Below-the-fold comments on the social media posts of politicians are often toxic. Stepping away from the exceptionalism that prompts people to think of the railway through Bath as though it's different from any other stretch of line, people seem to have settled into being ok with the fact that electrification of the UK's rail system has been increasingly  badly handled. In England, no rolling programme of electrication, something that lowers costs and builds/maintains skills. In the west country we've ended up saddled with the sub-optimal situation where we have expensive dual-fuel trains and electrification that doesn't extend to Oxford, Bristol or Swansea. We're building an entire new railway whose trains will run on diesel and without so much as putting in foundations for the electrification that it will need. This approach really curtails opportunities for the railway to excel in what it does. Diesel exhaust from railway trains is the smell of a legacy transport system, and it should really be fading fast by now.

How to pay for it? Day to day we already are, in terms of increased overheads, and not of the electrification variety.

Mark

 
I did laugh at the ‘you can taste the Cardiff to Portsmouth diesels as they go past’. Oh please!!  That’s nothing compared to the original Valenta engines on an HST or the various other diesel locos that used to pass through Bath such as 37s, 47s and 50s when I was growing up. Happy days 

 

If the trains have batteries for more substantial parts of their journeys, there may be potential to explore the option.  To my mind, though, having London to Bristol expresses equipped with batteries just for four or five miles doesn't feel economicaly sensible.

I quoted the comments on the original post to show just how complex the situation is, and how under informed some of the public are - no fault of their own; bright people just to experts in this complex world of railway provision and operation.  I am struck by the irony of road vehicles being required to be clean through Bath in a way that trains are not, and the comment about the smell from passing Cardiff -> Portsmouth trains. Perhaps those (and the short runs on the same line) are a case for batteries initially, rather than the London trains for which I suggest that full electrification might be the better solution.

 
Could new trains(a cheaper option?) on the London to Bristol route be run batteries between Bathampton and Oldfield Park?

 
Its long overdue wiring from filton and Chippenham to Bristol TM and Parson street

 
Bath Spa is the second busiest 2-platform UK Station outside London - it's incredible how many people get off and on trains there which are calling at each platform ten times an hour, all day. And yet almost every train there is running under diesel power.  Wera Hobhouse, MP for Bath said in Parliament


That quoted on social media, here is a selection of feedback comments