As of October 2023, 6,065 kilometres (3,769 mi) (38%) of the British rail network was electrified.
More than half is still old school
That’s… surprising. Here in Japan, over 26,000 km of the 30,000 some-odd km of track is electrified. Most of the fueled trains are for freight, which only accounts for less than 1% of rail traffic.
What prevented the UK from deploying electrification to that extent? Is it politics or logistics?
Politics. They privatized rail and the private companies don’t like doing the investment.
Network Rail (who own and maintain the track/infrastructure) are state run.
It was privatised for about 5 years, it was a disaster, and it was brought back in house.
Trains are run by TOCs, though these are being gradually coming back to the state too.
The honest answer is, we have a fuckton of track, much of which has been there since victorian times.
Couple that with diesel-electric trains that run at 125mph already, a lot of track that doesn’t get that much use, and the electrification number is low.
We’re slowly getting there.
New lines are electric from the start, and electrification projects are rolling out.
It can be a pain in the ass though (GWML, for example. We had to order bi-mode trains to continue down to the westcountry, and while the electric part was completed.)
Plus the issue that any track that’s busy enough to prioritise electrification on is going to be more complex because of the impact any downtime causes on a busy route.
So are battery trains expensive in the long run and have worse performance, and only being used because they’re immediately cheaper than electrifying more rail?
