In the Paws of the Fat Controller

The news this week that electrification of the Midland main line between St Pancras and the East Midlands is to be “paused” - because of planning and budgeting cock-ups blamed on Network Rail - is disappointing, since travel times on this line have long been unimpressive compared with most of the other main lines radiating out of London. The East Midlands deserves better.

In the late 1960s, when I first started using this route regularly, typical journey times between the capital and Nottingham were around 1 hour 50 minutes, and a regular highlight of evening northbound journeys was the sight of former deputy leader of the Labour Party, George Brown, who was the MP for Belper, propping up the bar, or attempting to, on the way back to his constituency. Today’s journeys are less fun, almost half a century on, with travel times down only slightly, to around 1 hour 40 minutes, or even 1 hour 35 on a good train (and a good day). Electrification seems hardly worthwhile if it is only going to shave another 10 minutes off the total journey time, and “Nottingham in Ninety” could easily be achieved today, with a little effort, especially if the faster trains missed out stops at Market Harborough and East Midlands Parkway.

Yes, “East Midlands Park”, as the electron-sparing dot matrix display in train carriages puts it, or as BBC News described it this week - “a station built in the wrong place”. Well, it wouldn’t be if a regular, dedicated shuttle bus service ran from there to East Midlands Airport and if, rather than London trains wasting time routinely calling there, frequent local services from Nottingham, Derby, Leicester and Sheffield did so, many of the airport’s customers originating from within this catchment area. Someone needs to decide whether it’s supposed to be a park and ride station for London traffic, or a link to the airport. It can be both, but if it includes the latter function, then well-meant suggestions for extended tram routes, including one to the proposed ludicrous HS2 “hub” at Toton, are unnecessary. All the station has ever needed was a little joined-up thinking in the form of a couple of buses with adequate luggage space. EMP to EMA in 10 minutes. Free to anyone with a valid rail ticket. Sorted.

So, yes, the “pause” is bad news, as is anything that frustrates the reduction of time spent in the company of East Midlands Trains, with its shrill, unwelcoming, tediously detailed announcements about the penalties to be incurred should one be travelling with an inappropriate ticket or pass (something which the excellent Victoria Coren-Mitchell complained about in an article many years ago – the inflexible attitude has changed little since), the bizarre electronic beeps that disturb one’s snooze or one’s thoughts when travelling on Meridian trains (with their badly-designed view-blocking window “pillars”), the practice of trains that are being “terminated” at Nottingham doing so as far away as possible from the passenger exits, and the way in which passengers are prevented for ages from boarding at Nottingham or St Pancras, even though their train has already been “platformed” for some time, and is sitting there evidently ready for business. The Midland line isn’t, when all said and done, in comparison to frequencies on other routes, busy. Nor can it appear passenger-friendly. I dread to think what travellers from overseas make of it - especially if they have just arrived at St Pancras by Eurostar and are used to the professionalism of most European rail companies. The expression “a bit of a come-down” doesn’t really do justice to the concept.

Such a visitor to Britain may, one imagines, sometimes (but these days not often) possess a less than fluent knowledge of the English language, and be innocent of the minutiae of ticketing rules and regulations, while being confidently familiar with an alphabet which, with a few minor variations, underpins all western European languages. On board their train, this confidence may soon be shattered, for as they journey north through the green and pleasant English shires they are more than likely to be hectored repeatedly that “owing to a short platform at Market Harborough, passengers in coaches X, Y, M and D are requested to move forward to coaches A, E, N and Z in order to alight from coach S for Stupid, sorry, that should be walk backwards to coach B for Barmy, as coaches Q, H and R for Ridiculous will not be platformed at Market Harborough owing to Market Harborough having a short platform at Market Harborough. This service is now arriving into Market Harborough. The next station stop will be Leicester”.

“Pliz, what is Makket Arbo?”

 
Thus it is disappointing that the minimising of one’s exposure to this kind of experience is to be delayed. One hopes, probably in vain, that the funds can be re-allocated to something useful, like lengthening the platforms at Market Harborough and Beeston. Best of all, this belated “discovery” of inadequate finances might encourage the scrapping of the whole misguided delusion known as HS2. However, while awaiting such a happy outcome, breathing should not be paused.

Making it up as you go along

It was amusing to see the Fat Controller on the news this week, launching the microminimally speeded up East Midlandzzz Trainzzz services to London, with four whole minutes shaved off some journey times between Derby and London, and an entire minute saved between Leicester and the capital. He failed to mention that, in the new timetable, some of the services from Nottingham by this most unattractive of train operators are actually taking longer.

When asked whether this thrilling, paradigm-shifting, quantum-leaping acceleration that so underwhelmed interviewed potential passengers didn’t obviate the need for HS2, he countered that more freight was travelling by rail, that we needed more capacity and that, er, more people were travelling. So, three absolutely compelling reasons then. Or maybe two (but what’s mere numbers to politicians, eh ? It’s always being right that counts). Travelling into Birmingham last weekend I couldn’t but help notice the cleared site adjacent to the Curzon Street relic that will form the projected HS2 terminus in the Second City, and I also observed how far it was from New Street and from most of the city centre.

Birmingham, as both a major city and a national transport hub, needs a radical improvement to its rail services, but neither HS2 nor the current redevelopment of New Street Station are the answer. Something with twice (or some multiple, I’m sure the experts would know) the capacity of New Street, incorporating HS2, is needed; perhaps, somehow, a New Street “deep” station, to use the terminology of the Berlin Haupbahnhof. It would cost a vast amount of money and cause huge disruption, but other countries – the Netherlands, for instance – are tackling similar problems in an imaginative way. If only the inspiration lying behind the splendid new Library of Birmingham could be redirected towards relieving the desperate congestion of the existing rail facilities.

More positively, I’ve now completed my promised painting, and though it hasn’t photographed very well, here it is.

It’s a composite, located in a semi-fictional setting in the vicinity of Westbourne Park and Kensal Town in west London, between the Paddington Canal and the Western Region main line, and it has the provisional title, with obvious debts to Algernon Newton and Edward Hopper, of “Terrace by the canal”. Hope you like it.

 © R. Abbott 2013