mushroomchow
Member
Increasingly, I fear that in the future the heritage rail industry will be hit by tightening emissions regulations and the increasing scarcity and cost of fossil fuels.
Jo Johnson's latest quip about seeking to make the railways free of diesel-only power trains by 2040 is obviously a necessary step towards a modern, ecologically friendly railway, but I worry that a hurricane is going to hit the heritage sector in the coming decades.
Let's face it, without the trains, heritage railways are of very little interest to most visitors. Imagine then, a future, potentially as little as 20 years away, where both coal and diesel fuel are prohibitively expensive through taxation, or simply no longer available, and many railways simply can't operate trains without plunging their delicate finances well into the red. I can see a lot of less financially stable lines going under pretty quickly once those targets start to bite.
I often feel that the government pick the wrong battles anyway - it's quite ridiculous that, by 2040, we could be seeing TOCs forced to abandon diesel trains, while the road freight industry appears to be getting off scot-free from similar restrictions on petrol / diesel cars. Unless
We have by far the biggest heritage railway industry in the world, and it's one of our greatest tourism assets. There are probably more steam locomotives operational in the UK than in the rest of the world combined. But some sort of solution is going to have to be found in a fairly short time if that is going to be sustained in the decades to come.
Here's hoping some sort of exemption is written into legislation to ensure that the past can be kept alive. In the meantime, I'd start stockpiling as much coal or fuel as I could in an f-off big warehouse as soon as possible to keep my trains running if I had the opportunity!
Jo Johnson's latest quip about seeking to make the railways free of diesel-only power trains by 2040 is obviously a necessary step towards a modern, ecologically friendly railway, but I worry that a hurricane is going to hit the heritage sector in the coming decades.
Let's face it, without the trains, heritage railways are of very little interest to most visitors. Imagine then, a future, potentially as little as 20 years away, where both coal and diesel fuel are prohibitively expensive through taxation, or simply no longer available, and many railways simply can't operate trains without plunging their delicate finances well into the red. I can see a lot of less financially stable lines going under pretty quickly once those targets start to bite.
I often feel that the government pick the wrong battles anyway - it's quite ridiculous that, by 2040, we could be seeing TOCs forced to abandon diesel trains, while the road freight industry appears to be getting off scot-free from similar restrictions on petrol / diesel cars. Unless
We have by far the biggest heritage railway industry in the world, and it's one of our greatest tourism assets. There are probably more steam locomotives operational in the UK than in the rest of the world combined. But some sort of solution is going to have to be found in a fairly short time if that is going to be sustained in the decades to come.
Here's hoping some sort of exemption is written into legislation to ensure that the past can be kept alive. In the meantime, I'd start stockpiling as much coal or fuel as I could in an f-off big warehouse as soon as possible to keep my trains running if I had the opportunity!
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