Successive generations have spurned opportunities to make Britain’s railways cleaner and more efficient by investing in a rolling programme of main line electrification.
Ben Jones looks at how the situation could be changed.
In 1841, just 11 years after Robert Stephenson’s iconic Rocket triumphed at the Rainhill trials, Scottish inventor Robert Davidson built Galvani, the world’s first electrically powered rail vehicle.
Based on a model produced four years earlier, it was exhibited in London and tested on the Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway.
However, with a maximum speed of just 4mph and batteries that couldn’t be recharged, it didn’t impress the railway’s management sufficiently to warrant further development.
Setting the template for British scepticism about the benefits of electric traction, it took another 50 years for the value of Davidson’s invention to be recognised.
Following Werner von Siemens’ successful development of electric traction supplied from an external power source in 1879 (demonstrated at Crystal Palace in 1881-82), the 1880s saw the first commercial electric railways open to the public:
Volk’s Electric Railway in Brighton and the Giant’s Causeway and Bessbrook and Newry tramways in Northern Ireland.
More minor railways and electric tramways followed, but in the following decade attention turned to a new generation of urban railways - both underground and elevated above city streets choked with traffic.
By the end of 1900, the British Isles (including Ireland and the Isle of Man) had 55 miles of electrified minor railways, 19 miles of urban railways, and 348 miles of electric tramway.
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