Our obsession with not electrifying the lines is beyond me. The transport cost is so much less when putting electricity through wires to a moving train compared to filling a train with massive batteries or carrying dino juice.
this post was submitted on 03 Apr 2025
9 points (100.0% liked)
UK Rail and Trains
339 readers
1 users here now
Talk about the UK rail network.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Batteries make sense as stop gaps for hard to electify areas, tunnels etc where there isn't the headroom to build overhead wires, but I agree in general we should be building out electrication as a priority.
We have an old network.
Electrifying all lines will take years. Using UK historic standards likely decades.
Building trains that run on both electrified and non electrified tracks means we stop using diesel as soon as they arrive.
I get it will take years, but we also just keep kicking the can further and further down the road.
We adopted 25kv in the 50s, but short term decisions by successive governments has meant that we electricifed barely 250 miles of track between 97 and 2019.
Given the operational life of an engine can realistically be many decades long, I do wonder what the carbon cost of manufacturing new tri-mode engines would be, compared to continuing to run old stock over the same time period, presuming a significant increase in the speed of electrification.
Agreed. But today we are in a situation where ordering batt capable trains is going to do more good then staying to convert the whole network now.
It dose not stop us doing so. More to the point it makes any major rebuilds or new tracks more likely to get electrified. Then providing more options to use non batt trains for high use routes.
If we could have done it 30 years ago things would be great. But accepting we didn't and our gov is slow to spend means batts chargeable by electrified track will reduce co2 the quickest.
Fair points, well made.
Newer classes are far more carbon-efficient, they incorporate safety features such as in-cab signalling that are essential to increasing line speeds and thus capacity, and they provide work for building and maintenance, preserving skilled jobs which would otherwise be lost from this country forever.
Oh totally, completely agree that there are many upsides on the newer classes.
My point was more on carbon emitted during manufacture specifically and if, for the sake of a noddy example, if that was more or less than running existing stock for 15 more years.
I have no idea, what that tipping point would be, and it feels like trimode may inadvertently facilitate further can kicking as running on battery is still better than diesel.
But maybe this is me wanting perfect instead of good.
Delays in electrification are not down to current rolling stock. There are bigger forces at play. For example freight operators have been mothballing their electric fleet because diesel has become cheaper than the electricity tariff per mile due to the recent energy price increases. Politics plays its part, with limited funding and each region scrabbling to get their own schemes done. Pay for a new station here, replace a footbridge with something wheelchair accessible there, and you quickly run out.
It’s very very expensive in the short and medium term. Even back in the 1960s, the British Rail Midland Region had to sneak WCML electrification under the noses of the Manderins by progressively extending an “experimental pilot project”. When the ECML was done in the 80s it was done on the cheap, which today results in closures whenever anything more than a stiff breeze blows the overhead lines down.
"Bu-but cables are visual pollution!"
I don't really get the objection to these trains.
We have the oldest rail network in the world. Some bits can't be electrified without demolishing and rebuilding. We don't want to do that unless absolutely necessary. These trains let us use electricity across the whole network.
The fact that the batteries have more mass is only really relevent when accelerating the train. It'll take a bit more energy, but with a battery onboard well get 60% of it back when decelerating. (Percentage pulled from my butt)