When I went to Japan in November (RAIL 1024, 1025), I was accompanied by the wonderful Rod Smith, who introduced me to various Japanese railway people and showed me round Tokyo.
Rod, a professor at Imperial College, had a long-term interest in high-speed railways, particularly the Shinkansen, not least because his wife comes from Japan.
Therefore, it was a terrible shock to discover that Rod was killed in a hiking accident in the Lake District on Boxing Day, which happened to be his 77th birthday.
Details are scant, but it seems it was a very foggy day, and his body was spotted by another hiker. The rescue helicopter was summoned, but apparently he died very quickly from his head injury.
As a member of the Alpine Club, Rod knew the hills there well, so what precisely happened remains something of a mystery. He loved the mountains, having reached the top of all the Lakeland Wainwrights as well as leading expeditions to Greenland, Arctic Norway and the Himalayas.
Rod was a past-president of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, and it is thanks to him and his relationship with Japanese railway managers that the National Railway Museum in York boasts a Shinkansen train in its Great Hall.
I had been planning to go with Rod to China, where he also had contacts, for further research on my forthcoming book on high-speed rail. It was a visit to which he was greatly looking forward.
He was a very nice man with a typical Yorkshire quick wit, and we had great fun exploring his favourite little restaurants in Tokyo.
The news of his death therefore filled me with immense sadness and showed just how careful one must be to enjoy every day of life. It can come to an end all too suddenly.
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