AN OUTSIDE VIEW

A piece by the railway news video Green Signals recently reported the fast charging trials for battery operated electric trains on the West Ealing to Greenford branch, in west London. In a comment under the video, I described the project as technological overkill, bearing in mind that before dieselisation in the 1960s it was worked by the tiny steam locomotives of the Great Western 1400 class, a 1932 design based on an 1870s design. The money that has been spent on the experiment would have paid for a small fleet of the old things. Elsewhere in the comments, I was critical of the 800 series trains. This produced a response from the makers of the video, as follows. “I may be grasping at straws here but I am guessing you don't like 8xx series trains all that much and rather wish we still had Kings, Castles and (for the branches) 14xx's. Fair? ” My reply was as follows... Yes you are grasping at straws. The model for long distance stock is the class 180, which is a 23 metre veh...

Richard Murphy, the accountant and policy analyst, has just produced a video on the fallacy of the £20 billion black hole in government finances. It is worth watching, but can you spot the hole in his argument? Murphy is partly correct, but also dangerously misleading. He has forgotten that there is a fixed supply of some things, such as land, which all buildings require—homes, factories, shops and offices. Creating money too freely leads to a land price boom. This was the main long-term effect of Quantitative Easing. It sent house prices sky high.  The notion that unemployment is due to shortage of aggregate demand is the great Keynesian fallacy. If Murphy understood the idea of the NAIRU (the Non Inflationary Rate of Unemployment), which has been around since 1959, he would know that pushing money into the economy cannot get rid of unemployment without causing accelerating inflation. Money has lost 98% of its value since 1945. It is one of the reasons why Britain's industry has...

  This discussion arose from a YouTube comment. “Keep operating super old locomotives is not exactly environment-friendly or even cost-efficient.” This is true as a broad generalisation. However, the energy consumption of rolling stock and infrastructure has to be calculated over its entire life cycle, from mine to scrapyard. I cannot lay my hands on the figures, but I understand that at least a third of the energy consumed by a train occurs in mining and refining the raw materials and construction of the vehicles. Large amounts of energy are used to just to dig out and transport the minerals and convert the ore to aluminium metal, while aluminium welding is also an energy-intensive process. Aluminium mining is not environmentally friendly. Similar considerations apply to electrification infrastructure and battery technologies. As regards cost, around a third of the total is for the capital costs of the rolling stock. This is usually reckoned to be fully amortised after 20 years, ...

The recent large scale shutdowns on French railways have been variously attributed to hostile action, terrorists, leftist agitators and Russians, but similar incidents have occurred by accident. A few years ago a small fire in an equipment cupboard shut down train services over a wide area around Gothenburg, and it took a fortnight to get things back to normal. A couple of weeks ago there was the worldwide dislocation caused by an upgrade of Windows computer systems which went wrong. Similar large scale disruption to electronic systems can also be due to natural events such as solar storms. Total shutdown of tills in shops throughout Sweden are common, apparently because of a failures of the VAT central computer system. Critical infrastructure such as transport, water supply, mains drainage, electricity and gas are all vulnerable.  Until a few decades ago, the signals and points at Brighton were controlled from a signal box at the end of the platforms. If anything went wrong, the s...

I noticed that there has been a flurry of discussion recently about what is known as Modern Monetary Theory  (MMT)). It strikes me as a bit half-baked but the proponents of MMT may have a point. The usual view is that governments collect tax and spend it to pay for their activities. I believe this is exactly the wrong way round. As I understand it, official money is created when government spends it into circulation to cover its expenses. The money must then be withdrawn from circulation through the tax system, so as to complete the cycle and prevent the undue increase in the quantity of money which leads to a general increase in prices as the value of money falls. Now, it is essential to remember that one of the core functions of governments is to protect land rights and provide what is needed to make land habitable and productive, thereby creating sustaining its value. The government‛s primary duties are to defend the realm, protect land titles, make justice available to the...

A handful of overdue policy reforms would alleviate many of the long standing problems that afflict the British economy. This are Rationalisation of property taxation including Reform of the Council Tax Abolition of Stamp Duty Abolition of Capital Gains Business Rates to annual assessments and will with fixed equipment, buildings and plant being ignored in the valuation.  Phasing out of VAT Significant raising of thresholds for income tax and NI contributions. Scrapping of VAT over a couple of years; it is damaging, inefficient and a solid obstacle to growth.  Even if these changes were revenue-neutral, great benefits would follow. Of course, even though Labour has a huge majority in parliament, little or none of this will happen.

For the second time this week, trains on many routes in the west of Sweden have been cancelled due to high winds: this happened on Sunday morning (7 July) and again this afternoon (10 July). Apparently there is a risk of trees falling on the overhead electrification cables, and of the cables themselves getting blown down. The cables come down regularly; a couple of times a week, it is said. I have personally been caught up in two incidents. In the first, the train was stuck in a forest for four hours  when the wires came down. This was on a lovely afternoon in July and passengers could enjoy the sun and opportunity to walk their dogs. The stay in the forest was so long because it took two hours to couple a rescue locomotive to the train. A month ago the passengers were ordered off a Copenhagen to Gothenburg train because the wires had been stolen, and that journey ended up with an overnight stay in a hotel. Which raises two questions. Why are trees allowed to grow where they a...

The Stadler class 93 locomotive is a tri mode (diesel/25kV electric/battery) unit intended for both freight and passenger train haulage. Its power is given as 6200 hp on electric traction, 1250 hp on diesel and 540 hp on batteries. Its main purposes is to haul high speed intermodal freight while avoiding diesel running under the wires, with diesel and battery power for the ʻlast mileʼ. This looks good but is exactly wrong. It is, presumably, a very expensive piece of kit, each one probably costing over £3 million. It that looks like it is brutal on the track - tiny wheels and a 21 ton axle load are a recipe for heavy wear.  Freight trains should not be traveling at high speeds. It wastes energy and damages the track - the modern container carriers with small wheels are track-bashers, and modern passenger trains are also destructive to the point that it is becoming a real problem; the poor state of the track is evident on, for instance, the Great Western Main Line.  Electricit...

Last Sunday was a Muslim festival, and the Gothenburg city council allowed this to be celebrated with public prayers in Slottskogen, one of the city parks. There was a huge turnout, as the picture shows. How many women can you count?

I intend to vote for Reform (if the postal voting form arrives in time) but their policies are not up to dealing with the problems that face the country. These have their roots in the theories that have been current for the past 100 years in the departments of economics in Oxbridge and the London School of Economics, and which circulate within the civil service and and the government. Until these theories are recognised as bogus, policies which might succeed are simply not available to whoever gets elected.  At their root is the notion that government revenue should be raised primarily from taxes on productive and legal economic activity. This is ultimately self-defeating, since it leads to a death spiral. The present mania for bringing ever more people into the country is a desperate attempt to escape the inevitable. The system was never viable, and much government spending has had to be financed by inflation; sterling has lost 98% of its value since the end of the war, and there...

Revolution VLR is a project for ultra lightweight trains for use on routes where traffic is relatively light. It is described as “an innovative, lightweight, cost-effective rail vehicle that provides a compelling alternative to operating traditional heavy rail vehicles on branch lines. Its low mass reduces all aspects of operating costs and can significantly improve the business cases for line reopenings and extensions, enhancing local connectivity. RVLR’s innovative design combines automotive and rail technologies to provide an attractive, environmentally and economically sustainable product that can be deployed rapidly. RVLR facilitates modal shift and enhanced public transport connectivity. It supports a more affordable, greener future for our railways.” I look at this and scratch my head. What were the designers thinking of? It is a curious design, with vehicles only 18.5 metres long (when the standard mark 1 length of 20 metres can run over the entire British system and another me...

Once upon a time, a train ticket was a small piece of thick card which you bought at the station when you wanted to travel. You would turn up a few minutes early in case there was a queue at the ticket office, which was staffed by a human being who knew his job. Then you waited for your train and made your journey. And that was all. Nowadays, except for local journeys, you have to book in advance and have to travel in a particular train. You might have to buy the ticket on a mobile phone, or else you will have to negotiate a terminal with a confusing and poorly designed touch screen, with every train company having a different layout and programme flow. There is a bewildering variety of tickets and prices. In the latest version of the Swedish Railways (SJ) booking system, there is no means of changing your booking or getting a refund if something crops up. You have to allow an extra half hour or more to be certain of catching the train you have booked for. The railways have adopted one...