Today’s news is full of the story that the Great Western Railway is to be electrified. A £1.1bn project will bring faster, more environmentally friendly travel to Paddington and lines to Bristol and Cardiff. As this is a service I use a lot, I am naturally interested.
On the other hand, most journalists don’t use trains save possibly for commuting into London, so their knowledge of the route isn’t necessarily good. I read the reports (Guardian, BBC) with some suspicion. Electrifying the line from London to Cardiff makes some sense, though they’ll have an interesting time with the Severn Tunnel. Whether they go into Temple Meads or not is another matter. The BBC’s map says that they will, but to do that they have to do something about Box Tunnel. In any case the electrifiction won’t, as the Guardian says, allow GWR to retire the aging 125 fleet, because those trains are also used on the London-Taunton line, and from Bristol all the way south to Penzance.
Of course when the Tories win the next election (which they surely will) they will cancel the project, so it is all moot anyway.
I’ll be sad to see the HST 125’s go. When they were doing their early testing before introduction they used a line which ran alongside the playing fields of my school. I can also remember the first time I travelled in one, from Newcastle to York in ’78 for one of my University interviews.