Latest commitments from First Great Western

Mon 27 Oct 2008, 11:04

I would be interested to know when bikes were first allowed on British trains. From memory, it may have been some time in the 70s. Certainly, if one watches films from the 1940s and 1950s you never see anyone attempting to take a bike on a steam train. Mind you, there wouldn't be room amongst all the soldiers with their huge kit bags and evacuees with their gas masks in wooden boxes! I remember going on holiday with my family in about 1977 and putting our bikes on the train. There was a sense that this was a new initiative on the part of British Rail and that we were "privileged" in some way to be allowed to take our bikes on the train. I remember my mother had to check carefully before we started out to make sure which trains would accept bikes because not all of them did.

To answer Glena's point, I think there were two things that led to bike transportation by rail becoming more difficult. One was the modernisation of rolling stock in the early 1990s: DMUs (which did have guard's vans) were replaced by Sprinters and Turbos (which don't); locomotive-hauled trains (which did have guard's vans) were replaced by HSTs etc. (which don't). The other big change in the 90s was of course the break-up of British Rail and the introduction of private rail companies. Overnight we went from a state-owned rail network which encouraged bike transport (albeit in a half-hearted, ad hoc fashion) to a private enterprise where cycle carriage was frowned on for the simple reason that it got in the way of making profit for the shareholders. We either need to go back to a nationalised railway or else there should be state compulsion to force the rail companies to make proper provision for cyclists. Either way, Mr. Brown must act! However, I expect he has more important things on his mind (like upsetting the Icelandic people).

One final point: the length of modern trains is also an issue here. The old loco-hauled trains I used to put my bike on in the late 80s frequently comprised eight or nine carriages, one of which was a guard's van. Compare to that to your average Voyager or Adelante these days which comprise only four or five coaches, i.e. less room available for bikes. Why can't British trains be longer? Recently I was on a London-bound train which was taken out of service at Oxford and had to wait half an hour for the next one. As there were two trains' worth of passengers likely to be using this train, FGW (amazingly proactive for once) coupled together two Adelantes to form a 10-coach train! It can therefore be done, but why not more often? If all rush-hour trains were this long then there would be plenty of space for one carriage or even half a carriage to be converted into a cycle carriage.