Feature How RAIL happened
RAIL was launched in uncertain times for our railways, and some might say we’re back where we started. HOWARD JOHNSTON has written for all 1,000 issues, and recalls how the time was ripe for a magazine that would change the face of railway publishing
Spring 1981 was a dark time for Britain’s railways.
British Rail’s senior management firmly believed that no one in government was really listening to their pleas for desperately needed long-term investment, in order to provide a quality service for passenger and freight customers.
It’s a full circle. Over the past 43 years, RAIL has reported on how the railways have gone from uncertainty under government control to sectorisation, privatisation, and back to uncertainty under government control.
Over that period, the Channel Tunnel has opened, HS2 is under way, and no fewer than 26 Transport Secretaries have occupied Whitehall’s Transport hot seat.
Sir Peter Parker, the charismatic chairman of the British Railways Board (BRB) from 1976-83, famously described the UK’s railways as on the “crumbling edge of quality”.
When RAIL first appeared, he was asking for an 85% increase in investment, warning that if it did not start to flow within two years, a rapid rundown of the entire national system was inevitable.
Within a decade, warned Parker, 3,000 miles of route would have to be cut, the number of permanent speed restrictions would rise more than five-fold to 800 miles, signalling would regularly fail with train delays almost doubling, half the locomotive fleet would be under repair, and a hefty percentage of passenger coaches would be unserviceable.
In those days, the stumbling block was that all the money had to come from the taxpayer.
However, serious discussion was already under way at a high level about attracting private investment - starting with Sealink, British Transport Hotels and Seaspeed, and selling off thousands of acres of redundant land.
Parker had to use all his well-practised skills to even get past the door of the Transport Secretary, Norman Fowler.
He was, however, able to negotiate with the most militant unions, and he was generally popular with staff because of his determination to improve working conditions. The downside was his left-wing instincts (he had unsuccessfully stood as a Labour candidate for Bedford in 1950), which did not quite align with a Conservative government led by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher at the height of her power.
Reflecting on this in our 800th issue seven years ago, RAIL said the broad government view in 1981 was that BR was a lame duck.
While ministers actively encouraged the production of detailed reports on possible investment, they rejected most of the suggestions and failed
