Letters to the editor - unpublished!

The power of railways

Date: October 23, 2024Author: Philip Hamlyn Williams 0 Comments

The Guardian of 22 October 2024 argued the case for more investment in northern railways. This is my response.

Your leader urging investment in our northern railways hits on a vital aspect of encouraging economic growth. I am exploring the history of British manufacturing towns, most recently in the northwest. https://britishmanufacturinghistory.uk/british-manufacturing-by-region/

A key feature to their success was the excellence of the railways, not least in their architecture of which there is surely an echo in the Elizabeth line. Improving, and in their case creating, railway connectivity is like the clearing of furred up arteries: the whole body responds with renewed vigour. Today so many of our champions of manufacturing have been suffering for many decades. This is unfair on their populations but also cruel to the country as a whole which loses out from so much untapped potential.

The Treasury needs to refresh its corporate memory of railway mania. Sure, some investors caught a cold, but many made fortunes, the power of industry was unleashed, the country blossomed and the task of improving the dire conditions of early industrialisation could be tackled. Then the power was underground in coal and iron ore, now it is far more potent in the potential of people.

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