Across the pond

Great excitement at Axminster station today when I arrived to meet the Lonon train at noon. The mayor and council and almost every other big wig in town was assembled on the platform. All waiting, I was told, to greet the transport minister, Lord Adonis, who was about to open the new footbridge, double track line, and hourly service to Waterloo. The regular London train was ten minutes late but the national brass were not on it. They were in their own special train which arrived fifteen minutes later. The toffs from London poured off and shook hands vigourously with the local toffs.

But no Lord Adonis.

Apparently he had been asked but he was too busy trying to keep all the national trains running on time. The locals had to make do with the managing director of Network Rail, who you can just about see making the speech in one of my pics.

Now I am sure that all the folks in Axminster will be delighted to have an hourly train service to London, thanks to Lord Adonis, Network Rail and and South West Trains for this £20 improvement scheme. But those locals who came on the 9.20 from London today will be more sceptical about the much publicised improvement. Under the old timetable the train used to arrive at 11.54, a journey time of 2 hours 34 minutes. Under the new timetable it arrives at 12.02, journey time 2 hours 42 minutess. To be fair it was the fastest train of the day, which did not stop at Crewkerne. Most of the others took between 2 hours 40 minutes and 2 hours 45 minutes.

But for the age of high speed trains that is a long time for a journey of around 150 miles. After all we live in an age when we can get from London to Paris in 2 hours 15 minutes.

So what was happening in Axminster today is of importance not just to the locals, but to the nation, because improvements have to be made to road and rail services to this neck of the woods before the Olympics which we are hosting in 2012. If Britain is not going to have egg all over its face in that year whoever governs Britain between now and then, must improve transport between London and this part of the country.

Because the water Olympics take place in Weymouth, to which South West Trains will take you on the 9.05 from Waterloo  in 2 hours 55 minutes. This is not because South West Trains is run by a bunch of idiots. It is because of the political decisions made by successive British governments. But before I do the naming and shaming let’s get the facts clear.

The money which has been spent on British railways modernisattion has gone to the Padington line to the west. So that if my wife had taken the 9.o5 from Padington today she would have been in Exeter in 2 hours 12 minutes. If she had continued her journey witth South West Trains to Exeter her journey would have been on the train for 3 hours 17 minutes.o

So despite the huge technological advances folks down here are not getting around by rail any faster than in Victorian times. Axminster station was opened in 1860 with two platforms and a double track. It has been withered down by the politics of Harold Wilson (and my Lord Beeching), Margaret Thatcher, with her doctrinaire decision to privatise Britain’s rail network (in total ignorance of the fact that many of the problemss inhherited by British Rail arose from the fact that this vital public service was run by a hodge podge of private comanpies trying to make money for their own companies.

So the line to Axminster was a bit of territorial expansion by the old Southern Railway company, which prospered on their line to Brighton. Things have not improved under New Labour. The present Labour transnport minister is the un-elected Lord Adonis, one of the Greek gods of New Labour, an unelected minister, brought into the New Labour Government as Education minister, at which he was not a great success. At least he  knew something about education, even though he was stronger on the theorising than on the realities.

But the problems today, in Dorset and in the rest of the country, arise from the need to have a national transport policy. Governnments can fire South West Rail, and Network Rail (again!) but however good the managers of privatised bits of our rail network are, they cannot serve the interests of the electorate.

Because what we need is an efficient national network. And none of the political parties are addressing this issue.

At today’s ceremony a bunch of the local schoolkids had been given time off to make up part of the welcoming party. Their placards announced a welcome to the Jurassic Coast. But in order to get there today’s rail travellers have to take the bus, because the railway line from Axmminster to Lyme Regis was closed in 1966. Courtesy of Lord Beeching and the Wilsonian new tech old Labour.

The rail network we have today was produced by Victorian privatisaton, which succeeded not because of the ideology, but because they were employing some really great engineers.

But the world has changed since Axminster station was built 160 years ago.