Modern dictator needed to sort out railways

I DON'T really want to become the founder member of the Suffolk and Essex branch of the Mussolini fan club, but it's high time someone took our railways by the scruff of the neck and managed to get our trains running on time, just as Italy did in the run-up to World War II.

The chaos caused by a National Express train bringing down power cables between Shenfield and Chelmsford was bad enough on Monday evening. That the disruption to services has continued for more than 48 hours is no joke for the commuters and other travellers who pay dearly for the privilege of riding the East Anglia main line.

With the service reduced off-peak to one train an hour, instead of three, to and from Liverpool Street and Ipswich, and one train an hour on the London to Clacton-on-Sea line, inconvenience is, to say the least, inevitable. This afternoon, the problems were compounded by an accident to Network Rail workers involved in fixing the overhead cables.

Of course, the incoinvenience of getting home fades in significance to the serious injuries of the engineers. But if our rail infrastructure had been updated in the 1980s and 1990s, and proper investment had been ploughed into rolling stock and modern trains as has happened in continental countries - Belgium is, however, the dishonourable exception with downright filthy and uncomfortable carriages which make our trains look top class - we would not be suffering today the constant delays caused by either signalling and wiring faults or broken down locomotive-hauled trains.

Britain gave railways to the world. Other countries have risen to the challenge of rapid mass transportation in the 21st century while we are daudling along on a branch line. In other countries, new routes and modernisation of existing tracks seem to spring up overnight. In the UK, it took an age to construct the Channel Tunnel Rail Link while the upgrading to the West Coast Main Line from London to Preston and Glasgow grinds on and on and on.

This afternoon, I arrived at Liverpool Street at 15:10 for the 15:30 InterCity to Ipswich. In the platform stood the 14:30, packed to the gunwhales with passengers squeezing into the carriages and fretting and fuming at the delay to the journey. It was 20 past three when we moved off, only to stop at Stratford where more unfortunate souls tried to board.

Next stop Shenfield, where the train was held for an age to allow emergency services to finish dealing with the injured rail workers. We shuddered to a start, only for another long wait a few miles up the line, finally traversing the London-bound line to make our way on to Chelmsford, Witham, Colchester and Manningtree, arriving in Ipswich at 17:00. For people who had boarded the train for a 14:30 departure, that represented a jounrey time of two-and-a-half hours, instead of the normal 68 minutes.

I travel all over the UK by train because for all the faults, it is less frentic than motorway driving and allows time to recover from the party conferences and meetings in London. As petrol drives up the cost of motoring, the train should really come into its own. But that will never happen unless the customers have confidence in travelling and that needs modern, clean trains which run on time.

The "on-board train team" as guards and buffet workers are now called tried their hardest this afternoon. Miracle of miracles, the air conditioning did not conk out.

Passengers seated in first class looked distinctly uneasy and unhappy as the plebs stood in the central aisles swigging back cans of lager. But hey, we all have to rough it at times on Britain's railways today.

There was one brief moment of entertainment as I waited at Ipswich for the Felixstowe shuttle - that was the sight of Jonathan Denby, National Express's PR guru, wearing a customer relations team yellow jacket and handing out compensation delay forms for arriving passengers. Every little helps, but Mussolini did it with much more chutzpah.