MEGA Make Electrification Great Again

Electrification plots a return at an IMechE conference. Will we avoid repeating the sins of the father when we get back in line with world policy?

Battleship grey: work on a portal in the Paddington suburban area in 2015. Courtesy Network Rail

A show of hands revealed that every one of the 73 delegates in the room at the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE) believed electrification is the only sensible future for the railways. Not one supported hydrogen or batteries, for a very good reason. These people can do sums.

But while the great engineers of the past look down on us unworthy successors, beyond the wooden doors, and just across the road in Parliament, sums are less popular. Outside, roads are closed and crowd barriers erected, possibly in anticipation of demonstrations against the Government’s carbon-boosting rail policy, although they could have been left over from Donald Trump’s visit the day before.

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