Electric rail is part of a renaissance (From Oxford Mail)

Electric rail is part of a renaissance

9:00pm Thursday 23rd July 2009 in

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THE news that electric trains will soon be serving Oxfordshire marks another notable step in the renaissance of the county’s railways.

It promises to bring the Great Western Main Line and its associated routes back to the front rank of Britain’s railways, on a par with the already electrified East and West Coast main lines running north from London to Scotland.

As Transport Secretary Lord Adonis was making the announcement, Network Rail engineers were hard at work in west Oxfordshire on a scheme to reinstate double track on much of the Cotswold Line between Oxford and Worcester, 28 years after the line was singled to save money amid plummeting demand for rail travel.

And Chiltern Railways is promoting a plan for a second Oxford-London rail route, via Bicester, with the aim of starting services by 2013.

Just five years ago, the former Strategic Rail Authority poured cold water on calls for Cotswold Line redoubling, while opposition to the idea of electrification seemed so deep-rooted in the Department for Transport that little over a year ago no-one would have believed it could ever happen.

But last June former Transport Secretary Ruth Kelly came out in favour of the idea and the torch was taken up by former Oxford don and city councillor Lord Adonis when he became a transport minister last October.

Just a month after taking over the top job in the department, he has given approval for 25,000-volt wires to be strung up through the Thames Valley, the West of England and South Wales, with the prospect of more to follow across the rest of the country.

Whatever next?

The go-ahead for the long proposed East-West rail link between Oxford, Bicester, Milton Keynes and Bedford?

This would undo at least part of the short-sighted closure of the Varsity Line to Cambridge in 1967, a matter of months after plans for Milton Keynes new town were announced.