The Friends of the Far North Line
Cairdean Na Loine Tuath
the campaign group for rail north of
Inverness - lobbying for improved services for the local user, tourist and freight
operator
A demonstration run of GWR's former District Line unit, 230001 took place overnight on 20 August. The aim was to beat the world record for the longest journey on a single charge and at the same time achieve 200 miles to help celebrate Railways 200. The previous record, made by a Stadler train in Germany in 2021, was 139 miles.
It wasn't a serious attempt to show that these trains are ready to do such journeys in service, more as a demonstration of the way things are progressing in battery development.
The train ran at a modest speed of around 35 mph, travelling from Reading-London Paddington-Oxford-London Paddington-Reading. At the end of the run it was estimated that there were around 55 miles left, with one of the six batteries remaining unused.
GWR's Engineering Director, Dr Simon Green commented, "Today's record attempt has been a bit of fun, but it also underlines a serious point: investment in battery technology is essential as we look to replace our ageing diesel fleet."
Of course, all this is very relevant to the Scottish 'rural' lines like ours, with ageing stock which will have to be replaced with something fairly soon.
Discontinuous electrification comes to mind, but knowing that Roger Ford of Modern Railways magazine is so against it rather takes the shine off the idea.
Adding charging stops on the Far North Line would probably more than obliterate the obvious benefit of more powerful trains being faster on gradients. Scotland, and the UK, don't seem to be wealthy enough to do the right thing and simply electrify everything as the Swiss did. Even in 1936 Swiss railways were 70%% electric, which compares with the UK figure of 38%% - except that figure was for 2023.