Ever since I forsook the leafy glades of the Surrey Hills at Effingham for the moors of North Yorkshire 10 years ago, I have been waiting for the railway hereabout to catch up. What Prime Minister Boris Johnson calls ‘levelling up’. But instead, those of us with an interest in railways have watched with increasing frustration as ‘exciting’ plans have been announced, then cancelled, then re-announced again and again, all without any real progress.
We have seen Midland main line electrification promised with great enthusiasm as part of the country’s ‘electric spine’ – and then cancelled. A similar fate befell the Castlefield corridor widening in Manchester, rendering the equally much hyped Ordsall Chord pretty much a white elephant. There has been High Speed 3, which then morphed backwards via several iterations into Northern Powerhouse Rail (NPR), with now it seems a target maximum speed of only 125mph, so better described as merely ‘higher-speed’. Even now, it may, or may not, run via Bradford, and may, or may not, use parts of the eastern leg of HS2, which may, or may not, be built. And meanwhile, a half-hearted upgrade of the existing trans-Pennine line has at last begun, anyway.
What they all have…
