122-639: Railtrack was a group of companies that owned the track , signalling , tunnels , bridges , level crossings and all but a handful of the stations of the British railway system from 1994 until 2002. It was created as part of the privatisation of British Rail , listed on the London Stock Exchange , and was a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index . In 2002, after experiencing major financial difficulty, most of Railtrack's operations were transferred to
244-408: A crank on a driving axle. Steam locomotives have been phased out in most parts of the world for economical and safety reasons, although many are preserved in working order by heritage railways . Electric locomotives draw power from a stationary source via an overhead wire or third rail . Some also or instead use a battery . In locomotives that are powered by high-voltage alternating current ,
366-586: A dining car . Some lines also provide over-night services with sleeping cars . Some long-haul trains have been given a specific name . Regional trains are medium distance trains that connect cities with outlying, surrounding areas, or provide a regional service, making more stops and having lower speeds. Commuter trains serve suburbs of urban areas, providing a daily commuting service. Airport rail links provide quick access from city centres to airports . High-speed rail are special inter-city trains that operate at much higher speeds than conventional railways,
488-731: A fourth rail system in 1890 on the City and South London Railway , now part of the London Underground Northern line . This was the first major railway to use electric traction . The world's first deep-level electric railway, it runs from the City of London , under the River Thames , to Stockwell in south London. The first practical AC electric locomotive was designed by Charles Brown , then working for Oerlikon , Zürich. In 1891, Brown had demonstrated long-distance power transmission, using three-phase AC , between
610-542: A funicular railway at the Hohensalzburg Fortress in Austria. The line originally used wooden rails and a hemp haulage rope and was operated by human or animal power, through a treadwheel . The line is still operational, although in updated form and is possibly the oldest operational railway. Wagonways (or tramways ) using wooden rails, hauled by horses, started appearing in the 1550s to facilitate
732-492: A hydro-electric plant at Lauffen am Neckar and Frankfurt am Main West, a distance of 280 km (170 mi). Using experience he had gained while working for Jean Heilmann on steam–electric locomotive designs, Brown observed that three-phase motors had a higher power-to-weight ratio than DC motors and, because of the absence of a commutator , were simpler to manufacture and maintain. However, they were much larger than
854-431: A steam engine that provides adhesion. Coal , petroleum , or wood is burned in a firebox , boiling water in the boiler to create pressurized steam. The steam travels through the smokebox before leaving via the chimney or smoke stack. In the process, it powers a piston that transmits power directly through a connecting rod (US: main rod) and a crankpin (US: wristpin) on the driving wheel (US main driver) or to
976-469: A transformer in the locomotive converts the high-voltage low-current power to low-voltage high current used in the traction motors that power the wheels. Modern locomotives may use three-phase AC induction motors or direct current motors. Under certain conditions, electric locomotives are the most powerful traction. They are also the cheapest to run and provide less noise and no local air pollution. However, they require high capital investments both for
1098-625: A "factually inaccurate" reply to the Select Committee but said that he had not intended to mislead them. This personal statement to Parliament was not accepted by the MP who had asked the original question, and the matter was remitted to the House of Commons Standards and Privileges Committee for investigation. As a result of that committee's report, Mr Byers made another statement of apology to Parliament. RT Group plc (in voluntary liquidation) made
1220-404: A House of Commons Select Committee was inaccurate, but on 14 October 2005 the judge found that there was no evidence that Byers had committed the tort of misfeasance in public office . The private shareholders decided not to appeal against the judgment because there were no legal grounds for doing so. For many of them – who had contributed around £50 each, on average, to the fighting fund to bring
1342-438: A busy mixed-traffic mainline. In 2000, reports emerged that Railtrack might not be able to go through with its planned commitment to purchase section 2 of High Speed 1 , resulting in disruption and uncertainty for that programme as well. In February 2001, Steve Marshall, the company's chairman, stated that Railtrack could have a net debt of approximately £8 billion by 2003. During May 2001, Railtrack announced that, despite making
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#17327656166171464-550: A diesel locomotive from the company in 1909. The world's first diesel-powered locomotive was operated in the summer of 1912 on the Winterthur–Romanshorn railway in Switzerland, but was not a commercial success. The locomotive weight was 95 tonnes and the power was 883 kW with a maximum speed of 100 km/h (62 mph). Small numbers of prototype diesel locomotives were produced in a number of countries through
1586-478: A double track plateway, erroneously sometimes cited as world's first public railway, in south London. William Jessop had earlier used a form of all-iron edge rail and flanged wheels successfully for an extension to the Charnwood Forest Canal at Nanpantan , Loughborough, Leicestershire in 1789. In 1790, Jessop and his partner Outram began to manufacture edge rails. Jessop became a partner in
1708-459: A freight train crossing its path, causing seven deaths and 139 injuries. The passenger train operating company had failed to inform Railtrack and the signaller that the automatic warning system (AWS), which warns drivers of adverse signals, had been turned off in the cab of the HST. As a result, the signaller set a route which would stop the HST and allow the freight train to cross in front of it. If
1830-450: A lack of focus, referring to putting items in his bag before the incident twice in his tape-recorded conversation with signallers at the nearest trackside telephone: "I'm okay, yeah, I was just putting me stuff away in the bag the A, the A, the, the AWS has been isolated because some, some brake problem, I believe, so, I had no AWS so, I put me stuff away in the bag and the next thing I knew, I
1952-437: A large turning radius in its design. While high-speed rail is most often designed for passenger travel, some high-speed systems also offer freight service. Since 1980, rail transport has changed dramatically, but a number of heritage railways continue to operate as part of living history to preserve and maintain old railway lines for services of tourist trains. A train is a connected series of rail vehicles that move along
2074-498: A larger locomotive named Galvani , exhibited at the Royal Scottish Society of Arts Exhibition in 1841. The seven-ton vehicle had two direct-drive reluctance motors , with fixed electromagnets acting on iron bars attached to a wooden cylinder on each axle, and simple commutators . It hauled a load of six tons at four miles per hour (6 kilometers per hour) for a distance of one and a half miles (2.4 kilometres). It
2196-423: A locomotive. This involves one or more powered vehicles being located at the front of the train, providing sufficient tractive force to haul the weight of the full train. This arrangement remains dominant for freight trains and is often used for passenger trains. A push–pull train has the end passenger car equipped with a driver's cab so that the engine driver can remotely control the locomotive. This allows one of
2318-658: A number of payments to shareholders during the winding up of the company's affairs before finally being dissolved on 22 June 2010. Robert Horton was the first chairman of Railtrack; he resigned from this role in early 1999 amid reports of disagreements between Horton and the company's then-chief executive Gerald Corbett. Steve Marshall became the company's next chairman; following the company's entering into receivership, he announced his own resignation in October 2001 and actually stood down in March 2002. That same month, Geoffrey Howe
2440-477: A number of trains per hour (tph). Passenger trains can usually be into two types of operation, intercity railway and intracity transit. Whereas intercity railway involve higher speeds, longer routes, and lower frequency (usually scheduled), intracity transit involves lower speeds, shorter routes, and higher frequency (especially during peak hours). Intercity trains are long-haul trains that operate with few stops between cities. Trains typically have amenities such as
2562-676: A piece of circular rail track in Bloomsbury , London, the Catch Me Who Can , but never got beyond the experimental stage with railway locomotives, not least because his engines were too heavy for the cast-iron plateway track then in use. The first commercially successful steam locomotive was Matthew Murray 's rack locomotive Salamanca built for the Middleton Railway in Leeds in 1812. This twin-cylinder locomotive
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#17327656166172684-465: A pivotal role in the development and widespread adoption of the steam locomotive. His designs considerably improved on the work of the earlier pioneers. He built the locomotive Blücher , also a successful flanged -wheel adhesion locomotive. In 1825 he built the locomotive Locomotion for the Stockton and Darlington Railway in the northeast of England, which became the first public steam railway in
2806-550: A pre-tax profits before exceptional expenses of £199m, the £733m of costs and compensation paid out over the Hatfield crash plunged Railtrack from profit to a loss of £534m. This loss compelled the organisation to approach the government for funding, which it controversially used to pay a £137m dividend to its shareholders in May 2001. Months later, Railtrack sought another bailout from the government. On 7 October 2001, Railtrack plc
2928-439: A revival in recent decades due to road congestion and rising fuel prices, as well as governments investing in rail as a means of reducing CO 2 emissions . Smooth, durable road surfaces have been made for wheeled vehicles since prehistoric times. In some cases, they were narrow and in pairs to support only the wheels. That is, they were wagonways or tracks. Some had grooves or flanges or other mechanical means to keep
3050-739: A single lever to control both engine and generator in a coordinated fashion, and was the prototype for all diesel–electric locomotive control systems. In 1914, world's first functional diesel–electric railcars were produced for the Königlich-Sächsische Staatseisenbahnen ( Royal Saxon State Railways ) by Waggonfabrik Rastatt with electric equipment from Brown, Boveri & Cie and diesel engines from Swiss Sulzer AG . They were classified as DET 1 and DET 2 ( de.wiki ). The first regular used diesel–electric locomotives were switcher (shunter) locomotives . General Electric produced several small switching locomotives in
3172-407: A standard. Following SNCF's successful trials, 50 Hz, now also called industrial frequency was adopted as standard for main-lines across the world. Earliest recorded examples of an internal combustion engine for railway use included a prototype designed by William Dent Priestman . Sir William Thomson examined it in 1888 and described it as a "Priestman oil engine mounted upon a truck which
3294-461: A strategy of disposing of engineers and outsourcing their work wherever possible with the goal of reducing costs. Within its first few years of operation, Railtrack appeared to perform well financially, annual profits were recorded while its share value quadrupled within a relatively short timeframe. Furthermore, during the mid-to-late 1990s, several high-profile investment projects in cooperation with train operators and other partners were announced by
3416-400: A system to ensure HSTs were not operated for long journeys with AWS inoperative. The action of the signaller in stopping a high-speed passenger train to allow a slow freight train to cross in front of it has been criticised. However, this is standard procedure when regulating trains to minimise overall delay; there was no reason for the signaller to expect that the HST driver would not stop at
3538-632: A terminus about one-half mile (800 m) away. A funicular railway was also made at Broseley in Shropshire some time before 1604. This carried coal for James Clifford from his mines down to the River Severn to be loaded onto barges and carried to riverside towns. The Wollaton Wagonway , completed in 1604 by Huntingdon Beaumont , has sometimes erroneously been cited as the earliest British railway. It ran from Strelley to Wollaton near Nottingham . The Middleton Railway in Leeds , which
3660-615: A threatened intervention by the Labour Party . This action effectively privatised Railtrack, although the company remained closely intertwined with the British government from an operational standpoint. Railtrack's initial operations were disrupted by an industrial dispute that largely ran between June and September 1994; at one point, the company's management proposed dismissing all of its signallers, comprising roughly 4,600 staff. Railtrack's first chief executive, John Edmonds, pursued
3782-431: A time. For most of the year in administration, the government's position had been that the new company would have to live within the existing regulatory settlement (£14.8 billion for the five years 2001–2006). However, it soon became obvious that that was impossible, and that the aftermath of the Hatfield crash had revealed that the network required significantly more money for its operation, maintenance and renewal. It
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3904-408: A wheel. This was a large stationary engine , powering cotton mills and a variety of machinery; the state of boiler technology necessitated the use of low-pressure steam acting upon a vacuum in the cylinder, which required a separate condenser and an air pump . Nevertheless, as the construction of boilers improved, Watt investigated the use of high-pressure steam acting directly upon a piston, raising
4026-472: Is capital-intensive and less flexible than road transport, it can carry heavy loads of passengers and cargo with greater energy efficiency and safety. Precursors of railways driven by human or animal power have existed since antiquity, but modern rail transport began with the invention of the steam locomotive in the United Kingdom at the beginning of the 19th century. The first passenger railway,
4148-410: Is a single, self-powered car, and may be electrically propelled or powered by a diesel engine . Multiple units have a driver's cab at each end of the unit, and were developed following the ability to build electric motors and other engines small enough to fit under the coach. There are only a few freight multiple units, most of which are high-speed post trains. Steam locomotives are locomotives with
4270-496: Is adopting a deliberate 'culture of defiance' against the rail regulator". Gerald Corbett , Railtrack's chief executive at the time, and Winsor did not share the same vision for the network. Railtrack resisted regulatory action to improve its performance, and as the regulator probed ever more deeply, serious shortcomings in the company's stewardship of the network were revealed. Winsor informed Railtrack that if it did not improve passenger train performance by 12.7 per cent by March 2000,
4392-613: Is believed that there was £532 million available to Railtrack comprising £370 million in the bank, along with £162 million of an existing Department of Transport loan facility still available to be drawn down, but Stephen Byers MP cancelled this facility, causing shareholders to believe that he had broken the loan agreement. This was the largest class action ever conducted in the English courts – there were 49,500 claimants, all small shareholders in Railtrack. Keith Rowley, QC,
4514-399: Is dominant. Electro-diesel locomotives are built to run as diesel–electric on unelectrified sections and as electric locomotives on electrified sections. Alternative methods of motive power include magnetic levitation , horse-drawn, cable , gravity, pneumatics and gas turbine . A passenger train stops at stations where passengers may embark and disembark. The oversight of the train is
4636-477: Is one of the two primary means of land transport , next to road transport . It is used for about 8% of passenger and freight transport globally, thanks to its energy efficiency and potentially high speed . Rolling stock on rails generally encounters lower frictional resistance than rubber-tyred road vehicles, allowing rail cars to be coupled into longer trains . Power is usually provided by diesel or electrical locomotives . While railway transport
4758-556: Is worked on a temporary line of rails to show the adaptation of a petroleum engine for locomotive purposes." In 1894, a 20 hp (15 kW) two axle machine built by Priestman Brothers was used on the Hull Docks . In 1906, Rudolf Diesel , Adolf Klose and the steam and diesel engine manufacturer Gebrüder Sulzer founded Diesel-Sulzer-Klose GmbH to manufacture diesel-powered locomotives. Sulzer had been manufacturing diesel engines since 1898. The Prussian State Railways ordered
4880-541: The Stockton and Darlington Railway , opened in 1825. The quick spread of railways throughout Europe and North America, following the 1830 opening of the first intercity connection in England, was a key component of the Industrial Revolution . The adoption of rail transport lowered shipping costs compared to water transport, leading to "national markets" in which prices varied less from city to city. In
5002-615: The United Kingdom , South Korea , Scandinavia, Belgium and the Netherlands. The construction of many of these lines has resulted in the dramatic decline of short-haul flights and automotive traffic between connected cities, such as the London–Paris–Brussels corridor, Madrid–Barcelona, Milan–Rome–Naples, as well as many other major lines. High-speed trains normally operate on standard gauge tracks of continuously welded rail on grade-separated right-of-way that incorporates
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5124-521: The emergency brake when the red danger signal came into view. As the tracks on the Up Main Line straightened ahead of the HST, the driver saw the Hanson -operated Class 59 locomotive 59101 Village of Whatley a mile in the distance, moving "at a funny angle," and realised that it was crossing his path. The freight train, which was formed of 20 empty bogie hopper wagons, was coming from London on
5246-496: The lease of stations and depots . Furthermore, the company routinely received funding from the British government; the resulting money was largely spent on the railway network in accordance with plans laid out by the rail regulator. Between its creation and late 1998, the company reportedly had a relatively calm relationship with its first economic regulator, John Swift QC , who exercised a strategy of encouraging Railtrack to make its own commitments towards improvement. According to
5368-414: The overhead lines and the supporting infrastructure, as well as the generating station that is needed to produce electricity. Accordingly, electric traction is used on urban systems, lines with high traffic and for high-speed rail. Diesel locomotives use a diesel engine as the prime mover . The energy transmission may be either diesel–electric , diesel-mechanical or diesel–hydraulic but diesel–electric
5490-458: The puddling process in 1784. In 1783 Cort also patented the rolling process , which was 15 times faster at consolidating and shaping iron than hammering. These processes greatly lowered the cost of producing iron and rails. The next important development in iron production was hot blast developed by James Beaumont Neilson (patented 1828), which considerably reduced the amount of coke (fuel) or charcoal needed to produce pig iron. Wrought iron
5612-418: The rotary phase converter , enabling electric locomotives to use three-phase motors whilst supplied via a single overhead wire, carrying the simple industrial frequency (50 Hz) single phase AC of the high-voltage national networks. An important contribution to the wider adoption of AC traction came from SNCF of France after World War II. The company conducted trials at AC 50 Hz, and established it as
5734-540: The 1880s, railway electrification began with tramways and rapid transit systems. Starting in the 1940s, steam locomotives were replaced by diesel locomotives . The first high-speed railway system was introduced in Japan in 1964, and high-speed rail lines now connect many cities in Europe , East Asia , and the eastern United States . Following some decline due to competition from cars and airplanes, rail transport has had
5856-521: The 1930s (the famous " 44-tonner " switcher was introduced in 1940) Westinghouse Electric and Baldwin collaborated to build switching locomotives starting in 1929. In 1929, the Canadian National Railways became the first North American railway to use diesels in mainline service with two units, 9000 and 9001, from Westinghouse. Although steam and diesel services reaching speeds up to 200 km/h (120 mph) were started before
5978-508: The 1960s in Europe, they were not very successful. The first electrified high-speed rail Tōkaidō Shinkansen was introduced in 1964 between Tokyo and Osaka in Japan. Since then high-speed rail transport, functioning at speeds up to and above 300 km/h (190 mph), has been built in Japan, Spain, France , Germany, Italy, the People's Republic of China, Taiwan (Republic of China),
6100-464: The 40 km Burgdorf–Thun line , Switzerland. Italian railways were the first in the world to introduce electric traction for the entire length of a main line rather than a short section. The 106 km Valtellina line was opened on 4 September 1902, designed by Kandó and a team from the Ganz works. The electrical system was three-phase at 3 kV 15 Hz. In 1918, Kandó invented and developed
6222-532: The AWS in the London-end power car had also been reported on the previous day, but testing at the OOC Maintenance Depot overnight failed to reveal any fault, and the train was passed for service. As the HST approached Southall East Junction, the driver failed to heed two warning signals (a double yellow followed by a single yellow) without slowing the train down, and only reacted by applying
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#17327656166176344-530: The Butterley Company in 1790. The first public edgeway (thus also first public railway) built was Lake Lock Rail Road in 1796. Although the primary purpose of the line was to carry coal, it also carried passengers. These two systems of constructing iron railways, the "L" plate-rail and the smooth edge-rail, continued to exist side by side until well into the early 19th century. The flanged wheel and edge-rail eventually proved its superiority and became
6466-514: The DC motors of the time and could not be mounted in underfloor bogies : they could only be carried within locomotive bodies. In 1894, Hungarian engineer Kálmán Kandó developed a new type 3-phase asynchronous electric drive motors and generators for electric locomotives. Kandó's early 1894 designs were first applied in a short three-phase AC tramway in Évian-les-Bains (France), which was constructed between 1896 and 1898. In 1896, Oerlikon installed
6588-478: The Down Relief line toward the north side, and had been signalled to cross the main lines at Southall East Junction on its way into Southall Yard on the south side. The driver of the freight train, Alan Bricker, observed the approaching HST and expected it to stop, but was alarmed by its speed and apparent brake application. He tried to accelerate his train out of its path of the HST, but to no avail. A collision
6710-462: The High Court and present evidence that the company was no longer insolvent. The principal reason given by the government to the court for this assertion was the decision of the rail regulator – announced on 22 September 2002 – to carry out an interim review of the company's finances, with the potential to advance significant additional sums to the company. The High Court accepted that the company
6832-507: The London-end power car, but it was not switched on because neither drivers Harrison nor Tunnock were then qualified to drive with ATP. From 1996, 125 mph (201 km/h) high speed trains were driven by one driver only, following the removal of a requirement for a second driver. Following this accident and the Ladbroke Grove rail crash , First Great Western (as GWT had become) required all its trains to have ATP switched on. If
6954-429: The Railtrack board had panicked in the wake of Hatfield. Around this time, regulatory and customer pressure on Railtrack audibly increased while the company's share price fell sharply as it became apparent that there were serious shortcomings in the company's ability to tackle and solve fundamental problems with its core activities. During February 1999, a significant fall in Railtrack's share price occurred in response to
7076-496: The accident occurring would have been highly unlikely. Functioning AWS would have given the HST driver an audible warning that he was running towards a signal at danger and needed to start braking. Failure to press the AWS cancelling button to acknowledge the warning would have caused the emergency brake to apply. The train was also fitted with fully operational Automatic Train Protection (ATP) equipment, both at trackside and in
7198-469: The action – the case had served its purpose. The circumstances in which Railtrack had been put into administration were highly controversial, with allegations in Parliament on 24 October 2005 that the company had not been insolvent at the time (7 October 2001) and therefore that the administration order had been wrongly obtained. This was because of the jurisdiction of the independent rail regulator – at
7320-519: The barrister for the shareholders, alleged Byers had "devised a scheme by which he intended to injure the shareholders of Railtrack Group by impairing the value of their interests in that company without paying compensation and without the approval of Parliament". The case was heard in the High Court in London in July 2005; some embarrassment was caused to Byers when he admitted that an answer he had given to
7442-508: The company would have to pay fines out of its profits. On 17 October 2000, the Hatfield rail crash occurred; this would prove to be the defining moment in Railtrack's subsequent collapse. The cause of the fatal accident was quickly determined to be an infrastructure-related failure, and thus within Railtrack's remit. In Hatfield's aftermath, major repairs were undertaken across the whole British rail network which were estimated to have cost in
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#17327656166177564-499: The company's launch of a bond issue intended to finance the West Coast Main Line modernisation and Thameslink Programmes . The modernisation of the West Coast Main Line had suffered from spiralling costs, rising from an estimated £2 billion to roughly £10 billion. The modernisation programme had failures that were technical as well as managerial, such as the moving block signalling apparatus being immature for such
7686-494: The company. However, as early as 1997, Railtrack was being criticised for paying little attention to infrastructure investment. The Southall rail crash in 1997 and the Ladbroke Grove rail crash in 1999 called into question the negative consequences that the fragmentation of the railway network had introduced to both safety and maintenance procedures. Railtrack was severely criticised for both its performance in improving Britain's railway infrastructure and for its safety record. It
7808-416: The crash in one of the most badly affected carriages, was fined for failure to ensure that the HST had their automatic warning system working during long journeys. The collision occurred as the 10:32 Great Western Trains (GWT) InterCity 125 HST returned from Swansea toward London Paddington . The train was formed of Class 43 power car 43173, eight Mark 3 carriages , and power car 43163. The driver at
7930-504: The decision to put Railtrack into railway administration was challenged by the smaller Railtrack Private Shareholders Action Group. Their action against the government alleged that the Secretary of State for Transport at the time – Stephen Byers MP – had, by deciding to cut off funding for Railtrack and asking the High Court to put the company into railway administration, committed the common law tort of misfeasance in public office . It
8052-430: The duty of a guard/train manager/conductor . Passenger trains are part of public transport and often make up the stem of the service, with buses feeding to stations. Passenger trains provide long-distance intercity travel, daily commuter trips, or local urban transit services, operating with a diversity of vehicles, operating speeds, right-of-way requirements, and service frequency. Service frequencies are often expressed as
8174-402: The end of the 19th century, because they were cleaner compared to steam-driven trams which caused smoke in city streets. In 1784 James Watt , a Scottish inventor and mechanical engineer, patented a design for a steam locomotive . Watt had improved the steam engine of Thomas Newcomen , hitherto used to pump water out of mines, and developed a reciprocating engine in 1769 capable of powering
8296-471: The end of the 19th century, improving the quality of steel and further reducing costs. Thus steel completely replaced the use of iron in rails, becoming standard for all railways. The first passenger horsecar or tram , Swansea and Mumbles Railway , was opened between Swansea and Mumbles in Wales in 1807. Horses remained the preferable mode for tram transport even after the arrival of steam engines until
8418-527: The engine by one power stroke. The transmission system employed a large flywheel to even out the action of the piston rod. On 21 February 1804, the world's first steam-powered railway journey took place when Trevithick's unnamed steam locomotive hauled a train along the tramway of the Penydarren ironworks, near Merthyr Tydfil in South Wales . Trevithick later demonstrated a locomotive operating upon
8540-432: The equipment is faulty, the train is taken out of service. It emerged after the incident that the reset switch of the warning system had contamination on its electrical contact surfaces which rendered its performance intermittent, hence its disabling at Oxford the day before the crash. The HST driver and operator were charged with manslaughter , but the charges were later dropped. GWT was fined £1.5 million for not having
8662-475: The era of great expansion of railways that began in the late 1860s. Steel rails lasted several times longer than iron. Steel rails made heavier locomotives possible, allowing for longer trains and improving the productivity of railroads. The Bessemer process introduced nitrogen into the steel, which caused the steel to become brittle with age. The open hearth furnace began to replace the Bessemer process near
8784-522: The first commercial example of the system on the Lugano Tramway . Each 30-tonne locomotive had two 110 kW (150 hp) motors run by three-phase 750 V 40 Hz fed from double overhead lines. Three-phase motors run at a constant speed and provide regenerative braking , and are well suited to steeply graded routes, and the first main-line three-phase locomotives were supplied by Brown (by then in partnership with Walter Boveri ) in 1899 on
8906-430: The government that the national railway network should go to Network Rail, no bidders apart from Network Rail were forthcoming, and Network Rail bought Railtrack plc on 3 October 2002. Railtrack plc was subsequently renamed to Network Rail Infrastructure Limited . Network Rail's acquisition of Railtrack plc was welcomed at the time by groups that represented British train passengers. The attitude of Railtrack's customers –
9028-525: The highest possible radius. All these features are dramatically different from freight operations, thus justifying exclusive high-speed rail lines if it is economically feasible. Southall rail crash The Southall rail crash occurred on 19 September 1997, on the Great Western Main Line at Southall , West London. An InterCity 125 high speed passenger train (HST) failed to slow down in response to warning signals and collided with
9150-569: The incident was formally opened on 24 February 1998, with Professor John Uff appointed to chair by the Health and Safety Commission with the consent of the Secretary of State for Environment, Transport and the Regions. The report was published on 24 February 2000 with 93 recommendations to improve rail safety. The key point identified in the report was that drivers had become increasingly reliant on AWS with single-manning and high speeds, and that it
9272-1230: The limit being regarded at 200 to 350 kilometres per hour (120 to 220 mph). High-speed trains are used mostly for long-haul service and most systems are in Western Europe and East Asia. Magnetic levitation trains such as the Shanghai maglev train use under-riding magnets which attract themselves upward towards the underside of a guideway and this line has achieved somewhat higher peak speeds in day-to-day operation than conventional high-speed railways, although only over short distances. Due to their heightened speeds, route alignments for high-speed rail tend to have broader curves than conventional railways, but may have steeper grades that are more easily climbed by trains with large kinetic energy. High kinetic energy translates to higher horsepower-to-ton ratios (e.g. 20 horsepower per short ton or 16 kilowatts per tonne); this allows trains to accelerate and maintain higher speeds and negotiate steep grades as momentum builds up and recovered in downgrades (reducing cut and fill and tunnelling requirements). Since lateral forces act on curves, curvatures are designed with
9394-399: The location where the train can be dealt with. During poor visibility, the train speed must not exceed 40 mph (65 km/h)" or "If a competent person is not provided...proceed at a speed not exceeding 40 mph (65 km/h), or any lower permissible speed that may apply, to the location where a competent person is available or to the location where the train can be dealt with" Among survivors in
9516-429: The locomotive-hauled train's drawbacks to be removed, since the locomotive need not be moved to the front of the train each time the train changes direction. A railroad car is a vehicle used for the haulage of either passengers or freight. A multiple unit has powered wheels throughout the whole train. These are used for rapid transit and tram systems, as well as many both short- and long-haul passenger trains. A railcar
9638-569: The main portion of the B&;O to the new line to New York through a series of tunnels around the edges of Baltimore's downtown. Electricity quickly became the power supply of choice for subways, abetted by the Sprague's invention of multiple-unit train control in 1897. By the early 1900s most street railways were electrified. The London Underground , the world's oldest underground railway, opened in 1863, and it began operating electric services using
9760-433: The mid-1920s. The Soviet Union operated three experimental units of different designs since late 1925, though only one of them (the E el-2 ) proved technically viable. A significant breakthrough occurred in 1914, when Hermann Lemp , a General Electric electrical engineer, developed and patented a reliable direct current electrical control system (subsequent improvements were also patented by Lemp). Lemp's design used
9882-412: The noise they made on the tracks. There are many references to their use in central Europe in the 16th century. Such a transport system was later used by German miners at Caldbeck , Cumbria , England, perhaps from the 1560s. A wagonway was built at Prescot , near Liverpool , sometime around 1600, possibly as early as 1594. Owned by Philip Layton, the line carried coal from a pit near Prescot Hall to
10004-472: The order of £ 580 million. Railtrack had no idea how many potential Hatfields were waiting to happen, nor did they have any way of assessing the consequence of the speed restrictions they were ordering, largely because the majority of the engineering skill of British Rail had been sold off into separate maintenance and renewal companies. These restrictions brought the railway network to an almost total standstill and drew significant public ire. According to Wolmar,
10126-465: The passenger- and freight-train operators – was much more cautious, especially as they were wary of a corporate structure under which shareholders' equity was not at risk if the company's new management mis-managed its affairs. On 18 October 2002, Railtrack's parent company, Railtrack Group, was placed into members' voluntary liquidation as RT Group. The Railtrack business (and its £7 billion debt) had been sold to Network Rail for £ 500 million, and
10248-525: The possibility of a smaller engine that might be used to power a vehicle. Following his patent, Watt's employee William Murdoch produced a working model of a self-propelled steam carriage in that year. The first full-scale working railway steam locomotive was built in the United Kingdom in 1804 by Richard Trevithick , a British engineer born in Cornwall . This used high-pressure steam to drive
10370-438: The rail industry. In November 2000, Corbett submitted his resignation, having been publicly called on to do so by multiple politicians and public figures. Corbett was Railtrack's chief executive as it went into receivership. Railroad Rail transport (also known as train transport ) is a means of transport using wheeled vehicles running in tracks , which usually consist of two parallel steel rails . Rail transport
10492-432: The railway historian Christian Wolmar , the regulator had intentionally acted weak as to avoid complicating the creation and privatisation of Railtrack. In January 1996, the British government confirmed its plans to privatise Railtrack for £2 billion with a total asset value of £4 billion. During May 1996, the company was floated on the London Stock Exchange , albeit at a lower than planned price, allegedly in response to
10614-439: The railway infrastructure, including the tracks, signalling, and stations, while train operations would be franchised out to various private companies. However, Robert Horton , who would become the first chairman of Railtrack and thus play a leading role through the early years of the organisation's existence, lobbied for the infrastructure-holding company to be privatised as well in order to maximise financial gains; this position
10736-407: The red signal protecting the crossover. At the time there was no requirement for the signaller to have been informed that the HST was in service with its AWS isolated. The Rail Safety and Standards Board rulebook was revised to cover this: "Driver.....if you become aware that the AWS has become defective when it is required to be in operation, you must.....tell the signaller" A public inquiry into
10858-526: The regulator's position, in July 1999 a new rail regulator began a five-year term, starting a much tougher regulatory era. Tom Winsor , the new rail regulator, had been Swift's general counsel (1993–95), and adopted a more interventionist and aggressive regulatory approach. The relationship between the two parties was reportedly stormy at times; in April 2000, it was reported in The Guardian that "Railtrack
10980-439: The signaller had known that the AWS in the express was not working, he would have been prevented by the operating rules from setting a conflicting route. The HST driver did not apply the brakes until it was too late because he was packing his bag and did not see the cautionary signals. He was charged with manslaughter by gross negligence , but the charges were later dropped. Great Western Trains, whose managing director survived
11102-441: The standard for railways. Cast iron used in rails proved unsatisfactory because it was brittle and broke under heavy loads. The wrought iron invented by John Birkinshaw in 1820 replaced cast iron. Wrought iron, usually simply referred to as "iron", was a ductile material that could undergo considerable deformation before breaking, making it more suitable for iron rails. But iron was expensive to produce until Henry Cort patented
11224-477: The state-controlled non-profit company Network Rail . The remainder of Railtrack was renamed RT Group plc and eventually dissolved on 22 June 2010. During the early 1990s, the Conservative Party decided to pursue the privatisation of Britain's nationalised railway operator British Rail . A white paper released in July 1992 had called for a publicly-owned company to be primarily responsible for
11346-495: The then Conservative transport secretary John MacGregor MP. When the Labour government took over after the general election in May 1997 , the new transport secretary (and deputy prime minister) John Prescott took a much harder line. When Swift's five-year term of office expired on 30 November 1998, he was not reappointed. After an interim period, during which Chris Bolt , Swift's chief economic adviser and effective deputy, filled
11468-505: The time Tom Winsor – to provide additional money to maintain the company's financial position. Sir Alan Duncan MP, then the shadow transport secretary, said in Parliament that this aspect of the affair – which was not dealt with in the shareholders' case in the High Court – was "perhaps the most shameful scar on the Government's honesty" and "an absolute scandal". Byers apologised in the House of Commons on 17 October 2005 for having given
11590-500: The time of the collision, Larry Harrison, boarded the train at Cardiff. Earlier that day, the HST's previous driver, James Tunnock, had found a fault with the Automatic Warning System (AWS) that prevented the brakes from releasing. In response, he isolated (disabled) the AWS at 06:00 but did not report the failure to the signaller and to Railtrack as was required to enable extra signalling precautions. A fault with
11712-475: The time, was Liverpool and Manchester Railway , built in 1830. Steam power continued to be the dominant power system in railways around the world for more than a century. The first known electric locomotive was built in 1837 by chemist Robert Davidson of Aberdeen in Scotland, and it was powered by galvanic cells (batteries). Thus it was also the earliest battery-electric locomotive. Davidson later built
11834-543: The track. Propulsion for the train is provided by a separate locomotive or from individual motors in self-propelled multiple units. Most trains carry a revenue load, although non-revenue cars exist for the railway's own use, such as for maintenance-of-way purposes. The engine driver (engineer in North America) controls the locomotive or other power cars, although people movers and some rapid transits are under automatic control. Traditionally, trains are pulled using
11956-471: The transport of ore tubs to and from mines and soon became popular in Europe. Such an operation was illustrated in Germany in 1556 by Georgius Agricola in his work De re metallica . This line used "Hund" carts with unflanged wheels running on wooden planks and a vertical pin on the truck fitting into the gap between the planks to keep it going the right way. The miners called the wagons Hunde ("dogs") from
12078-484: The two most severely stricken coaches in front of the buffet car were Richard George, then managing director of GWT, who played a valuable role in establishing calm, and four injured members of staff in the buffet car, who quickly organised help for passengers. After the completion of the inquiry, power car 43173, which had sustained heavy damage in the collision, was scrapped at a remote site, MoD Shoeburyness . As of 2021, power car 43163, which sustained minor damage in
12200-423: The various diversified businesses it had created to seek to protect itself from the loss-making business of running a railway were disposed of to various buyers. £370 million held by Railtrack Group was frozen at the time the company went into administration and was earmarked to pay Railtrack shareholders an estimated 70p a share in compensation. The Group's interest in the partially built High Speed 1 line
12322-629: The wheels on track. For example, evidence indicates that a 6 to 8.5 km long Diolkos paved trackway transported boats across the Isthmus of Corinth in Greece from around 600 BC. The Diolkos was in use for over 650 years, until at least the 1st century AD. Paved trackways were also later built in Roman Egypt . In 1515, Cardinal Matthäus Lang wrote a description of the Reisszug ,
12444-622: The world in 1825, although it used both horse power and steam power on different runs. In 1829, he built the locomotive Rocket , which entered in and won the Rainhill Trials . This success led to Stephenson establishing his company as the pre-eminent builder of steam locomotives for railways in Great Britain and Ireland, the United States, and much of Europe. The first public railway which used only steam locomotives, all
12566-512: Was a soft material that contained slag or dross . The softness and dross tended to make iron rails distort and delaminate and they lasted less than 10 years. Sometimes they lasted as little as one year under high traffic. All these developments in the production of iron eventually led to the replacement of composite wood/iron rails with superior all-iron rails. The introduction of the Bessemer process , enabling steel to be made inexpensively, led to
12688-549: Was accomplished by the distribution of weight between a number of wheels. Puffing Billy is now on display in the Science Museum in London, and is the oldest locomotive in existence. In 1814, George Stephenson , inspired by the early locomotives of Trevithick, Murray and Hedley, persuaded the manager of the Killingworth colliery where he worked to allow him to build a steam-powered machine. Stephenson played
12810-537: Was also sold for £295m. During December 2002, Railtrack Group was delisted from the London Stock Exchange; that same month, the company announced an agreement to sell its remaining property interests, RT Group Developments, to the property developer Hammerson in exchange for £63 million. In late 2001, Railtrack shareholders formed two groups to press for increased compensation. A lawyer speaking for one of those groups remarked on GMTV that his strategy
12932-703: Was also supported by several figures within the Conservative government, such as the Chancellor of the Exchequer Kenneth Clarke and the Secretary of State for Transport Brian Mawhinney . On 1 April 1994, in accordance with recently passed legislation , the newly-established Railtrack took control of Britain's railway infrastructure from British Rail. Its primary revenue sources were the track access charges levied on train operators and
13054-523: Was appointed chairman of Railtrack Group (the part of the business not in administration) and quickly pursued a strategy of seeking compensation from the British government. Railtrack's first Chief Executive , John Edmonds, was a keen proponent of outsourcing the company's engineering activities and driving down costs. During late 1997, Gerald Corbett succeeded Edmonds as chief executive. During his tenure, numerous accidents occurred; Corbett issued multiple apologies and issued recommendations for reforms of
13176-514: Was built by Siemens. The tram ran on 180 volts DC, which was supplied by running rails. In 1891 the track was equipped with an overhead wire and the line was extended to Berlin-Lichterfelde West station . The Volk's Electric Railway opened in 1883 in Brighton , England. The railway is still operational, thus making it the oldest operational electric railway in the world. Also in 1883, Mödling and Hinterbrühl Tram opened near Vienna in Austria. It
13298-706: Was built in 1758, later became the world's oldest operational railway (other than funiculars), albeit now in an upgraded form. In 1764, the first railway in the Americas was built in Lewiston, New York . In the late 1760s, the Coalbrookdale Company began to fix plates of cast iron to the upper surface of the wooden rails. This allowed a variation of gauge to be used. At first only balloon loops could be used for turning, but later, movable points were taken into use that allowed for switching. A system
13420-456: Was coming up against red, up, such coming through, through...Through Southall, yeah"... ..."I was just putting me stuff away in the bag, like I would normally do, you see. (signaller: Right.) And all of a sudden I was whizzing through Hayes with a red at Southall (signaller: Right.) I see the slow train crossing over then" If the AWS or the ATP equipment on the HST had been working, the chance of
13542-548: Was introduced in which unflanged wheels ran on L-shaped metal plates, which came to be known as plateways . John Curr , a Sheffield colliery manager, invented this flanged rail in 1787, though the exact date of this is disputed. The plate rail was taken up by Benjamin Outram for wagonways serving his canals, manufacturing them at his Butterley ironworks . In 1803, William Jessop opened the Surrey Iron Railway ,
13664-489: Was light enough to not break the edge-rails track and solved the problem of adhesion by a cog-wheel using teeth cast on the side of one of the rails. Thus it was also the first rack railway . This was followed in 1813 by the locomotive Puffing Billy built by Christopher Blackett and William Hedley for the Wylam Colliery Railway, the first successful locomotive running by adhesion only. This
13786-400: Was no longer acceptable to run trains at full speed if the equipment was inoperative. The rulebook was changed, so that if AWS is isolated the train may only run at high speed with a competent person accompanying the driver in the cab. This person must have full knowledge of the route and know how to stop the train: "If a competent person is provided....proceed at normal permissible speed to
13908-422: Was not therefore insolvent, and the railway administration order was discharged on 2 October 2002. Network Rail was formed with the principal purpose of acquiring and owning Railtrack plc. Originally the Government allowed private companies to bid for Railtrack plc. However, with limited availability of financial data on Railtrack, the political implications of owning the company and the very obvious preference of
14030-410: Was now inevitable. The HST was travelling at 125 mph (201 km/h) when the driver saw the danger signal, so even though he applied the emergency brake, the collision occurred at more than 80 mph (130 km/h). The later accident inquiry report found that: Seven passengers died; six at the scene and one in hospital. The HST driver said he was aware of the isolated AWS but admitted to
14152-642: Was observed in Lord Cullen's inquiry into the Ladbroke Grove accident that trains would have been prevented from passing any signal at red had an Automatic Train Protection (ATP) system had been fitted and operational; however, ATP's national adoption, a recommendation made after the Clapham Junction rail crash in 1988, had been abandoned as the cost was considered to be excessive for the increase in safety. One particular area of criticism
14274-720: Was placed into railway administration under the Railways Act 1993, following an application to the High Court by the then Transport Secretary , Stephen Byers . This was effectively a form of bankruptcy protection that allowed the railway network to continue operating despite the financial problems of the operator. The parent company, Railtrack Group plc, was not put into administration and continued operating its other subsidiaries, which included property and telecommunications interests. If this action had not been taken, rail services throughout Britain might have entirely stopped for
14396-476: Was reported on 23 November 2001, that a further £3.5 billion might be needed to keep the national railway network running, a sum disputed by Ernst & Young , the administrators. During February 2002, the European Commission approved the provision of state aid to the ailing Railtrack in order to maintain operations. To get Railtrack out of administration, the government had to go back to
14518-762: Was tested on the Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway in September of the following year, but the limited power from batteries prevented its general use. It was destroyed by railway workers, who saw it as a threat to their job security. By the middle of the nineteenth century most european countries had military uses for railways. Werner von Siemens demonstrated an electric railway in 1879 in Berlin. The world's first electric tram line, Gross-Lichterfelde Tramway , opened in Lichterfelde near Berlin , Germany, in 1881. It
14640-403: Was that the regulator was not tough enough on Railtrack and, as a result, the company had been able to abuse its monopoly position. In particular, Railtrack's customers, the passenger and freight train operators, were allegedly desperate for regulatory action to compel the company to improve its stewardship of the network and its performance. During 1993, Swift had been appointed rail regulator by
14762-636: Was the first tram line in the world in regular service powered from an overhead line. Five years later, in the U.S. electric trolleys were pioneered in 1888 on the Richmond Union Passenger Railway , using equipment designed by Frank J. Sprague . The first use of electrification on a main line was on a four-mile section of the Baltimore Belt Line of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B&O) in 1895 connecting
14884-539: Was to sue the government for incorrect and misleading information given at the time Railtrack was created, when John Major was Conservative Prime Minister . An increased offer of up to 262p per share was enough to convince the larger shareholder group, the Railtrack Action Group, to abandon legal action. The Chairman, Usman Mahmud, believed that legal action would not be successful without the support of management and major shareholders. The legality of
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