Christian Wolmar

Network Rail learning the ropes

Christian Wolmar — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 17:01:58 +0000

The difference in reaction over the Network Rail bonus row between last year and this year. Last year, Philip Hammond railed from the sidelines and was basically ignored by Network Rail [thanks to MatthewDurbin for the correction]. This time, Justine Greening, threatening to turn up to a meeting of the members, seems to have sent Network Rail into a panic. I thought initially it was a bit of a naive gesture on her part, and I’m still not sure she understands the ins and outs of the government’s relationship with Network Rail, but certainly her move elicited a different reaction.

By cancelling their meeting, Network Rail’s directors have shown a lot more nous than last year. They seem to realise what side their bread is buttered on. However, none of this resolves the issue of bonuses, which is a blight on the industry – people on six figure salaries do not need bonuses to do their job properly. NR is not a capiatlist go-getting company dependant on entrepreneurial skills, but a boring utility which needs to do the same things day after day efficiently. In any case, who on earth needs these mega salaries anyway? What on earth do they do with the money once mortgage is paid off, kids schooled and holidays taken?

Greening gesture politics

Christian Wolmar — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 16:10:55 +0000

Justine Greening’s idea of going along to the Network Rail members meeting to cast her vote against the bosses’ bonuses exposes the ridiculous nature of the structure of the industry. Here is the person representing the interests of the government, which puts £4bn subsidy into the industry, casting her vote which has the same weight as Les from Dorking and Doris from Droitwich who happen to be members because they like the quarterly opportunity to mix with the hobnobs while quaffing cucumber sandwiches in a three star hotel.

In a way, I rather like Ms Greening’s gesture and it certainly is not her fault that she is placed in this ridiculous position. But it shows up her naivety because it is not good politics, nor does it make any sense. It is part of the wider phenomenon of started in the Thatcher era of trying to extract government out of any involvement in industry,and therefore there has to be a pretence that the railways are nothing to do with ministers. Hence, she is just one voice among all the others.

In truth, of course, this is patent nonsense. One would rather like the person responsible for the taxpayers’ input to throw their weight around rather more than just one vote out of a 100 or more. This is, I’m afraid, gesture politics at its worst. Hopefully, Ms Greening will reflect on that when she completes the long awaited paper on the future structure of Network Rail.

As has now been pointed out to me, and I mentioned on the News Channel, the government has the power to appoint a director to the renumeration committee and failed to do so. It is now, apparently, about to do so, but only because Labour opposition pointed out that this was possible. Perhaps the good Lord Adonis should have done it some time ago….

Rail 688: HS2 go ahead does not settle issue

Christian Wolmar — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 16:44:56 +0000

The publication of the government’s response to the consultation process for HS2 should have marked a key point in the progress of the plan. It should have been the point at which everyone recognised that, come what may, the scheme was going ahead, the time when the Nimbys decide to channel their efforts on maximising their compensation rather than stopping the scheme and when a confident minister proclaims that HS2 is the future.

However, it does not feel like that, despite – or maybe because of – the desperate efforts at news management that surrounded the launch of the documents. That’s partly, too, because a close examination of the dozen or so documents published on Jan 10 reveals that far from confirming that the scheme is by far the best way forward for the future of the railways, they raise yet more fundamental issues that will keep alive the controversy over the project. It’s just that these caveats on, for example, the alternatives and the consultation process were not highlighted by ministers nor picked up from this huge information dump by journalists.

Let’s start with the little bit of news management at the weekend before the launch. Suddenly, I started getting calls from TV stations about a report produced by Network Rail about the alternatives to HS2. As I was being asked to appear on TV, I rang the out of hours Department for Transport press office number and to my surprise received the report by email within 15 mins.

The reasons for such rare efficiency on the part of the press office was that the report ruled out the three main proposals supported by opponents, the series of improvements and operating changes known as Rail Package 2, the somewhat different plan put forward by 51M, the group of local authorities against the scheme and Scenario B developed by the Department itself. Network Rail’s rather cursory examination of the proposals gave them short shrift suggesting not only did they have a weak benefit to cost ratio, but also that they would result in intolerable disruption at Euston while new platforms were added. This was a rather strange response given that rebuilding Euston and demolishing a swathe of houses in the area for HS2 is likely to be rather more disruptive.

One would have thought that Network Rail would at least have talked to the promoters of the alternatives and yet the authors did not do so, conducting its analysis in secret and, incidentally, completing it in November which means it sat on the ministerial desk for two months until being released just three days before the HS2 announcement.

Oddly, , three days later as part of the swathe of documents released by the Department, there was a rather more considered report by Atkins on the alternatives. The consultants found that the 51M scheme had a whopping benefit to cost ratio of 6, and even though there are then various qualifications, these apply to any such calculation. Indeed the Atkins report warned that because the cost of these schemes was low, the BCR could change quick substantially if more money had to be spent – but that is hardly an argument against them. So why did the government feel the need to commission the rather shabby piece of work by Network Rail? The only explanation can be that the Atkins report rather inconveniently did not give the right answer. Indeed it was certainly never mentioned in the Parliamentary debate.

The Department has also managed to finesse away the findings of the consultation with the Department’s website by failing to provide a proper summary and burying the document on their website – which then apparently disappeared for several days until a Camden councillor, Paul Braithwaite, notified the DfT.

On the day, the Department’s plan for news management was clear. First there was a briefing for national newspaper transport journalists – neither I nor any rail specialists were invited, though Nigel Harris did get a one to one session with Ms Greening the night before the launch – followed by the release of more than a dozen documents on the Department’s website at 9 30am. Of course the site promptly crashed, making it difficult for those of us trying to give instant responses. Despite the importance of the announcement, there was no press conference. A clip and various photos of Justine Greening giving a brief statement in front of a Javelin train was all that we saw of the transport secretary up till the Parliamentary debate at 3 30pm.

In fact, Greening acquitted herself really well in the debate, answering 74– albeit mostly supportive – questions in an hour, which begs the question as to why she did not appear more widely. Perhaps the answer lies in her rather muted performance a couple of days later in response to the HS2 question on BBC Question Time, suggesting she is good with the Parliamentary set pieces but less strong on her feet with the public. Certainly, though, given the Tories’ male Etonian image, they could do worse than putting a female northern product of a Comprehensive more exposure.

It was not only the absence of Greening that was strange about the news coverage. Clearly Pete Waterman had been put forward by the Department team as a supporter of the scheme because he spent the whole day doing the rounds of the studios promoting the HS1 cause. There was, too, several appearances by Andrew Adonis, the former transport secretary which meant that the government’s case was being presented by an ageing, and at times ill-tempered, pop impresario and a member of the Opposition.

Where was Theresa Villiers who, older readers will remember, was the first politician to put forward the scheme when she was shadow transport secretary at the Tory Party Conference in 2008? Instead, on Newsnight we got Norman Baker, the number three in the Department who, bless him, cannot rid himself of the slightly scruffy image of the sort of maths schoolteacher whose chalk covered jacket with leather elbow patches had seen better days.

The news management, of course, did not work. The broadcast media, as they often do, jumped ahead of the story too fast, perhaps precisely because of Saturday’s release of the Network Rail document and partly because there was no set piece press conference. So the media, thinking the story of the line is already known, immediately try to get new angles, which invariably means focussing on the opposition. Now while I am deeply sceptical of the case for the line, I do think the case for it deserves a reasonable hearing.

Indeed, the far more interesting story was the way the business case for the Birmingham section of the line has all but collapsed, with a benefit cost ratio of 1.6, on the cusp between poor and medium in the Department’s normal assessment. It is only by including the rest of the Y shaped line to Leeds and Manchester, that the ratio rises to a respectable 1.8 to 2.5, but given that this part of the scheme has not yet been worked up in detail, this is pretty theoretical.

The main questions about HS2 remain. It fails on environmental grounds, on the basis of past assessments, its business case is weak, and the alternatives have better benefit to cost ratios, although they do not provide as much capacity as a whole new line. Moreover, the assumption of 2.4 per cent growth until 2037 remains, with no suggestion that mitigating measures will be necessary until, suddenly, the line opens in 2026 which is wholly unrealistic. Some of the alternatives will have to be introduced anyway.

However, on the other side, the opponents did not acquit themselves that well in the discussions. It was the ‘locals’ in the Chilterns who were given most coverage and they did appear as a frightful bunch of pinched pint quaffers in their posh pub who had just transferred from the Countryside Alliance. Their PR could have done with a bit of news management, actually. Did they not realise that all sitting in their green wellies watching a huge TV screen merely made them look self-interested and smug, rather than concerned about the wider issues? My ex-partner commented acidly: ‘I am against HS2 until I seem them on telly and that changes my mind.’ As I have mentioned before, their argument that the line will costing every household having £1,700 is as dishonest as the nonsensical claim by the supporters of the scheme that it would create 1 million jobs.

Actually, because the Chiltern residents come across as so narrow minded, not helped by one of their MPs Cheryl Gillan scarpering faster than a high speed train, the fact that the Chilterns will suffer severe degradation has been somewhat obscured. Again, because the issue is so fiercely contested, it needs a cool assessment of exactly what a 250mph line would do – and indeed, how much better it would be if the line speed were reduced to 186mph which seems plenty for most purposes. Certainly the supporters of the scheme are wrong simply to dismiss their opponents arguments as Nimbyish. It is strange, though, that the 250 or so households – both rich and poor – in Camden who will lose their homes as a perfectly good estate is to be demolished have made such little noise despite having a far better case than many of the Chiltern residents.

It is, though, not the impact on a very small proportion of the population that should receive so much coverage. The environmental effect on the Chilterns is part of the story but should not be allowed to dominate the debate as there are so many more crucial questions, such as whether the line is really needed, the validity of the alternatives, the effect on regeneration and so on. The fundamental problem is that the whole project was started on the wrong footing. It needed to commence with a very thorough analysis of railway – and wider transport – demand across the country, and then to look at possible ways of dealing with it. Instead, we got an announcement of intention to build a line at the 2008 Conservative conference quickly followed by the other parties jumping on the bandwagon. What we have never had is a clear exposition of the advantages and disadvantages of HS2 and the alternatives, set out in an neutral way rather than by an interested party. My hunch is that if this were to happen, it would kill off the project. Most of my colleagues on Rail take the opposite view. But at least we would be able to say that the arguments have been set out clearly. It’s not too late.

Panorama a sad shadow of its former self

Christian Wolmar — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 15:59:39 +0000

Looking at Monday’s Panorama programme again was a dispiriting experience. It had all the faults of modern TV documentaries with much emphasis on personal stories and nice pictures but very little substance. The message was incredibly muddled and anyone not versed in the issues would have struggled to understand what on earth was going on. It failed to explain propely the background, merely allowing numerous passengers to moan rather, as they are wont to do.

The choice of heroes and villains was arbitrary. For example, the portrayal of Chiltern Rail as a beacon of private enteprise fail to mention the fact that it was only able to invest because these expansions were taken into account during franchise negotiations. I’m not decrying Adrian Shooter, who has done a great job, but merely pointing out it is more complicated than merely saying Network Rail was bad, Chiltern Rail good. David Higgins actually gave a good account of himself but what was he supposed to say when he was pressed about Reading, a project going smoothly but not finished. Of course it might overrun, but it might cost less than expected, too.

I suspect, too, that the woman from the Office of Rail Regulation, who did look completely daft, was somewhat set up. She should have stopped the interview, sorted out the issue and come back.

Then there were the punters who came across as pretty self-serving. Well, yes they may be paying quite a lot, but, say, the guy from Wellington to Birmingham is paying only £1,500 which works at at just £7 50 per day for a 60 mile journey. Not cheap, but not exorbitant, either, and far quicker than on the congested roads.

I am not saying that the railway does not deserve criticism. God knows, I doll out the brickbats myself at times. But just that there was no structure to the way this programme was written or presented. The documentary tried to raise too many issues but did not have the time to examine any of them properly. There was no serious investigation of where the money goes – Rugby was an example already used by Dispatches and difficult to pin down – or a critique of the structure that results in the extra costs. It was just a shambolic mess making random points without a coherent structure. Rather like the railway itself, in fact.

Boris airport plan will not get off the ground

Christian Wolmar — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 16:44:20 +0000

They were talking about Boris Island on Radio 5 the other day. We’ve already got Boris bikes, the tortuously alliterative alternative to Barclays Bikes, which presumably the sponsor had hoped would be common parlance, and even Boris buses, the replacement for Routemasters that will supposedly bring back conductors, but Boris Island? That really does seem a little over the top. After all, it is, in fact a plan for an airport, a whopping great big airport in fact, stuck out somewhere on the Thames Estuary, way beyond the area under the control of the mayor of London. It’s hardly going to be called Boris Johnson international – John Lennon will spin in his grave.

It was in the news because apparently David Cameron thought the idea was worthy of consideration, but hold on a sec, is this really right. Well Boris said so, the Daily Telegraph intimated that Cameron was on side and that was picked up by the other papers, but this is a long way from any government endorsement of the scheme.

Yes, the Department for Transport is starting a consultation process on the future of aviation, and particularly of airport capacity in the Southeast, in the spring but the London mayor’s vision of a new airport on the Isle of Grain is fraught with more obstacles than Aintree racecourse.

Boris has form on grands projets He likes to espouse them without much previous thought, to grab the headlines and suggest that he is dynamic but often then gets into trouble over the details. He has, for example, endorsed the idea of a branch off the Northern Line costing around £600m to serve the proposed development at Battersea Power Station. He even persuaded George Osborne to give the scheme a boost by mentioning it prominently in the Autumn Statement, only for, two days later, the developers to collapse putting in doubt the whole project. As, too, with other ideas emanating from Boris Office, the plan had never been properly funded as it was supposed to be private sector financed but only about a third of the cost had been promised.

With Boris Island, though, any rational analysis would soon knock the idea on the head. London, according to the Department’s own previous Aviation White Paper, does not need two hub airports. Therefore, Heathrow would have to be closed down, or reduced to catering to low cost and charter airlines. That is not going to happen.

Therefore, even to the most ambitious and creative imagination, Boris Island is not set to join Boris bikes and buses as a memorial to the tousle-haired mayor. Like many of these ideas, such as the cable car over the Thames which goes from nowhere much to nowhere much, the idea of a new airport out in the shifting Kent sands has not been set in the wider context of transport or planning policy. On the face of it, the idea that it would link easily with HS1 and that access would principally be by rail is appealing. So is the fact that, as we all know, Heathrow is in the wrong place, as having planes fly constantly over the capital – I can hear one now, and I live in North London 15 miles away – is both a risk and a nuisance.

However, it is too late to move it. The whole orientation of the capital would have to change. The implications of Boris Island – or rather the Thames Estuary airport to give its proper name – for the capital are so huge that it is difficult to know where to begin. Heathrow employs 76,000 people directly and perhaps three or four times that indirectly? An airport is not just a couple of runways plonked out on empty land but a major industry requiring vast support structures. Thousands of companies, ranging from aviation engineers to US pharmaceutical firms have located near the airport. Where would they relocate? Do not be beguiled by the idea of rail access. An estuary airport would require massive new road infrastructure to support it, just as in Hong Kong, which though linked by an underground line, required a major new bridge..

Then there’s the birds – but far too much attention is focussed on them. It is the sheer practicalities and cost that ensure this will never happen. So Cameron’s supposed interest is merely a bit of spin. Not only does it offer the opportunity to help the mayor in his electoral campaign, it has the advantage, too, of annoying his deputy prime minister Nick Clegg since the Libdems are opposed to the idea. Cameron’s stated interest therefore is merely a bit of political spin. It costs nothing, except creating a bit of uncertainty among many businesses, to say they are looking at the idea but like Foulness, Maplin Sands and all the other airport ideas,

Talking with a senior railway executive the other day, I was struck by his emphasis on this country’s disastrous absence of any overall planning framework, and he contrasted this with his experience of the Netherlands where everything fits into an overall scheme. In a society that was more confident of its direction and aims, a crazy idea like a Thames Estuary airport would simply be immediately laughed out of court. That is precisely what will happen with Boris Island, but not before it has been used to gain some political capital for its main promoter.

HS2 case rests on flimsy foundations

Christian Wolmar — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 16:52:24 +0000

The plan to build a high speed rail network across Britain is the largest ever single infrastructure project this country has ever seen. In cost terms, at £32.7bn, it dwarfs predecessors such as the Channel Tunnel or the Olympics and is on the scale of, say, the Pyramids or the Panama Canal. While it is, therefore, hardly surprising that the project generates considerable controversy, it is astonishing that the basis of the project is based on flimsy foundations.

When the idea of a High Speed Line running up the spine of the country was first put forward, it was promoted by politicians on the basis of its environmental advantages and its business case. Both arguments, however, have been found to be somewhat wanting suggesting that, despite the support of all three major political parties, the scheme’s promoters face an uphill task in persuading the public of its benefits.

Writing in The Guardian, veteran columnist Simon Jenkins, a former director of British Railways, for example, said it was the greatest waste of money since the decision to build aircraft carriers: ‘HS2 is gesture spending dressed up as growth. It is Concorde for slow learners’. Numerous other economists have debunked the scheme which the government says will earn £1 60 in economic benefits for every pound invested.

In terms of the environmental arguments, the best estimates suggest that the scheme is broadly neutral in relation to CO2 emissions. This first emerged in the original government report setting out the project and while the numbers have been adjusted marginally, the argument that there was a strong environmental case to build the line is no longer used by the scheme’s promoters.

Therefore everything rests on the business case and here the arguments are far more complex. The methodology for transport projects which has been developed over the years is based on the notion of calculating a ratio between the benefits and costs of a scheme. This is done by discounting both sides to obtain a Net Present Value to make them comparable and currently, for the London – Birmingham HS line, the benefit cost ratio is 1.6.

The cost side is fairly straightforward, though clearly the projected expenditure is an estimate since no contracts have been prepared, let alone let. By and large the figure has remained broadly at just under £17bn for the first 103 mile section between London & Birmingham and a similar amount for the Y shaped section to Leeds and Manchester whose route has not yet been determined, giving a total of £32.7bn in today’s money. This figure includes a 40 per cent uprating due to what the Treasury calls ‘optimum bias’ – which would be better termed as ‘pessimism bias – based on the experience, backed by research by the megaproject expert Bent Flyvjberg, that previous big projects have generally overshot original estimates by around that percentage.

It is the benefit side that is the subject of most controversy. This is made up of two main components. First, there are the fares expected to be collected from passengers on the train services. This obviously requires numerous assumptions to be made about the number of trains operated, the share of the market that will be gained, the numbers transferring over from ‘classic’ trains services and so on. While all these are subject to interpretation, one particular assumption has attracted criticism from within the industry, the notion that the capacity of the line would be 18 trains per hour in each direction. In fact, no high speed service in the world operates any more than 14 trains per hour and therefore the assumption seems highly optimistic. In the British case the difficulty of running such an intensive service is compounded by the fact that many trains would be coming from and going to destinations not on the high speed network where they would be much more likely to suffer the type of delay with which all train passengers are familiar. If technically 18 trains per hour is not possible, then the line would not be able to take as many passengers and consequently its benefits would be lower.

Furthermore, there are two overall assumptions underlying the calculation of the benefits. First, the growth rate on the line is calculated at 2.4 per cent annually until 2034 and all benefits over a 60 year period after completion are included. This means, in fact, that half the calculated benefits accrue after 2066, outside the lifetime of most people reading this!

While in recent years indeed numbers have boomed on the West Coast in recent years, much of this is the result of improvements to the line and consequently to train frequencies in the relatively new Pendolinos. Overall, the railways have experienced a rise in passengers numbers of two thirds since privatisation in the mid 1990s, but historically this still represents a high figure over such a sustained period of time. Assuming growth will continue at a high rate is a heroic assumption. Moreover, whereas normal Department for Transport practice in assessing schemes would be to assume this growth rate for a maximum of 15 years, an exception has been made and it is now calculated to continue till 2037 – when thereafter growth is forecast to tail off.

Given all these assumption, fares are estimated, discounted back to Net Present Value, at just under £14bn, but this figure is dwarfed by the other main component, called ‘user benefits’ which are estimated to be worth around £20bn. By far the greatest component of this second component is the time savings made by passengers using the line rather than other forms of transport. It is, in fact, expected that more than half the journeys would be by travellers transferring from conventional rail and more than quarter would be generated by the existence of the new line with only 16 per cent transferring from other modes, equally divided between air and car, a strange assumption given that there are no flights between London and Birmingham.

These user benefits are calculated separately for business travellers – whose time is calculated at a generous £39.19 per hour – and leisure travellers – valued at £6 52 per hour, which is normally used to value commuters’ time. Therefore of the £20bn benefits, £12.8bn accrue to business travellers. Apart from the rather embarrassing implication – embarrassing for politicians trying to sell the project as a railway for everyone – that most of the benefit will accrue to people who are earning £81,000 per year, these figures are undermined by the fact that many people now work on the train and therefore their time savings could be viewed as almost valueless. While that would be extreme, he importance of the assumption about the value of business travel is shown by the fact that, according to the RAC Foundation Review of the case for HS2, valuing business travel at the lower – commuter – figure would cut the benefit cost ratio from its present 1.6 to 1.2, making it too low for the scheme to proceed.

Despite the vagaries of the methodology, the scheme’s very design seems to depend on keeping the BCR high. For example, the decision to design the line to a speed of 250mph (400kph) rather than the 186mph (300kph) of the most Continental lines. This is surprising given distances are shorter in the UK and the decision will mean higher costs and greater environmental degradation as a slower speed would enable higher gradients and more gentle curves. However, because time savings determine such a high proportion of the user benefits, reducing the line speed would lead to a cut in ‘user benefits’ and therefore much to the surprise of many rail industry insiders, the government is sticking to the higher speed for the design of the line.

When various other less important factors such as environmental degradation and operating costs are taken into consideration the current BCR for the London to Birmingham line to obtain the 1.6 figure, which is just on the border between poor and medium on the Department’s scale. The volatility of this figure is demonstrated by the fact that when the last detailed appraisal was made last year, the BCR was 2 and in 2009 it was calculated at 2.4, but changes since then, notably the current economic situation and various changes in methodology has lowered the figure.

Normally a BCR as low as 1.6 would preclude the department from going ahead with the scheme as a BCR of 2.0 is normally considered a minimum for major projects. However, the above calculations relate only to the first section, London to Birmingham, whereas BCR for the full Y shaped network is higher at between 1.8 and 2.5, because of the high costs of building the London terminal – which has reduced the London – Birmingham BCR and the added wider benefits of linking major cities such as Leeds, Sheffield and Manchester. However, no detailed design work has been carried out north of Birmingham and therefore the costs and benefits of this section are subject to even greater variation than the first section.

The sensitivity and constant readjustment downwards of the final BCR figure lays bare the extent to which this is the application of a methodology based on theory that holds up poorly to detailed scrutiny. Ultimately, the decision whether to go ahead with the High Speed Rail scheme will be made more on the instinct of politicians, rather than reliance on this methodology which is so easy to manipulate in order to give the ‘right’ answer, both for supporters and opponents of the scheme. The Victorians who built the original railways had no idea of whether, ultimately, they were a good idea or not, and just as the promoters of today’s high speed lines are relying on guesswork to justify their confidence in the project.

Tracing your railway ancestors – WDYTYA magazine

Christian Wolmar — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 11:36:12 +0000

It is almost impossible to exaggerate the importance of the railways in creating the Britain we know today. Before their invention, travel was a slow and arduous business and few people ventured very far from their homes. Once the railway age began, with the opening of the Liverpool & Manchester railway in 1830, people’s horizons opened up and travel soon became commonplace, even for the relatively poor. The railways ushered in the modern age and though their role in dominating transport has been taken over by the car and the lorry, their position in history is assured.

Within a mere 20 years of the first railway, there were 5,000 miles of line across Britain and the railways were fast becoming the nation’s largest industry, a position they would hold until well into the 20^th century. Consequently, they were the nation’s biggest employer and during the railways’ long heyday, almost everyone must have known someone who worked in the industry. Some towns such as Swindon, Eastleigh and Crewe grew up solely because of the local railway works and therefore virtually all the men were railway workers.

In trying to track down family members with a railway connection, the workers can be divided into two main categories. First, there were the men who built the railways during the construction period which, with a few minor later exceptions, lasted between 1830 and 1900. They were called ‘navvies’ an abbreviation of ‘navigators’, the men who built the canals which themselves enjoyed a boom before the advent of the railways and were employed by contractors, initially local but later often run by men such as Thomas Brassie or Samuel Peto who built railways across the country and, indeed, abroad. The navvies were a distinct group men who travelled round the country wherever there was work available to construct the lines. They were proud people, who saw themselves as distinct from the ordinary labourers who were recruited locally and did not have the same level of skills. Not only were the navvies proud of their ability to work harder than the less experienced men, they could outdrink and outeat them and were prone to remarkable binges on their payday, spending all their money. At times, too, they took enormous risks, often working drunk as beer could be part of their pay, and consequently their death rate was high. As a result of the dangers and the excesses, many perished young and without issue, although some were accompanied by families who followed them around from site to site, often living in insalubrious conditions. The victims were usually buried nearby but their identity as railway workers was not always revealed in local burial registers, as they could be listed according to their skills as miners, bricklayers, tunnellers, masons or possibly to their ignominy, as mere ‘railway labourers’. It is impossible to estimate the number of navvies, but certainly at the height of the various railway manias, such as in the 1840s and 1860s, tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of men were building railways. There were, too, many agricultural workers who helped build the railways in their local area, perhaps only for a few weeks or months, but it far less likely that any record of their work on the railway is available. They were looked down upon by the navvies who considered them unworthy colleagues.

The second, and inevitably much bigger group, encompasses all the people who worked on the railway. There was an incredible variety, from platelayers and gangers who maintained the track, to porters and ticket collectors at the stations to the white collar workers behind the scenes, who counted the money or set the timetable, and of course, the elite, the firemen and drivers of the locomotives. There were, too, thousands of workers in the locomotive and carriage works, many of which belonged to the larger railway companies. The big railway companies were led by grand figures who owned or ran them, several of whom were also MPs or local figures of note such as mayors or aldermen. There were even men whose sole job was to go and wake up drivers and firemen who worked unsociable hours and had no means of keeping time.

The railway companies operated rather like armies. They imposed strong discipline on their peripatetic workforce, but also treated them, for the most part, with benign paternalism. A job on the railway was usually a job for life, provided the worker followed the rules which were many and varied. Offenders were sacked without hesitation. In 1848, the Great Western dismissed a clerk at Abingdon for betting on a horse, while on the London & North Western later sacked a ganger for going off to get a cup of tea. Many jobs required the wearing of uniforms, and not surprisingly this attracted many former members of the services to join the railways.

For some occupations, railway work was very dangerous job. The most perilous task was being a shunter, working in a train shed hopping between engines to move them around with the ever present risk of being run over. Porters on platforms, too, would often have to undertake the hazardous jobs of connecting or disconnecting carriages, not infrequently resulting in the loss of fingers or hands. Hundreds of workers were killed each year – for example, in the three years 1874-6, 2,249 workers were killed and more than 10,000 injured – and the names of the victims might be found in local newspapers.

For many years, the companies refused to take any responsibility for their workers’ deaths, perhaps merely paying out a few shillings to the widow, as they argued that it was the workers fault or ‘Acts of God’. It was not until the last quarter of the 19^th century that conditions began to improve, as the railway workers began to unionise and campaigned for reduced hours – which could be up to 60 or 70 hours per week with no overtime paid – and better wages. Railway accidents in involving passengers were less frequent, but nevertheless routinely accounted for more than a hundred people in a year and were investigated by the Board of Trade which published detailed reports on them.

The railways in the United Kingdom were built by a wide variety of private companies, big and small. Some merely constructed a little branch line of a few miles, while others soon developed large networks. Clearly in trying to track down relatives, the larger companies were more likely to have accurate records which survive today. Smaller companies were often later incorporated into larger ones. Eventually, after the First World War, the railway companies were mostly – there were a few exceptions – consolidated into four giant concerns: the London & North Eastern, the London, Midland Scottish, the Great Western and the Southern – and then the railways were nationalised under British Railways in 1948.

The records of all these companies are a great source of information and the Ancestry website has recently put on line a wide range of records from several of the larger railway businesses. The Great Western, the only railway company that existed in the same form from its creation until nationalisation is particularly well covered, but there are also records from nine other companies, including all four post grouping businesses, as well as the Retired Railway Officers’ Society. The other principal source is the National Archives which have a fantastic range of records.

In his book, The Railwaymen (David & Charles, 1984), R.S. Joby estimates that at the height of the railways in the period immediately after the First World War, there were 750,000 workers, a remarkably high proportion of Britain’s population which, at the time, was around 45m. By the time the railways were nationalised as British Railways in 1948, there were still 620,000 people employed by the railways. In addition, there is the London Underground which employed up to 30,000 people at its peak and before the creation of London Transport in 1933 was split into various companies. There is, therefore, a good chance that stretching back up to half a dozen generations, someone in your family worked on the railways.

Women on the railways

Women only started being employed on the railways in significant during the First World War when the government made the mistake of not ‘safeguarding’ railway jobs and consequently allowing 184,000 railway workers to join the army. Before then, women had been largely confined to working as crossing keepers, often on the death of their husband, toilet attendants in ladies conveniences, or laundresses, unlike in some European countries where they had been taken on as ticket clerks and secretaries. In the First World War, they were initially allowed only to take up jobs like carriage cleaners and clerks, but as increasing numbers of men left for war, they made inroads into traditional male roles, such as porters and ticket collectors, jobs for which initially they were deemed unsuitable. There were even, eventually, a smattering of signal workers but they were never allowed on the footplate even as ‘firemen’, let alone drivers. On the London Underground, women were permitted to serve as guards, however, and the newly opened Watford section of the Bakerloo was almost entirely run by women because of the shortage of men. These pioneering women had to overcome widespread hostility from the remaining men and even from the unions and their exploits were widely reported in the press. Gradually, though, they came to be accepted.

After the war, most, often reluctantly, were made to give way to the returning menfolk. In the second world war, women were again taken on in large numbers and this time many stayed on afterwards. It was not, though, until the 1980s that women were was able to overcome opposition to be allowed to become a guard on a train or to drive one. Today, there are several women are chief executives of train operating companies or have senior roles in Network Rail, the infrastructure company. The subject of women in the railways was much neglected until the publication of the book Railwaywomen by the woman who was the first British Rail guard, Helena Wojtczak (Hastings Press, 2005) which contains many anecdotes about women workers on the railways.

Watch out
One notable feature of railway work is that jobs were often kept in the family. Railway jobs were often keenly desired and many sons of railway workers followed the footsteps of their father into the same company. So if you find one relative, keep looking – there may be more.

Top tip
The first thing to do when trying to track down information on your ancestor, is trying to ascertain what railway company they were employed by. Before 1923, there were over 200 and many were very local. So start with finding the address where they lived and then trying companies that operated nearby with the help of a railway atlas.

Some useful sources

There are literally tens of thousands of books on the railway, and many tell the story of just one company or even a single branch. These very locally focussed books can be great sources of information if you know where your relative worked. Most are listed in George Ottley’s A Bibliography of British Railway History.

If you want to know a bit more about the overall history of the railways to get you started, my book Fire & Steam, a new history of the railways in Britain provides a concise overview of the growth and role of the railways from their creation until the present day which may help to guide you to the right area.

There are numerous railway museums around the country. The two biggest are the National Railway Museum in York (Leeman Road York, North Yorkshire YO26 4XJ; 0844 815 3139, www.nrm.org.uk ), which now has a ‘Search Engine’ open to the public with very helpful archivists. The other is the London Transport Museum (Covent Garden Market 41 Covent Garden Piazza, London WC2E 7BB; 020 7379 6344 www.ltmuseum.co.uk) which has a library (visit by appointment) which contains a unique collection of staff magazines stretching from 1913 to the present day. Brief references to individual staff are typically found in notices of retirement, obituaries or social activities.
Record round-up
Researching information on railway relatives can be particularly fruitful as there are numerous major sources of information and lots of potential routes to explore. The first place to start is The National Archives at Kew (Richmond, Surrey, TW9 4DU; 020 8876 3444 www.nationalarchives.gov.uk ) which holds a very wide variety of records Most basically, these consist of staff registers and record cards, and pension details. Other potential sources include station transfers, accident records (which can include death date), apprentice records (which can include father’s name), caution books, and memos. Records will typically list an employee’s name, station, position, birth date or age, and various other details, such as salary, date entered service, and transfer information. Records from more than 120 companies are available, including very small and obscure railways, such as the Brandling Junction Railway, which only operated for the seven years up till 1843, eventually being incorporated by the much larger North Eastern Railway which in turn became part of the London & North Eastern Railway. This example shows how it can be difficult to work out precisely for whom an ancestor may have been working. As mentioned in the main text, records from some of the larger companies have now been put on line at the Ancestry website (www.Ancestry.co.uk ). The National Archives also have a range of railway periodicals – there was at one time about a dozen periodicals covering the railway industry – which were formerly held by the British Transport Historical Records Office library. As well as the railways, they cover London Transport, waterways and docks and road transport. For staff records of Scottish or Northern Irish railway companies, you have to consult the relevant national archives. The National Archives of Scotland (H M General Register House, 2 Princes Street Edinburgh EH1 3YY; 0131 535 1314 (www.nas.gov.uk not only houses a variety of company records but has several collections of private papers relating to specific companies which may prove useful. Similarly, the Northern Irish records are at the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI)
2 Titanic Boulevard, Belfast, BT3 9HQ 028 90 534800 www.proni.gov.uk .

The Search Engine at the National Railway Museum is another fruitful source of information and the website (www.nrm.org.uk) has a wonderfully helpful step by step guide to tracking down your ancestors. The records there include many very evocative audio recordings from railway workers, bringing to life their jobs and their stories. The Search Engine has numerous unique records such as rolls of honour of railway workers who perished in the two world wars, and a very comprehensive set of magazines and periodicals.

Railway workers were one of the most highly unionised groups, starting in the last quarter of the 19^th century and consequently their name may turn up in union records. Trade union records are now held at the Modern Records Centre which is part of the University of Warwick in Coventry. There is a special section for railway workers (Modern Records Centre, University Library, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL; 024 7652 4219 http://www2.warwick.ac.uk) Be careful. There can be confusion about what union your ancestor may have belonged to. For example, while most engine drivers belonged to ASLEF (the Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen) others joined the rival National Union of Railwaymen.

For London Transport workers, some early records are held at the London Metropolitan Archives 40 Northampton Road, London EC1R OHB; 020 7332 3820) while others are with Transport for London (TfL Historical Archives, Ground Floor, Wing-over-station, 100 Petty France, London, SW1H 0BD: 020 7918 4535)
There is also http://www.railwayancestors.org.uk which is designed specifically to help people find their railway ancestors.

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Robert Horton obit (add)

Christian Wolmar — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 10:32:28 +0000

: Robert Horton played a crucial and controversial role in the privatisation of Britain’s railways in the mid 1990s and can be characterised to some extent as the villain of the piece. The largely ‘back of an envelope’ privatisation scheme put forward hastily by the Tories after their surprise 1992 election victory envisaged Railtrack, responsible for the track and infrastructure of the railways, remaining in public ownership at least until after the following election to give the railways some stability while the rest was sold off.

After he was made chairman of Railtrack in February 1993, Horton set about changing that. I met him soon after and he was adamant he wanted Railtrack to be privatised. He was charming and open about his aims. His argument was that keeping the company under state control would mean that it would always be subject to spending restrictions and the vagaries of Treasury policy. In an interview with me for my book, Broken Rails, he said: ‘I always felt that the long term-funding requirements were for infrastructure and we would not get these amounts of money unless we were privatised. I started lobbying ministers, strongly pointing out that it as likely there would be a change of government and that would leave Railtrack in the public sector’.

Horton found allies among senior civil servants, such as Steve Robson at the Treasury (later a non-executive director of RBS during its disastrous expansion period) and Nick Montagu at the Department for Transport (later head of the Inland Revenue), and they persuaded the Chancellor, Ken Clarke, that the privatisation would be advantageous by bringing in a large capital receipt. In the event, the privatisation of the infrastructure company proved disastrous as it was totally unsuited to the short term requirements of a shareholder controlled plc and ultimately, after the near collapse of the railways following the Hatfield train accident in 2000, very costly for the Treasury.

Rail 687: Fares becoming political

Christian Wolmar — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 16:38:08 +0000

The annual fares rise caused rather more uproar than usual, and remarkably led to a partial retreat by the government. This suggests that the policy of increasing them even more steeply next year may be reversible, especially now that there is a Transport Secretary who has rather more sensitive political antennae than her predecessor.

The case for these rises is weak, and the line taken by the Association of Train Operating Companies that the money is going towards investment in the railways is not credible, and consequently does not wash with the public. My stepdaughter, Robyn, summed it up neatly over the dinner table recently when she said: ‘Why are the fares going up so much without the service improving?’

The argument that the money is being spent on the railway ends up reflecting badly on the train operating companies, too. When I was on a radio phone-in when the precise level was announced, it was clear that most of the callers thought that the operators were coining it from these rises and that it was down to them. This reflects badly, too, on the railway at large. If ATOC were a proper trade body, rather than a supine organisation always scared of biting the hand that feeds it, the press release would say something like: ‘These increases are a pain in the neck: they are imposed on us by government and there is nothing we can do about them. We would much rather be offering our passengers better services for the same money, but we are not allowed to do that’.

Instead, we get ‘the long-standing government approach to sustaining rail investment is to cut the contribution from taxpayers and increase the share paid for by passengers. The industry is working together to continue cutting costs as a way to help limit future fare rises and offer better value for money for taxpayers over the longer term’. Bland or what? It seems that ATOC is presenting itself as an arm of the government rather than as a representative of the train companies and their owning groups. Oddly, just as I was writing this, in plopped more guff from Michael Robert, the head of ATOC, in response to Passenger Focus: ‘Money raised through fares helps to pay for better services. For a number of years, the Government has sought to sustain investment in the railways by reducing what taxpayers contribute and increasing the share that is paid for by passengers.’ In fact, the money raised does not go to pay for ‘better services’. The income from these increases is subject to a negotiation process between operators and the government, with the intention that the money should not benefit the operators, apart from estimates on the losses from passengers who are deterred from using the railway by the high fares. There is, therefore, only a very indirect relationship between the income from fares rises and money available for investment, especially as, by and large, the investment programme for the railways is set in five year chunks well in advance of political decisions on fares levels. The extra fare revenue goes to the Treasury which may, or may not, give some back for railway investment.

This is, therefore, a missed opportunity. The retreat on the fares rises, which was originally to be RPI + 3 per cent, was cut to RPI + 1 per cent in the Autumn Statement. This was, admittedly, partly because the Department for Transport was heading for a big underspend on its budget, and the last thing a minister wants is to hand back money to the Treasury at the end of the year. It was, though, also a response to the fuss that was being generated by near 10 per cent rises at a time when people’s wages are stagnant or worse.

Perhaps it is time for ATOC to think about splitting itself into two – a statutory organisation to run the various ticketing schemes which it is obliged to do and a lobbying arm fighting for the train operators and, indeed, the wider railway. In fact, the opportunities for a body like ATOC to lobby for the interests of the railway, rather than simply mouth platitudes is demonstrated by the government’s recent change of direction on two other important railway matters. First, there was the leaking of the plan to tunnel over an extra part of the HS2 route at an estimated cost of £500m, though figures in relation to the project are necessarily vague. This suggests that the fierce lobbying from within the Tory party is paying dividends and that the plans could be changed as time goes on.

Look, too, what has happened with Bombardier. The desperate attempt to push some orders its way after the fuss over the Thameslink order resulted first in talking up the idea of fitting pantographs on to Voyagers to enable them to use electric power when under the wires, and then rushing through the order for 23 extra trainsets – though hardly enough to keep a production line going for six months but good PR – for Southern as a result of the delays stemming from Thameslink.

There is an air of panic about the Department. Ideas have been bounced by ministers with little idea of the consequences. Hammond’s suggestion of joining Heathrow and Gatwick with a high speed line was just one example. Electrifying the route across the Pennines and recreating a West – East line to eventually reconnect the Oxbridge cities mentioned in the Autumn Statement may indeed be a great ideas, but clearly they look as if they were plucked from the air by ministers desperate to show they were doing something.

This all suggests not only that there is much uncertainty in the government on its rail policy, but also that ministers are very open to change their minds in the face of well-founded arguments. Philip Hammond, as I mentioned before, was, according to sources close to him, far less decisive and certain about his intentions than the image he liked to project (God help the armed forces!). When he was interested in a particular topic he would spend hours in discussions examining the issue. For example, he examined in enormous detail the rather obscure issue of the lane rental scheme for road works in London which allows Transport for London to charge utilities for the disruption they cause. He had half a dozen meeting with senior TfL executives before agreeing that the scheme could go ahead. Yet, on the other hand, he left in his in-tray a vast number of issues on the railways for Justine Greening to progress – or not – because he was not very interested in them.

Therefore, it may well be that the various delays to policies (which I outlined in the previous issue of Rail) it may simply be that the Government – both ministers and civil servants – has no idea what to do about key issues such as franchise reform, cutting costs in accordance with the McNulty report, fare levels, rolling stock policy and so on. Time and again, the ministry of railways – for that is what the Department for Transport has become – has shown itself incapable of running the rail system which is part of its role under the current arrangements. Perhaps Justine Greening would do her and her colleagues the biggest favour by suggesting that the time has come to recreate a slimmed down version of the Strategic Rail Authority, staffed by full-time railway people, in order to make these decisions. So, here’s a hint to the Rail Delivery Group: why not suggest this idea to Ms Greening and, therefore, get yourselves out of doing an impossible job? To sum up, we need a proper lobbying organisation for the railways, and a proper structure to run them. Simples.

Northern Line black hole

The story of the proposed Northern Line extension to Battersea, from a spur at Kennington, is yet another demonstration that when it comes to rail planning in the UK the tail is often wagging the dog. The plan is for a line that would serve new developments at Battersea and was mentioned as a key project by George Osborne, the Chancellor, in his Autumn Statement.

However, almost as soon as he mentioned it, Treasury Holdings (which has nothing to do with the Treasury), the main developers of the Battersea Power Station site, which has remained empty and decaying for nearly three decades, went bust and the future of the area is now, again, uncertain. This was very curious as either Osborne must have known that the scheme was about to collapse and yet pursued the idea for PR purposes, or he was ignorant, in which case the Treasury is frighteningly badly informed.

Osborne, and Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, have both claimed that the project – variously estimated to cost between £500m and £800m – would be funded by the private sector but, in fact, the developers only ever put up around £200m, suggesting that the rest would have to be raised through a complicated change in the legislation on planning gain. Ultimately, given the failure of the developers, and the basic economics of building underground lines, it is highly unlikely that the scheme will be built without considerable public support, even if it is provided in a disguised way.

That is not to say that the idea is totally misconceived. However, It would make much more sense if it were extended to Clapham Junction, which has no Underground connection, but there is no private money available to do that, and if the issues of overcrowding on the Northern Line could be addressed. This looks like a repeat of the Jubilee Line Extension story. There, the line was backed by the Government because developers were prepared to lob in a few million –ultimately less than 2 per cent of the ultimate £3.5bn cost – and it was given priority over other more worthy schemes such as Crossrail and Hackney – Chelsea. Just as with the national railways, there seems to be a lack of any coherent strategy or planning on meeting London’s future rail needs.

Mystery over tunnelling costs as DfT tries to manage media coverage

Christian Wolmar — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 10:14:05 +0000

One of the big mysteries of yesterday’s HS2 announcement was how the Department had pulled off the trick of adding in five miles of extra tunnelling and yet seemingly the cost of the project has remained the same.

Pressed on this point on Newsnight, Norman Baker was vague saying there was an extra cost,but he was very unspecific and was not pressed by the other participants in the discussion. However, buried in the ”economic appraisal’ document, the capital cost of the London to Birmingham section is revealed as £18.8bn – in other words nearly £2bn more than the previously used £17bn figure. I initially thought this explained the rise but as Transport Briefing explains in a comment below, this may not relate to the extra tunnelling, but may be associated with extra capital costs on completion and as TB points out, total capital costs in that document is £36bn – but with DfT not responding to requests for information, it is hard to pin it down – costs in the command paper are £32.7bn, almost equally split between the two, which therefore still implies that despite the extra tunnelling, the overall cost of the Birmingham scheme has gone down – which is incomprehensible. The extra cost of the tunnels has, like the line itself, simply been buried.

This was all part of a very carefully worked out news management strategy for the whole HS2 announcement. First, on saturday, the department published the appraisal by Network Rail of the alternatives – which was less detailed and thorough than the Atkins appraisal published yesterday which suggests that the alternatives are actually a good deal – in orer to weaken opposition arguments. Then on Tuesday, a whole swathe of documents was placed on the website at 9 30 – and it promptly crashed, of course – looking at the alternatives, the economic appraisal, and so on. There was a briefing, too, from civil servants but only for a handful of national transport correspondents – not including me – were invite and there was no press conference. Then at 3 30 Justine Greening gave a statement and answered questions in Parliament.

Actually, she was pretty good on her feet and gave confident answers. Yet, she was kept off the airwaves, with no live programme discussions – left to the rather untidy looking Baker – and therefore managed to avoid questions on the increase in cost and other details. For the most part, it was left to the rather flaky and shaky Pete Waterman and the suave former Transport Secretary Lord Adonis – in other words, an ageing pop impressario and a former transport secretary – to put the case for the lne rather than the elected government. Bizarre.

While this news management has been, for the Department, relatively successful – at least when Waterman kept his temper, unlike on Radio 5 when he berated me for cycling – there was still plenty of coverage of the opponents’ case and each time the govt uses these techniques, a little bit of democracy is lost….

Christian Wolmar

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