AN OUTSIDE VIEW

The high-speed rail project may be swept up in the latest railway crisis as a 2012 review released under Freedom of Information shows officials believed it was unaffordable. Article in Guardian

It has just been announced that the Midland Main Line and Trans-Pennine electrifications have been shelved due to rising costs and the need to cut back. It was inevitable that HS2 would put financial pressure on other rail investment and so it has turned out. In a rational world, the electrification of the Midland, and reopening of the direct line to Manchester, would be a priority The other drain on finance is the Inter City Express or Incredibly Costly Express, Britain's most expensive train ever, which is replacing stock which is good for another 20 years. The replacement for the 1980s Pacers will also end up being a money gobbler. It is unlikely that the new trains will cost less than £2 million a vehicle. It is worth getting this in proportion. In 1955, a new railway carriage cost £5000 - around £250,000 after allowing for inflation, but let us double it for luck and allow £500,000. Of course the 1955 design would not be acceptable today. It would need retention toilets, thoug...

It might be unfair to call this a vanity project, but the new route 55 which started last week is being promoted as Gothenburg's first electric bus. It is not, because there were a few trolleybus routes running until the early 1960s. It is a hybrid, with charging points at each end of the route, using an overhead supply and a pantograph on the roof of the bus. Charging takes about five minutes. It runs on electricity on the flat sections of the route in the centre of the city, which makes it quiet and emission-free when running on its batteries, but the engine starts up as soon as it hits a slope. This probably takes battery power as far is it will go. The underlying problem with batteries is the poor energy density, both in terms of mass and volume - they are bulky and heavy and can not store enough energy. They are also expensive due to the use of materials which are relatively scarce. The technology will ultimately be seen as a dead-end. Road transport fuels must have a high en...

Dublin trams are 7-car sets. That is too long. It is time to think about getting double-deckers.

Last Sunday, Sverigesradio broadcast the main 11 o'clock Mass from St Lars, Uppsala. This is a flourishing, lively and diverse parish which attracts many new converts to the faith. As the priest said in his sermon, there are seventy different languages spoken amongst the parishioners. The sad thing is that the liturgy there could be so much better than it is. As a world-class university city, the parish should be a shop window offering the very best from the 2000-year-old tradition of Catholic music, a tradition which pre-dates Christianity by at least a millennium. The occasion of a broadcast should have been taken as an opportunity to put these treasures on display. Unfortunately, the liturgy was barely even recognisable as Catholic. The service began with a well-known Anglican hymn "Holy, holy, holy" to the setting by the Victorian composer Dykes, and there was a popular Swedish hymn at the offertory. The Ordinary was one of the adaptations to the Swedish text to ...