Comment: From 1825 to 2025… and beyond

New Year is a time when we usher out the old and welcome in the new. In 2025, we could say we are ushering out the last 200 years of rail and welcoming the next 200.

Rail’s bicentenary day isn’t until September 27, but the celebrations have already started as we begin events up and down the country that run all year.

We kick off our Railway 200 anniversary coverage this year with a look at what survives from the original Stockton & Darlington Railway. It will be the first of our bicentenary articles dipping into two centuries of rail history.

Also in this issue on sale now and online soon, David Clough tracks the repetitive rises and falls of the Class 90 locomotive, while Philip Haigh looks at the history of the great rolling stock manufacturers that started even earlier, in 1823, and what it will take for that manufacturing sector to secure a future.

Our cover story also concerns an innovation with a development history stretching back well over a century, to the early days of electrical engineering.

The first electromagnetic brakes for rail were patented by Westinghouse Air Brake Company of London in 1900, with the first introduced in Germany in 1903. Since then, there has been plenty of evidence from other countries that they can help with emergency braking in the event of poor rail adhesion.

Introducing new technology requires time and care, and almost always turns out to be more complex than its proponents argue. But is it time for this established piece of engineering to be considered in the UK? Ben Jones reports and explores the issue.

The rail industry is keen that the bicentenary is not all backwards-facing. Two hundred years ago, today’s world of airlines, satellites and smartphones was so far away as to be unimaginable. Now technology moves so fast, and is accelerating with every innovation, that it is increasingly difficult to predict the next 20 years, let alone the next 200.

But I will risk a crystal ball. Digitalisation is already shaping the way new generations think, and is changing almost every aspect of our lives. It is reaching into every sector - and it’s coming to transport.

Car manufacturers are not just worrying about how they will sell the electric vehicles on which most of them are now exclusively focusing. Further ahead, they have their sights set on shared ownership models for connected vehicles and driverless cars. That would transform our city centres, our mobility habits, and our experiences of transport, as well as being more efficient and better for the environment.

But what will digitalisation mean for rail? The ‘internet of things’ is now reaching into the railways, with sensors finding their ways into every part of rolling stock and infrastructure, enabling closer monitoring for safety, preventative maintenance, and (in the longer run) improvements in performance, efficiency and sustainability.

That’s a long road, but it’s one the industry has started down. Peter Plisner looks at some of the ways that artificial intelligence is already being used around the network. Electrification was a trend for rail long before road vehicles and is still a live issue, thanks in part to developments in battery technology. Joe Campbell catches up with Great Western Railway’s trials of the latest fast-charge technology. Both thsoe features in the issue on sale now and coming soon online.

These moves towards digitalisation and sustainability in rail (and in the entire transport sector) should enable a more integrated transport system that will benefit everyone.

Visions of the future promised flying cars and hoverboards, but it’s much more likely to feature smarter, more convenient, shared transport that integrates rail. And it will be a lot sooner than the next 200 years.