Great Western Railway Routes

James Gray Excerpts

Monday 8th February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Foster]

I thank my hon. Friend for sharing with the House his superb knowledge of the vegetation on the Great Western main line in Devon and Cornwall. His point absolutely rams home the message that a tree falling over, a cow breaking out of a field, or a small amount of earth moving at a critical point can close huge parts of the network. That is why it is so important to hold this debate about resilience. In addition, the cross-country services have been cancelled at Dawlish again today. I must say that that is not due to the line but to a fault with the trains, but that again brings home to us the vulnerability of some key routes and networks on which many people depend.

I hope that this debate will not be about being negative and having a moan. We could all spend the next few hours whingeing and sharing our stories about various poor train journeys. One that sticks in my mind was when I and my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton Deane (Rebecca Pow) got on a train that had what was charmingly described as a “toilet spill”, which was particularly interesting. Being negative will not achieve anything: it may make us feel a bit better to get a dreadful journey off our chests, but it will not actually make a difference.

[Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)]

I am sorry to bring a disagreeable note into what has, so far, been an extremely agreeable debate. Of course we all love to moan and groan about our rail journeys, but I have travelled with First Great Western twice a week for 20 years and I find it extraordinarily good. We have criticisms of some things—the catering, the toilets and one or two other matters need to be sorted out—but overall, the punctuality and the service are extremely good.

[Kevin Foster]

My hon. Friend is right that there are many positive stories to be told. Let us be blunt that a key one is the amazing legacy of innovative engineering we have been left by the Victorians. The Royal Albert bridge was built using innovative techniques and was a feat of engineering at the time. It created the link between Plymouth and Cornwall that exists to this day and carries trains far heavier than it was ever designed for. Box tunnel is now one of the most well-used tunnels. It was so innovative when it was built that there had to be a station at both ends, because some Victorian travellers were rather frightened of going through a tunnel, so there was the option of getting off the train, taking a horse and carriage ride around it and getting back on a train at the other end.

[Mr Gray]

rose—

[Johnny Mercer (Plymouth, Moor View) (Con)]

I think my hon. Friend was there.

[Kevin Foster]

That is very ungentlemanly of my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Johnny Mercer). I give way to my hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire (Mr Gray) again.

[Mr Gray]

My hon. Friend is being very generous. Box tunnel is, of course, in my constituency. He will know that the only time one can see from one end of the tunnel to the other is once a year on Brunel’s birthday. [Interruption.] The Minister says that it is not true, but we believe it is true—I have seen it myself. More importantly, we think that we are close to reopening an important station at Corsham, which is at one end of Box tunnel. I hope my hon. Friend will agree that opening such stations along the route is extremely important.

[Kevin Foster]

Absolutely. I do not want to get involved in a cross-Wiltshire debate about tunnel openings and people’s birthdays, but it is important to think about the communities along the route. One reason why the theme of resilience is so important is that having a station is great, but if a train does not run at certain times, people do not have the service they want.

Let us be candid: this is the positive story of a network that stretches from London to Swansea, that runs through Cheltenham and Bristol, and that goes down to Penzance. It revolutionised a whole region that had been fairly isolated until the trains went through.

Over the past few years, we have seen huge growth in rail travel across our region, with many branch lines, particularly in Cornwall, seeing passenger levels that have not been seen for decades. All that is being delivered with the well-known limitations of the network in the area: the relatively old rolling stock, some of which has seen better days, and issues with the network in terms of resilience, signalling and other things that I will come to in a minute.

The point of this debate is not to share jokes or reminisce about poor train journeys, but to say that there could be an even more positive story in the future that would boost productivity and deliver more jobs and investment.