The Bee Gees and HS2

November 5^th – I hinted at the practice in my last published novel, The Quarry’; I quote from chapter two:

Along this trackway, now denuded of its iron rails and wooden sleepers but still covered by the weed-pocked, creosote-stained ballast that once supported them, were the skeletal remains of a dream ripped apart by Mister Beeching and his cohorts many years ago. Although they preserved the remote country stations, which gave an accurate map of the country homes of politicians, what they helped to destroy was the Britannia Class landscape in the lives of suburban, short-trousered tykes with grey mothed pullovers, grubby knees and notebooks. These past runways of British Rail rolling stock were now just the winter roosting sites of wood pigeon, fieldfare and redwing and here, on one of the estate’s favoured drives, of pheasants; and tonight they were all in their allotted places.

That seems very shallow of me, to use that lengthy quote to illustrate today’s guff but, honest, there’s a reason. In the news now, with HS2/HS3, and what has been in the news for the past 20+ years, ever since the Conservative government embarked on hiving off our national railway service to their friends to make a profit out of, has been the wholesale castration of our transport industry into its present-day shit-shape.

As a starter, I nominate for the position of Worst Train Station in the UK the joyful stop that is Bristol Parkway. Was there ever a more depressing, cruel and socially alienating yet almost unavoidable place on the UK mainland? I’m open to challenge but you’ll have to prove it. This is a corrugated-iron wind tunnel where the regular announcements by electronically segmented phrase selections assure you that a machine somewhere in the bowels of customer-service hell is sorry for the delay; and these automated vox-pops signify all that is terrible in this careless, supportless nation of ours, and so the beat goes on.

With a start figure of £25bn, HS2 has now bloated itself out to a present-day estimate of a £40bn price tag, with the PM saying he’ll;

Cut the £50bn cost of HS2 ?

It would seem even the figures bandied around by the industry are £10bn short of what the PM thinks it’ll cost; there’s a man who’s on the case... Due to be completed in June 2033 (yes, that’s right, twenty thirty-three) my guess is the HS2 costs won’t decrease any… Ever had the feeling we’re being right-royally fucked over?

One of the myths being promulgated is that the railways are safer in private hands; but the facts tell an interesting story. Since privitisation in 1997 there have been 28 rail crashes resulting in 83 deaths and 1345 serious injuries over a 16 year period so 1.75 rail crashes per year average. Before privatisation and taking a similar 16 year period there were 38 rail crashes resulting in 132 deaths and 1165 serious injuries so 2.37 rail crashes per year average; not a lot to choose between them…but, thing is, those accidents that happened post-privitisation were, in the main, caused by poor maintenance (pointing to a lack of infrastructure investment perpetrated in order to gain a greater dividend for the shareholders and board members) whereas those before, when politicians ran the show, were, in the main, caused by driver/staff operator error (pointing to possible excessive shift working to make up for poor pay, union intransigence in staff discipline and management’s lack of investment in training).

On this day in 1967 a train was derailed at Hither Green near London. 49 people died and 78 were injured and amongst those was one Robin Gibb (of Bee Gees fame) who was travelling in the crowded train with his then fiancée, Molly. Mr. Gibb helped many injured passengers from the train wreck until, after three hours of helping he too was taken to hospital suffering from shock and exhaustion. This was a pre-privitisation crash that was caused by poor track maintenance which, in turn, was due to the practice of using joiners for the rail track as well as the excessive speed by the driver in order to keep to the timetable.

After this crash the practice of continuous welded rails and greater inspection routines were introduced all of which helped to reduce the probability of a repeat.

At the time of this accident the Bee Gees were riding high in the charts with their rendition of the New York Mining Disaster of 1941 which tells the tale of a fictitious service industry accident (although there was an Avondale mining disaster in Pennsylvania in 1869) and makes much of the bravery of folk in extreme situations. So, at the time Mr. Gibb was singing about coping with a fictitious disaster when he was employed in coping with a real one....just sayin'...