East West Rail has announced the appointment of Chiltern Railways is the operator of the ‘new’ rail line linking Oxford with Cambridge – that rarity of things, a new railway development.
This is a genuinely important and interesting new route development, albeit It is a complicated bit of railway engineering – as ever in England – utilising both existing and reopened sections, with the first stage only linking Oxford with Milton Keynes when it opens later this year. The other two sections are, first, Bletchley to Bedford, scheduled to open after 2030, and then Bedford to Cambridge – not set to open until the mid-2030s. It will provide connecting opportunities to the West Coast Mainline (WCML) at Milton Keynes and, later, to the Midland Mainline at Bedford.
Chiltern Railways, whose London terminus is Marylebone, is an innovative operator that has previously brought life back to sections of railway that had been abandoned or downgraded in the days of British Rail. Indeed when I first came across the line it had just been saved from becoming a coachway, was single track for most of the route and ran a train to London from Bicester that ran every hour or two and took nearly two hours to get there.
Under the leadersup of the late, lamented Adrian Shooter, Chiltern showed what was possible: now there are two stations at Bicester – one of the line to Birmingham and one on the rebuilt line to Oxford and there are four trains an hour taking as little as 41 minutes to get to London. Shooter also oversaw the commissioning and introduction of an innovative new class of train, the Class 168 Clubman, in which he removed first class by making every seat better than the previous first class.
However, the Chiltern was eventually bought by a private equity group before being sold to Deutsche Bahn where, in common seemingly with the German railway system itself, services have gone pear-shaped. The last Conservative government cancelling an order for new carriages did not help either, and the result is a service that while occasionally excellent seems to have increasing cancellations due to technical issues and where overcrowding and shabby coaches has become the norm. Standing room only to and from Bicester is now too often the reality.
Which then begs the question of where they are going to get the rolling stock from to run East West Rail. I understand that some old Midland trains will be provided and that will help but it hardly seems right for a shiny new railway. More realistically I suspect we are going to see further collapse of the Chiltern Line itself…..