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Such wonderful news, yet tinged with mixed feelings

On the other, I’m aghast at the prospect of a country once known as the workshop of the world, the nation that invented the locomotive, possibly ending up with no major train-building facility at all.

Yes, we’re part of the European Community, yes, this is free enterprise in action and yes, Siemens employs a large number of people in the UK and will provide work for many more as a result of this contract.

But can you imagine the Japanese allowing this to happen in their country? Officially, protectionism is not supposed to exist, but it does.

Regardless of whether or not Derby Works has had a few problems with train delivery orders in the past, the fact remains that there are well over one and a half thousand Derby-built ‘Electrostar’ and ‘Turbostar’ vehicles giving superb and reliable service to numerous operators every day of the year all over the country. The factory builds damn good trains.

Are we in Britain perhaps too fond of the free market, TOO fond of getting the best deal for taxpayers? Bombardier (which is now conducting a review of its UK operation) does have other British orders in the pipeline, but none as large as that and there would, in any case, be no obligation on the firm to allocate work to its British sector for sentimental reasons.    

We’ve already lost our locomotive-building capacity. One day, we could wake up and find we’ve no rail-related heavy industry left to fall back on at all… then what? We would be in no position to bid for any train contracts or even to react swiftly to changing circumstances if overseas markets ever became unavailable to us for any reason. It is so pitifully shortsighted.

I HAVE been stunned by a statistic released by First Great Western this month. In itself, it’s a relatively small matter concerning the single-track Truro-Falmouth Docks branch line in Cornwall, but it could have enormous implications for provincial railways generally.

In 2008, 579,000 passengers travelled on the line. The following year, Cornwall County Council helped finance the installation of a loop at Penryn for the relatively modest cost (by today’s standards!) of £7m, enabling FGW to double the service frequency. The result? Passenger figures last year almost DOUBLED to just under a million!

Surely there is a lesson there for us all to learn.

THE revelations in the letters pages in recent issues concerning Brunswick green livery have been fascinating and educational. The writers who claim that the term was never officially used by BR may well have a valid point and we’ve given much thought as to whether we should discontinue use of the phrase in the interests of historical accuracy. However, the suggested alternative – ‘Dark Green’ – seems so vague as to be almost meaningless and we also feel that a sudden change in editorial style would cause unnecessary confusion for historians and researchers of the future.

Apart from that, it would be almost impossible, after more than 60 years, to persuade tens of thousands of people to desist from using a term they’ve accepted as second nature for most of their lives. So, in the continuing absence of absolutely irrefutable evidence to show that BR definitely didn’t use the term, we have decided to continue the use of Brunswick Green  for the foreseeable future… and we rather suspect everyone else will carry on doing so too!

Nick Pigott
Editor