The Highland Sleeper route makes no sense.

The Caledonian Sleeper is one of my favourite ways to get to London. You can sleep while you travel overnight, so you don't waste time during the day. There are, in fact, two Caledonian Sleeper trains, each with multiple portions. The Lowland Sleeper serves Glasgow and Edinburgh, splitting and joining at Carstairs. Sensible enough. But then there's the Highland Sleeper, which serves Fort William, Inverness and Aberdeen, but it splits and joins at Edinburgh. Why Edinburgh and not Carstairs? OK, for the Aberdeen portion, Edinburgh isn't much of a diversion, but for the Fort William portion, it seems rather inefficient to drag the portion to Edinburgh, to have to take it all the way back to Glasgow to get to the West Highland Line. Plus it runs for a fair old distance on diesel power under the wires. 

Which brings me to the other issue: traction choice. Back when DB Schenker were providing the traction, the sleeper was hauled by Class 90s for the electric part of the journey down the West Coast Main Line, and by Class 67s (which replaced Class 37s) north of the central belt. Sensible enough. However, when GBRF took over the contract, they switched to Class 92s for the electric-hauled part of the journey (still sensible enough), but for the diesel-powered part of the trip, they chose... Class 73s. What? These were electro-diesels built for the Southern Region of British Railways, primarily for routes that were electrified by DC 3rd rail in the south-East of England, with a diesel engine for bits of track where 3rd rail power was unavailable. They were certainly not built for dragging sleeper trains over the mountainous West Highland Line. Anyway, GBRF overhauled them, installed new engines, and had them double-head with Class 66s when more power was required.

Now let's be honest, the Sleeper doesn't need to be fast. It's a sleeper train; people expect it to take 8 hours or more so they can get a good night's sleep. However, routing the Fort William and Inverness portions via Edinburgh does seem highly inefficient from a fuel use standpoint if nothing else. So, how would I improve its efficiency? First of all, forget Edinburgh. Route the Highland Sleeper through Motherwell instead. Take off the Fort William portion there and send it via Whifflet and Gartcosh to join its current route via Queen Street low level. The Aberdeen portion can take the Falkirk Grahamston route to the Forth Bridge and Fife to join its present route, and the Inverness portion can carry on to Stirling, Perth and Inverness. Alternatively, if we take Fife off the Highland Sleeper's itinerary, the two portions could split at Perth, however this would still require changing to diesel traction at Stirling. As an alternative, Fife could be served by extending the Edinburgh portion of the lowland sleeper to Dundee via the Forth and Tay bridges.

As for traction, GBRF is planning to replace its current locomotives with bi-mode Class 99s, so that problem is likely to solve itself fairly soon.

Upgrades to Stranraer needed.

While central Scotland has been doing quite well recently with railway reopenings and electrifications galore, the South West has seen a severe lack of investment. Stena Line's relocation from Stranraer to Cairnryan in 2011 left Stranraer's railway station (built on a pier to serve the ferry) rather isolated and lacking in passengers. The new ferry terminal has no rail connection and is instead served by a road coach from Ayr! Things got even worse in September 2023 when a fire in the abandoned Ayr Station Hotel caused trains south of Ayr to be cancelled for months while the hotel was made safe. Surprisingly, the South West Scotland Community Rail Partnership has been completely silent on this issue, and their website hasn't been updated since 2019.

Mutterings from local politicians about relocating Stranraer station closer to the town centre have fallen on deaf ears. Having the station closer to the town would eliminate a long walk out to the windswept pier to catch the train, making it a more convenient option for residents and visitors. It wouldn't even take much effort; simply slew the track round to the south of the old car park and build a travel interchange at the Ulsterbus Garage on Port Rodie (see map below).

I have seen some enthusiasts online suggest that the old Stranraer Town station could be reopened as an alternative, but that station, which was on the former line to Portpatrick, is on the edge of the town and just as much of a walk from the town centre as the harbour, although it might be more convenient for residents living in that area.

Meanwhile the ferry ports at Cairnryan still have no rail service. I have previously suggested reopening the old Cairnryan Military Railway from Dunragit to serve both P&O and Stena ferry terminals. The A77 road (which carries the bus from Ayr) is dangerous and prone to closures, so having a railway would be a more reliable means of getting foot passengers to the ferries. There is untapped potential for freight in the area as well. Perhaps the former ferry terminal at Stranraer could be repurposed as a rail-connected freight terminal for smaller container vessels, timber carriers or even tankers?

As Dumfries and Galloway Council run a consultation on the redevelopment of Stranraer seafront, they should consider options for the railway.

Cycling infrastructure needs joined-up thinking.

 Cycling is one of the greenest and healthiest modes of transport. Whether it's making short trips around town for shopping or commuting, or longer bikepacking adventures, cycling is carbon neutral, cheap, and provides exercise as you go. However, it's also dangerous. Cyclists are of course highly vulnerable when sharing the road with motor vehicles, which puts off a lot of people from cycling. There's also an anti-bicycle mindset among many motorists, with many reports in the press of road rage incidents against cyclists from motorists who consider the road to be theirs and theirs alone (despite the fact that bicycles, and horses before them were there before the motor car was invented). Except for designated multi-use paths, cycling on the footpath is illegal, slow and often difficult. The solution is obviously properly segregated bike paths. However, cycle path provision in the UK is patchy, to say the least. 

While some councils have made good effort to provide well-engineered cycle routes that connect places, many paths are isolated, inconvenient and often downright unusable. You get the impression in some areas that paths were provided merely where space and funding was available, with little thought to where the paths were going to and from, and who was going to use them. Warrington Cycle campaign used to have a Facility of the Month page (last updated in 2019), which named and shamed some of the worst examples. Many of these went into a book called "crap cycle lanes", which ridiculed these unusable, confusing, and even dangerous token attempts at providing bike paths. 

To campaign for better, safer cycle routes that actually go from somewhere to somewhere, campaigners in Scotland started a not-quite-annual pedal on parliament to take their concerns straight to the Scottish Government.

Simply put, cyclists want routes that actually connect places, and are safe and convenient to ride.

Photographed below are some examples of bad and good practice:

    Bad practice: Bridge Street Cambuslang at the junction of sustrans routes 74 and 75. Access to the bridge is down the overgrown path to the left. The path across the road is multi-use, but there's only a small sign on a lamppost to indicate this and there's no obvious transition on and off the path. Getting down to and across the bridge requires kerb-hopping, and then there's a fence across the road at the other end of the bridge. These things are all fixable with a bit of thought.

    Good practice: East Kilbride, on sustrans route 756. Well-marked and signposted, fully segregated bike path. Where the cycle route joins the road there are drop-kerbs and white lines to indicate this, providing a smooth ride with no kerb-hopping. 

Could EMALS be fitted to UK Aircraft Carriers?

One of the most controversial design choices of the UK's new Queen Elizabeth class aircraft carriers is that, despite their size, they are designed around the VSTOL variant of the F-35 L:ightning II Joint Strike Fighter, the F-35 B, meaning the ships are fitted with ski-jumps for short take-offs and no arrester gear because the aircraft can land vertically. The USA with its nuclear powered Nimitz class ships operate the  F-35C CATOBAR aircraft, but (and here's the important bit) can also operate a wider range of fixed wing aircraft using catapults and arrester gear. However, such systems are expensive to maintain, take up space in the ship, and require a source of steam to operate. There's no shortage of steam on a nuclear vessel of course, but the Queen Elizabeth Class are powered by diesel and gas turbine engines, not steam or nuclear. A steam boiler would need to be added to create steam to power a catapult.

However, a new technology means that it's now possible to power a catapult with electricity rather than steam: EMALS, or Electro-Magnetic Aircraft Launch System. This new form of catapult uses a linear induction motor, rather than a steam piston, to launch aircraft. The system first saw use on the latest US Aircraft Carrier, USS Gerald R Ford, and is now being introduced on China's newest aircraft carrier, the Fujiyan. Like any new system, EMALS has gone through significant development and testing by the US Navy, hitting many bumps along the road, but the design definitely shows promise, with many notable advantages over steam catapults, including smoother acceleration of aircraft, more precise adjustment for weight of aircraft, and taking up less space below decks. But one of the most obvious advantages is that it doesn't need a source of steam (although Gerald Ford still has that, being nuclear powered). There are conflicting reports on the Fujiyan's power plant, with Wikipedia (not the most reliable source) suggesting it may use steam turbines, like earlier carrier designs, or Integrated Electric Propulsion, like the Queen Elizabeth class. More up-to-date videos on youtube imply the latter.

Which brings us back to the Queen Elizabeth Class. Could the British carriers be retrofitted with EMALS and arrester gear? Certainly in the initial design of the carriers consideration was given to using a CATOBAR design, but this was dropped due to the cost of such a system. EMALS is still a new, expensive, and untested technology, but it should be technically possible to retrofit the ships. The question then becomes one of funding, as well as purchasing additional CATOBAR aircraft to take full advantage of the facility, plus additional pilot training. One thing never mentioned in these debates is that CATOBAR is less safe than VSTOL, with aircraft landing at speed and having to catch an arrester wire to stop, which is a difficult method of landing requiring precision flying from the pilots. With a vertical landing, the plane comes to a hover before landing, eliminating the old risk of missing the wires and having to go around again. 

In summary, VSTOL is safer and cheaper than CATOBAR, but CATOBAR offers the possibility of longer-range fixed wing aircraft with a wider choice of fixed-wing aircraft. While it's fun to speculate about the possibilities, the current finances of the UK will probably preclude the adoption of EMALS for the foreseeable future.

Where next for high speed diesel units?

Electrification and introduction of bi-mode trains is bringing about the withdrawal of many high speed diesel trains in the UK. The nomadic and unreliable Class 180s were withdrawn by Hull trains in favour of Class 802s in 2019, and were transferred to EMR to replace older HSTs, but electrification of the Midland Main Line as far as Corby and the introduction of Class 360 EMUs on the route have once again made the Class 180s surplus to requirements and they have been withdrawn along with EMR's final remaining HSTs. Furthermore, the introduction of bi-mode Class 810 Aurora trains will result in the withdrawal of EMR's Class 222 fleet. The 40+ year-old HSTs were life-expired and due for scrapping, but what of the Class 180s and 222s? Surely these modern trains could find further use? One possible user for the Class 180s is open-access operator Grand Central, which is the only other operator of the type. Where the Class 222s could go is less clear.

Meanwhile on the West Coast Main Line, Avanti Trains is to replace its Class 221 Voyager units with Class 805 and 807 bi-mode trains. In September it was announced that seven Class 221s would be transferred to Cross Country Trains to allow the withdrawal of HSTs.

A surprising announcement towards the end of last year was that Transpennine Express would be withdrawing its four year old fleet of Nova 3 Class 68 locomotives and Mk5 carriages. Their Class 185 DMUs will be fully retained to cover the loss. While the Class 68s could potentially be cascaded to Direct Rail Services for freight use, there isn't much demand for push-pull carriages. Perhaps Scotrail might consider them to replace HSTs on Inter7City services? 

New Zealand needs Inter-City trains.

 

So I recently returned from a month-long holiday in New Zealand, and in terms of trains it was certainly an eye-opening trip. In the UK we are used to being able to take a train anywhere in the country any time we want and if we miss it there will be another one along in a few minutes, or a few hours at the most. In New Zealand, this simply isn’t the case. The suburban commuter networks around Wellington and Auckland are modern and frequent, but if you want to travel between the two cities, well… you can’t. The only passenger train between new Zealand’s two biggest cities is Kiwirail’s “Northern Explorer”, which is a scenic tourist train that runs once every other day.  It goes north one day and returns south the next day.  If you want to go to Auckland from Wellington on the day it’s going from Wellington to Auckland, too bad. You’re going to have to fly instead. Forcing people to fly when there is a railway there is frankly disgraceful when there is a climate emergency on. The less populous South island is even worse off for passenger trains. There are no commuter trains at all connecting any towns in the South island, just the once-a-day tourist trains, the “Coastal Pacific”, which connects Christchurch with the ferry port of Picton, and the "TranzAlpine", which connects Christchurch with Greymouth on the West Coast. The city of Dunedin to the south of Christchurch has no regular train link to Christchurch, just a few tourist lines that run a couple of times a month.

Some of the problems New Zealand has stem from its low population density. With just 49 people per square mile (compared to 715 in the UK or 1346 in the Netherlands), New Zealand doesn’t have enough customers for the kind of frequency we’re used to in more populous countries. Also, the track gauge of 3’6” used in New Zealand prohibits the kind of high speeds we see in countries with standard or broad gauge railways. That’s not to say a daily Picton-Christchurch-Dunedin or Auckland-Wellington service wouldn’t work. Certainly Air New Zealand has enough customers on these routes, but of course the plane can do the trip a lot faster. But as the world seeks to cut down on air pollution, reviving these trains would give citizens and tourists in New Zealand a greener choice. Campaign group "Save our trains" is putting pressure on the New Zealand government to restore Inter-city rail travel in Aotearoa.

The car lobby's culture war is insane and dangerous.

 The accompanying image was modified by me from a popular meme that characterises well-known environmental activist Greta Thunberg as demanding electric cars. I have turned Greta here into a straw man, because that's exactly what this meme is. It completely misrepresents the green movement and what it wants to achieve. And that is the point. The car lobby, and the political right in general has declared a culture war on anti-car environmentalists, and this is a big problem. Make no bones about it, the world needs fewer cars, and the ones it has need to be smaller and more efficient. yes, electric cars are part of the solution, but they aren't a silver bullet that's going to fix climate change. And that brings us to the latest insanity from the right. 15 minute cities are a town planning concept that states that most city dwellers should be no more than a 15 minute walk or bike ride from the shops, churches, schools, pubs, libraries and places of employment that they need to go about their business. It makes perfect sense in theory. However, far right conspiracy theorists have conflated ultra-low emission zones (which are intended to keep cars out of city centres) with some sort of attack on freedom of movement. Let's be clear, 15 minute cities and low emission zones are not going to be some sort of "Hunger Games"-style districts that you are locked into with no escape. They are simply a means of reducing car use. If you want to cross town, over a distance more than a 15 minute walk away, there should be a public transport option to take you there. Nobody is banning you from leaving your 15 minute zone.

The absolutism of the right (who like to attack Greenpeace for using diesel boats, while claiming that restrictions on cars will stop tradesmen in white vans from going about thier jobs) is absurd. Yes, car use should be eliminated where practicable. This of course will be easier for city-dwelling commuters than for farmers and tradesmen in the country. Where a car, van or truck cannot be eliminated it should be made as efficient as possible, by downsizing and electrification. Why buy a giant SUV if you only need a mini? And public transport needs to be electrified. As I have discussed in other blog posts, wiring up the railways is the easiest and fastest way the powers that be can eliminate diesel emissions.