richard Trevithick, John Blenkinsop and the Stephenson brothers were pioneering steam locomotives there was no real plan, was it to be used for carrying passengers or goods. And there was no thought about signals and even brakes in the early days. Eventually Governments came to realise that money could be made from rail companies through taxation. The railways were nationalised in 1948, after years of under investment during the seconded world war they were described as a disgrace. In 1963 Dr Beechings report came out with a plan to save the railways losing money, he closed 2,000 stations and 5,000 miles of track. The Serpell report came out in 1983  which heralded the start of privatisation of the railways. 

Stuart finished by talking about HS2 which had an initial cost of £36 billion and was to reach Leeds and Manchester but has now been scaled back to go just to Birmingham at a cost of £100 billion and a finish date of 2036 -2039. 

What a way to run a Railway indeed. 

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