...contemplates the wider picture

There continues to be a dearth of good news on Scotland's railway. Pandora is writing in late July, so there remains the possibility that the timetable will have been fully restored by the time this is read; that peace and goodwill have settled disputes between employers and employees; that strong men and women have arrived with shovels in The Place We May Not Name. Chickens which might be available for counting are not expected however.

Pandora is thus forced to raise his eyes and - just this once - look at the larger railway scene. Had he been granted one wish by the Fat Controller Fairy he would never have thought of appointing Peter Hendy as Rail Minister. Pandora is not a whole-hearted supporter of the House of Lords as an institution, but he recalls warmly that Andrew Adonis - the last Labour rail minister - did a fine job from the red benches. Maybe the freedom from acrimony in debates in that place allows for better outcomes: we can only hope. A man who can work successfully under two such disparate, look-at-me figures as Ken Livingstone and Boris Johnson will surely have worked out how to achieve his policy objectives.

Is it too late to reinstate the sensible parts of HS2, cancelled (in Manchester, of all places) by Rishi Sunak? The six long years wasted on the Williams Review (no, no, you must include my name in it, said an easily forgotten minister) are ... well, largely wasted. Will its remains yield anything useful? One can only hope that a government which has, in many policy areas, hit the ground running will take decisions quickly so that the laborious process of actually delivering can begin. Hendy knows enough from his work-experience job running Network Rail that decisions, when they arrive in his in-tray, will surely scoot quickly across his desk to the other side. And then over to the men and women with shovels. And maybe a tunnelling machine or two.

Pandora is pencilling in a General Election on 3 May 2029 when Starmer, like Blair in 2001, will be returned with another substantial majority. Success in this would be helped by visible progress with the shovels.

...and that was where Pandora concluded his thoughts...

Since then, however, an excellent article in Rail Engineer has caught his eye. It returns to the vexed issue of how to make trains go if nasty polluting diesel is to be phased out. Roger Ford in Modern Railways coined the expression "bionic duckweed" to pour scorn on uninformed Ministers who thought that electricity was on its way out. With one bound bionic duckweed would solve all our problems. Happily the present incumbent at Great Minster House is not taken in by such nonsense, and thought will be given to deciding just what, on each route, will be the sensible choice - overhead wiring, battery, hydrogen. Electrification has massive upfront costs, but once the knitting is up it's a lot cheaper to operate on all levels. Pandora has been down this road before - what is new?

RSSB - the industry's safety chaps - are doing research into fires in batteries which suggests that the risk has perhaps been brushed under the carpet. Not quite as obvious as was thought. HSE - whose remit extends into the world outside the railway - is doing research into what happens when there is a hydrogen leak in an enclosed space - a tunnel, say. Neither piece of research is likely to rule battery or hydrogen out, but the idea that they are easy options is no longer quite so obvious. Bite the (cost) bullet and get on with the knitting!