FORUM: Take the fast track to a new prosperity

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Published: 1 September, 2011

IT may seem odd that someone who makes a living writing about slow travel should be so passionate about the need to build the new high speed line to the north of England.

Let me explain.

I’ve spent the past two years travelling round the branch lines and byways of the rail system to write two books about the best of slow train travel.

Make no mistake.

There is no more relaxing experience than bowling along an idyllic country branch line on a summer’s day.

But sometimes we need to travel faster rather than slower.

And during more than 30,000 miles of train travel I was especially struck by the vision and confidence of our Victorian engineers – the great bridges and viaducts and cuttings, as well as thousands of miles of track that formed the backbone of the rail network we take for granted.

Great for their era, but now we need something better.

The growth of Britain’s trunk rail routes began here in Camden in the 1830s, on the site of the proud, but sadly demolished, Euston Arch.

Here Robert Stephenson, the father of the world’s railways, began building his historic London & Birmingham Railway to the north.

What a vision! And what a contrast it seems to me, to the petty-mindedness of those who oppose its successor, High Speed 2 – the government’s proposal to build new tracks that would take us to Birmingham in 49 minutes and Manchester in just over 90.

Here is the grandest infrastructure opportunity of our lifetimes, a monumental project that would link up the country in a way the Victorians could only have dreamed of.

But it may be slipping out of our reach. Sadly, with public consultation having closed at the end of July, the signs are that the Jeremiahs – including Camden councillors – may be winning the propaganda battle.

I admit the line’s proponents have done an unconvincing job in getting the message across, but the objectors’ arguments are phoney and selfish.

The Institute of Economic Affairs says the new line is “economically flawed”, but the IEA has a record of supporting the road lobby.

The landowners of the Chilterns claim to be protecting the landscape, but have hired barristers and PRs to ensure their own swank properties are not blighted.

These were the same arguments used by the 19th century opponents of the new railways.

One Hertfordshire landowner claimed that Stephenson’s railway would undermine his “noblesse”.

Would any of the folk queueing at Euston this morning to get their holiday trains to Cumbria still sign up to William Wordsworth’s view that the railways were some form of evil?

The reality today is that our north-south arteries are seizing up. The West Coast Main Line is full – as our sclerotic rail system struggles to cope with huge increase in passenger numbers.

I know about this since I commute by rail from my home in Camden Town to my job as a university lecturer in Lancashire.

I don’t suppose the wealthy folk of the Chilterns often end up standing for two hours aboard a packed train from Euston to Preston as I and my students often do. Nor do they probably care about the north-south economic divide, which is worsening, and will deteriorate still further without decent new transport links.

How sad to see the blindness of Camden councillors who seem to be falling over each other to state their opposition to the line.

I wonder how much they know about their local history. The great historic railway stations of St Pancras, King’s Cross and Euston have for a century and a half brought huge prosperity to the borough.

The world’s great passenger railways were born in Camden when in 1808 Richard Trevithick, the father of steam, demonstrated his first locomotive, the Catch-Me-who Can, near the Euston Road.

Raw materials of every description from beer to coal were transported to the freight yards in Somers Town, Chalk Farm and King’s Cross.

The boat trains from Liverpool and Glasgow bore in generations of hard-working Irish immigrants, who liked Camden so much that they settled here.

Nowadays you only need to stroll past the busy shops and restaurants in the magnificently restored St Pancras to see the regeneration our most recent new high-speed line – the HS1 – has created locally.

Soon the historic King’s Cross station will emerge with similar effect. A new prestige Euston connected to a high-speed network, as well as Heathrow will be the talk of the world – and a huge stimulus to local employment.

What a shame that the representatives of Camden – birthplace of Britain’s national railways and whose economy has benefited many-fold over the years from the mighty trunk lines that emanate from its heart – should appear to line up with a bunch of right-wing think tanks and rich country landowners to oppose a heroic public project that will benefit our grandchildren and their grandchildren, too.

• Michael Williams’s On the Slow Train Again: Twelve more great British train journeys is published by Preface, at £14.99. An updated paperback of the companion volume On the Slow Train is newly reissued by Arrow, at £7.99.