British Railways Board film on the electrification of the East Coast Mainline & the then new Class 91 loco with Mk4 coaches. Produced by Cinecosse in 1989.
Though it's fashionable to criticise British Rail as the ultimate failure of a nationalised industry, films like this show that by the late 80s and early 90s, BR was finally on the right track (pun intended). Of course, to the Tory mind, this just meant it was now ripe for privatisation. Just imagine what our railway network would be like today if this 'successful' version of BR had been allowed to continue. Instead we got privatisation, Railtrack, Potter's Bar, franchises regularly going pop (especially on the ECML), excessive goverment interference.
Privatisation was going to happen anyway, as the UK gov. was motivated by the EEC (later EU)’s directive to separate rail infrastructure and operations. If only British Rail was sold off as one, things wouldn’t be needlessly complicated it is now.
"Regularly" = once a day, and only since last year ... compare that to sections of the Great Western network that have bi-mode trains running once or twice per _hour_ and still no plans to electrify them.
@@mr.atomic2970 your right ,however the ball was started rolling many years previously, btw 'Thatcher's Britain' is a bit of a joke saying, originated from Max and paddys road to nowhere comedy series.
It was planned to just that when they eventually built the associated sleeping cars they found that the train and the OHL could not supply enough power for the hotel services of the train. The new sleeping cars never saw the light of day in UK service. Some were sold off to Canada and parts of the EU I believe.
I'm afraid your getting your ECML sleepers mixed up with your Eurostar Sleepers (called Nightstar if my memory is correct). The Nighstar sleepers are what got exported to Canada and were built to go through the channel tunnel. They were to provide an overnight service similar to the 'Regional Eurostars' (which never got used on their intended services either), as flying was faster and cheaper and BR realised they couldn't compete. In fact, the sleeper services on the ECML started to reduce in the late 80's because people started to fly to Scotland, hence why a 91 never hauled a sleeper and we have ended up with 2 sleeper services from/to London from Scotland.
But it was supposed to and designed to. GEC promotional material refers to the locos being able to haul sleeper trains over Shap on the WCML. Privatisation and the Balkanisation of passenger services scuppered that plan
Trains looked like proper trains in Britain back in those days. Not the plastic junk interiors with horrendously uncomfortable seats they have nowadays.
Third rail operates at a low voltage 750V vs 25000V for AC OHLE. To deliver the power necessary for long distance intercity and freight trains the current demand would be massive in turn resulting in huge volt drops unless feeder stations with grid connections where positioned every few miles. The resulting cost would be colossal far exceeding that of a 25KV OHLE system
and all of you "armchair experts " who scream "bring back BR ",- "good old BR ", -- "should have never privatised the railway" ,etc, etc - you all seem to be ignorantly unaware that there WERE a high proportion of private companies involved in the successful east coast electrification project- " good old BR " just simply contracted MOST of the work out to outside private industry !!
