Right, you may as well all stop reading now. Most of you will be totally unsurprised at the following rant, some of you will be wondering what the hell is going on, very few of you will actually find it interesting (and all of you will be baffled by some of the terms).

With the state of the railways, such as they are, in this country I have to take them to task on one more thing. My GOD modern rolling stock is dull and uninteresting.!

Back when I was a wee nipper (1987, so I was 9) I used to love standing at the lineside, watching a procession of early DMU’s, PW trains and aging diesels blasting past my vantage point. The sheer delight at seeing a double headed pair of class 37’s whapping along with a load of ECC tanks was so powerful. But what do we have now.? A tedious array of Voyagers, Sprinters and the inevitable 66’s on EWS freights. Ok, so privatisation was supposed to bring down fares and renew the downtrodden rail market and traffic wise at least, it has improved. The passenger is still shafted six ways from Sirius by pricing but more loads are carried and more passengers too. However there has been a cost to all this. Boredom.

I still love watching rail traffic, I always will, and during the mid 1990’s when the last Hoover was pulled out of service and into preservation I knew with a sad certainty that 1950’s and 60’s engines would never soldier on much past 2001, but standing at Bristol Temple Meads a few months ago made me look round and sigh with misery at the horribly predictable stock sat around me, all of it draped in terribly twee Barbie livery, terrible advertising colours and Virgin’s stylish but bland silver.

You all think I am talking a load of rubbish by now and I guess some of you might be right, but then again, you wouldn’t understand it. You never stood next on a platform as 100 tons of throbbing diesel loco flew past at 90mph three feet away from you. Feeling that massive wall of air hit you as the train passes and then the sudden silence, save for the hissing of the tracks that instantly envelopes you. The old trains had an air of almost menace, like a hidden power waiting to spring forth, now all we have is USA built blandness.

I miss the old days.

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