WITH the greatest respect to the admirable Transport Secretary Lord Adonis, there are questions to be asked of his enthusiasm for trams on the Watford-St Albans Abbey branch line just announced. Or rather of all these schemes such as the Cambridge and Gosport guided busways and the Oldham Loop.
Why do they take places off the main network, so no excursion trains can go there, no freight can ever operate there, trains cannot leave and go to main city termini, and they cannot be connected to further extensions or through routes in the future?
Lord Adonis says: ‘The demise of the tram was a serious mistake in post-war transport policy’. I would suggest the same about this process. We don’t, of course, know the details of the St Albans Abbey experiment but I would guess that it’ll mean changed platform heights and be incapable of taking normal trains for some reason such as signalling incompatibility. A tram system is a fine thing if it goes on into the town centre (as at Croydon), but if you know St Albans Abbey station at the foot of steep Holywell Hill, that is never going to happen there. The onward route towards the City Station and Hatfield has long been blocked by development. Equally, at Watford, the branch is the wrong side of the main line to access the town centre, (although if someone is suggesting a flyunder, great. You could even join the Croxley line, as I suggested 30 years ago).
In other words, little gain for the loss of a part of the national railway system. These things always cost far more than just fixing the branch line (and this one isn’t even broke!). All that is needed to increase capacity on the St Albans Abbey branch is a passing loop halfway down which won’t cost much less for a tram than a railway, and a second-hand electric unit. Signalling is quoted as the big bugbear. Nonsense: The part from the loop to the end of the line and back could be a train staff type of arrangement – ie one train allowed up there and it must possess the authority. I could lend them an old walking stick.
There must be some real gain from these change to make it worth severing a line from the system. Otherwise we are entitled to ask why have the Bluebell, the Mid-Hants, the North Norfolk and the Swanage fought so hard to get back to the network when the authorities are disconnecting branches in other places? Our forefathers realised that having 4ft gauge near Dundee and broad gauge in the West was a mistake. It all had to be to inter-operable. It was lesson painfully and expensively learned. Don’t unlearn it now.
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