After the battle of Austerlitz in 1805, William Pitt the Younger reputedly said ‘Roll up that map: it will not be wanted these ten years’. Sadly, we can now almost certainly say the same about the electrification programme, destroyed by a perfect storm of naive over-enthusiasm by politicians and civil servants, poor planning and execution by Network Rail, and a spineless approach to technical standards by the industry and its safety regulator.
The final nail in the coffin was the announcement that key parts of the Great Western electrification are to be slipped to some future date. I never expected Thingley Junction to be mentioned on the BBC website, but this is as far as the wires will go on the route to Bristol via Bath, after which bi-mode Inter-city Express Programme (IEP) trains will progress at the acceleration and speed of something like a Class 156.
It’s not entirely clear what the trigger for the announcement was, probably a combination of further physical slippage and the need for Network Rail to review its programmes to live within old fashioned nationalised industry cash limits, perhaps with a dash of problems with getting consents for sensitive sites such as Sydney Gardens in Bath and Bristol Temple Meads.
